Paradise ponders, oh happy day edition...

Paradise ponders, oh happy day edition...  I have no idea what's going to happen in the Trump administration, but I am celebrating the end of the Obama era anyway.  The graphic at right has been on my blog for eight years now, and it's gone as of today – because Obama is gone. 

Now we get to find out what the country gets with Trump.  I'm neither optimistic or pessimistic – more like just trying to prepare myself for any eventuality...

This morning I plowed my driveway, as we had a couple inches of snow on the ground and today was allegedly going to be clear.  Immediately after I finished plowing, it started to snow – hard.  Now we have a couple more inches on the ground, but the sun finally did come out.

I received a freight shipment today from my friend Mike B. in North Carolina.  It's the vacuum table component of the numerically controlled milling machine we're building.  He's doing the fabrication, and this is the biggest component of that effort.  It's about 250 pounds of wood that makes a 4' x 4' table; it's very stiff (by design) and has hundreds of small holes in the top and a vacuum compartment on the inside.  Right now it's all packed on a pallet; I'll be unpacking it to see it later today.

I'm also hoping to get some repair work done on my tractor today – replacing a broken turn signal and a cracked gear shifter shroud.

Yesterday I noticed that there was a problem on my Model X: the spoiler wasn't automatically retracting and extending like it's supposed to.  It's stuck in the fully extended position.  This doesn't really affect anything at all about driving it, so there's nothing urgent about fixing it.  But the fact of the problem provoked my first support call to Tesla – and the experience was very reassuring.  I had a tech on the phone in mere seconds, and about a half hour after my initial call I got an email from them.  They had (somehow!) remotely accessed the car and verified that there was indeed a problem with the spoiler.  They could not, however, find the root cause remotely.  They asked me to reboot the computer (with the Tesla equivalent of CTL-ALT-DEL!) to see if that fixed it; it did not.  So now I've got an appointment to visit the Tesla service center in Salt Lake City for diagnosis.  They scheduled it for a day when I was going to be in Salt Lake City anyway, very convenient for me.  If we're lucky, they'll be able to diagnose and fix it.  If the repair can't be done on that day, they'll send a “ranger” out to our house to do the actual repair.  Nice!

Debbie and I have been going through a bit of a life change here.  Since we picked up her car, for the first time in our life together we have our cars in a garage.  This is really strange for us – even the everyday experience of parking in a garage, and pulling the car out of the garage, is new to us.  It's all new in a good way, mind you, but still new and strange.  I'm especially enjoying the fact that we can climb straight into the car in the middle of the winter without having to scrape ice and snow off our windows! :)

Automatic “artsy” photos...

Automatic “artsy” photos...  Google keeps taking my photos, applying some filters to them, and notifying me about their proud constructions.  Usually I'm much less than impressed with them, but this morning's attempt was actually kind of nice:

Paradise ponders, snow reprieve edition...

Paradise ponders, snow reprieve edition...  Our forecast called for up to 3" of snow last night, but we got none at all.  I fear the reprieve is but temporary, though: the current radar (at right) shows a giant blob o'snow approaching from the west.  Methinks I will be spending time on the snow plow today...

Yesterday was largely consumed by little (but necessary) things, again.  Today I will be focused on catching up on my paperwork mountain.  Sheesh...

One more day of Obama – now there's something celebrate!

Paradise ponders, missing day edition...

Paradise ponders, missing day edition...  Man, yesterday just slipped right through my fingers.  I got absolutely nothing done that I was planning to.  How did this happen?  Well, it started with some chores: hauling firewood into the house and barn, filling the bird feeders, and so on.  Then we had to run one of our cats (Konani) to the vet, where we discovered that he needed to have a tooth extracted.  We left him.  Then home, got my office fire going, and discovered that Debbie's prescription couldn't be refilled because we changed insurance companies effective January 1st, and we didn't have the new insurance cards yet.  Dang!  Zipped to the Post Office, where we had a letter from the new insurance company – but no cards.  That letter had our ID number, but that was insufficient for the pharmacy; they needed four other numbers.  After two hours on the phone with Regence (our new insurance company), most of it on eterna-hold, I finally got those magic numbers.  Called the pharmacy and took care of that, but that took another half hour.  Then it was time to take off again – ran a couple errands in town, stopped and had a bowl of (delicious!) beef soup at Los Primos, then picked up poor Konani after his surgery.  By that time it was 4 pm and I'd accomplished nothing on my agenda for the day.  Sheesh!

So far today is little better, I'm afraid, though some of it is of our own making.  We took a lovely morning drive up Blacksmith Fork Canyon, figuring this would be our last chance for a while (we have six days of snow in the forecast starting tomorrow).  We saw lots of deer and elk, and a bald eagle flew right over us (and we could gawk through our Model X's windshield as he was right overhead!).  When we got back, we had a phone call from our local Kubota dealer: some parts I had ordered were in.  So we jumped back in the car and zipped up there to get them.  I'm surprised, very pleasantly, by how easy it was to get a couple of obscure proprietary parts for the tractor (a plastic surround for the gear shift levers, and a turn signal assembly).

Now my lovely bride is in the house making us a meal of her homemade chili, which is pretty much guaranteed to make my brains fall out.  I'm drooling just thinking about it.

We're having some more metal fabrication done for us by the same people who built our fireplace door (Lazy K Wrought Iron, in Kalispell, Montana).  We've developed quite a list of projects for them to do for us, but the next one is for a couple of covers for the window wells that open into our new sun room.  We want to avoid having people fall into those holes!  Those covers should be done in a few weeks, and we're planning to drive up there (it's about a 9 hour drive) to get them.  They should fit nicely in the back of the Model X (though I haven't measured to verify this yet), so we're planning to drive that up.  It will be our first test of a long-distance drive using the Tesla “Supercharger” network that will let us charge up our car for free, and quickly.  It should be a pretty drive, no matter what happens – and we'll learn whether we like the experience or not...

Paradise ponders, toasty office edition...

Paradise ponders, toasty office edition...  My office woodstove is burning a nice chunk of black walnut, and the temperature in here is 74°F (but it's only 7°F outside).  Ah, that nice heat feels so good!

Over the past couple of days I've had a frustrating experience with Nest's support for their thermostat.  We have five of them (two in our house, and three in our barn), and for the most part they have operated flawlessly.  However, a couple months ago one of the thermostats in our house started misbehaving.  From the on-screen indications it was obvious that the battery wasn't charging.  I thought at first that it was a problem with our furnace, but after lots of troubleshooting I came to suspect that the battery in the thermostat was failing.  I then decided to take one of the thermostats out of the barn and install it in the house, and now it has worked flawlessly for several months.

So yesterday I set out to see how to fix my thermostat.  It's a lithium-ion battery, so how hard could that be?  A little googling and I determined that I had a second generation Nest.  A little more and I found unofficial teardown instructions – and it looked really easy.  The battery, however, is a proprietary one.  How could I get one of those?  My usual sources (Mouser, DigiKey) had nothing.

The next thing I did was to contact Nest support via their chat application, where I briefly described the situation and asked if they could provide me with a replacement battery (which I'd be happy to pay for).  After a bit of back-and-forth with the very polite support agent, I determined this:

• My Nest thermostat was indeed broken, and the likely problem was the battery
• My Nest thermostat was out-of-warranty
• Nest would not sell me a replacement battery
• Nest would not fix the thermostat for me
• The only thing Nest would do is to give me a coupon for 20% off on a new Nest thermostat

This response, I thought, was completely inadequate.  I told the agent how disappointed I was with that response, and that I would replace the thermostat with one of another make.  She then said “Let me go check with a senior agent”.  After a bit she came back and said that she'd gotten approval for a no-cost replacement.  Well, that sounded great!  But unfortunately I had to leave my computer at that moment.  So she sent me the case number for our session, and said I could chat with anyone there to make arrangements for the replacement.  I was very happy with that resolution, which was actually more than I had been expecting.

But (and you knew there was going to be a “but”, didn't you?) when I started a chat session with another agent, an hour or so later, there was apparently no record of the approval for a replacement.  I told the agent what had happened, and he promised he'd look into it and email me back shortly thereafter.  I waited a few hours, but got no email.  So I started another chat session with yet another agent, and had basically the exact same interaction.  After that I went looking harder for a replacement battery, and found one from a highly-rated seller on eBay.  I waited until this morning, and then tweeted about my frustration and started yet another chat session – but this time I got the same agent (Kathleen G.) that had gotten approval for a replacement on the day before.  She apparently had some record of that approval, because shortly after we finished up I got an email from Nest confirming the imminent shipment of a replacement thermostat.  I'll be sending them the dead one back, presumably for repair (which makes me wonder why the don't offer repair as a service, as I'd have been happy to pay for that).

Apple handles this sort of thing so smoothly, so easily, that I have come to expect that from other high-end hardware – it's jarring and disappointing to find out that's not the case.  It's not quite bad enough to cause me to eliminate Nest products from consideration in the future, especially since after some hassle my problem did get resolved – but it's darned close.

Yesterday we had lunch at Herm's Inn, and both of us had their carnitas skillet.  I ordered mine with a fruit cup instead of potatoes – I've done that before, so I knew I was in for a treat.  The carnitas were excellent; nicely spiced slow-cooked pork with salsa fresca, guacamole, and a couple of eggs over easy.  The English muffin came with some excellent raspberry freezer jam.  The fruit cup was simply superb: perfectly ripe strawberries, blueberries, black raspberries, and an orange slice – and a few grapes for sweetness.  Their potatoes are good, too – but in my book, those fruit cups are way better...

On the way to Herm's, we drove through the classic inversion layer that happens in the winter, mostly to portions of Cache Valley north of our house.  Yesterday it got us as well.  The haze made for an unusual view of the Wellsville mountains to our west, though.  I snapped this as we drove north on State Highway 165, just south of Hyrum.

We were driving in our Model X, and we noticed something odd at the top of the big center screen: a red triangle with an exclamation point in it.  That didn't look good!  When I clicked on it, I got the dialog at right.  What the hell does that mean?  Sure enough, when I tried to navigate somewhere, I got an error message.  There was no clue on-screen about how to fix it.  So when we got home I did some googling, and quickly found out that (a) that error is fairly common, and (b) you fix it by rebooting the computer that runs the center console.  With some more googling, I found out that you reboot that computer by holding down both the left and right scroll buttons on the steering wheel for a few seconds.  I tried it, feeling a bit like I was having a trick played on me, and ... it worked!  It took about 30 seconds to reboot, and then everything was working fine again.  I haven't used Windows for quite a few years now, but this instantly brought to mind the CTL-ALT-DEL ritual that every Windows user knows by heart.  C'mon, Tesla, you can do better than Uncle Billy, can't you?

Paradise ponders, frozen air edition...

Paradise ponders, frozen air edition...  This morning when I let the dogs out for their morning run the temperature was -4°F (that's -20°C for my European readers).  Cold!  I was out before daylight to haul firewood into my office in the barn and into our house.  My breath froze in my mustache and beard, and I noticed that through the house lights I could see ice crystals in the air.  After the sun rose I could see that the air is full of gently falling ice crystals, which in the perfectly still air are coming gently to rest on whatever surface they happen to fall onto.  The photo on the right shows some of these crystals resting on an ornamental plum twig.  The relative humidity is high (about 90%), so I'm assuming that the ice crystals are being formed from the water vapor in the air around me.  The sky is clear, so it can't be precipitation.

My office was so cold this morning that my document scanner refused to work.  The scanner software actually reported that the temperature was too low!  I discovered through some googling that the problem is the paper-handling rollers: they won't operate properly when the temperature is so low that they get stiff.  That's a first for me!

My friend Mike B. and I were texting about the amazing low prices of disk drives today (including SSDs, which really aren't “disk” drives at all!).  One of his texts:

It's amazing...  My Mom was born in 1903 and got to see aviation got from gliders to the moon landing.  You and I saw the technology go from simple flip flop circuits to being able to go to the "store" and buy 6TB drives for next to no money.  We can say we were there from the start !!  Boggles my mind....

This is a phenomenon I ponder quite often, especially after reading some twit proclaiming that mankind has stopped inventing revolutionary technology.  My start in electronics was using vacuum tubes, something that electrical engineers in school now don't learn about at all, and may well not have even heard of – and yet, they were state-of-the-art (especially for radio) when I got my start in electronics in the '60s.  The first computers I worked with (early '70s) used discrete components including germanium transistors (then the speed kings) and magnetic core memory.  Even though I lived through all these electronic advances as a part of them, I still have trouble wrapping my brain around the sheer scale of the advances.  Mind-boggling indeed...

I'm in my office now, listening to a performance of Mozart's opera Don Giovanni, by Teodor Currentzis.  This version is notable for the use of period instruments in the orchestra, and for the energy of the performers.  I bought it after reading about it here.  I'm enjoying it, which is unusual for me – opera is not usually something I find tasty.  I find myself wishing I spoke Italian like my friend Doug W.; as I don't, I have to think of the voices as musical instruments, rather than as carrying a dialog...

Ah, my fire is starting to warm my office!  Perhaps I'll be able to run my scanner soon...

Paradise ponders, multitude of mooses edition...

Paradise ponders, multitude of mooses edition...  Well, Debbie and I are finally having that less-than-harried day.  It feels really good!

Yesterday I did manage to finish (re)installing all our Nest Protect alarms.  I thought there were twelve, but I was wrong – there are actually thirteen of the darned things.  I mentioned yesterday the annoying problem in their user interface, wherein the number of names the things can say (verbally) is limited and doesn't match the rooms we actually have alarms in.  Well, it turns out that the list of “sayable” names is exactly thirteen long!  That means that we have to use every single one of them if we want a different verbal cue for each alarm (and I do!).  So we have several that are ... much less than intuitive.  For instance, our mechanical room is verbally our “den” (because we don't have an actual den).  That's something I'd really like to see Nest change, though I suspect limitations on CPU power or flash storage are the source of the issue, and fixing it might require new hardware.  It wouldn't be such a limit in a smaller home, but for us, with our big house full of small rooms, it's very much a real limiting factor...

A couple days ago we picked up a nice-looking chunk of sea bass from our grocery store, and yesterday afternoon Debbie cooked it for our dinner.  She found a recipe that had her simply bake the fish, but then slather it in a sauce made with olive oil, capers, and lemon.  She put it all over rice, and it was superb!

Just after we finished that wonderful meal, our friend Michelle H. came over with her daughter Lizzie and her husband McKord.  They brought some lumber over to build a short set of stairs, and they needed the tools I have in my shop.  I spent the next few hours working with them (mainly with McKord; the girls went into the house to talk with Debbie) to make a “stairs kit”.  McKord knows all the types of tools we used (woodworking bench and vise, table saw, band saw, chop saw, and router), but naturally he didn't know my specific makes and models.  So my role was basically to show him how to work the particulars on the tools, and he did all the actual fabrication work.  It was quite enjoyable for me, and McKord was having a ball with the tools.  For instance, my chop saw paints a laser line just to the left of the kerf, and he really liked that.  Another thing he really liked was the woodworking vise – he'd never seen one before, and he loved how easy that made it to use the router (we used that to put a bullnose on the stair steps).  When we were all done, they piled all the cut-up wood into their car and took off back for Michelle's house, where presumably they assembled the stairs down into her newly-finished garage (now a play room).

This morning we took a leisurely drive up Blacksmith Fork Canyon, the mouth of which is just four miles from our house.  We were hoping to see some wildlife and some pretty scenery, and boy howdy did we.  Last night we had a freezing fog, and as a result the trees and weeds and everything else (even the elk!) was frosted, and in the early morning light it was just gorgeous.  We didn't see any deer at all on the trip into Hardware Ranch, but we did spot four moose – a mom and a yearling, and then another mom with a much smaller yearling.  Both of them were quite close to the road, and we remembered to bring our binoculars, so we could (literally!) count the hairs on their tails and in their beards.  One thing we saw that we'd never noticed before: the tips of their tails (all four of them) was white.  Somehow I'd never noticed that before.  The second photo below shows the mom-and-yearling pair with the smaller yearling.  On the way back out of the canyon, Debbie spotted a beautiful buck with three does; the third and fourth photos show them.  The rest of the photos are some of the scenery we saw.

Debbie had a brilliant idea as we were driving home, to wit: to drive up to Herm's Inn and get one of their cinnamon rolls to go – then go home and have it along with a nice cup of tea (for me) and decaf coffee (for her).  We did exactly that.  Herm's cinnamon rolls are (a) gigantic (about 7" in diameter), and (b) absurdly delicious.  They are made doughy, buttery, and chock full of cinnamon – and they come with a cream cheese based frosting that you can slather over the top.  One of them is more than enough for both of us even when we're hungry.  With some of the excellent beverages we have at home they were even better than at the restaurant.  Yum!

Memories...

Memories...  I'm sure that anyone who has ever grieved for someone they loved is well-acquainted with this phenomenon: seeing, hearing, or smelling something that vividly reminds you of someone, and provokes a smile, a laugh, or some tears.  The past few days I had three separate instances happen.

Once was while Debbie and I were enjoying the beef soup at Los Primos.  My dad was a great soup aficionado, and their soup is exactly the kind he would have enjoyed: a flavorful clear broth, big chunks of meat, and lots of vegetables.  Thinking of him brought both a smile at the thought of how much he'd have enjoyed that soup, and choked me up with sorrow that it could never be.

While we were taking our Christmas tree down, we came across several ornaments that were made of cloth covered with small sequins.  This instantly reminded both Debbie and I of a dear friend, Lois Warburton, who died far too young, almost 20 years ago, of pancreatic cancer.  She loved sequins, and often wore sequined clothing along with her vast collection of sequined purses.  That memory brought some tears, both for our loss and the manner of her death (pancreatic cancer is a cruel way to go, and more so 20 years ago than today).

Then just yesterday I was outside filling our bird feeders, and stopped for a few minutes to just stand and watch the bold (and probably hungry) little birds attacking the feeders just a few feet from me.  That got me to thinking how much my mom would have enjoyed standing there with me; she'd have been smiling at the little things exactly as I was.  That got me smiling even more...

Paradise ponders, the pseudo-down day edition...

Paradise ponders, the pseudo-down day edition...  Well, I was hoping for a day of lazy leisure today, after the craziness of the past week or so, but such was not to be.  It should be a bit easier, though. :)

Yesterday our trip to Salt Lake City to pick up Debbie's car didn't go quite as planned.  First, Jeannie had a bit of an upset tummy and didn't feel that a meal at Red Iguana was wise, so she stayed home.  Tim came with us, though, and was his usual sunny company all day, despite what happened to him later.  What's that, you ask?   Well, the process of getting Debbie's car was far more complicated that getting my Tesla was.  Instead of dealing with a single person, we dealt with three: one to finalize the sales paperwork, a second to handle the financial angle, and a third to teach us how to use the car.  Each of these took over an hour, three and a half all together.

Just after we left Tim's house, Debbie got a text from Michelle H. (who was at our house): our fire alarm was reporting smoke in the house.  Yikes!  We zipped back, and I quickly figured out that this was a false alarm (the third time that's happened in the two years we've had the Nest Protect alarms).  This time, though, it wasn't obvious which alarm (there are 12 in our house) was causing the problem – the name it was hollering at us didn't match any room in our house.  I ended up removing the batteries from all 12 alarms before I finally found the culprit.  The ambiguity is caused by a limitation of the Protect's software: it has a fixed list of names for rooms that it knows how to say.  Some of our rooms have no rational match on that list.  Our “mechanical room” (the locally standard name for what I'd call the “utility room”, with our furnace, water heater, etc. in it) is one such room, the cattery another.  So we chose other names from the limited list, more-or-less at random – and then promptly forgot them.  After I dismantled the entire alarm system, we took off.

One pleasant surprise for us: the offer Lexus made us on our trade-in (a 2010 Tundra with 130,000 miles on it) was considerably higher than Blue Book, or anything we thought we could sell it for ourselves.  I suspect that mostly means I didn't negotiate as low a price on the car as I could have. :)  On the other hand, the session with the finance guy went exactly as I expected.  If you have little experience with such things, you might think that the fact we were paying cash would mean this was a trivial event.  Oh, no.  From the car dealer's perspective, the finance guy is an opportunity to upsell you on grossly overpriced dealer add-ons (things like “paint protection” and “undercoating”).  This fellow started with nearly $10,000 worth of such add-ons – a mind-boggling amount to me.  They must often succeed in selling them, as they put an awful lot of effort into doing so.  I'm sure the margin on those add-ons is very high, too.  We declined them all, a big disappointment for this poor guy.  We did, however, buy two Lexus options: an extended comprehensive warranty and two years of routine maintenance; the price on both was quite reasonable.

Finally it was time for us to be introduced to the car itself.  They had it parked in a special place, with a red bow on top, all ready for Debbie.  The “delivery specialist” spent an hour with us going over all the controls and indicators in the car.  Your impression, sitting in the driver's seat, is starkly different than sitting in the Tesla's seat.  The Tesla has very few controls visible, and just two displays (in front of the steering wheel and in the center console).  The GX 460, on the other hand, looks more like the cockpit of a 737.  There are switches and knobs everywhere, along with indicators of various kinds (especially lots of idiot lights).  There are both pros and cons to this, as a drive in either will quickly point out.  I can't even say which approach I like better overall, though I can easily point out aspects of each that I like.  For instance, on the GX 460, there is an indicator telling you that there's another car (or object) in either your left or right blind spot, and the Model X has the same thing.  On the GX 460, the indicator is built into the side view mirrors, right where you'd look for an object – I found that very natural.  The Model X, on the other hand, has a really cool little “cartoon” with a fancy live pictorial of what surrounds you.  I like it, but I'm finding that I need to train myself to look there for obstacles.

Despite this being Debbie's new car, she didn't want to drive it home through the Big City.  As I write this, she still has not driven it on the street!  So I drove from the dealer (when we finally could escape!) to the Red Iguana, where we had another lovely meal.  Tim and I both had machaca burritos, enchilada-style (smothered in enchilada sauce and cheese), while Debbie had a beef dish whose name I didn't catch.  Those burritos were enormous, but Tim and I managed to finish the whole thing and have dessert besides. :)  Some photos of the event:

Then I drove us all home.  Most of the drive consisted of us moaning and groaning about how full we were. :)  I did have some fun exploring the GX 460's features, my favorite one of which is the adaptive cruise control that uses a radar to stay a safe distance behind the car in front of us.  And Tim was our master wildlife spotter as we transited Sardine Canyon, spotting lots of elk and deer throughout.

This morning I made an early run to Walmart to pick up a label machine, for my big project today: fixing the alarm problem.  The drive there was very beautiful; the sun had not yet risen over the Wasatch's to our east, but the Wellsville mountains to our west were lit with a soft orange glow, as if through a slightly fogged camera lens.  I had no clear view to take a photo, but it surely was beautiful.

First thing this morning I uninstalled all 12 of our Nest Protects, and now I'm about halfway through reinstalling them.  They're each getting a carefully selected name from that limited list, the best choice I can come up with.  They're getting a proper name (this is not limited) for display on the alerts we get on our phones.  They're each getting a physical label on them with both the proper name and the verbal name (which on four of the alarms don't match).  And perhaps most importantly of all, I'm building a list that has the proper name, the labeled name, and the verbal name for each.  This list will be available on each floor of our house somewhere, so we don't have yesterday's problem happen ever again!

Paradise ponders, the five-day break edition...

Paradise ponders, the five-day break edition...  Most of my day yesterday and the day before consisted of fighting snow.  I plowed the driveway twice on Wednesday, and once again yesterday.  I shoveled all the snow off our new deck's roof: 600 square feet of roof piled 2' to 3' high with a mixture of snow and ice.  That was fun!  And I cleared our balcony floor of snow and ice twice.  I am ready for a day without snow removal!  And it appears that I will have five of them, all in a row, as there's no precipitation in our forecast until next Tuesday evening.  Then another multi-day storm approaches...

Yesterday I had another, easier chore too: getting the garage ready for Debbie's new car, and preparing her 2010 Tundra for trade-in.  We're driving down to Salt Lake City this morning to pick her car up, almost a month earlier than the dealer estimated.  Quite a contrast to my wait for the Model X. :)  Her car should look like the one in the photo at right.  It's a GX 460, which is the spiffed-up Lexus version of the Toyota 4Runner.  Debbie is pretty excited about getting this, though she's also sad about giving up her beloved Tundra.

We're making the trip with our friends and neighbors, Tim and Jeannie D., who are coming along just for fun.  We had Tim along two weeks ago when we went to get my Model X; now he and Jeannie are both coming with us, and we're all stopping at the Red Iguana for an early dinner.  I suspect Tim's stories of his first visit there convinced Jeannie that she should come along too. :)  Debbie and I are both looking forward to spending the day with them, and introducing Jeannie to the wonders of the Red Iguana.

I'm listening to a beautiful recording of twelve Liszt etudes and eleven other pieces, by Danil Trifonov on Deutsche Grammophon.  Nice way to start the morning...

Last night I got up around 2 am and happened to look out the window.  It was a magical scene, with our snowy landscape brightly illuminated by a full (or nearly full) moon.  I let the dogs out for a romp, and romp they did – snow was flying everywhere in the moonlight.  We've had cloudy days for over a week, and I didn't expect it to be clear last night.  Clear skies mean cold mornings, though, and it was just 12°F when we got up this morning...

We had an unexpectedly interesting experience yesterday when seeking a place to repair one of Debbie's boots.  This particular boot has a zipper closure, and the zipper's cloth had actually torn.  That called for a cobbler, and Debbie was able to find one close by: Cache Valley Cobbling.  It's only a few miles from our home, with the tiny shop tucked into the side of a home right on US 89, just north of Wellsville.  The photo at right shows the original owner of the shop, now retired.  A year ago he sold the shop to a much younger man, perhaps 30 years old.  The shop is absolutely stuffed with lovely old tools and machines that would make any aficionado of old tools drool.  I certainly did!  Even the smell of the place is enticing!  Some of the machines are over 100 years old, with leather belts and trundle drives.  The new owner seems to be really excited about his business, and here's hoping he's successful with it!  It would be nice to see both the artifacts and the skills preserved...

Paradise ponders, driveway maintenance edition...

Paradise ponders, driveway maintenance edition...  When yesterday dawned, we had up to 2" of ice on our driveway (1" in most places), and it was so slippery that one could barely stand upright.  For most of the day the temperature was above freezing and we had intermittent precipitation, so a layer of liquid water built up above the ice.  By using my snow plow as if it was an ice shaver, in two efforts separated by about four hours, I was able to get all that ice off the driveway.  This was far less work, overall, than plowing a foot of snow off – and the benefits are well worth it.  Last year we had a persistent layer of ice for a couple of months, but I never tried the “ice shaving” trick.  It's now in my repertoire...

We didn't do much else yesterday, just puttered around the house and ran a couple of errands.  But we did stop for a lovely lunch at Los Primos, where we both had a bowl of their delicious vegetable beef soup.  We've been there enough times at this point that the waitresses are becoming familiar with us.  This time they didn't even bother bringing a menu; our waitress knew we would want the soup. :)

A few days ago I had a bit of fun with our Model X that I forgot to relate.  I had run up to Ridley's (groceries, hardware, and guns – so Utahan!) for a few things, and when I walked out and back toward my car, I noticed a couple of young guys looking at it.  They were gesturing and talking excitedly, and as I approached I overheard one tell the other that the owner couldn't be someone from around here.  So I introduced myself, and asked them if they'd like a little ride in it.  Their answer was an excited and emphatic “Yes!”  I opened the falcon wing back doors for them, which started them going again, then I drove them a half mile or so down the road and back.  I had a chance to show them the acceleration (which, being young guys, of course they loved).  They also liked the big display.  However, they deeply regretted the lack of engine sound. :)  That was fun!

A few days prior to that, we took our friend Michelle H. out to lunch at Los Primos.  She rode in the back of our Model X, and when we got to the restaurant we opened the falcon wing door for her to get out.  When we walked into the restaurant, the people at a table near the door piped up with “Nice car!” and wanted to know what it was.  Michelle's comment: she really liked being noticed getting out of the “cool car”, and offered to go with us anytime we wanted to be noticed. :)  Personally I'd be more comfortable not being noticed, and I'm kind of glad that the falcon wing doors are on the rear seats (which we rarely use) and not the front...

This morning we have about an inch of slushy snow on the driveway, and it's still coming down.  The temperature is hovering right at freezing, but should be going up at least a few more degrees during the day.  I'll be plowing at least once again today...

How do “Little Hotties” work?

How do “Little Hotties” work? My work outdoors this winter has been vastly more comfortable because of these magic little pouches called “Little Hotties”.  Having lived in southern California for over 40 years, I'd never heard of these things.  Nearly every store here carries them: grocery stores, sporting goods stores, gas stations, even pharmacies.  They are available in different shapes and sizes, for various purposes.  For me, the hand and foot warmers are the key to my comfort. 

I wondered, though, how they worked – and whether there were dangerous or harmful chemicals in them. It was obvious from the packaging that the process involved oxidation, as the pouches come sealed in an airtight plastic bag.  As soon as you open the bag, they start getting warm.  But how?

Well, the short answer is that they're perfectly safe – they work by oxidizing iron powder.  They contain a very fine iron powder mixed with a few other ingredients that act to regulate the rate of oxidation (and therefore the temperature).  The Little Hotties web site has a description, and I found more here.  When you're done with one of these things, all that's left is a little plastic, some rust, a bit of salt, and a teaspoon or so of expanded rock (vermiculite).  All safe and even environmentally friendly, except for the bit of plastic...

Paradise ponders, slick driveway edition...

Paradise ponders, slick driveway edition...  Conditions over the past 12 hours or so have conspired to produce the slickest icy driveway I've ever experienced.  Yesterday evening it was above freezing and we got some snow and ice pellets.  This formed a slushy mix on our driveway, around an inch thick on average.  Overnight it dipped below freezing, and all that slush froze into solid ice.  Then this morning the temperatures have risen above freezing again, so now there's a thin layer of water atop the ice.  If you could have seen me walking from our house to our barn, about 50', you'd be laughing at my antics as I tried to stay upright.  I partly succeeded – I only fell three times, not too bad.  Just after I got into my office it started to snow – wet, slushy snow.  We're forecast to get up to 12" today, and 6" more tomorrow.  What a mess!  I think I'm going to be quite busy trying to keep any disasters (as we had yesterday) from occurring...

My sister wrote to tell me that I am forbidden from ever writing a post like yesterday's again:

“I do not want to have to read such a jamulblog post again, do you hear me?!”

I had no idea she was so opposed to free speech.  And can you imagine an English teacher using such punctuation?! :)

I'm going to work indoors for a few hours until things warm up and thaw a bit outside, then I'm going to try to get some of the ice/slush off the driveway.  It's probably a futile effort, but I'm going to give it a shot anyway.  The rest of my day will likely be completely occupied by various snow-removal chores...

Paradise ponders, snow and ice trauma edition...

Paradise ponders, snow and ice trauma edition...  We had quite the day yesterday.  I mentioned in a previous post that I intended to shovel the snow off the new deck roof where it had accumulated some of our second floor windows.  At right you can see those windows, prior to my shoveling.  The snow piled there was up to 4' high, a combination of snow that fell there, and snow that slid off the second floor roof above.  Also it wasn't just snow: melt water dripped off those icicles you see, and then froze in the snow below.  It took me almost 5 hours to shovel off a 3' wide strip from in front of those windows, and I have lots of sore and strained muscles to show for it.  Much worse, though: while I was shoveling, a vast swath of snow and ice fell off the second floor roof right on top of me.  I was knocked down and knocked out cold.  I woke up with my face in a snow pile and a 3" thick block of ice on top of me, about 4' by 2'.  Yikes!  I have no idea how long I was out, but I suspect it was only a few seconds as my clothes didn't get wet.  Then I had to shovel the new fall off before I could get back to work on the original problem!

As if that wasn't punishment enough, we got some more this morning.  When we woke it was raining and the temperature was already above freezing.  We'd heard some snow fall during the night, big booms and crashes.  So the first thing we did this morning was to walk around the house looking for any problems – and we had a big one.  Water was steadily dripping into our dining room, and we had visible drywall damage over a 50 square foot or so area.  We also had furniture and a rug getting wet.  It was a mad scramble for a while – first to clear out all the stuff under the leak and start catching and sopping water, second for me to get upstairs to the source of the leak.  I knew what it was: there was a snow and ice dam on our balcony, and it was backing up the rain and melt water.  I had hoped to get to that yesterday, but I was exhausted from the deck roof adventure.  Now we were suffering the consequences of my inadequacy.  I had a couple hours of hard work, shoveling wet snow off the balcony and then chipping ice away with a hammer.  In places it was 4" thick, though most of it was “only” around one inch.  Now my right wrist is sore from all the hammering I did, and in a hurry, too.  We simply can't let snow accumulate there!  In the course of chipping that ice away, I did some damage to the balcony floor, too – that's not going to be cheap to fix.  Come spring I'm going to see if there's anything at all we can do to permanently fix that problem...

Yesterday after I shoveled the deck roof off, I refilled our bird feeders (and they're empty again, so I'll be doing that again when I finish this post).  Moments after I filled a feeder (we have six), the birds would swarm it.  Most of the birds were goldfinches, juncos, and chickadees, but I also saw a spotted towhee – an unexpected winter feeder here.  The photo at right shows two of our feeders.  The one on the left I keep filled with already-hulled seed.  It has something tricky to keep the magpies off it: spring-loaded perches.  The little birds don't move them at all, but anything bigger than about a robin will cause the perch (which is smooth metal) to swing down, and they lose their grip.  When I first put up that feeder it was very entertaining watching the magpies get all frustrated at their inability to get at that yummy food!

Our Model X is about to get all official!  On Friday I received the packet of paperwork needed to get it registered here, so today Debbie and I drove it into town, to the Cache County office building where the DMV offices are located.  Once again it was a pleasant experience: we walked in and were immediately served by a friendly and helpful clerk.  No lines, no 'tude – it was great!  Well, except for the part about writing a check for the sales tax. :)  Anyway, we got the paperwork all done in about ten minutes, with lots of smiles.  It will surprise no one who knows me that I ordered personalized plates: "8SIGMAS".  On the form I filled out for that, I had to explain what that meant, so I wrote: “Eight standard deviations from normal”.  The clerk who helped us read it and cracked a small smile, but didn't say a word.

Speaking of the Model X, I've noticed an interesting phenomenon with it.  When I'm backing it into our garage (it fits!), Debbie closes her eyes and refuses to watch.  This has something to do, I think, with the fact that there's about 4" of clearance on either side.  This bothers her for some reason. :)

While we were in town we stopped for lunch at one of our favorite spots: Jack's Wood Fired Oven.  We had pizzas...

...and they were so good!

Salt-lick camera take...

Salt-lick camera take...  Here's some photos from the last few days.  I've turned off the camera for now, as it's just staring at a giant snow pile from my plowing...