An Informal Housewarming

I'm given to believe that we'll have family visiting on Sunday coming up!

C's sister and her family will be in our area on Sunday. They've not been to the Cottage yet. We kinda' suggested they stay away while we tore into it. Their three kids are younger than R, two of the three are younger than M. We had nightmarish visions of five active kids in an extensive construction zone.

Now, though, we're done. We're spending our time picking up our leftovers, arranging things for beauty (not workable space), and tuning stuff. We're ready to show off the results and feel safe about hosting the cousins!

It'll be great to see them on Sunday. It'll be great to show off the house and take a walk to the big park. It'll be great to talk in the past-tense about darned near everything that happened to this house.

I guess this is a housewarming of sorts. I wonder if we should consider an actual 'housewarming'? We've not discussed one before...wonder how that would go over.

Technical Difficulties

I've been getting server errors since the weekend... If you see this post it's because it's fixed.

Blog Post Updates

ON THE YARD LIGHTS:  after returning from the beach last night, C and I tweaked the lights. Turns out one whiole 'zone' of lights was not wired up to the power supply. That's why the lights only sorta' worked on Friday. Once I fixed that detail, we got virtually ALL the lights going. We then spent about an hour repositioning and tuning. It became clear right away that, with the lights positioned so as to line the sidewalk, the yard looked... well, contrived. When we started moving the lights back away from the path, into/under/behind plants that we wanted to showcase, the yard started to really *pop*. Suddenly, we could make out the garden's highlights as localized spots. And we still got enough ambient light to help C navigate the path safely.

So, lights are DONE DONE DONE. Really, finally done.

 

ON THE TILTED TWISTER PROJECT:  R and I started the build process for this particular Mindstorms over the weekend. Intriguing process, as we're following computerized build instructions generated by Lego Digital Designer software. It's cool, AND it takes some getting used to.

 

ON THE YARD:  the front yard grass is growing in nicely; big difference over the weekend. It actually looks like a lawn! I need to mow a portion of the front yard tonight! We also have all the yard debris picked up from the front of the house. Just in time, because yard debris pickup day is tomorrow. Once the current batch of juniper branches and cuttings are gone, we're caught up on the yard pile, too!

 

Practically one year to the day we snuck over to the Cottage and performed a sneak attack on the out-of-control yard debris, I can write the following:

All I have is a small list of quickie tweak-and-tune tasks left to complete. Honey, pick up the tools, vacuum the floors, put away the laundry, and hold that garage sale, because we're DONE!

Lights!

So, yesterday after work, I took the plunge and picked up where the landscape contractor had stalled out - wiring up the yard spots.

I cut the intended wire, hooked up a pigtail, and wired the pigtail to the power supply. Then, R got the honor of plugging the power supply into the AC Power. It worked. Sorta.

From the power supply, we now have two separate lines of lights. We got some lights working on both lines. Good. Power seems to be going to both wires properly. We just need to tune the individual wire hookups until all the lights fire up!

We can pretty much take yard lights off the list - just tuning left to be done.

 

R and C worked together yesterday to finish the french drain we've been building along the east side of the house. I helped with the finish-up; they did most of the heavy work. A gravel drainage bed takes the water away from the house and into a french drain that runs toward the street. Buried, so we can grow the lawn right over the drain. One more thing off the list. YES!

 

In the coming month, we'll have a garage sale to clear out the extra stuff. We'll have finished the final tuning work I still have on my list. We'll have grass growing across the entire front yard, and grass filling in throughout the back yard. We'll have the side yard finished. We'll have all the yard debris removed.

Shoot, this is the sort of work I've become accustomed to doing in a weekend. I have a whole month in which to do it. This is heaven.

Another Low-Cost, Temporary Shelter

Could make for an interesting Boy Scout project in some fashion.

Twelve 4'x8' panels of plywood, insulation boards, etc., are all that are required to make this shelter. The roof panels are derived from six of the sheets by cutting one corner-to-corner diagonal cut.  The developers of this design have put it into the public domain.  [link]

Seeing Green

Just last night, C  was asking 'will the grass EVER grow?' I assured her it would. This morning, I have clear evidence of germination!

I heard her say these very words last night: "Okay. The front yard's done for the summer. We finished."

Nice!

The back yard gets cleanup, sweep up and tool removal today. The yard lights are scheduled to be fully activated by tonight.

The side yard gets the french drain and the back-fill today. All that remains is my cutting in flagstones to make a pathway. That'll be done within days.

Gee, other than systematic removal of yard debris via the trash hauler, there's precious little left for construction-type projects. Just some fine-grained details in the house that don't have a material effect on our livability (nook bench endcap, front door window panes, pantry roller floor tweaks, trim piece in M's room, bolting down the basement sink, basement workshop cleanup)

Could it really be? Could we be ** DONE ** ?

Scientific American: How Making Decisions Tires Your Brain

"These experimental insights suggest that the brain works like a muscle: when depleted, it becomes less effective. Furthermore, we should take this knowledge into account when making decisions. If we've just spent lots of time focusing on a particular task, exercising self-control or even if we've just made lots of seemingly minor choices, then we probably shouldn't try to make a major decision. These deleterious carryover effects from a tired brain may have a strong shaping effect on our lives."

This is required reading for the adults related to my family. Brain fatigue isn't a negative if you're working your brain hard. Olympic athletes get to their world-leading status by continuing to reach (and push back) their fatigue levels. Same with the brain, and my family members push their brains HARD. Compassion and family-awareness demands that we pay attention to this type of research to better relate to each other.

Here's the whole article  [link]