After working hard on our fire pit project the last three days we took it easy today.  I put a load of laundry in to run while we had breakfast and browsed our blog and news feeds.  A couple of recent installments from NutritionFacts.org reminded us yet again why we are following a whole-food plant-based way of eating.  I made follow up phone calls to various contractors and left messages as no one seems to answer phones anymore.  We often do not answer our phones if we don’t recognize the number or the caller ID is blocked, but we are not running businesses.  I did get hold of Ed and we had a nice chat about the restricted water flow problem in his Aqua-Hot and what he did to fix it.  I’m starting to form the impression that these are “fussy” high maintenance units.

I got a call from Chuck in reply to my e-mail to him yesterday.  He is working on a project to replace the conventional bulbs in his side cargo lights with LEDs.  He found a source for a double contact base that fits in place of an 1157 bulb.  He can solder the wires from the LED arrays to the base and plug it in; no modification of the cargo light housing or wiring needed.  I like those kinds of solutions.

I got a call back from Darryll Mech at DCM Heating and Cooling.  Darryll installed a garage heater and a furnace/air-conditioner for the addition to our previous house.  He is going to schedule a time to come back to the new house and figure out exactly what we need to do to prep the house for natural gas.  It is going to involve running additional black pipe, installing a garage furnace and a small furnace/air-conditioner for the library, and then converting the kitchen stove, whole house generator, and hot water baseboard furnace to natural gas.  We have a local guy (TOMTEK) who services the hot water baseboard furnace, so we will probably have him do the conversion on that unit.  We also have a company that installed and services the whole house generator and will probably have them do the conversion on that unit along with the annual maintenance.  We would like to have all of this done, except the appliance conversions, in August.  The natural gas pipeline and hookup is scheduled for “late summer to early fall.”  When I talked to the contractor it sounded like that meant the end of August to early October.  I hope it’s closer to the former than the later.

Scott Barnes from The Renewal Group in Hartland, Michigan retuned my call.  He wasn’t able to work today due to the rain so he came over to discuss our pole/bus barn project.

We got together with Steve and Karen Limkemann for dinner this evening and then went to their house in Westland to visit.  As we moved to being vegetarians and then vegans Indian food rose towards the top of our list of favorite cuisines, and one of our favorite restaurants in all of SE Michigan is Neehee’s in Canton.  Neehee’s is a small, unassuming semi-fast food place that serves “Indian vegetarian street food.” As the name implies, you will not find any dishes with meat, fish, or fowl.  You will, however, find dishes made with paneer (an Indian cheese) and yogurt.  They also serve ice cream.  They have a nice selection of vegan dishes, however, and some of the vegetarian dishes can be made vegan on request.  It’s a long way for us to drive just to have dinner, but very much on our way to Steve and Karen’s place.  They were good sports and agreed to try it.

The menu had changed since the last time we were there.  The “Indo-Chinese” section was gone, and with it one of our favorite dishes, a fried cauliflower in a spicy sweet and sour sauce.  We had the Special Gujarati Thali which consisted of nine different curries and sauces, two types of puri (crepes, thin breads), and rice.  It was very good.  Steve and Karen were not as thrilled with their dishes, but the issue seemed to be a bit too much “heat.”  Almost all Indian food (that we have had) is spicy, in the sense of being pungent and aromatic, and some of it is “hot”, in the sense of having a burning sensation in the mouth.

We drove to Steve and Karen’s house after dinner, looked at photos from trips, and talked at length about past and future travels.  Steve had resurrected some very old computer games and had them running on his Raspberry Pi and displayed on their large screen TV.  We played one for a while based loosely on A Hitch Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy.  It would have been a trip down memory lane if I had any memory of having played it years ago, but I didn’t, so it was a new old experience for me.  He also demonstrated their Roku device, which connects to their WiFi network and streams a wide variety of programming to their television.  Much of it is free, some of it involves a monthly subscription, and some of it is “pay-per-view.”  It might be part of a solution for us at home.