Cool now, was hot

June 27, 2007 (5:33am)
61º F, Cloudy, NW wind, 2 mph.

Good morning,

The shower works! Complete with cold running water and cold hot running water. We each took a rinse last night to stop the sweat from flowing and also to cool off a bit. I can report with all confidence, the shower was indeed cold. The leaks in the shower base have also been eliminated. I had picked up a stainless steel drain grate and had to remodel it a bit to fit a 2" drain pipe instead of a 3" drain pipe. It works. I also replaced the relief valve on the hot water heater and will run an drain line from it to the outside of the house. With PEX, that is a bunch easier than the old hard pipe method.

We got a somewhere between ½" to 1" of much needed rain last night. There were storm warnings and watches up until after midnight. I didn’t stay up to watch them come down. Yesterday was a very hot day, temperature well into the 90's. Hope that is it for the year, but I doubt it. Didn’t work too fast or hard yesterday, but did manage to unload the truck and get the contents to the right areas to sort and put away. Or at least put in a different place. Margriet is having a ball going through the "stuff" from Mom’s house. Every once in a while she will find a new treasure and have to show it to me. She does have the luxury of working mostly in the basement of the main house where it is relatively cool.

Margriet has found several boxes of photos and papers of various kinds. Some are very interesting, as I don’t remember ever seeing them before. One is a scrap book of postcards received my Mom’s Mom and Dad. Most are dated 1911 and were sent by Mom’s siblings. Some of the cards are photos of the area in and around Milwaukee, and others are cartoon type cards with some cool pictures and sayings on them. Not much writing in the message area, more of a wish you were here kind of message and then signatures. I want to take some time and really go through them, identify some of the places and compare to what they are now. Bet there are some changes - especially with the lake of horse drawn streetcars/carriages/wagons today!

There also was a box of pictures from Mom’s side of the family mostly. Many of the folks I have no idea who they are at first glance. Also want to spend some time on them. Suspect I will do a lot of scanning and emailing of them to try and figure out who/what/where the are. There are some old ones from Dad’s kid days too. I think one at least is a class picture of someone in his family, but the names on the back are only half written in ink and the other half in pencil. Can’t read the pencil names and don’t recognize any of those in ink. I might be able to enhance them with the scanner, but that will have to wait until I get the scanner here and set up.

A couple very useful things we brought up were a couple of fans. One is a 20" box fan, I had forgotten about, which fits perfectly into one of the windows in the gathering room in the Hobbit Hus. Set it up late yesterday afternoon and it really brings in the air. Very comfortable - comparatively speaking, with it operating. The other fan is an oscillating fan that we also put to good use. Noticed the box fan literally pressurizes this little house, causing the air to flow out of the rest of the windows. Like that as we will find a way to put it in a window on the coolest side of the house and blow the hot air out another place or two.

I found out yesterday that I really have to get my shop some organized. I can’t figure out which box has which tool in it! I looked for an end nippers yesterday for 45 minutes and never did find it. I know it is here, but where? Hope I can get the shelving I am cutting up done soon, so I can start remodeling workbenches and start building some adequate shelving and tool boards. In my perusing yesterday, I did find 10 pieces of 1¼"x3" rectangular tubing about 5+’ long, now being used to hold up plywood shelving in the lean-to. They will be perfect for making legs for the work benches! Was trying to figure out what to use, now solved. Bet I find other very useable iron around here. After I get the present cut up project completed, I will pull the existing "work bench" out of it’s cave and rework it into something more useful. Probably will start building some shelving into the cave once the bench is out of it. Sure do need it!

Major project for today is working on getting the LP gas line to the Hobbit Hus, paying some bills, and taking down the old, milk house piping strung form one end of this house to the other and used as the water supply line. It is ugly and bothers me every time I look at it. Should be a bit cooler, so should be able to do some digging.

Time to get a-going.

In Christ My Saviour,

Chris ><>