Hardwood and flowers make a nice day!

Hardwood and flowers make a nice day!  Early yesterday morning we set off for Salt Lake City, to visit the MacBeath hardwood store.  This sort of trip was one of the main reasons I bought my utility trailer, and I was very pleased to see how well it worked for the job.  I was hoping to get red oak for my framing wood, but even MacBeath didn't have enough.  In fact, the only reasonably strong hardwood they had in stock in sufficient quantity was yellow poplar.  That's not an ideal choice, but it should be plenty strong enough for my job.  I got 45 pieces of random length 1x4s, all between 11' and 12' long.  That's a lot of hardwood!  I had been planning to use oak 1x3s, but moving to 1x4s will make the poplar frames very nearly as strong as the smaller oaken frames.  Below the poplar sticks are eight sheets of Baltic birch plywood.  These are all “cabinet grade”, meaning no patches, no knots, and no interior voids.  Both faces of each sheet are birch, though one side is better quality.  I only care about both sides on some of the 1/4" thick sheets, and I got lucky on them: both sides of those sheets are darned near perfect.  When I got done loading the trailer, the guy at MacBeath helping me estimated the weight at 600 lbs.  The trailer behaved well, most especially at highway speeds.  For the portions of our trip along I-15 north of Ogden, we were traveling at a steady 80 mph, and the trailer acted like it was glued to the road.  It only got bouncy on some very rough city streets in Salt Lake City.  Very nice!  Oh, and the Tesla didn't feel any different at all driving with the loaded trailer.  I couldn't detect any difference in performance, except for the battery consumption (roughly 20% higher than with no trailer, though only at highway speeds). 

After we got home and got the lumber unloaded, we went to Rudy's Greenhouse to find some color for our porch and balcony pots.  We picked out seven of their hanging baskets, which we're going to just steal the plants from.  So pretty!  Transplanting these is on the agenda for this afternoon...

Enquiring minds apparently want to know...

Enquiring minds apparently want to know...  Two people have written me in the last few days to see if my use of diphenhydramine as a sleep aid is still working.  Short answer: yes it is, just as well as when I started several months ago.  I've settled on a dose of 12.5 mg (I chop 25 mg pills in half).  When I can remember (that's infrequently :) to take it an hour or so before I go to bed, that dose is darned near perfect.  With more experience, I have a better idea of why it works for me.  I wake up nearly every night sometime between 1 am and 2:30 am.  Before I started using diphenhydramine, there was an excellent chance (at least 3 of 5 nights) that I would not go back to sleep.  Since I've started the diphenhydramine regimen, I go back to sleep almost every night.  I'm now regularly getting between 7 and 8 hours of sleep every night, and occasionally getting even more (one memorable night a couple of weeks ago I slept for 10 hours – and if that doesn't seem remarkable to you, it certainly is to me!). 

I haven't seen any side effects yet at this dose.  If I take even slightly more (like 15 mg) I start to have “morning sedation” – well-described in the list of side-effects for diphenhydramine.  That's a groggy state that caffeine and a shower won't wake me up from – I have to just let it wear off, which can take several hours.  At even higher doses, the morning sedation is deeper and longer lasting.  I've tried 10 mg doses, which seems insignificantly different than the 12.5 mg dose I've settled on – and it isn't reliable in letting me fall back asleep in the middle of the night.  I'm surprised at the sensitivity of the dosage, but there it is.

Last night is a good example of my experience with this drug.  I took my 12.5 mg dose just before I took my evening shower at 9 pm.  I took my shower, went to bed, read for a while, and was lights-off and ready to sleep at 10:15 pm.  I woke at 1 pm, went back to sleep within a few minutes.  I woke up at 5:15 am, got up and felt almost no morning sedation.  By the time I took my shower and had my morning tea, I was wide awake.  This sort of thing may be normal for most people, but for me it's still quite novel. :)

14,000 and counting...

14,000 and counting...  The previous post was the 14,000th post I've published since I started this blog over 13 years ago.  It's hard to wrap my brain around having done 14,000 of anything creative, though intellectually I know I've done most of my creative work as a software engineer (something that's very difficult to measure in any concrete way).  It's a milestone of some sort.  Probably of how crazy I am to keep doing this!

Debbie and I are about to jump in our Tesla Model X, trailer attached, and head for Salt Lake City.  There we'll be visiting MacBeath's hardwood store.  I'm picking up (at least, I hope I am!) a huge amount of lumber to build the grill cabinet.  I'm picking up a total of 8 sheets of hardwood plywood, various thicknesses, half of it with two good sides.  Then I've got a total of 700 linear feet of a combination of hardwood 1x3s and 1x2s (for framing).  That's a lot of hardwood!  I'm hoping to get red oak for the framing wood, and Baltic birch for the plywood, but I'll be somewhat at the mercy of what they've got in stock.

We'll be coming straight home, with no stop at the Red Iguana.  I don't want to leave a trailer full of valuable hardwood sitting in the their parking lot while we eat – unlike the area where we live, Salt Lake City has an all-too-typical big city crime rate.  But that's so sad that we're going to miss that great food!  I will probably cry as we pass...

We see Lily (and her mom, Lizzy) every week or two...

We see Lily (and her mom, Lizzy) every week or two...  Consequently, it seems like there are large changes in Lily every time we see her.  I snapped this a couple days ago when we took Lily, Lizzy, and (grandma!) Michelle out to lunch at Los Primos.  This time we noticed that she sat confidently in her high chair – as opposed to being strapped into a car seat the last time we went out to lunch with her, about a month ago.  She's totally engaged with her surroundings, mainly (so far as I can tell) in an effort to find things to chew.  Her mom, meanwhile, is busy removing all possible chewables from her reach – not, it turns out, an easy thing to do.  Eventually Lizzy was reduced to chewing the edge of the table. :)  She's eating a lot of solid food now, and shared beans, rice, and guacamole with the rest of us.  She really liked the horchata!

Finished!

Finished!  With the trip planning, that is.  Eighteen days, just over 6,000 miles, 84 supercharger stops, and 15 different lodgings.  Whew!  The lodging turned out to be the most challenging part.  Certain parts of the country (I'm looking at you, Yellowstone, coastal Maine, and Niagara Falls!) are damned near impossible to book for the season we're passing through.  Our goal was B&Bs all the way, but in five places I had to compromise on hotels, as there was just no B&B space available.  Also we ran into something new: in many places now, B&Bs have two-night minimums.  I did some research online as to why they were doing this.  The main reason seems to be to eliminate those pesky overnight travelers (like us!), as they're neither as lucrative or as fun as the stay-a-whiles.  When the B&B is in a market where the demand exceeds the supply, it's an easy way for them to sort out the more desirable customers.  That two-night minimum made it really tough to find lodging in some places.

I'm going to be building a cabinet to hold our new grill on our deck.  A good friend of mine, Mike B., is a very experienced cabinet maker – so I went to him for some advice.  It was very simple advice, indeed: use pocket-hole screws and ignore all the howls of traditional cabinet makers (who generally use mortise-and-tenon or finger joints).  So I took his advice, and invested in a set of Kreg pocket-hole jigs.  There are many makers of such jigs, but Kreg is probably the biggest and best-known of them.  I got the jigs a couple days ago, and yesterday I tried making a couple of simple joints, just to see how they worked and how hard it would be.  Bottom line: I can see why Mike swears by them.  They are ridiculously easy compared with traditional techniques, and at least as strong.  They also allow a few joints that are nearly impossible with traditional techniques, such as angled butt joints.  About the only skill required is to cut boards to the right length, and that's just not very hard!  It will be interesting to build this cabinet as a first project – it's reasonably ambitious for a first go.  There will, of course, be photos as I progress...

I'm up to my neck...

I'm up to my neck ... in trip planning.  We're going on a big road trip in a few weeks – from Utah to Maine and back.  We'll be gone for 18 days, the longest pure road trip Debbie and I have taken in a good many years.  Our wonderful friend Michelle H. will be taking care of our animals and house while we're gone.  That's her car at right, parked in our garage.  While we were on our last trip, she took advantage of the opportunity to park in my Tesla's spot (note the red-and-white sign on my garage wall).  Cracked me up! :)

Yesterday we drove out to Hardware Ranch and didn't see all that much in the way of wildlife.  That dearth was more than made up for by the best viewing of a western meadowlark we've ever had.  It was sitting in the top of a juniper, about 10' high, and 20' away from us.  The yellows and oranges of his plumage were so intense!  That photo at left is not mine, but it gives you some idea what we were seeing.  Even though it was only 20' away, we got our binoculars on him – and at that range, he filled our view with those glorious colors!

I'm hoping to nail down the last lodging this afternoon.  I'm tired of trip planning!  :)

Can't believe I forgot to mention this!

Can't believe I forgot to mention this!  While in Lander, Wyoming a few days ago, we spent a delightful couple of hours in the Fremont County Pioneer Museum, and wandering the grounds of the (after-hours) American Museum of the West.  The Pioneer Museum has an amazingly eclectic collection of pioneer artifacts, from optometry instruments to cattle brands.  The displays are very well done, informative, interesting, and attractive.  We thoroughly enjoyed our visit there.  Admission was $8 for the two of us – one heck of a bargain!  The American Museum of the West is a collection of old buildings moved to the site, and filled with interesting-looking exhibits.  We got there after-hours, so all we could do was wander the grounds and peek in the windows, but that was enough to let us know that we have to go back someday...

Here's an incredible free resource I just ran across...

Here's an incredible free resource I just ran across...  The BBC has posted over 16,000 sound effect files (in WAV format), licensed for free use under a fairly permissive (and remarkably plain-language) license.  I've not seen any collection of sound effects of this quality (or size) on any other site...

The statue is unloaded and unpacked ...

The statue is unloaded and unpacked ... and in a temporary parking position for a few months until we've finished our water feature (where it will be permanently placed).  Here are a couple views of it (as usual, click to embiggen):

We're back!

We're back!  And such a lovely little trip we had...  Our route (both ways) took us around Bear Lake, then to Evanston, Rock Springs, and finally Lander, Wyoming.  We saw far more wildlife than we expected to!  On the stretch from Bear Lake to Evanston we saw many Sandhill cranes, and a few pronghorn antelope (the latter exciting for us, as we don't see them often).  But on the stretch from Rock Springs until about 30 miles before Lander, we saw hundreds and hundreds of pronghorns.  We found out later that they migrate to this area every spring so the pregnant females can feast on emerging forbs – rich in the minerals they need at that point in their pregnancy. They sure were a feast for our eyes!  They were still there on our way home yesterday, too.

Friday we spent all day in the Lander area.  The big event was visiting Eagle Bronze – the foundry selected by the sculptress (Christine Knapp) who created our mountain lion statue.  She'd told us to expect to be there all day, though we had absolutely no idea why.  We had the very mistaken idea that sculptures were made by pouring bronze into a mold, letting them cool, then taking them home.  That turns out to be very wrong. :)

The first thing we saw when we walked in was the statue at right.  The color in the photo is accurate – that's actually what it looked like!  I thought it was clay at first, and that we'd had some enormous misunderstanding with Christine!  But then I remembered we're at a foundry, so there must be bronze involved somewhere...

We spent the next four hours enthralled by the two “patina people” – artists in their own right – transform what you see at right into the statue we took home.  They were fine with us watching and asking a million questions, something we both enjoyed very much.  The collection of photos below are those I took as they were working.  The overwhelming takeaway for me from watching them was that this process is complicated.  The photos below are in sequence, and you can see each part of the process – washing, buffing, applying chemicals, using heat, drying, polishing, lacquering, and (the last step!) waxing.  I had utterly no idea that there was so much use of color and texture in making a bronze statue!  Just a couple of examples to illustrate what I mean.  To make the eyes stand out, the orbs were carefully buffed, then polished with jeweler's rouge.  For certain areas of their pelt (tip of the tail, back of ears, etc.) the fur is darker, almost black.  In those areas, the patina people heated the metal (to open pores in the metal), gently sprayed black acrylic (some of which seeped into the heat-opened pores), then let the metal cool before buffing the acrylic off.  The result is a subtly darkened area of the metal, with a nice gradient to the areas that weren't darkened.  Watching these two work, and learning from their knowledgeable responses to our questions, was an experience I'll cherish...

We took one small break from watching them at the urging of Christine, who wanted to show us an amazing statue of a horse that would soon be leaving the foundry (after having been ten years in the making!).  That thing is 28' tall from the floor to the tip of its nose ... just look at Debbie – she doesn't quite come up to its knee!  The statue is made of bronze, with the “skin” being about 3/8" thick (roughly the same as our statue).  That's not nearly strong enough to support the weight of the statue, so the horse has a gigantic steel armature inside of it – and interesting piece of engineering all by itself, complicated in form, and with some challenges in making it strong enough to handle all possible wind loads.  Eventually this statue will end up in Singapore (where the customer is), so they won't have to worry about snow loads. :)  This same foundry makes miniatures the size of your little finger, and I'm told this horse is only the third-largest (by weight) statue they've ever made.

While in Lander, we stayed at Lander Lodging, and a very enjoyable stay that was!  Our hosts, Don and Laural, couldn't possibly have been any nicer.  In fact, they rescued us from an awkward car-charging situation by giving us a couple of rides into town, something we greatly appreciated.  Most of all, though, they were “our kind” of people: farmers, animal lovers, full of stories (especially Don!), and dispensing good cheer in all directions.  Their little spot in the Sinks Canyon is truly beautiful, with great views, lots of trees, and plenty of animals for us to meet.  We particularly enjoyed their miniature horses Star and Indy (below).  We learned from Don that the miniature horses were developed specifically to work in mines, pulling carts of ore.  I'd always thought they were more modern than that, and developed mainly as pets – not so.  These two had very sweet and curious dispositions, and both were jealous if we paid attention to the other :)...

It was a lovely trip, and now our mountain lion statue is parked on our trailer in our back yard.  On Tuesday my brother Scott will be here, and with his help we're going to move it into a temporary position until we get its permanent home on a water feature built.  Once I get it unpacked and placed, I'll take some photos of it and post them...

Ramblings...

Ramblings...  Yesterday afternoon we wandered up Blacksmith Fork Canyon again.  I spotted the first mountain wildflowers of the season (at right).  They were nestled in some exposed rocks on a talus slope, each plant no more than an inch or so high.  There was a cluster of plants about 8' in diameter.  I've no idea what they are, but the flowers look a bit like pea family flowers, and they were pouring out a sweet, strong smell.  Those thorned leaves belong to that plant, and those sure don't look like the pea family!  Oh, lovely they were...

As we got to Hardware Ranch at the end of the paved road, we took the back (dirt) road up to the visitor's center.  The scene at left is from that little drive.  That's looking just about due east, back toward Hyrum (16 miles away and out of sight).  You can see the obviously green meadows, but if you look closely you'll see that the deciduous trees are still bare.  Close up, some of them have popped-open buds and the leaves are a-coming.  In another couple of weeks, this scene will be considerably greener.  I'll try to remember to snap it again then...

We've had a busy day today, scrambling to handle a few last-second chores before we set off on another three-day trip.  This time we're headed to Lander, Wyoming to pick up a mountain lion sculpture that we commissioned a few months ago.  Hopefully by the end of this summer that sculpture will be sitting atop a water feature in our back yard, just off our deck.  I will of course post photos after we pick it up on Friday.

One of our chores today was to visit Rudy's Greenhouses in Logan to collect eight hanging basket of color.  A few weeks ago, we bought “tickets” to get these baskets – Rudy's works with the local Boy Scouts each year to help them raise money.  Everybody wins: the Boy Scouts get some cash, Rudy's raises their volume and gets more people to know them, and the ticket buyers get some gorgeous baskets at a discounted price – in our case, eight of them to go around our deck (at right).  We drove in right at opening time to get the best selection, but we needn't have worried – there were vast quantities of those hanging baskets to choose from: over 3,000 of them according to one of the workers.  The staff there were ludicrously helpful – they wouldn't let me load my car by myself, and one of them suggested plastic sleeves (they offer them for free) to avoid messing up the car.  We chose our baskets in just a few minutes, and were getting ready to load 'em up when we spotted a friend driving in: Michelle H., and Lizzy and Lilly were tagging along.  After some happy, friendly chat, we set off for home and I got all the baskets hung up.  Lots of smiles from Debbie and I each time we see them.

Shortly after that, Debbie gestured to me to follow her into our bedroom, to look through the door of our sun room at the scene of feline luxury within (at left).  There were eight cats in there, all absorbing the sun and occasionally waking up long enough to chatter at a robin hunting worms on the lawn outside.  The robins seem to completely ignore the cats – they've apparently figured out that the cats can't get to them.

This afternoon I hooked up the trailer to our Model X as practice, and to test the lights.  Our trip starting tomorrow will be the first time we've used the trailer in earnest – the mountain lion sculpture will come home riding on it.  We're taking a path that's mostly off the Interstate, though we'll be on one for a short while in order to rendezvous with a couple of superchargers (one in Evanston, Wyoming, and another in Rock Springs, Wyoming).

As usual, blogging on the trip will be light-to-nonexistent.  This time we don't even know if our lodging has an Internet connection!

New project arrived...

New project arrived...  Well, the essential ingredients for one, anyway.  A while back we ordered a built-in grill from Solaire – and yesterday, it arrived.  That's it, sitting on the sawhorses on our deck at right.  The big unit on the right is the grill itself, with a rotisserie attachment (that's the little motor sitting on the grill).  The smaller unit at left is a two-burner stove.  These arrived via freight, in six boxes shrink-wrapped onto a pallet.  The pallet weighed just over 300 pounds, but the actual components at right are just under 150 pounds – so there was over 150 pounds of packing material.  That will give you some idea just how well packed these things were.  There wasn't a ding or a scratch on anything at all.  The workmanship on the grill is superb, nothing like any of the grills we've owned before.  Debbie's gonna go a little crazy cooking on this thing, methinks. :) 

The rest of the project is to build a cabinet for these to sit in, on our deck.  The tentative plan is for a 9 foot long cabinet, 30" deep, with the grill sitting right in the middle and 3' of granite counter top on each side.  The cabinet underneath will have big, deep drawers in it; not sure how many yet until I get the dimensions all settled down.  It will be redwood-sided (2x6s mounted to plywood) to match the deck.  It will be quite the cabinet-making project for me!

I also caught the dogs enjoying the sunshine.  These are the three young field spaniels.  Clockwise from the lower left: Ipo, Cabo, and Mako (looking at me).  They are loving springtime!