Quest update

We had a good and interesting weekend at Quest. It all started on the
ride up to the event, when about 30 miles out from home one of the tires
on the trailer blew. I'm talking explosive detonation here. It sounded
like someone lit off an M80 and the Jeep shook. I pulled over right away
and saw a shredded tire on the trailer. No big deal I thought since i
have a good spare on the trailer. We unloaded the whole back of the Jeep
to get to the lug wrench and jack that are stored with the spare tire
under the floor.

I proceeded to jack the trailer up and remove the blown tire. Once i had
it off, I went around to the front of the trailer and started spinning
the wing nut off that holds the spare under the trailer. When it got to
the very last thread, it stopped dead. I found a multi-tool I keep in
the Jeep and used it to spin the nut off, only to have the entire
threaded rod unthread from the nut inside the trailer (which i could not
get to without unloading the entire trailer). Now I had a problem. I had
a spare tire with a rusted on nut on one side of the rim and a stuck
wing nut on the other and only ONE pair of pliers and no other tools.
Needless to say this is the last time I leave the tools home.

I called AAA and had them send someone to help. In the meantime we
looked for a way to get the wingnut to go the last 3 or 4 turns to
remove it. We ended up with me holding the tire between my knees,
holding the hex nut with the pliers, and Rain hitting the wing nut with
her metal ground quiver. Eventually, we got it loose and I was able to
put the spare tire on. About the time we got the stuff reloaded in the
Jeep the guy from AAA finally got there. He had air on board, so was
able to inflate the spare which was a little on the low side.

We got to Quest about an hour later than we expected and got the 2 gers
set up. I have to say that they worked out really well. We had loads of
space inside and they proved to be waterproof when it rained. I was glad
I got the smoke holes cut before Quest. They really did their job well,
including venting smoke from the stove when we were cooking. We
comfortably sat 12 people for dinner and still had plenty of room to
navigate around.

The new & improved camp benches worked well too. They really cleaned the
common area up by allowing us to sit on the supplies instead of piling
it in plastic tubs around the sides.

Why plywood is not a bad choice for a khana

One of the biggest arguments against using plywood is that it may
delaminate over time, especially when exposed to water. I can't count
the number of people who have mentioned this concern to me when I talked
about the idea. I wasn't all that concerned about delamination but
couldn't come up with a good reason why. Tonight that reason came to me
when I was tarping the trailer because of the rain to keep the khana dry
(the recently cut edges are still unpainted).

In my backyard, I have 2 small pieces of wood (roughly 1'x1') that I use
to set the side stand of my bike on when I pull up by my shed due to the
ground being soft and sandy. These pieces of wood were cut from 3/8"
interior grade plywood a few years ago when I made our camp sinks. They
have sat outside on the ground, unprotected and unpainted for at least 3
years now and they are still in good shape. There is no sign of
delamination on these pieces.

Now, considering that these 2 gers will be set up and used for about 3
weeks total every year and stored in the shed out of the weather when
not in use, I see no reason why they should not last at least 10 years
without any issue of delamination (I bet i'll break a few long before
that happens).

Sexy CPR

This is great.. and work safe.

http://supersexycpr.com/cpr.html

The words remain the same...

But the meaning has been altered considerably over time. I actually got to listen to some of my Pink Floyd collection today. I mean really listen, not have it in the background. Some of the songs have found new meaning over the last 20 years for me. Life's experiences have taught me quite a bit in that time. I now see a while new meaning to some of these words that I did not see when I first discovered them as a teenaged kid.

Sweet dessert mead

Today I spotted 5lb jugs of clover mead at Costco for $10 each. I could
not pass that up so I bought 5 jugs and started a 6 gallon batch of
sweet dessert mead. We'll know in 9 months or so if it is a good one.

Check out google.com today

If you haven't been to google.com today, check it out. They have a
playable pacman game as their logo!

Thanks alot DYFS

Dyfs unceremoniously closed Adrien's case today so we will lose the DYFS
funded daycare that we had for him. That's $150 /week we're going to
have to come up with now unless we can find something cheaper.

iphones suck

I can't say it enough... iphones are junk. Who ever designed these
things was not thinking. How can you design a touch screen phone that
requires skin contact to use? Don't these people realize that quite a
few women out there have long nails (my HTC was touch sensitive, and did
not require skin contact to use)? On top of that, the touch screen
keyboard makes it way too hard to accurately type anything. I find
myself hitting every key BUT the one I am aiming for on the screen (my
boss's phone, not mine). This is just one more reason why I will never
own one of those pieces of crap.

Busy weekend

I had a real busy weekend. With some help from friends, we set up both
gers and tested the full rig. This is going to work really great. The
amount of usable space in these things is enormous. We ended up
shortening the rafters by about 2" to give a little more canvas
overhanging the sides which made me happier. Garth helped me rebuild the
camp benches and turn them into boxes, so now I can re-pack things and
not use the plastic bins any more. We also repacked the shed after
totally unloading it and managed to get the bike back into the shed
again with the 2 gers. Yay! I'm still tired. I am not used to all that
effort.

the blueberry is bottled

Last night I bottled the blueberry mead. It had ok flavor but is a bit
on the acidic side. Next time i'll use less of the acid blend.

Old skills die hard

Tonight I put my electronics skills to the test. My daughter's laptop
had a flaky power jack on the mother board. It's an older laprtop and we
can't quite afford $400 for a new one right now. I got on Ebay and found
a replacement jack for $6. Of course this meant that I had to totally
disassemble the laptop, un-solder the old jack, solder in the new one,
and put it all back together again. Well, 1:45 later and the laptop is
up and running with no more flaky power connector. Yay!

Ger #2 is almost done

The roof ring and roof are done. I just need to cut and hem the sides and drill holes in the door frames.

Oh, so fun.....not!

SO, a few days ago we noticed we had luke warm water instead of hot
water. Odd, but it got hot again. We also noticed some air in the water
lines. Maybe the well was going? Nope... This morning before I went to
work I shut off the water to the heater (I installed a shutoff valve
when i replace the last one). Tonight i turned it back on so Katie could
get a shower, etc. About an hour later Rain comes running up the stairs
from going to do laundry. Water was pouring out of the water heater and
it was all over the floor. I shut it off, grabbed the shop vac and we
proceeded to clean up what we could. I turned the water in for a few
seconds to see where the leak was and it was the lower heating element,
so off to Lowe's I went to buy another one. I've seen this before. The
element gets a pinhole leak and the element explodes the tube it's in
and then water comes pouring out of the element. I replaced the element
and no leaks so far, thankfully. Needless to say this is not how I
wanted to spend my evening.

Everything is green

Wow, the pollen is insane today. Not only is everything green, but it looks like there's a fog in the air the pollen is so thick. I am so glad I have my alegra.

The khana is done!

I finished the last khana piece today. A few holes in door frames and gluing the roof ring are all the structural pieces left to complete. Yay!

Its hot out

Its 87 degrees and its only 11:00. It's gonna be a hot one. I just finished half the khana for ger #2. One more to go :)