We drove out to the Eastern Shore on Saturday to visit the Morrisses, and had brunch at a wonderful, quiet little spot outside of Easton. The weather was mostly lousy but the company was excellent as always, and the bloody marys were delicious.
The Fed asked respondents how they would pay for a $400 emergency. The answer: 47 percent of respondents said that either they would cover the expense by borrowing or selling something, or they would not be able to come up with the $400 at all.
We’ve had an oh-shit fund since before I stopped using credit cards, and it always gets replenished. This was in response to being laid off the first time, back in 2001. But the hits keep coming, and it’s not getting easier to refill the fund. And college tuition is looming on the horizon…
- Pulled the rear tires off the Accord to diagnose brake squeal.
- Had the rotors and pads replaced by the pros for time’s sake.
- Fixed the hose bib on the west wall.
- Cleaned rooting cedar trees from the north side second story gutter (and then the first story too).
- Sealed the foundation around the first floor toilet cleanout.
- Cleaned black sealant goop off the spare Scout windshield.
- Put oil in the Scout, which was a quart low.
- Replaced three exploded bricks in the front walkway.
It’s the middle of April in the ‘Ville, which means telephone poles start growing yard sale signs and people get ready to deal. Finley and I woke early this morning, snuck out of the house like thieves, and hit Dunkin Donuts for breakfast. Then we made it to four mostly disappointing yard sales in under an hour. She sweet-talked a lady out of a flowered ring, and I found two beginning guitar books for $1, but other than that it was pretty barren.
Because the last sale had taken us most of the way down the hill, I parked the Scout in Ellicott City and we sat next to the river to eat our donuts. While we watched the water pass by, Finley noticed several pairs of ducks nearby and then a family of goslings further upstream, so we crossed the bridge and walked to the end of the parking lot to find a mother goose preening on the rocks while twelve goslings darted across the water in front of her. Finn and I stood and watched for about ten minutes, entranced.
After bringing some food home for Mama, we moved up to the attic to straighten out the mess and get everything in the atrium up there. Now that it’s (mostly) clean I can start to wrap my head around what has to happen next in there: buttoning up the electrical work. Then, we packed a hiking bag, loaded the Scout up with recyclable metal, and drove to Elkridge.
I gutted two aluminum G5 towers about two years ago and I’ve been slowly collecting different types of recyclable metals for longer than that. All of this junk was beginning to get in the way, so I thought we’d take care of that stuff and get a hike in on the way home. The metals only brought $5 (looks like aluminum and copper is WAY down from the last time I was there) but it’s great to have that stuff out of the basement and garage. That room, plus what we got back from having the tandem gone, makes the garage look positively cavernous.
A hike was just what Finn and I both needed. The air was cool when we walked into the woods but by the time we’d reached the bottom of the trail it was perfect. The trail we followed is one I used to ride with my friend Rob 20+ years ago, one that starts at the top of Catonsville and follows a stream down a valley to meet up with a larger river in the heart of the park. I remember it as a blurry downhill with several water crossings and a few heart-stopping obstacles, but with Finn it was a quiet exploration of felled trees, burbling streambanks, and sun-dappled pathways. We stopped to look at small fish darting in the shallows of the water and greet the dogs that crossed our path, of which there were many. Finn took pleasure in finding the optimal way to cross over each water obstacle, preferring felled trees to rocks. With no heat or bugs, it was absolutely the perfect time to explore, and we both had a great time together.
We got to the bottom and broke out the snacks, and word came that our neighbors were going to the park across the street to play after some ice cream, and would Finn like to come? So we hustled our way back up the hill, picked up some lunch for Mama, then walked over to the park for some playtime. Finn’s friend stopped over for another hour’s worth of play in the yard, and by the time she left it was dinnertime.
There’s a Kickstarter going which promises to make direct positive photo paper available for 120 cameras.
Direct positive photo paper falls somewhere between instant film and regular film: the paper does need to be developed, but compared to film the process is lightning fast. You can have a roll developed in about 7 minutes.
I’m totally keeping an eye on this, because shooting this with my Rolleicord would be so much fun.
Via: Petapixel
If you love old film cameras and constantly want to know more about them (like me), then Old Cameras is a YouTube Channel where you can lose hours of time.
Source: Petapixel
This morning I fired up the Scout and got to work digging out the rest of the hedges in the front yard. We got sidetracked last fall after the sewer pipe incident, and so we’ve been living with half a moustache since November or so. It was pretty easy work, given we’d had rain on and off all day yesterday, turning to snow (!??!?!) and then a light frost this morning. The ground was damp and 4WD was in full effect, which meant I had them all out in about two hours.
Jen and I spent about a half an hour measuring out our yard so that she can map it out with graph paper; our lot isn’t actually a rectangle, but a parallelogram so that as you see the house from on center above, the property line shifts to the right as it goes back. We still have no real idea where the boundaries are, and we’ll need to have someone come out and mark it for us, but for this year we can get away with what we’ve guesstimated in the front yard.
I brewed my 33rd batch of beer with my neighbor last weekend. We brewed the same recipe, followed the same times, and brewed at the same temperature, but the only difference is that I poured my wort over ice to chill it while he used his copper chiller. We’re going to keep everything the same and do a taste test to see if using commercial ice to chill has any effect on the flavor. I’ve been using ice because it’s easy and cheap to do, but one of the mantras of brewing is that your beer is only as good as your water. I do have a chiller but I don’t have a pump to move water yet; a trip to Harbor Freight is in order this spring no matter what the results are.
Another quick project this weekend was to rebuild my light tent to be more portable and less of a giant pain in the ass. It’s been broken down for a couple of years now, but comes in handy every once in a while–so that it’s not worth getting rid of. It was originally set up at 4′ x 4′ but I reduced it to 3′ x 3′ and added two sets of cheap hinges to fold it into itself so that it packs away for easy travel and storage.
Uberbike has left the building. Last weekend I spent a good bit of time cleaning up the garage, which was cluttered with stuff we’d thrown in last fall. Uberbike was sitting in the back, on two flat tires, holding up the soft top for the Scout, and looking sad. We haven’t ridden it in three years, and now that Jen has a bike and Finn is supposed to learn how to ride her new bike, a tandem is pretty useless. I decided it needed a new home. On a whim, I posted it to Craigslist at best offer, and figured I’d get a random inquiry or two. What I got was multiple emails within 6 hours from several very interested parties. One guy kept at me all week until we could schedule his brother to come and pick it up, and he gave me $100 for it this evening. Goodbye Uberbike; may you ride long into the future.
On Monday I stopped into our local music store to pick up a new set of nicotine-free strings, and poked around the bass section to see what they had. Looking through the inventory there, it affirms the fact that I got a screaming good deal on this bass, even if it’s smelly, beat up, and not original; every MIM bass I’ve seen for sale on CL before and since is more than twice what I paid. I walked back to the string section and asked the dude behind the counter if he could identify what I had (he couldn’t) so I got a set of Ernie Ball medium-weight roundwounds for it. While I was there, I browsed a box of half-off bass strings and found a set of Rotosound 606s for the Steinberger. I’ve always played GHS Bass Boomers on that bass, and haven’t tried a new brand in 20 years, so I thought it was too good a deal to pass up.
The Ernie Balls are good, but they don’t have the warm, meaty tone of the unknown strings it came with, and they don’t feel as smooth to my hands. I kept the originals and I’m going to try again to find what brand they are when I have a little more time, because I like them that much.
I also got a package in the mail from Shenzhen, China, with two foldable focus adjustment tools for my lenses. There is a setting in most modern prosumer DSLRs which can fine-tune the focus point for each particular lens you mount; the camera knows which one you’re using and stores the settings for that particular lens. Last weekend I spent Saturday morning with a cup of coffee and a table full of lenses, adjusting each one with the D7000 and storing the data. It looked to me like the primes were the most out of register, especially the 50mm f/1.8, but I think I’ve got to do some more fine-tuning in direct sunlight and at a different focal distance to be sure.