Donations and Whatnot:
• There's a piece of plywood under the cushions of the sofa. It helps keep us from being "swallowed up" by the sagginess it had before. In testing, my butt only fell asleep once.
• There's a "new" blue, green, or blue-green flannel sheet rescued from Dad's barn. It's pretty comfortable on warmish nights. (I'm not too good at identifying greens and reds.) There's also a black BBQ cover from the barn that's a good for short term coverage of the new BBQ.
• Also from the barn collection, there's a "new" rug along the wall next to the bed in the Captain's Quarters. It's a pretty nice fit, and is sitting on top of the rugs that were already there.
• New spices in the cabinets: Mustard powder, fennel seeds, celery salt, sage (grown in my backyard), and some dried hot peppers I can't remember the name of called chiles de arbol. There should be enough to last for a few years at least.
• The CA Modern mags in the biffy have been updated. There's also a special section from the LA Times about the Kings winning the Stanley Cup this year. There's a 1982 Hockey News yearbook in with the real books (probably of interest to hardcore hockey fans only), and a sci-fi short novel compilation I accidently ordered a duplicate copy of when I was in a book club.
• There are two small camping-size propane canisters in the flammables shed. Use 'em up if you can.
• There's a huge new BBQ spatula thing in the kitchen. I've been given at least four BBQ tool sets for Christmas or birthdays over the years. There's more where that came from if we need them...
• The 1935 Ontario license plate is over the entrance to the kitchen. I triple-checked. It looks crooked, but it's level. It's the top of the doorway that's crooked. That's the ceiling fan before it went up in the background.
• I brought an old thermometer / barometer / humidity meter and put it near the dining room table. The barometer proved to be impossible to calibrate accurately, but it will still register changes in pressure that will tell what the weather is likely to be.
• There are 2 "new" tarps, one blue at 9'x11', and one white at 6' 8" x 19' 8". They're in the biffy shed.
• There's a "new" set of itty-bitty screwdrivers in the tool bin in the kitchen cabinets.
• The black clock is officially dead & gone. The potential replacements at Home Hardware were all outrageously priced and hideous. We need an alarm clock right? Does it have to be battery powered? I may have an old clock-radio to donate, although it sucks as a radio and takes up too much horizontal space for the bureau. eBay maybe?
• A wine glass bit the dust. The shelves over the hot plate aren't a good spot for glassware & gravity to coexist.
• I intercepted Ray's rusty old BBQ on the way to the dump and set it up as a wood burner instead of propane. It's next to the flammables shed. DON'T THROW IT AWAY! I used the Futura-Wood tarp to cover it up. (Doug, see the note about the "new" tarps above.)
• I thought about putting the solar shower thing behind the biffy, but it wasn't a good fit. I thought the biffy was bigger. Maybe next year I'll find a spot for it. It's still good for a nice warm late afternoon shower.
• I checked out the front door weatherstripping vs. rug situation, and still don't see why a rug needs to be there. True, it looks like crap, but a little patching and paint on the floor would fix that. There's no need to paint the whole floor I would assume, just the part near the door.
•The Canadian and U.S. flags are really looking shabby, and I didn't feel like sewing them again. I know a website where the lightweight ones can be ordered for 6 or 7 dollars apiece if the order's for six flags or more. Cuba or Texas, anyone? How about a U.S. Civil War era 35-star flag? They also have the Canadian provincial flags. Nice job on the caber...er, I mean new flagpole. Hopefully it'll dry out and get lighter one of these years. I put a lightly oiled piece of rope on it below where the bark is peeled off, with the knot on the low side. It seemed to deflect quite a bit of drizzle from getting into the base.
• The pump is working fine. Some were thinking it was leaking. Toni checked it out, and said the sock on the end changes the flow so that it tends to splash out of the top of the pump-head, then down onto the counter. Pumping too fast and too hard also contribute to this.
• We saved a ton of $$$ by bringing most of our groceries from Michigan. I did the shopping at three different stores, and I'd guess we saved about half of what things would have been at the Sundridge Foodland. I left a printout of the Canadian rules for bringing food into the country on the bureau, along with our grocery list for the customs officer, which he never asked for. The import rules are also on the jukebox computer. We brought up four chickens that were still frozen solid by the time we got here. I also made a list of on-the-way grocery stores in Orillia, Barrie and Gravenhurst that I'll put on the blog.
Projects:
CEILING FAN:
It's in, it's quiet and it works great. The only "gotcha" is that it needs to be turned off whenever someone climbs the ladder to the attic. It's within a half foot of the climbing path. I thought the blades had a wood coloured side, but I was wrong. If someone wants a different colour, it wouldn't be difficult to take the blades off and paint them. We may also want to buy a length of pull-chain, to replace the cheesy looking rope that's on there now. I don't have all the receipts, but I think the total for the ceiling fan, including wiring, lumber and the support / safety cable came in under $60. Toni contributed the wire.
READING LIGHT:
I took one of the leftover light fixtures and the switch from the ceiling fan, and combined them with a part I brought from home and a piece of the floater chair that fell apart two years ago to make a reading light for the Captain's Quarters. Now we don't have to get out of bed to turn off the light in there. There's also a new board to widen one of the ledges over the hooks on the wall -- not by much, but every little bit helps. There are three more of the light fixtures from the ceiling fan in the back shed we could potentially use around here. A few of the rooms could really use lighting upgrades.
GUTTER ON BACK PORCH ROOF:
It works pretty well. The water tends to run toward the lake, and if the wind is blowing in from there, some of the water blows back onto the bottom step. The gutter over the front door is letting the water run behind it again, so the plastic I put under the shingles last year must have fallen out.
EXTENSION CORD HOOK:
One of the old hooks that used to hold up the porch shutters has been repurposed as an extension cord (or whatever) hook on the back porch. Looking at it now, I can see we need to turn it a little so it doesn't have the potential to impale anyone.
SMALL BUCKET:
It's been fixed (for now). The trick is to put the sticky stuff on the inside of the bucket, not outside. It's rusted, so it's days are likely numbered.
(ANOTHER) CRACKED GREEN CHAIR:
It's fixed, but we'll soon be in need of more wire hangers. Watch out for the wires when sitting down in the sun. They get hot.
"SUN CHIME":
It's made from a stick, some wire and some old useless CDs. If anyone wants to donate useless or unplayable CDs or DVDs, I can make more. The ones that are shiny on both sides are the best. It's sort of a low-rent disco ball.
The weather was pretty good. Only a half day of rain, and lots of sun. I might have gotten more done around here, but I screwed up my knee about three days in. Because of that I took one of the Ace bandages from the toiletries drawer with me. I'll bring it back next year or mail it to someone if it's important that it's here.
-¥eem
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