Taking a rare (and well-deserved) walk with my wife last night, I noticed little dots of color here and there on the ground. I noticed that the older trees in our neigghborhood are still green and full, but many of the younger maples are beginning to redden and drop leaves- a sign of the season to come.

The Kenmore model 75062 is a low-profile, EnergyStar-compliant unit, featuring a remote control, timer function, 6000 btu/hr, and quiet operation. We bought ours at Sears and installed it in about five minutes. It cycles on and off quietly on the EnergyStar setting and chills a 150-sq.foot room in minutes. Plus, being low-profile, we can actually see out the window over the top of the unit. (It’s also comparatively light.)

Yeah, the indian summer here in Baltymore is over. We’re now back to the low 90’s with typical Maryland humidity, which is to say, wet like a sponge. The beginning of June was idyllic, and I only wish I’d gotten out and taken more advantage of it. This weekend saw the long-awaited continuation of 2004’s outdoor projects—I finished reglazing the living room windows and replaced the storms. I cut in the rest of the siding on the South and West sides of the house, as well as scraped and painted a ton of exposed wood on the porch. By the time 5:30 rolled around, I was hot, tired, and ready for November.

I intended to get the first rain barrel installed in the southeast corner of the house today, but gave up on that pretty quickly after 5PM. The trick is to elevate the barrel so that gravity will do the work of irrigation for us, which means building a platform to put it on, diverting the gutter around a corner and into the top of the barrel (literally, a square peg in a round hole) and fitting an overflow valve. The hardest part will be the gutter portion, based on what I’ve found at the various Home Superstores around town, because there isn’t anything made for this particular application—which means I’m going to have to get creative with PVC and flexible tubing. Then again, I could just buy this peculiar-looking contraption, or perhaps this even stranger-looking thing.I think I’m going to look some more at Lowe’s first, because neither of these things allow for getting around a corner.

I found this comparison of 14 flux core MIG welders via the MAKE: blog this afternoon, and it’s like an answer to my prayers. I’ve always wanted to weld some more—my experience was limited to some very basic lessons taught by my roommate Pat after hours in the sculpture lab at MICA—and there are many things I’d like to be able to do/build/fabricate given the time, money and equipment. Besides, I think real men should know how to weld. Meanwhile, the site is now in my permanent RSS feed. Any site that recommends a pocket knife as a Father’s Day gift is OK with me.

Our houseguest of three months is gone! I can relax in my own house again!

So if I read this correctly, Governor Erlich torpedoed the deal because he wouldn’t replace his four appointees on the Public Service Commission, who did absolutely nothing when it became clear that our local gas and electricity company would hike rates by 72% this year.

Update: OK, so I read this story in our Alternative Weekly, and now I understand that we as a state sort of poked ourselves in the eye.

The thermometer outside the atrium window reads 92° this morning, probably because it’s older than I am and in the direct sunlight. Officially, the temperature is 68°, which means I’m going to put on some shorts and spend at least half the day outside in the yard. Our good friend Dave, who has been doing triple-good-friend duty, lent me his chainsaw, late of Louisiana, for some down-home woodcutting fun this afternoon. I found an owner’s manual online with instructions on gas mixture and chain tension, and I’ll probably pick up a new chain for the heck of it.

Part of the Great 2006 Garden Experiment is to plant several species of tomato, bean, and vegetable in a 25’x10 plot towards the back of the lawn. Instead of buying expensive wood to edge the plot, I’m going to cut thin slices of the remaining felled tree out back and use this to keep the soil in place.

We seem to be having problems keeping our seedlings alive downstairs, which is troubling both of us. The cucumbers started almost immediately, got huge and started pressing up against the plastic of the container, so we opened the container and most of them died off. The tomatoes have proved to be heartier, but we’re at a loss for how we should deal with the loss of our entire crop. There’s a house in our neighborhood owned by a man who runs a window installation business, and he often puts old casement windows out on his lawn for people to take. I’m going to grab a couple that I saw today and build a larger coldframe out of scrap wood to see if that helps our crops.

You’ll note that there’s a new entry on the long-ignored houseblog, where I start detailing the changes we’re making in our living room.

Does anybody have a basic sewing machine my wife can borrow? I promise she’ll give it back.

(she’s looking at the chair in our basement and thinking about reupholstering it.)