The journey continues...

Brian Bilbrey August 7, 2019

7 August 2019

I'm feeling a bit broken, with the shootings of recent days, and the inflammatory rhetoric of the GOP and their Beloved Leader. Sorry. The garden is two thirds dead. No peppers. No zucchini. But the tomatoes, they are in full production. We had salsa this weekend, and I'm going to make more tomorrow night, since Marcia pulled out a bushel of red fruit today. I did manage to find time to roast some coffee the other night. Here I'm pre-heating the roaster before doing the actual deed... We're drinking that coffee, and it is super tasty. I've got a new…

Brian Bilbrey July 28, 2019

28 July 2019

As far as I can tell, June and July weren't as wet as last year, but we've had at least a bit of rain each week. Additionally, for most of the last week, we had mornings that were a lot more like mid-September than late July - temps in the morning in the low 60's instead of the mid 70's, and highs in the 80's instead of high 90's. I will note that, botanically, we got nearly four weeks out of our tiger lily bloom this year, instead of the usual two-ish weeks. The picture below is from about the…

Brian Bilbrey July 21, 2019

21 July 2019

There really isn't much to report since a couple of days ago when I got around to posting (late). I got a bit of cleanup done in the garage, and put up all the tools in the woodshop. After all the assorted work, I'm only missing my socket wrench and one socket! They're here, somewhere... It's been properly hot around here, but this is supposed to be another summer where it doesn't actually reach 100F on the thermometer. Is it supposed to be scary and sell more advertising that they've been reporting on "feels like" rather than "is" for a…

Brian Bilbrey July 18, 2019

18 July 2019

Well, I came to my senses, realizing that leaving y'all with the impression that I was going to be doing something seen as dangerous (fixing garage door springs), then going dark-ish. Thanks for the kind thoughts, y'all! First the good news - I'm fine, the garage door is working fine, and I had few issues with the DIY repair. Therein lies a tale. I previously wrote, "I’ve ordered a pair that individually match the spec for balancing out my door. I’ll install both, and wind them with about half the turns that the single spring had, then adjust to the…

Brian Bilbrey July 7, 2019

7 July 2019

As holidays go, this one was less than stellar. We started by trying to get out fishing early. Sadly, our local favorite hole had a "Gate is not operating" sign up. Perhaps they just didn't want to deal with holiday crowds while on holiday staffing (it's a pond on a local preserve, requires special permits, etc). Meantime, right after breakfast, we'd found out that the flush mechanism on the main floor toilet was busticated, so a new flush handle was on our list. So we left the failed fishing hole, and dropped by the poor second choice hole. Once there,…