Yesterday I was up in the attic twice. The first time was to disconnect some hokey wires that were installed on the north wall of the office, and to put the HVAC foil tape on the plenum joints. It took about an hour. I was in the attic at 105 degrees F (about 40C) and by the time I came down I was absolutely drenched in sweat. I also scraped my ( Read more... )

I have two 3ft long hardwired outlet strips from Wiremold. It's the 2000 series... I have had the hardest time trying to figure out how to properly feed these strips. Turns out there's a fitting V2010A2 that allows you to connect the strips to 1/2 inch EMT conduit. but I only figured this out after about 3 days of fooling around with them, and ( Read more... )

Saturday morning, Francesca helped me pull wires from the panel to the library and south side of the office. There are two separate crawl spaces, one for the old house, and one for the added on section, so I had to pull around a slab, and into the added on section. It didn't take that long, but everything under the house in a respirator and monkey ( Read more... )

Yesterday I chipped out plaster in the closet, and found the situation with the studs. Stud finders don't really work on our plaster walls... :-( I had one cross-block that can be used for the bottom of the panel, but it needed blocking for the top panel ( Read more... )

Can't help myself. This one has a heavenly scent, and a beautiful shape and color.


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Demolished the paneling on the north wall of the office. Behind it is 1x2 furring strips on top of exterior stucco (the old porch). The wiring in this wall is a total mess, and I'm going to remove it all. then I'm going to run new conduit along the bottom of the wall, put an outlet box, and up near the door for a switch and into the attic to ( Read more... )

We've been having a heat wave here, and on most of the west coast. Yesterday it finally stopped. Also, the order for bathroom fans and a modern programmable thermostat arrived yesterday, so I removed the old thermostat, patched the ugly wall hole, and installed the new thermostat. Just in time to make a difference. It doesn't make a difference when ( Read more... )

I'm bored with people honking on high gas prices on the radio and internet and soforth. No-one ever analyzes the data correctly so it's just all sound and fury. Sure it's been going up rapidly, but how big a fraction of people's income is gas cost ( Read more... )

Roses on the table at our new house, cut from my rose bed on the west side of the house:


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The latest diet research says: Get 50% of your calories from a High Carb + Protein breakfast for weight loss.

I believe this. It really does make a difference to not be hungry right from the beginning of the day. and it's easily believable that the endocrine response in the morning after sleep is totally different from say 4:30 in the afternoon.