Nothing Much

Categories Apollo, Nothing Much

Buying a new car….

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Husband’s current car is a 10yr old Nissan Sentra.  He got it because prior to this car he and several of his family members had owned Nissan’s and liked them quite a bit.

This car broke that record.  Its been nothing but a massive PIA.  There’s a screwed up sensor that apparently Nissan either can’t or won’t fix.  Every year in order to get his car inspected he has to have them re-set the sensor.  He used to replace the sensor every year, but there was no point.  It would still fail within the year.  And to top it off he’s had to replace bearings on it 5 times.  Now its doing this random, start-never mind not going to start, thing that appears to be related to the sensor again.  Its left him stranded a couple times with a car that won’t start, and replacing the sensor only temporarily fixes it (battery, alternator, fuel pump have all been checked, repeatedly).

In addition the Sentra just isn’t big enough.  Its not big enough to haul Apollo around (he doesn’t fit on the rear bench seat).  Its not big enough to haul materials for projects around the house.  Its just not big enough.

My car is a Dodge Caliber.  Like it quite a bit, though I’d not go so far as to say I love it.  It has some issues.  But in general its almost big enough for what we need.  I can haul Apollo, and even Apollo AND Arty in it as long as I fold down the entire back seat.  I can fit 8′ lengths of lumber in it (though not while the dogs are in it).  I can fit 2 other adults in the back seat comfortably (though not while Apollo is in it).

We made the decision that if we were going to replace the Sentra we wanted something just a bit bigger than the Caliber.  Something we could haul Apollo in, AND at the same time haul a 3rd adult or a small amount of cargo.  In addition we want AWD or 4WD as there have been multiple occasions where Husband has been nearly blown off the road on his way home from work in the winter.

And thats where we got stuck.  We don’t want to go for a full-sized SUV, but Apollo is such a big boy…..he’s 27+” at the shoulder, and if he’s sitting the top of his head hits 36″.  So either there has to be room enough for him to stretch out, with no more than half the rear seat folded down, or the roof has to be high enough to reasonably accommodate him while he’s sitting.

Since Husband is going to be the one doing 90% of the driving of this new car I let him do the initial narrow down of choices without my input.  And then we went down to the big name multi brand dealership in Syracuse to test drive as many as possible.

The 2016 Mazda CX-5 was an awesome car, I’d have bought it in a heartbeat if we were looking for something comparable to the Caliber, but it just wasn’t big enough for what we wanted.  Not enough room for Apollo to sit in the cargo space, and when we folded down the larger half of the back seat the remaining seat was very cramped even for me.

The 2016 Jeep Cherokee was even shorter on space than the CX-5.

2016 Jeep Grand Cherokee (V6) didn’t quite have the gas mileage rating we’d been hoping for and was pushing the upper end of what we were willing to spend, but omg the space!  Husband fell in love on the test drive.

2016 GMC Traverse was borderline on space, and we both disliked it on the test drive.

2016 Kia Sorento had the space, and we took the V4 on a test drive.  Not bad.  Didn’t love it the way we both loved the Grand Cherokee, but not bad.  We might have to go back and test drive the V6.  It’s also quite a bit cheaper than the Grand Cherokee for similar options.

2016 Honda Pilot (the CRV not having enough space) had plenty of space, but we ran out of time to do a test drive.  We’ll be going back to do a test drive this week though.  Pushing back onto the upper end of the budget again.  Especially with the options we’d probably pick.

Choices choices……we have to go back for a test drive on the Honda.  Jeep has a rep for needing constant work.  My SIL is a perfect example of several Jeep owners I’ve talked to who said that they LOVED their Cherokee, but wouldn’t recommend them due to constantly needing work.  I’ve never been a huge Kia fan, though supposedly they’ve been improving over the last 10yrs or so.  Honda of course has an awesome rep, and I’m partial to Hondas having grown up with them.  But the 2016 Pilot is the first year of the new re-design, which means that its more likely to have problems.

*sigh*

Categories Nothing Much

Color

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Actually taken a few days ago.  It was the last tree in the yard to change color, and is now shedding its leaves.  If you look close you can see the tree line behind it is mostly bare.

This morning I got up and thought for a minute we’d gotten snow overnight.  After grabbing my glasses I realized it was “just” a heavy frost that hadn’t melted off yet.  Close enough.  Guess winter really is coming!

Categories Nothing Much

People….

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Ok, this particular incident actually happened a couple weeks ago, but it still has me shaking my head, so I’m sharing it so that the rest of you can admire the sort of public that are out there.

This older gentleman is a regular customer.  He’s also the sort of customer who goes to a home improvement store to buy dirt and plants and then gets upset about putting said dirt and plants into his pristine car.  I swear we need to start selling sheets of plastic at the registers for the folks like this, $1 each.  I certainly don’t understand the mentality that the store is responsible for keeping your car clean.  If you’re going to buy stuff that sheds dirt and you don’t want that to shed in your car plan ahead with a tarp or the like and stop trying to blame the cashiers for not having anything to put down to protect your precious car.

Anyway, so I remembered watching him leave, fussing all the way about the fact that the bag of potting soil was dripping water.  I found out later that he even made a point of asking the cashier if the dirt “was ok” if it’s wet?

A couple hours later I answer a phone call.

“I bought a bag of soil earlier today, and it was dripping when I bought it, and it’s still dripping!  Is it ok?!”

*deep breath to hold in the variety of sarcastic answers that occur to me* “Yes sir, it’s normal.  They sit outside where they get rained on and it’s been raining this week.”

“But, all the important stuff in the bag isn’t going to wash away with the water is it??”

It took me several minutes to convince him that his bag of dirt was going to be just fine.  And I’m still not sure he believed me.  I half expected to see him back in the store with it later, returning it……

Categories Nothing Much

General update

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Our firewood for the season was delivered Friday.  There is now a pile of 10 face cord of firewood dumped in front of the carport for stacking.  Guess I know where my free time will be spent for the next little bit!

I spent a large portion of today running the table for the local buffalo farm at the local farmers market.  They paid me in meat, so its hard to complain, but of course today was the day that the weather decided to show us that WINTER IS COMING.  Complete with snow.  I managed to avoid freezing to death, but only thanks to prior planning.  Course, Tuesday its going to be back in the 60’s again.

Our new front steps are taking shape.  The platform is up, as are the stairs themselves.  Still needs guards and railings and some odds and ends, but I’m happy.  We even got the platform level first try!

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Categories Gardening, Nothing Much, tracking garden 2015

Last garden update of the Summer

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If you’re curious, THIS is the link to look back at my garden costs tracking for the summer.

Based on my lackadaisical method of record keeping I spent $90.15 on the garden.  Round it up to $100 since I’m sure I forgot to record SOMETHING.

And “made” $184 (plus whatever all the melons, carrots, radishes, lettuce, pumpkins, etc would have been which I never did manage to check prices on)

So, definitely a profit, especially since I’d have likely never bought half as much if I’d had to actually buy it all.  But not really thousands and thousands either.  Course, I’m not being massively OCD about keeping up with the garden, nor do I have a full 1/4-1/2 acre in garden, but it’s still a good sized garden for a home garden.  I’ll take it.

The compost tomato plant succumbed to Late Blight, but I managed to salvage a few ripe tomatoes off of it that didn’t appear to get touched by the blight, so I’ll be planting those seeds again next year.

Here’s what mature Long Pie Pumpkins look like:

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The biggest is 13.5″ long, and weighs 5.5 pounds.  The other two are closer to the 12″ mark, and weigh about a pound less.

Anyone want Rattail Radish seeds?  I massively over planted, and since you eat the seed pod on these, instead of the bulb like normal radishes, I have a million seed pods drying now too.  Ok, not literally a million, but since I packed a gallon ziplock (and I do mean packed, I smushed them in) of the largest seed pods that were dry enough to empty out as I get time, and still barely made a dent in the seed pods, I have plenty of seeds for the next few years!  Seriously, if someone wants some email me at ruthcatrin (at) scaryyankeechick (dot) com with “rattail radish” in the subject line (otherwise your email might get filtered as junk).  But unless you have a HUGE radish loving family 4 or 5 plants is plenty!

I planted three tires with Purple Early Sprouting Broccoli and some more normal radishes for fall/winter gardening.  The Early Sprouting Broccoli is designed for the winter garden, and infact HAS TO experience a winter in order to produce heads.  Its supposed to be hardy down to 10 degrees (F).  I’m making plans on how I want to cover it for the winter since our chances of dipping below 10 are pretty good.  I’ll try to remember to keep updating on that.

On the deck side of things, the worst of the bad electrical is fixed, but we’re going to have to have an electrician out at some point to basically re-wire the garage and carport.  Now that we now to look for it, there doesn’t appear to be a single junction box in the entire garage, and in several places they wired in “additional” stuff using lamp cord wire instead of proper electrical wire.  And since the carport was added after the garage its safe to assume that its the same way.  The paperwork for the permit for the new front steps and landing is into the town, they agreed to waive the requirement for footers since this is a “temporary” set of stairs.

Categories Nothing Much

My Summer/Fall project

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Well, lets start by saying that this wasn’t the project I’d PLANNED to do for the end of summer/fall.  I’d PLANNED to be putting in all sorts of ice dam preventatives, including proper vents in that attic space where the wood burning stove chimney is.  I’ll still be putting in vents, but I won’t be doing any of the rest of it.

On the evening of August 15th our front deck collapsed, with me, my husband, and both dogs standing on it.  Thankfully it was less than 3 feet off the ground and we’re all fine (though Arty is now terrified of the front door).

A look at it in daylight and we assumed that the ledger board must have rotted out.  But we could also see that it had been attached to the house with nails (3″ nails).

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Since it was safe to assume that the entire length of it was attached to the house with nails (vs screws or bolts) we made the decision to just pull the entire deck down, salvage what we could of the wood, and toss up a set of stairs.  We’ll figure out a replacement deck at a later date.

That wall where the front door is, is the living room addition done by previous home owners.  Not sure if it was done by the folks we bought from, or from before them (I suspect the folks we bought from though).  When they built the outer walls, the wall sits on a heavy timber that sits on the concrete block wall, then outside of that they put a (NOT pressure treated) chipboard before wrapping the addition with house wrap and putting on the siding.

The deck ledger board was NAILED through the house wrap into that chipboard.

It wasn’t the ledger board that rotted out.  The ledger board was fine, a very nice 2×12 piece of pressure treated lumber.  It was the chipboard that rotted out.  Right up under the housewrap and siding.  The ONLY thing that was holding up the deck in that corner was the small portion of the nails that made it into the heavy base timber.  I have no clue how it didn’t collapse under the snow-load last winter.

We’re going to have to pull down the siding and housewrap, remove the rotted chipboard, make sure the rot didn’t damage anything else, replace it all, and redo the housewrap and siding.

But thats not the worst of it.  We found a few more things when we pulled down the deck.

1: the guy who installed our Direct TV really was as big of an idiot as we took him for:

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Yes, we knew he’d run the cable under and then up through the deck, but we didn’t realize till we were pulling it all down that he’d drilled through the ledger board.

 

2: The former homeowner who installed the security lighting likely did it himself:

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That is the wire up to the indoor switch for the outdoor security lighting, with the wires running from it to the fixtures.  Just hanging like that in the crawlspace.  No tape.  No box.  No support.  And I’m pretty sure those are the ground wires just sticking out random.  That all by itself caused some profanity to be said.

 

3: The fact that the whole house was crooked last winter wasn’t a fluke and we should have checked ALL of the house supports under the original structure as soon as things thawed (we checked the rest of the house, but this corner is hard to get to so we assumed that since the rest of the house looked ok……)

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A bit more profanity was let go as we all looked at that.

We called our homeowners insurance, and they informed (this past Tuesday, cause the local guy is a massive PIA to deal with) us that its “wear and tear” and therefor not covered.  I haven’t decided yet if I’m going to argue the point.  I have to dig through the policy and look at the exact wording of whats covered…..

Yesterday (Thursday) we had the whole house re-leveled and new supports put in.  The sales guy for the company we hired about drove me batty, but the guys who actually did the work were great.  It was done quickly, with minimal fussing.

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I’m still waiting for the town to get back to me on whether I need footers for a small landing and 3 steps up to the front door.  If we do then we’ll need to breakup the 6″ deep slab that was poured under the deck since there was no permits done on it and I can’t prove there’s footers under it.  I’m really hoping I don’t have to.

And now I need to dig through the electrical code paperwork to figure out if its legal to have a junction box in the crawl space or not (I suspect not, at least technically, though its certainly accessible since that portion is still skirted).  And get those wires supported and taped, and……we still have the side of the house to deal with.

Oh, and its looking like there were no permits on the living room addition either…….

Categories Nothing Much

ouch

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In the wake of discovering that my ankles weren’t going to be adapting to concrete floors I picked up a pair of soft ankle braces to take the place of the ace wraps I’d been using to give my ankles support.  The braces weren’t anything fancy.  $10 each at the local pharmacy.  But they helped, a lot, and weren’t horribly uncomfortable to wear while I was at work.

This past Thursday, part way through the day, my feet apparently swelled up and the braces became uncomfortable to wear, so I ended up not wearing them for the last couple hours of the work day.  Things didn’t hurt to badly.  So yesterday, Friday, since I was only working a 5hr shift I decided to try the day without them.  I never did figure out what caused my feet to swell and I wanted to see how bad the shorter shift would hurt without the braces.

Wasn’t to bad.  Made it through the 5hrs with no braces with not much additional pain, though I could tell my knees were going to be more sore than usual.  

Till I left work.  

1/2hr drive home and both ankles and knees stiffened up drastically and getting out of the car at home was, well, interesting.  Staggered into the house, greeted the dogs, and collapsed with my feet up.

It is now Saturday morning, I leave for today’s work shift in an hour.  My ankles are still very stiff and painful despite some careful stretching exercises.  My knees are better, but not as good as normal.

Crap.

Obviously ankle support isn’t optional for any reasonable length work shift.  For the moment I’m just going to pick up a 2nd pair of the cheap braces in the larger size for the next time my feet swell.  But I guess I’d better start looking for better ankles supports too…..

Categories Nothing Much

Computer problems……

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Grrrrr

For the last several days I’ve had trouble connecting other devices to my computer.  Mostly via USB connection, but also SD cards directly.  Its not entirely at random, but it feels like it.

The pattern goes like this:

With a freshly rebooted computer I can plug in any device (my phone, ipad, camera, SD cards, etc) into the computer no problem and the computer will recognize them with no issue.  This will seem to last for several hours with no problems, and no matter how many times I plug stuff in and unplug it and plug it in and unplug it……

At some point overnight (I don’t generally turn off the computer overnight due to using it to play quiet music as white noise to keep Apollo from having a snit over night noises) this changes.  When I get up in the morning, anything plugged in the night before is still connected fine, but as soon as I unplug something I can’t plug it back into the computer.  Attempting to plug anything into the computer at that point results in the single-tone “duh-duh” noise indicating failed connection, and the computer not recognizing the device/SD card/whatever.  This lasts until such time as I reboot the computer, and then we start the pattern all over again.

My next step to try (tonight) is to try turning off the various scans that I normally run overnight and see if that fixes it.  If so I’ll then have to try each scan individually till I figure out which one, and then see if I can figure out what setting to change to fix it.  If turning off the scans doesn’t fix it my actual suspect is one of the 18 Windows updates that came in the day before this started happening……yah, that should be fun to figure out…….

Categories Gardening, Nothing Much, Rants, Solar Power

I’m having one of “those” weeks…..

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It could be ever so much worse, but still.

The last 5 days in a row we were predicted to get rain, potentially a lot of it.  We got a sprinkle once.  Looking at the weather map it looks like there were actually storms, but they ended up going around my immediate area somehow.  For 5 days in a row.  Now don’t get me wrong.  I’m thrilled that the yard has finally dried up enough for me to mow completely.  But it also means that I’m having to water the garden…..

Monday in particular was extra “interesting”. 

Monday we received a notice from the state that we were being audited due to our claim of getting solar panels put up in 2012.  We have 30 days to provide them with the paperwork to prove the claim or they’ll cancel the refund.  Never mind that I included copies of almost everything they’re requiring with the tax paperwork……So now we’re digging through files and muttering rude words as we discover that this or that piece of paper didn’t get filed properly.  We’ve got it all, but it’s still frustrating as heck.

After spending an hour digging through files and getting frustrated I went out to go spend an hour or so in the garden since I find that generally calming.  Keeping the volunteer clover from taking over is pretty much a constant chore anyway, and after the discovery of the giant zucchini hiding under the clover in that tire I’ve been trying to work my way around the various beds to at least thin the clover enough to be sure I don’t have to many other surprises waiting for me.  Everything was going smoothly till I grabbed a specific clump of clover in one of the cantaloupe tires.

There are yellow jackets nesting in that particular tire.  Under that specific clump of clover.  Immediately adjacent to a ripening pumpkin and a still growing cantaloupe.

And yup, I got stung.

Today’s Wednesday and I’m still swallowing the max dose of benadryl in order to keep the swelling down and itching from driving me crazy.

I hate using general insecticides in the garden.  I have, after much work, finally managed to have enough pollinators in the yard to ensure proper pollination of everything.  And the last thing I want to do is kill them.  But I’m not going to try to work around a nest of stinging insects either, even if we didn’t have family who’re allergic.  ESPECIALLY when the nest is immediately adjacent to two growing fruits that will have to be picked before TO much longer.  I picked up a bottle of concentrated permethrin, and have already treated the nest area once.  I’m being extra careful to ensure it doesn’t get onto any flowers or the like, but I’m still not happy about it.

I’m just hoping the rest of the week goes a bit smoother…….