Category: projects

The heavy lifting is done.

I probably have 45 minutes more of cleanup. Then a trip to the firewood place to change all the pieces with metal embedded in them (why?).

Since you probably don’t know too many 67-year-old guys in a position to move and stack 6,000 pounds of firewood in under three hours, I’ll give you a little backstory: I accidentally got strong during a year off from university, working a job that, well, made me stronger. I didn’t realize it until I got to Maine for summer camp season. Unloading the campers’ trunks from a truck, I noticed that my fellow counselors, fresh from classes, were struggling with some of them. I, on the other hand, was flinging them onto my shoulder like they were nothing. As an artist, I had never interested myself much in physicality, but that, I thought, was cool. So I’ve tried to stay in shape.

Thirty years later, waiting for the ass-dragging Canadians to approve our residence (we finally gave up on it, for which I have been very grateful recently), I drove from Spokane to Las Vegas to meet an old friend coming from New Jersey for a conference. He was, as usual, overweight, and commented on how fit I seemed. He took a picture of me with my shirt off as we wandered around in the desert.

I thought I looked pretty good, so posted it, where smart-ass Jewish high school senior MySpace friend from San Diego responded almost immediately: Eww! Old. (jk).

At that point I saw a reality of being middle-aged, that in the absence of actively building muscle mass I would be losing muscle mass with each year. I joined the YMCA for a while, only to discover how incredibly boring gym machines are (and got ringworm from the sauna). Then I found and bought The Miracle Seven: 7 Amazing Exercises that Slim, Sculpt, and Build the Body in 20 Minutes a Day.

I could feel change in my muscles after a week, and I’ve been doing them ever since. Move and stack 6,000 pounds of firewood in under three hours? No problem.

(I solved the sauna issue by buying one through our company as a medial write-off.)

Kindling

All that thin wood on the right represents three hours of dragging lumber from underneath the avocado trees to the nearby carport, cutting it to length on the table saw (I would say “cheap table saw,” but anything with a motor or engine is not cheap in Uruguay), loading in a wheelbarrow and stacking 20 meters away in front of the casita (small/guest house).

There’s nothing quite like a shop vac for cleaning up piles of sawdust without having to breath it. This morning I emptied it and marveled at the simplicity of this 10-year-old supermarket-points purchase, still going strong.

Then I wondered if I had a manual for the shop vac (I always save them, even if I never look at them). Then I thought, what if it was my job to write a manual for this thing? I quickly concluded I would get fired, for my instruction manual would consist of a single line.

If you need an instruction manual for a shop vac, you are probably a liberal arts professor and should not be trusted with it.

My gardening

The patio where I try to grow things in containers.

The side of the house, which an amazing squash plant has made impassible.

One of the avocado trees I planted 12 years ago. The other is on track to produce only a handful this year.

It is the other tree that has produced monsters in years past.

A temporary fix

A couple nights ago, I pulled on the ball chain cord to turn on my homemade kitchen light fixture, and instead of the light coming on, the cord pulled out of the switch. A quick look demonstrated that it could not be repaired. Yesterday – Saturday – after dog walking and errands, I remembered and ran up the road to the electrical store. Which, despite being open on Saturday afternoons, had closed 45 minutes before.

My simple solution was a plastic bag clip left behind by friends who moved away two years ago, which holds the two wires for the switch together.

Note I said simple. I did not say easy. Those are, in fact, not the wires from the switch. I had to remove the entire fixture (all the connections are on the top, out of sight), rewire it hot (I needed the other ceiling light to see, since it was after 5:00 and we’re one day away from the winter solstice here, light was fading fast), and reinstall it.

I can’t complain about the switch. It has served us well for over ten years. And I’ll get some new plastic channel for the wires; the old one was falling down. But now I am starting to think I should design and build a new light fixture. Maybe that’s just an excuse to have fun with dangerous power tools? We’ll see.

Window awning

Big-ass bandsaw blade. I had to go to the aserradero today for a piece of lumber, or else wait until they reopen on 10 January.

Later I saw a guy carrying it out, so my guess it’s going for sharpening while the place is closed.

My project is rebuilding a window awning bracket that rotted.

You can see the diagonal piece missing in the back. The board propping it up was one I made to hold up an avocado branch I thought might break under the weight of fruit. It was exactly the right height.

And the cutout I made for the branch was perfect as well. I love it when stuff like this happens.

Dog chasing its tail

Huge thunderstorm and winds last night. Power went off, and when I turned on the main breaker, it flipped off again – a short somewhere. Lights were on in other houses, but it was time to go to bed, so no big deal.

This morning I turned all but the main breaker off, flipping them on one at a time until I found the culprit – my wife’s office upstairs. Unplugged everything there, but the breaker still tripped. Maybe the breaker is bad? I wasn’t sure I knew how to replace one, so best to call an electrician.

I needed to call Syd for the electrician’s number. However the wifi router, which includes the land line, wouldn’t turn on. Since we lost one to a lightning strike shortly after arriving here, I assumed whatever messed up the circuit breaker fried the router as well. Meanwhile there was no cellular network available for voice calls. Say what? Walked next door to Wayne and Janet’s, used their land line to call Syd, which took some jiggering, since for some reason their phone was switched from tone to pulse dialing. Then got a message that Syd’s phone was out of service (turns out I must have dialed wrong). Wayne used his cel phone to call a handyman who “speaks great English,” and after hearing him apparently having a bit of trouble understanding Wayne, I took the phone and arranged in Spanish for him to come by, but the earliest he could do was late afternoon.

Then decided maybe I should replace the breaker myself, so went to the local electric store, asked instructions and bought another. While I was out, I went by Syd’s – their phone was fine. Stopped by a kiosk and added minutes to my prepaid phone – I couldn’t make voice calls because I had no minutes. Stopped by the phone company to find out what number to call about the router. Finally got through to them, and set up a visit from tech support.

Back home, I managed to remove the circuit breaker, and tested it with a voltmeter – it was fine. So I reinstalled it, and was struggling to replace the breaker panel cover, which inexplicably is a total bitch. Wife goes to shower, informs me there is no hot water. For the first time I realize the water heater, in an outside patio closet, is on the same circuit as her office. Unplug the water heater, no problem with the circuit breaker.

So while it’s unplugged, I remove the control face plate, see what looks like a reset button inside, press it, plug in the water heater, go downstairs and the breaker is fine! Back upstairs, I see the light is on and so it’s working, and I go to replace the face plate and *fwap* something shorts. So our water heater now has the control face plate hanging off its side, and otherwise is functioning normally, a “let sleeping dogs lie” kind of repair.

FWIW, this photo is from 4-1/2 years later

And about the router – a year or two ago I decided to cut down on wifi radiation, so strung ethernet cables for my wife’s and my computers. I only turn it on for brief periods of time, for iPad updates or to load reading material I have stored online. Suddenly I realize that I have been trying to turn it on using the wifi on-off button, not the power on-off button. Yes, that would make a difference. So that’s solved, and after seventeen attempts, I finally get through to tech support to cancel the visit. Also let the handyman know he didn’t need to come by.

The next time I see a dog chasing its tail, I will remember this day.

Non compost compost

My favorite gardening technique is letting things plant themselves…

These little squash plants (what kind, who knows) are growing from my “compost” (noun) for a transplanted palm that didn’t in fact compost (verb).

Meanwhile, my recent re-jiggering of my non-composting compost has resulted in another little accidental garden. (I have no idea what that big-leaf plant in the background is, but it’s obviously happy and it’s not bothering me.)

Closer view of the non-garden “garden.”