September 2015

tue sep 1
We set out for Maine. Mary scored some free time in a bay-side bungalow on Hancock Point, across the bay from Bar Harbor, playground for the rich, but not famous. So we drove – and drove – North and, after accidentally trying to break into the house next door, we finally got settled into the right house. It was perfect weather, and we had bourbon and potato chips and watched the sun set across the bay.  Then we had a great meal at the Inn down the block.

wed sep 2
The floor was freezing the next morning, and we had coffee and toast and then I fixed the front wheel of a rusted-out bicycle, using a box of bolts I found in the barn, hoping Mary could ride it. She wouldn’t, and I can’t say I blame her. We drove around the harbors and through a granite quarry that was no longer there, and found a museum operating out of the back of a small engine repair shop by a guy who just liked granite and had a thousand old photos, tools and stories for us. I loved it. We had lobster and beer on the pier and learned about hard vs soft shell and walked thru the line, where everything from bait to meat invited inspection. I touched every lever and peered into every box, while Mary told me not to. We went to the light house, parked illegally, and looked it over. Nice bells, but they don’t ring them. We found a farm stand manned by a farm hand who told us right off that he didn’t have any god damned blueberries, because the season is way over already. Not that we’d asked. He pulled up a head of lettuce and sold it to us, root and all, along with some bacon from the drawer of a freezer labelled ‘exotic meats.’ We bought olive oil at the worlds seediest general store, where the other guy in the store bought 2 soda pops, a slim jim and a lottery ticket, and paid with a $100 bill. More bourbon and a really good sunset and then lobster and really bad corn on the cob.

thu sep 3
We had bacon and eggs and set out for Bar Harbor. We walked thru town and around the shore walk, reading the signs and sweating in the sun and humidity. We took a window seat in an open-air bar and ate and drank and cooled off and watched the crowd. Their blueberry pie was a disappointment. We drove into the park, parked at Sand Beach, admired the sand, and then walked to Thunder Hole, but the thunder, like yesterday’s quarry, was missing. Only on Thundays, I suppose… I got on my bike and rode, panting hard, to the Stables, stopping at all the overlooks, while Mary kept her distance from a monster jelly fish back at the beach. Mary caught up in the car and, while I cleaned up, she chatted up the lady hosing down the horses as the place closed up. We drove to the top of Cadillac Mountain (which I can’t believe I biked up last time) and had a bourbon and, I’m sad to say, googled a bunch of stuff while the the sun set in immersive, panoramic HD.  We drove down, parked at the wrong end of town, and walked to Fathom, and had a fabulous meal.

fri sep 4
We set out for Vermont. We stopped in Freeport for lunch and leather, but they didn’t have a jacket I liked. Then we drove to Conway for ice cream and leather, but I decided I need to keep looking, even though they had one that fit perfectly. We got to Hardwick just as First Friday was wrapping up, and the only restaurant in town was way packed and way understaffed, and our drinks took forever and and they ran out of Bourbon and our check arrived before our food. The manager ‘made things right’, and the whole night only cost us a $5 tip.
I gotta say, I was glad to see BZ again, and I think he was glad to see me.

sat sep 5
Back to the old routine. I set up Mary for Mowing and watered my pumpkins and pulled another 5 gallons of weeds. I went next door and took out sheetrock and trim and started clearing out the pile in the living room because it’s in the fucking way. Mary ran out of diesel, so I started the lawn mower for her, bought another drum of diesel, and then got on the motorcycle and rode to the top of Smuggler’s notch. I was freezing. I need leather.
The raccoons got Mary’s corn while we were gone, but we ate what was left of it with steaks on the grill and a peach salad.

sun sep 6
After putting the mower back on and wrestling with the diesel drum, I headed next door. I cleaned up the enormous pile in the living room and I think I need to focus on either getting rid of piles or finishing ripping stuff out. Basically, I need to stop taking days off.
I had lunch and, since Mary wanted to pick and process plums, I grabbed a bucket and picked a bucket of plums, and so did Mary. Mary picked most of her plums off the ground, thinking they fell off because they were ripe, and the weeds caught them and cushioned their fall, so they’d be perfect plums. Whereas I figured if they dropped, they’d be bruised and rotten, and I don’t like bruised plums, so I picked my plums off the tree. In the end, her plums were better than mine. We sat on the porch for 2 hours, squeezing the pulp out of them, and my elbow was killing me. And the thing is, none of the plum stuff we’ve made in the past has been any good. Meanwhile, we have a big pot of pulp and pits from the plums we’ve picked, and we don’t know what to do with it. So we had nachos and watched 60 minutes.

mon sep 7
Labor day. Not that much labor took place.
I worked next door, and stripped the sheetrock, insulation, and nails from the walls of the last bedroom. There were cluster fly hives in the voids of the insulation, and the windows were black with flies trying to get through.  Rather than handle it twice, I threw the mess onto the stairs and left it there. We had a window consultation and Mary couldn’t get upstairs due to the debris.
Mary made jam from the plum juice – lots of it – and canned the last gallon as-is, in case we think of something to do with it. I rode into town for metric nuts, which I hollowed out on the lathe, so I can measure the vacuums and balance the carburetor.
A long spell on the porch reading a boring book, and then we made big salads and watched a sad movie.

tue sep 8
Big day in Burlington. I headed straight for Home Depot and ordered 7 windows for next door. Then I did a grand tour of all the motorcycle stores in the area. Roadside was closed. Classic Bike doesn’t carry gear, but they specialize in restoring old bikes. Mostly 70’s-era british bikes. Wish I’d known about them before. Sea-Doo was a good stop, and the guy gave me a run-down on what’s what. The Harley store was an alternate universe, with lots of bikes and gear, and they sic’d a cute young saleslady on me. No sale, though: everything says “Harley” on it in big letters front and back. Lunch, coffee, drove south, dropped off some chain saw blades, bought tubing, groceries, and finally home.
I headed next door and managed to pack all the debris into one big load in the truck, ready for a dump run tomorrow. Grilled chicken and a movie. Sweating in the heat of the night.

wed sep 9
I gathered up the household garbage and headed for the dump. Had to get in line, because everyone and his brother was there with their long weekend’s projects debris. With so many people jockying for position, I felt a little guilty when I finally got the truck backed up, because it took me quite awhile to unload the 1000+ pounds of crap, and I got a fair number of dirty looks. I did the best I could and ended up hot, sticky, itchy, and dirty, but at least the truck was empty. I came home and decided to stay cool for the rest of the day.
I did email and worked on the motorcycle, mounting the sissy bar and rack so I’ll be able to carry luggage. It’s an improvement, but now I need to re-locate the rear blinkers. It’s always something…
Mary made another batch of salsa and then a batch of spaghetti sauce, and some caesar dressing. A good dinner.

fri sep 11
I spent a lot of time working on the motorcycle the last couple of days, finishing up the sissy bar and rack, and moving the blinkers so they’re not in the way. The more I think about it, the more I think I need to replace the piston rings, because I finally understand how bad rings cause not just low compression, but also a lot of fuel/air flushing thru the crankcase, and I can’t stop thinking about the white mist that came out of the baffles when I first got it running this summer. So I took a deep breath and ordered all the gaskets, shims, rings, and tools I’d need for yet another re-build, and I’m going to try to get it all done in 1 day when everything gets here. I’m really curious to know: just how good is this thing going to run if the compression, the valve clearances, and the carb balancing are all done right? I’ll either be disappointed or blown away.
I called the spray-foam guy about the green house, and he showed up same-day and gave me some tips and a quote. Five figures.
I made a batch of enchiladas and they turned out great.
Watched the first Colbert Late Show episode, and we were underwhelmed.

sat sep 12
Finally, I decided to clean up the garage. Now that the motorcycle is ‘done’ and the spiral staircase is moved out, there’s just no reason to have tools scattered all over the place, so I moved them all downstairs, and now there’s a big pile of stuff on the big bench in the basement, but at least they’re all in one place.
I examined the refrigerator and decided that it is more broken than my skill set can handle, so I gave the warranty info to Mary and washed my hands of the whole affair. Then we cleaned the big freezer. Tamales and beans from 2012 (ditch it) and organic beef from 2010 (make spaghetti sauce out of it) and lots of unlabelled cold, hard crap. Truth be told, we could get by without a freezer.
I went next door and struggled with laying out a wall. It’s really hard to hang a straight wall on a crooked beam. I chainsawed some brush and helped Mary burn it and came home and finished the boring book I was reading. What a slog.
Mary worked into the dark and was using the tractor headlights when she finished.
Fresh swordfish slathered with skinless cherry tomatoes and taragon, with kohlrabi-carrot fritters, and cucumber-yogurt sauce and a cheap wine.

sun sep 13
Mary was out of bed at the crack of dawn, cooking down tomatoes. My coffee was getting cold by the time I got to it. Maggie’s working in Stowe and we’ve got the kids today.
I bagged papers and put the garbage in the car and she headed out to the dump and to brunch with Karil. I hope she washed her hands in between.
I cleaned up the shop and got groceries and, when Mary showed up with the kids, I pounced. I told them I needed help moving a bench next door and then gave them a wild ride in the back of the pickup and then unloaded it facing the fire. We test-tasted 9 different kinds of apples and decided that #4 and 5 were the best. Then I put them in the loader and they picked picked from all the tastiest trees, way up high, where the best fruit was. They had a blast and I saw that it was good.
Maggie showed up and we had spaghetti and meatballs. Actually, I’m the only one who had S&M. Maggie had kale and meatballs. Sophia had noodles but no meatballs. Mary had GF pasta and meatballs, and Suri vacuumed up everything in sight.

mon sep 14
criscolo closing. Town offices. pellet stoves. queen city steel. little red kitchen.  interior partitions.

tue sep 15
Lawyers Pyle and Fox. Dunbar twisted his ankle. Lister, town clerk, abatement. grocery run. more interior partitions. Cut my 4″ steel pipe, which weighs a lot more than the 50# I got charged for.

wed sep 16
Mary got a burn permit and it was a nice, calm day, so I burned the piles of brush and wood taken from next door. Two big piles, and the first one was an inferno. The brush pile had been there for awhile and was pretty wet, but when it got going, there was no getting near it to move the coals around. I was a little nervous about burning because, with the check valve in the water line, the hydrant at the well head doesn’t work, so if the fire gets out of control, all I’ve got is a shovel. In the end, it went smoothly, and all the piles went up in smoke.
So after working near the fire all morning, what was a very nice day turned into a scorcher for me, and I cleaned up, made a run into town, and then took off on the motorcycle, only to find that the creemee stand in Jeffersonville was closed for the season. I took a scenic route thru Bakersfield back home and stopped at the Heavy Equipment Auction site to examine the goods. I only wish I were in the market for a dump truck, an excavator, or some other huge item.

thu sep 17
This morning, I worked on plumbing. I’d hoped to work on more stuff, but plumbing took longer than I expected. I added adapters so I can hook up an expansion tank with a gallon of H202 in it and inject it into the system. Our water tastes like shit, and a little hydrogen peroxide ought to kill the little buggers. So plumbing took all morning, and by the time I felt safe to go to the auction, it was 6 lots from over, and the fire hydrant I’d had my heart set on was the last lot, and it was sold for $25 before I could sign in to participate. I felt sad and helpless, watching it sold, and unable to chime in. Then when I got home, my new plumbing had sprung a leak and I had to take it apart and fix it.
Since everything had gone wrong here, I went next door to work, and did justice to a couple of inside walls and felt a little better. Mary made scallops in brown butter

fri sep 18
I started off the day puttering with the 4″ pipe extension to go atop the spiral staircase. I traced the fin shape onto some plate steel and moved the pipe to the garage, where I can make a mess. The morning rolled by and it was time to head to Hyde Park for lunch at Cajuns. Mary and I rode there on the motorcycle, with Jon and Ashton right behind us. This was the first time Mary had ridden with the back-rest, and she says it was comfortable.  We took dirt roads back to the Mill, I dropped her off and rode home.
A couple years ago, Mary came back from a road trip with a cardboard box full of rusty wrenches she’d picked up at a flea market. She thought they were cool and she figured I’d think of something to do with them, and they sat in a pile for a year and then in a corner for another year. This afternoon, I finally got around to welding them up into a sculpture for the ‘fish ladder’ in the garden.
I worked next door for the rest of the afternoon, putting in interior partitions.
We had pizza and a movie and I figured out why the bitflow driver wouldn’t load. Finally getting some traction for working on c3pr most evenings.

sat sep 19
After a breakfast of burnt bacon, I took a walk and gathered and labelled a couple of apples from each of 11 trees so we can decide which to harvest and turn into goodies. Mary sampled each of them and rated their flavor. No flowery language about terroir or hints of this or notes of that: they were either ‘good’ or ‘tart.’  Then she turned them all into applesauce.
I spent most of the day mounting the fins on the drain pipe, trying to make it look like a rocket ship. Mary picked a ton of tomatoes and tomatillos and skinned them all and made a confit.

sun sep 20
This morning, we harvested apples from 3 of the ‘good’ trees. As usual, we picked way too much, but at least with apples, we didn’t have to pay extra for our excess. Like plums, I like to pick them off the tree, and Mary likes to pick them off the ground. And to pick them off the tree, you need to stand high up, so I was in the bucket and Mary was in the drivers seat, and I kept telling her ‘higher’ and she kept telling me ‘it’s not safe’. I’d say ‘higher!’ and she’d yell ‘No!’ and it got pretty heated. Finally, she said ‘Fine. You want higher? Die, sucker!’ and she jammed the lever to the limit and I flew off into the treetops and tumbled to the ground. From then on, we picked the apples off the ground.
We peeled about 60 apples and she cooked them down into applesauce. Good stuff.
Meanwhile, I went next door and started repairing the floor, which has 2 big holes and some rotted spots. A shower and a haircut and a long-sleeved shirt and some fancy pants later, and we were on our way to Michael’s, for Charon’s birthday dinner.

mon sep 21
I spent the morning fabricating steel tabs to mount on the ‘rocket fins’ of the gutter pipe. They’ll bolt to the flange atop the spiral staircase and hold the pipe vertical.
It was a nice day (and Mary’s last day off) so we took the motorcycle down to Waterbury, had lunch in the expanded Prohibition Pig, and then took back roads to the Cold Hollow Cider Mill, where we tried to get a close-up of their press,  because we both want to do something with all the apples on the trees.  We came home the long way thru Stowe and were starting to get chilly by the time we got home. We definitely need some motorcycle jackets.
I went next door for an hour or so to work on the floor, and it seems that the table saw is blowing the breaker under load. It’s done this for years, but it’s really bad now. Everything I own is fucking broken.

tue sep 22
I worked on the refrigerator all day long. I think I may have made it more difficult than it needed to be. Compressed air, bare-wire power, and everything apart. And as the day wore on and as everything I tested worked like it should, I got really frustrated and even angry and had to just quit, put it back together, clean up, and go as far away from it as possible. So I went next door, and the table saw kept blowing breakers on me, and I went upstairs and worked on the floor and pulled out nails, and I felt a little better.
Mary made a marvelous dinner and saved the day.

wed sep 23
After sleeping on it, I re-examined refrigerator and ordered parts. My fingers are crossed.
I finished welding and rough-grinding the rocket fins and tabs.
Went next door and put up tyvek and 3 windows. Fitted the irregular little subfloor next to the flue. Mary toured the place after I’d left and had some suggestions.
Making slow progress testing out ascii operation of the camera.  IEEE 754 single precision floating point byte ordering.

thu sep 24
At long last, I treated the water, which has been smelling bad for quite awhile. Last week, I plumbed up some adapters to allow me to inject hydrogen peroxide next door and also near the pressure tank downstairs. Everything worked reasonably well, but there was a lot of walking back and forth between houses as I closed and opened valves, flipped breakers, fetched tools, and fiddled with the expansion tank holding the chemical. 1 gallon next door and 2 gallons here. If this doesn’t work, it’ll be back to the drawing board.
Then I went next door again to continue patching the subfloor where the addition hits the post & beam portion. Nothing is pretty over there, but it is becoming less ugly over time.

Everything I own is broke.
The refrigerator is broke. The water smells. My table saw blows breakers.The toaster oven is erratic. My processor’s buttons are failing. The mowing deck is cracked. My motorcycle needs more work. My laptop shuts itself down every 15 minutes. The garage door is stuck. And today when I walked back from next door, Mary met me to tell me that the tractor quit running and won’t start. So far, I’ve been able to fix almost everything, but it sometimes seems like it would be easier to throw stuff out and write some checks.
But then I’d be broke too.

fri sep 25
The parts for the refrigerator arrived, and I put it back together. It was not apparent that the fix worked, and I spent the rest of the morning fending off inquiries with “I have no idea.” Eventually, the box warmed up (or cooled down) and Mary rushed in to tell me she’d heard the ice tray filling and, later, the crash of ice cubes in the tray. So it worked after all. High five!
But before that, Mary was string trimming and she came upon a wheel from the mowing deck laying on the lawn. Another broken thingy. Fuck. So I fixed it, but I have to tell you it’s wearing me down. So I worked for an hour on c3pr, which calmed me down somewhat, and then headed next door, where I spent another 2 hours fitting a new threshold into the bathroom, spanning the gap between additions 2 and 3. What a mess.
More c3pr, a very good eggplant parmesan, and a little light reading.

sat sep 26
When I asked Mary what I could do to help out today, I was told I could clean my bathroom.  So I did a diligent job of it, but thinking back, I really should have cleaned the sink and tub too instead of just the toilet. “Do the important things first,” I always say.
While Mary spent the morning cooking, I vacuumed the house without even being told, and then, off the hook, I did some welding. (I need to transfer the water from the gutter, 19′ off the ground, into a 4″ pipe mounted on the spiral stairway, without dropping any. Don’t ask why) Mary made fancy ham sandwiches and I pulled some weeds and did a grocery run. I needed a joy ride, and I took one, in the hills behind Stowe where I’ve only been once before. Now that I’ve ridden a little, I’m starting to detect that it’s not running as well as it could, and I really Do need to rebuild it right. We had Shary and Uvaldo here for dinner. Nice pair, but I’m not sure what to make of them. They left without dessert.

sun sep 27
Trip to burlington for Suri’s birthday. Cat food, coffee, home depot, lunch, taco night. Picked up 7 windows and drove them home. Fully-eclipsed supermoon.

mon sep 28
Today I worked all day next door, installing windows, and I got the triplet put in. It was a lot of work, but the right mental attitude helped: You just resign yourself to doing ugly work for a couple hours and go at it. A block and tackle helps.

tue sep 29
Another long day installing windows. 3 more done.  Whew.

wed sep 30
rain. Like 2 inches of it. I suppose that, ecologically, ‘we need it’, but to me: Who needs it?  So I stayed inside and trimmed the steel trough I made, that’s the last link in getting the water from the gutter to the hole in the ground. Next door, I tore out the sheetrock and insulation in the kitchen, so now the whole surface of the whole outer wall is exposed. And it’s not pretty.
I’m programming away on a gui for the photonFocus registers, and I really wish I had my old text editor back.  alt-b alt-c.