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I was originally thinking that today I would try and build a wall in the boathouse, but ultimately I chickened out on that project, because it will involve hauling 5 sheets of half-inch plywood from the lumber shop to the boatyard, and it was still rainy this morning, and I'm still mostly riding Princess TinyBike around because Frodo is still in the shop. I'm just not sure about hooking Princess TinyBike up to the Big Mama. I could have hooked up Froinlavin, but I also know from prior experience that Froinlavin definitely isn't built to haul heavy loads. And I could have hooked up S's GT, but it lacks fenders, has too much reach for me, and can only take front panniers right now. I suppose in theory I also could have hooked up Old Faithful, but that also would have been a disaster of a different sort.

So anyway, I didn't do any of that.

But another next big project at the boatyard, is getting tools and supplies all organized, so that some of them can go back on the workbench in the back of the boathouse. We call it "Yuri's workbench," because he is the main workbench user, and is the person responsible for its general state of organization/disorganization.

He uses an organization system based on "security by obscurity," where he has squirreled away a whole bunch of useful boat parts and tools in places where he can find them quickly, but almost nobody else can, because they're stuffed in-between bins and boxes full of kipple. This is partly motivated by the fact that the workbench is very much an open space, where anyone using the boathouse could walk up and just grab things off the workbench. In any case, Y isn't around at the moment, and the rest of us DO need to be able to find things relatively quickly, so it's time to undo his organization system.

I wasn't around for the initial stages of moving everything off of the workbench and out of the boathouse; I was only around for the later stages, after about 50% of the stuff had been cleared off. So I didn't have a chance to develop much of a mental map of what came off the workbench, or where it went.

Instead, this morning, I first cleared all of the remaining bits and pieces off of the workbench, and vacuumed the whole thing, and then worked on the shipping container.

This is the cleanest this workbench has been in a very long time.

Cleaned-off workbench

I have a teammate who really wants to paint the top of the workbench. For some reason this doesn't seem like the greatest idea to me, but I can't articulate why not.

After all that, I spent a whole bunch of time going through every single box that's currently in the shipping container. That then made it possible to finally consolidate a bunch of stuff, according to type. Now, all of the new oarlocks and oarlock bushings are in a bin together, and those are grouped near the enormous collection of brand new oar sleeves and the bazillion clams (Composite Load Adjustment Mechanisms). All of the footstretchers and shoes are also together, as are all of the coxbox speaker wires, all of the skegs, all of the hatch covers, et cetera, et cetera. It's also now clear that we DO need to order more new boat shoes. Also, the bins with items that are rarely needed are stacked together in the way-back corner. And all of the various solvents and paints and other chemicals are also grouped together. And the epoxy and all kinds of gloves (all kinds, I tell you!) are in that general area, too.

Most of the tools are also now in or near the tool chest. The most commonly used wrenches are grouped in a box, and almost all of the half-disintegrated cardboard boxes full of randomness are now completely out of the shipper.

Here's how it looked right before I closed up for the day, noting that I did not touch anything in the tool chest to the left, because that is our first aid cart:

Reorganized shipping container

It helped that our youth rowers are at the state championships this weekend, so all of the supplies they needed for the regatta are currently out of the shipping container, freeing up more space for me to fling the remaining things around.

Some of the things in the shipping container also needed to be moved elsewhere. For example, the safety logbook is now back in a place where it's more accessible to people who don't have access to the shipping container:

Logbook returned to its shelf

I eventually put a handful of things back on the storage shelf under the workbench, and also set up a temporary walkie-talkie charging station back there, while I was at it:

Workbench for now

The most fun thing back there is now the giant blue bin, which I have labeled, ?? Mystery Items ??.

Regarding the walkie-talkies, I want to feel vindicated for a little bit. I advocated for purchasing them a couple of years ago, first and foremost for our annual regatta, because we really need them for it. (phone calls or texts are WAY too slow!) More recently, it seemed to me that we should test out using them during our on-water practices, because sometimes our boats get spread out pretty far apart, to the extent where a coaching megaphone isn't going to help at all.

Some teammates were a little reluctant to start using them, wondering what sort of protocol we might need to put in place. But from day 1, they have immediately demonstrated their worth. They are making it SO MUCH EASIER to coordinate with each other, and I also think they are much better from a safety standpoint! Plus, using them during our practices means everyone will have a much better idea of how to use them at the regatta. The kind we got are water-resistant and will float, and we quickly learned that if they come in contact with water, the included flashlight will start to flash. Great stuff. But another item that needs to be kept charged.

While organizing the shipping container, I also encountered a handful of items that really needed to go in our storage shed instead, where we keep specialty items for the events we host and whatnot. So that then also led to some additional reorganizing of the storage shed.

This is the most organized the storage shed has ever been, in the time I've been with the club. I also moved some things from the shed into the shipping container.

Reorganized storage shed

There are so many bins full of t-shirts in there. But there is NOT a giant tent that no one has used for at least a decade!

The new organization isn't perfect, but it's definitely an improvement compared to how things were jumbled in there previously.

The entire 5 hours that I worked on moving stuff and things around, the river looked like this:
Post-rain high flows

No signs of any change with the tides. The water is the color of chocolate milk, full of silt and giant tree trunks. The flow got up over 92,000 cfps, moving fast enough that I was not particularly keen to go out there (and we didn't try to this morning, we just headed to the fitness center for cross-training). But the flow now appears to have crested, and is back down to 86,000 cfps now, so with any luck we'll be able to row again starting Monday.

Anyway, when all that was done (for now), I was very tired. I biked home, showered, and still managed to get in a grocery store run.

Tomorrow I should have at least a little time to finally work on some garden things! And it is even supposed to be sunny! Imagine that.
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After the driving adventures of the prior weekend, it was kind of a relief to not have any involved travel plans for this weekend. Instead, it was a weekend of errands and housekeepery and cooking and projects around the house.

Destination one, Passano Paints. They had mixed up a gallon of Signal Orange marine paint for me, which I'll use soon to start working on repainting the rowing club's oars. I have been glad to learn about this paint shop, because they're a local business, located right along the bike path between Albany and Troy. They are also a dropoff center for leftover paints and related substances, and they have many of the small necessities that can make a big difference when painting and staining things. So I also bought a can of stain to use for the chair refinishing project, some painting pyramids, and a paintbrush spinner.

Then I biked home, ate some lunch, and we fired up the gasoline-powered vehicle for our next errands. Next was Tractor Supply, because from the internet I learned that chick feed can work as a reasonable food source for dubia cockroaches*, and it appears that Tractor Supply is the main place in our region for going out to buy chick feed in person instead of online. Of course, there aren't any Tractor Supply locations within Albany itself, and the closest one is in one of the strip malls in the suburbs to the south of us, which is not at all pleasant to ride a bike to. So we drove, although I observed when we arrived that there's at least one bus line that runs out there, in case I want to use that option in the future.

In any case, Tractor Supply had chick feed, although they did not have any ice choppers available for sale whatsoever, another item on the shopping list. And the place where there might have been baby chicks had exactly zero baby chicks, only baby ducks for sale. Also, they were playing the sort of country music that reminded me of shopping in every store anywhere I went in Texas. Also also, we did not buy any of the pre-built coops they had for sale, to turn into a luxury catio for our cats.

So from there, we hied us over to the nearest Ace Hardware by way of some freeways that did some really strange looping things (I-87 and I-90 interchanges, I guess?). The Ace Hardware didn't have any ice choppers, either, but had a handful of other items on our shopping lists. Oh - there was also a stop at the bike shop near the Ace Hardware, to pick up a wheel they built for S and some spare tubes for me, because on Friday afternoon while meeting with my research student my front tire started making some hissing noises and went flat due to failure of the rubber at the base of the valve stem.

Since we had only partial success at Ace, we next went to the Despot. One of the items on my list was "rocks for the work aquariums," but none of the things available at the Despot fit my bill. So we also visited the local pet shop, which DID have rocks for sale. It was a little strange to be paying money for rocks, but that's what I get for not gathering rocks somewhere during my sabbatical (never mind questions about the legality and/or ethics of rock-gathering, which I know nothing about).

Then, after a trip through the car wash, I dropped S off at the dentist and went home to engage in a cleaning** and cooking rampage. I made a tasty paneer curry out of 660 Curries, got started with a batch of red lentil curry burgers, and also prepped some apples and onions for ketchup-making on Sunday.

Actually, that reminds me that I took a photo of the bulk spice section at our grocery co-op on Friday night:
Bulk spices

All I can say is, our local grocery co-ops is one of the best things about living here.

Today pretty much continued apace. Part of the cleaning and cooking rampage was preparation for a ketchup-making session with a friend, so this afternoon we made and canned 3 different varieties of ketchup. The recipe for one variety was for a "Green tomato ketchup," but the recipe notes say you can substitute ripe red tomatoes if you wish, just omit the green food coloring, so that's what we did. For varieties 2 and 3, we used the same base recipe but used 2 different kinds of canned tomatoes, and added roasted jalapeƱos to one of the two batches.

Then we taste-tested our work, with some help from our significant others, e.g.:
Ketchup testing

When asked which one was his favorite, S said, "Yes."

My favorite was the batch with the jalapeƱos, but all 3 batches came out well, far better than that one time I boiled the ketchup in the cast-iron Dutch oven and it came out very metallic-tasting.

Anyway, based on how the ketchups came out, I think I now have a good game plan for churning out batches of ketchup. I'll try and share the ketchup recipe here sometime soon.

At some point today I also used some jewelery-making wire to make a couple of small umbrella repairs:

Umbrella repair

I don't know how well the wire will hold up as a repair method, but I didn't have much to lose, and if it actually works for any period of time I'll be very pleased because I am fond of this umbrella.

And now we're back on the precipice of another work week.



*Last week I got some young dubia cockroaches to rear as food for the campus reptiles. With a fairly good but basic setup, they should be relatively low-maintenance.

**For posterity, the cleaning rampage included full moppings of the kitchen and bathroom floors. Also, the vacuuming picked up a LOT of stuff because it had been 3 weeks since the last time I'd vacuumed. Also also WOW the kitchen sink really needed that scrub-down.
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On account of today's weather, which has been vacillating between freezing rain and snow, I decided to stay home. I'll do more of the zookeeping tomorrow instead.

Thursdays are the day when I mostly just lick my wounds and try to brace myself for the next round of teaching ordeals, anyway.

But before getting to that, I wanted to work away at the List of Things to Acquire. To wit, mostly placing orders for even more plastic storage bins:

-A greeting card organizer. I tried ordering one about a month ago off eBay, only to have the seller refund my money because they oversold. Ugh! Besides, nowadays eBay is mostly just a Jungle reseller. An annoying repeat of my recent online shoe-shopping experience. I eventually resigned myself to ordering things from the Jungle, because there are a handful of other bits and bobs that it appears can only be readily and accurately found through the Jungle site or equivalent these days (replacement mounting brackets for my bike odometer; the correct replacement hook & loop pads for my orbital sander; the specific face lotion I want; a sufficiently long boot tray for my bike in my office). I hate this, but as I've noted, I live in a depauperate area when it comes to shopping for many things. We did at least purchase lots of bike parts last weekend from our local bike shops, because we do want them to stay in business.

-Medium-sized bins for organizing woodworking/hardware tools and supplies. This is modeled after [personal profile] ranunculus's scheme of maintaining a set of grab-and-go bins for her various projects around the ranch. I'm getting really sick of dealing with piles of things on shelves, but also, the bins need to not be too giant and deep as to be unwieldy.

-File boxes. Ages ago I attempted to use coroplast file boxes. Total junk that fell apart. Then I got a set of cardboard file boxes. When I put actual files in them, the files caused the cardboard to collapse. So now I'm moving on to hard-sided plastic of the correct dimensions for files. Sigh.

The latter two came from The Container Store. The big-box stores in this area all sell various kinds of plastic storage containers, but those all tend to be flimsy and of the wrong dimensions, and I am so over that.

But now it's time to get back to work projects.
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Sometimes it seems like too much of life is just trying to tidy up loose ends.

Today's loose ends (which are kind of literal, ha):

1. Rain pants. This is a sore subject. I do want to attempt a repair of my existing pair of Showers Pass rain pants, that currently have a large hole in the butt. The hole does not affect the functionality, because when I am riding a bike water falls on me from above, and my fenders protect my butt. Looking things over, the pair I have is advertised as their "packable" type, and they sell another, more expensive pair for more serious rainy conditions. The more expensive ones are currently on sale for around $100 off, probably because it's January and that's when companies try to reduce inventory on hand. I'm still holding Showers Pass at arms' length because their very nice jackets wear out too quickly for my uses, and it may be the case that even the more serious pants will, too. But for the short term they will make it possible to give the ripped pair a break so I can think about how to repair them. I might not be able to repair the ripped pair, though, because of how technical fabrics get manufactured nowadays. I am thinking I just want to sew on a giant reinforcement patch over the entire seat area, but it might be that the fabric of these can't handle being sewn. I'm not sure I can apply glue or some sort of seam tape, either. I tried re-melting the seam tape on an older Showers Pass jacket, and that went about as well as you can imagine.

A couple years ago, I tried to get Boathouse to make me a new pair of warmup pants, because my previous pair from college was awesome and lasted a really long time before it was time to hang them up for good. But the replacement pair had terrible fit, particularly for bicycling, so those just went into the donate bin so the sight of them doesn't make me angry anymore.

2. Bottle caps. For the sabbatical, I packed along two 16-oz plastic bottles of shampoo and conditioner. I actually inherited the bottles from my mother because her co-op doesn't do the right kinds of bulk shampoo, conditioner, and dish soap anymore. Anyway, one of the lids cracked at some point, and leaked shampoo all over the inside of the gallon ziploc bag I put the bottles in, just in case (go me, better than shampoo all over all of my clothing!).

Shopping for bottle caps/lids is always a funny project that seems to come up for me sporadically, more often than one might surmise. At one point I wanted to see if I could track down lids that would be compatible with my mom's collection of old food storage jars (very old peanut butter and mayonnaise jars that are splendid but oddly specific). Unfortunately I've never managed to fully follow through on that project. For my current workplace, there are a lot of mismatched bottles and lids. But when I recently checked, it wasn't possible to easily get the right replacement lids for the subset of bottles where it would be most useful to have replacement lids.

However, for the bottle caps, I think I found a place where I can get new ones. And even if that doesn't work out, I also ordered 2 more bottles that will be compatible with the caps I just ordered.

Shipping cost about as much as the actual plastic items, but I like these old bottles a lot, or I wouldn't bother with this project.

3. Boat stuff. This is still a very loose end, because I'm trying to get boat stuff for Petrichor, but also boat stuff for the rowing club. I have items together for one order of boat stuff from Fisheries Supply, but apparently I have to talk to a human being to get my online account set up (to line up with my in-person account, which gives me a discount), and they might be closed today. I have some things lined up for a second order, but I have to talk to rowing club people and wait for an item to get back in stock before I can place the second order. The second order isn't at all urgent, but I'll be glad when it's placed and done.

But anyway, it's time for lunch and time to tackle teaching prep for the week.
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One of the local grocery chains around here is called Price Chopper. The people who own Price Chopper, also own grocery stores they have rebranded as "Market32," which are supposed to be more upscale than their Price Chopper locations. But we know what they are, so we call the smaller, nearby Market32's "The Chopper," and then we have called their larger location in a strip mall on Central Ave The Big Chopper.

While we were out of town, there was a story in the paper about how a different grocery chain, Shop Rite, was closing its stores in the area. If you don't already know this, grocery stores are big business, but they often have a tricky time staying in business because profit margins are often slim. There was also something about Price Chopper taking over the Shop Rite locations, including a Shop Rite location along Central Ave, near the Big Chopper.

Anyway, the other day while we were driving around running errands, I noticed that the prior Shop Rite has been transformed into a Market 32.

This morning, I needed to visit the Big Chopper to buy some littleneck clams to add to our campus saltwater tanks. Well, when I got over there, lo and behold, the Big Chopper no longer exists. The strip mall plaza that used to contain the fun Ocean State Job Lots store, the pet food store, and the Big Chopper, is looking pretty damned empty now.

I don't yet know the bike route over to what we should henceforth call the ShopRite Chopper. Central Ave is a terrible street to try and ride a bike on, so we typically access shops using some strategic back routes.

Thankfully, on the more accessible side of things, there's one other big grocery store, Hannaford's. We just never got into the habit of shopping at the Hannaford's previously, even though it's more convenient to reach, in the same strip mall as the nearest Asian grocery store. Today was a good day to start changing that, by scrutinizing their inventory more closely.

They did have littleneck clams available, and also the salsa and cheese we tend to buy from conventional grocery stores. Altogether it actually looks like the Hannaford inventory is better than the Big Chopper's inventory.

So maybe I just won't bother trying to figure out how to get to the ShopRite Chopper. I'd only ever been to that ShopRite once, one year when we participated in a Cranksgiving event that involved going to a bunch of different grocery stores to get food for a local charity. That trip didn't give me any reasons to work on going back.
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One thing I definitely did not miss about living here, is what it takes to get a range of kinds of stuff here. We might as well be back in Texas, in that regard.

Three examples:

1. Ordinarily I'd prefer to get various bike parts directly from a local bike shop. They can usually order just about anything and have it delivered to the shop once or twice a week. In this case I'd go over to the shop to ask about getting a pile of spare brake pads and the replacement trailer arm. But with the closest bike shop permanently closed, getting to the next-closest bike shop is too time-consuming, because this would be a double trip, one to discuss the item(s), another to actually obtain it/them. So instead I've ordered the part from Burley and paid for shipping and packaging material.

2. The shoes that I wore almost every day during my sabbatical have completely worn out, after about 5 years of heavy use, and unfortunately for me, the company that makes them no longer sells them in black. I know that Seattle has several good shoe stores where I could go in and have a reasonable chance of finding a replacement, but any of the potential places I might go out here are about a minimum 45-minute or hour bike ride away (to say nothing of how long it would take using public transit). And potential places are an unknown quantity, so I might find myself at a store where everything is cheap and ugly and the wrong kind of shoe. Shoes are definitely a category of thing where it's helpful to try on the merchandise in person. But once again, because of the above, I've bought shoes online once again.

3. I've become very opinionated about plastic storage bins, having bought and used and dealt with so many different ones over the years. Finding what I actually want for sale in a physical store would be like winning the lottery at this point. Specialty shops for this kind of thing are generally only found in major urban areas, but again, it's definitely not worth the time or expense for me to go down to NYC or over to Boston to buy yet another set of plastic storage bins.

Buying plastic storage bins online and having them shipped to me in a big box always feels like the worst of these fiascos.

And the thing that always makes matters worse, is not all places will offer USPS options, nor will they all offer less expensive but slower options, for cases where I might be more willing to wait.

In December, the one larger local art supply store put out a plea to people because there were concerns the business might not be able to survive financially anymore. Sadly, the one time I rode my bike out there convinced me I don't ever want to try and ride a bike there again in the future. Not only is it at least a 45-minute expedition, but the store itself is on a busy 4-lane road with only sporadic shoulders or sidewalks.

So I've ordered some very basic puff paint online instead.

There aren't even any halfway-decent thrift stores in town. Anything that exists is in the 'burbs, and with limited time it's hard to work up the motivation to ever go out there. The shopping in the 'burbs out here is mostly big-box chain stores, with a small number of other businesses sprinkled in. So it feels like a slog and a punishment to even go out there.

The one store that might become worth a periodic visit, is an REI that recently opened up in one of the local malls. But once again, attempting to bike to that mall is TERRIBLE, so that will also be a bus expedition, and only on rare occasions. I might eventually venture forth on a quest for new cross-country skis, for instance.

I really don't enjoy the mental overhead associated with this stuff.
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One of which is a portable task light. I'm hoping it will be helpful for knitting and mending projects, and also for reading books while traveling. I'm realizing I don't really even have a good setup for hand mending at home in New York. The lights in our living room are fine for ambient lighting, but not great for detail tasks. I have a phenomenal desk light in my home office, but I don't particularly like to work on mending while sitting at the desk. That might be part of why the mending pile keeps growing faster than I fix things.

I also ordered some hand-stamped plates for Petrichor's Hull Identification Number. Some states require that boats that are Petrichor's size and shape be fully licensed, and it also just seems prudent to have the HIN on the boat to be clear about ownership.

Plus a new set of lock blocks, because one of the ones I had wound up going for a swim near the Ashby Shoal, and so I currently don't have a great way* to attach my handlebar flashlight to bicycle handlebars.



*There are, of course, plenty of mediocre options, like rubber bands and duct tape. That gets old after a point.
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I did not pack my full-length rain pants, nor did I pack my duck boots.

These are my reasons why the bed magnets won once again, this morning.

Neither the Centurion in Seattle, nor my sister's bike here, has fenders. The rain cape and overshoes can only do so much.

I woke up this morning also thinking about numerous possessions that need to be repaired. Perhaps where 2024 has been a year of finishing things, 2025 will be a year to focus on repairing things. In the time since I've been away from Albany, I've been very pleased to see that people have started up a Repair Cafe there.

The rain pants that are in New York have worn out in the seat, and I'd like to see about just adding another fabric reinforcement layer to them, rather than discarding the pants entirely, when I get back to New York. The other option would be to fabricate a full and fully repairable replacement, based on a sewing pattern available from Seattle Fabrics, but of course that would take an even larger time investment at first.

Over a decade ago, a friend of mine gave me a Pearl Izumi insulated jacket as a castoff item. I'm remembering that its zipper is failing, but that's something I could potentially replace on an otherwise excellent winter bicycling jacket.

This past spring, I had the soles on my 30-year-old hiking boots glued back on, in anticipation of doing some actual hiking this year. The boots had their first test when my mom and I went out to the Olympic Peninsula in October.

While the soles were totally fine, I discovered a different and new problem. The brittle plastic skirting the edges of the soles is shattering.
Old kicks

Upon seeing the situation, [personal profile] scrottie suggested trying Sugru where the plastic has come away. It does seem worth a try. The plastic lace-up eyelets seem to still be robust enough, at least.

In the meantime, the pair of Born clogs that I wear basically every single day has sprung leaks through the thick rubber sole in such a way that I just don't think they can be repaired. That particular style is no longer manufactured, so it looks like I'll be back to shoe-shopping again.

Collectively these things mean I don't really have any great footwear options for the rainy weather here right now. I mean, I can deploy the overshoes, but that's an extra step.

In general I've been trying to mentally counter all of the advertisements I see that are trying to convince me to buy more stuff, by instead saying in my head, "Enough." This actually seems to be working, to some extent, which is funny. Part of this is because an absurd amount of the targeted advertising I experience is for beverage containers (mugs, thermoses), and I definitely don't need any more of those.
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As I'd hoped, sanding the outside of the boat with the 220-grit was, mercifully, so much faster than the 120-grit sanding. I got the entire hull sanded in about 4 hours. By comparison, I'm estimating I spent about 28 hours just on sanding the interior of the boat with the 120-grit.

After the 220-grit

After the 220-grit

It's still not perfect, but it's definitely better.

The only problem is, even with using only the 220-grit and trying to be careful and take my time with a delicate touch, I sanded back through about half of the places where I'd applied epoxy patches.

This isn't especially surprising, but confirms that a proper epoxy patch job requires multiple coats of epoxy, plus the waiting and cure time and more extensive follow-up sanding. It also confirms that the edges of my chines are too pointy.

In spite of that, I am going to forge ahead with varnishing. From what I read in the two-part article about how these boats age, my sense is that the boat isn't going to instantly deteriorate and fall apart after three uses - unlike the paper rowing shells that were manufactured for a period in Troy, NY back in the day (so lightweight! So ephemeral!). Instead, I'll eventually need to haul the boat out for a round of refinishing, and that day will arrive sooner rather than later because of these blemishes. At that point hopefully I'll have more space and more time and more energy to attend to the details. Hopefully. Or more money to pay someone else to do it for me, heh. I do happen to know a guy. But in the meantime, there are multiple good reasons to keep working.

So I got underway with the deep-vacuuming of the garage to prep for varnishing, which led to some questions for my mother: how thorough would she like me to actually get with the garage cleaning? There's a lot of stuff stored in the garage, and several decades' worth of cobwebs, too. Much of the dust is glued in place by decades of grime.

After consultation, the conclusion is I don't need to get too meticulous, overall. We eventually identified one shelf in particular as the spot containing things where we weren't entirely sure what they are or what to do with them, so that shelf deserved a bit more attention. It looks like a shelf that mostly contained stuff that my dad used or was accumulating, half car-related, half "other."

Garage clean-out

Lingering recycling and disposal questions:

-My dad accumulated different metals in different piles/containers, as can be seen on the bottom shelf - e.g. aluminum items like toothpaste tubes and baking pans and bike suicide levers, vs. almost an entire disintegrating milk jug full of steel nails and staples and whatnot (so heavy, so pokey!). How to get these to the appropriate scrap metal destinations?

-Steel cans: there's an empty steel gas can and an empty steel camp fuel can. Do these recycle somehow?

-Old Coleman Camp Stove: My mom attempted to replace the generator on this stove, but when she tried to test it out, it started leaking fuel at other points, which freaked her out and caused her to abandon the project. My sense is that someone who knows more about what they're doing could finish the repair and then there's a nice, working campstove. But I already have a campstove of this style, so I really don't need another one, and my mom currently has a small backpacking stove she knows how to operate, so she isn't inclined to keep or work on this one further. So, what to do with this one?
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Two other rather random things bouncing around in my head:

1. The other day I read a news story about a speculative proposal for my community in New York that would involve building a factory to make bricks out of dredging waste. There are of course a lot of questions and concerns, particularly around pollution production, and the idea could fizzle out, but honestly I love it. Shit bricks, folks. Interestingly it sounds like heating the dredging waste to the high temperatures needed to produce bricks could either break down or fully immobilize the PCBs and PFAS in the waste. I would just have to hope that such a factory would have the appropriate air scrubbers (being fully aware that there must be legal regulations in place to actually make this happen). This is especially a big deal because there's another factory in the community already that has been burning waste material that is causing it to release these kinds of compounds into the air - a worse fate than just burying that dredging or other waste "somewhere."

Anyway, I love the proposal from the standpoint that it would take unwanted waste material and turn it into building material. I've already said a lot recently about trees, anyway.

2. After everything I wrote about Western redcedar, I got really curious about how the bark is harvested, processed, and used to make baskets.

Well, it turns out that the Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center Alaska produced a whole series about Tsimshian basket weaving in 2019! Here's a link to the first in the series:

https://youtu.be/YrFOFxftByQ?si=KcHUDHrkFOK0-qjA

Now I'm curious about the long-term consequences for the trees from which the bark is harvested. I could imagine the trees continuing to be basically okay, because the harvesting doesn't completely girdle them, although the harvest looks to be a one-time thing for each tree. I'm fine with that, and it really helps me to understand why the cedar baskets and weaving I've seen offered for sale are as expensive as they are. They SHOULD be that expensive. I actually started to watch the 5th or so in this series first, which reiterates the importance of walking through the forest with deep respect; I think part of that respect comes from a recognition that the resources in the forest need to be protected.

I also loved hearing the master weaver featured in the beginning film talk about her realization after going to a basketry conference, that people across the entire globe all weave.

I don't personally plan to take up basket weaving at this time (hello, too many other hobbies!) but I definitely want to keep learning about it. Maybe more about local materials in New York, now that I have a better understanding of some of the local materials along the Northwest Coast.
rebeccmeister: (Default)
One of the challenges of the boatbuilding project is that it is generating a lot of waste. The packaging for the trailer has been the worst of it, so far. The trailer parts came in four packages, including two large boxes secured with some of those giant box staples. Inside the boxes (which you might remember, failed to protect the axle end anyway), things were somewhat cleverly cushioned by adding plastic trash bags and then filling the bags with some form of that expanding foam, so the foam would fit the shape if the items in each box.

My mom carried out a small experiment with some of the expanding foam, to verify that it is not water-soluble, although it is easy enough to cut (although that makes a huge mess). I did figure out that if I stand on it, it squishes down somewhat. Seattle charges for garbage based on the volume and weight that households produce (as they should!), so my mom has the smallest possible volume can, and the expanded foam won't directly fit in it. Instead, it looks like if I squish, roll, and then tape up one bag of the expanded foam at a time, I can then basically get one piece at a time into the can. It is thus going to take several weeks to fully dispose of the foam pieces. Let that point sink in for a minute.

In the meantime, the remaining pieces are on the floor in the downstairs bedroom where I'm staying, and George kind of likes using them as obstacles when playing.

Meanwhile, the boxes and their staples. I have this long-ago memory of my dad gathering up small bits and pieces of metal for recycling, but I'm hazy on the details. My internet searches for information about metal box staples tended to be fairly useless, as they mostly turned up information about a horrible big-box office supply chain, or about staples in paper. I did eventually find something that indicated that box staples are typically stainless-steel coated with copper.

And sometime after that, I found information about scrap metal recycling in this area, which basically says, separate out your ferrous and non-ferrous metals. So, lo! The staples are indeed ferrous, so they went inside a ferrous can, crimped shut and now in the recycling bin.

While learning that, I also learned that yes, you *can* leave labels on your recycled cans, but they'll get burned off, whereas if you do go to the trouble of taking them off, they'll be recycled as paper (to the extent that actually happens).

My mom works really hard to be conscientious about how she disposes of things (and about thing acquisition), so she did try listing the more intact of the two large boxes on the local Freecycle, but didn't get any immediate direct hits. (side note, with her Ridwell subscription, she can usually recycle things like plastic bottle caps and bread tags, and more.)

Most of the people I encounter in New York might find this level of attention to waste disposal to be very foreign, and yet it seems to me that New York has a far larger and more complicated waste disposal problem than Seattle does.

At least one aspect of the solution to all this waste production is to buy less stuff (especially online!) and borrow more. The other day I came across this article about a 'library-centric economy', and while I don't think it would work for everything, it seems like it could work for a number of things. I have yet to make use of the tool library in Albany, but that's one example I'm glad exists. I'm now pondering what it would look like to set up a camping and hiking library at my college.

Also, puzzle libraries need to become more common.
rebeccmeister: (Default)
I spent most of today assembling the trailer for the Annapolis Wherry Double we'll be building this week in a boatbuilding class at the Center for Wooden Boats.

I'm sure my mom is relieved that most of the boxes of stuff in the living room is gone now, although that might be replaced by mild consternation/bemusement about the new big thing on the back patio.

Starting parts:
Trailex Trailer Assembly

Putting the tongue together:
Trailex Trailer Assembly

The point where I ran into the first problem:
Trailex Trailer Assembly

The axle is supposed to bolt onto the trailer body.
But there's a slight discrepancy in widths.
Trailex Trailer Assembly

I eventually figured out that the trailer body parts that were preassembled, were preassembled incorrectly. The side piece should be on the outside, and the cross piece should be on the inside of the butt joint, not as they are pictured here:
Trailex Trailer Assembly

I only had to loosen and retighten 34 bolts to fix it.
Trailex Trailer Assembly

Then, half of the nuts provided for attaching the axle to the frame, were the wrong thread pitch.
Trailex Trailer Assembly

Amazingly, my mom had two nuts with the correct pitch in her strategic nuts and bolts stockpile, so I was able to keep going.

Getting there...
Trailex Trailer Assembly

This doesn't seem quite right, either. Shipping damage, perhaps?
Trailex Trailer Assembly

*almost* finished:
Trailex Trailer Assembly

I borrowed a torx wrench to tighten the wheel lug nuts the correct amount, but I didn't wind up with a socket of the correct size. Argh! So I'll have to finish this last (critical!!) step later.

I also still need to fasten on the spare wheel.

But this seemed like good progress for the day, at least.

Boatbuilding class starts tomorrow morning, and we're to expect full days all week long.

At some point I have to decide, epoxy or varnish?
rebeccmeister: (Default)
I'm spending a lot of hours on the computer these days, to the point where when the evening rolls around, I'm tired of it. One of the things I've been doing recently is putting on internet videos while knitting or washing the dishes. Somehow or another, I am finding myself watching a lot of videos of people fixing things.

It's all kind of great, really.

I guess this all pretty much got started when S and I began watching videos about the keel-up Ship of Theseus restoration of the Tally Ho (completed, after something like 7 years of very intense work!).

I appreciate that the person with the below channel does not voice-narrate his videos, and he also provides a lot of tiny tips and hints about things I would never have learned anywhere else:

https://www.youtube.com/@NewYorkshireWorkshop

I haven't watched his videos about his kitchen remodel, mostly just videos about updating his small backyard and alley. His approach is interesting to me from the standpoint of what he saves/restores versus what he replaces and updates. I might personally make different aesthetic decisions, but there's still a lot to learn.

I especially learned a lot from this staircase restoration: https://youtu.be/46vpG9arDAM?si=x4YXgQ_mzGZ9tY6f

I also wound up watching a couple of videos by another person who seems to have created a business from restoring vintage furniture:

https://www.youtube.com/@ModernMakeovers

It's just helpful to see how much labor goes into this kind of restoration work, and to see/learn which tools work best for various processes. Also to appreciate how much life remains in many of the spaces and objects that surround us, and what some possibilities are. I did watch one where I was filled with great envy, because this restorer had far better success with a chemical finish stripper than I've had. It was also helpful to learn about some of the particular repair decisions made, and to see how different kinds of wood/veneer damage were dealt with.

I really don't think I'd want all of my life energy going towards an Extreme Home Makeover. But it's good to see what that actually looks like. On the other hand, there's something to be said for developing a connection to things by working with them directly. So I don't necessarily need to live in a house that is totally buttoned up, either. A balance is called for.
rebeccmeister: (Default)
Among the things I foolishly left at home is an AA/AAA battery charger.

Given that, I'm pondering the idea of getting a solar battery charger. I'm not sure about this one:

https://www.rei.com/product/198072/goal-zero-guide-12-nomad-5-kit

Any thoughts or experiences to share?

Thank you,
Rebeccmeister
rebeccmeister: (Default)
One of my biggest complaints about online shopping is the packaging!

Regardless, I online shop, because many of the things I want aren't available locally.

I just forged ahead and purchased a couple of wool tank tops I'd had my eye on, because they appeared to occupy that magical space between "something that is great for my sweaty lifestyle" and "something that can be dressed up to look good anytime, anywhere."

They arrived in 100% compostable packaging.

They were not cheap but I will definitely consider buying from this company again in the future.

Ibex wool, in case you wondered.
rebeccmeister: (Default)
I do feel like I am at least partly succeeding in this, but it has to happen in stages.

Today, whether I like it or not, I am trying to figure out how I want to organize myself and my upcoming projects and travel.

This may be partial procrastination from the next paper I need to write, but I'm going to do my best this afternoon to block out all other external stimuli and work on it for a couple hours.

In the realm of longer-term projects, I am determined to roll up my sleeves and work on chair refinishing for at least a couple hours this weekend.

In the back of my mind, I am also presently constantly trying to think about what to pack and bring with me for my cross-country travels this summer and fall. This is a complex enough trip that it is going to require a lot of advance planning. For example, Arizona in the middle of summer is effing hot, so I will need clothes and gear for that. I will also eventually need clothes and gear for Seattle in September/October and the Bay Area for Nov/Dec, including some plans for a backpacking trip with my mother in September.

I am thinking my travel wardrobe will consist of linen shirts and lots of wool layers of varying thicknesses and warmths. A couple years ago I acquired a set of tissue paper-thin wool shirts as hand-me-downs from a friend, but by now they are so thin and full of holes as to only work as undershirts at this point.

Anyway, here's hoping I can stop my mind from buzzing on these things for at least a short period of time today. Yeah, right.
rebeccmeister: (Default)
I can't remember how I found this social media account, but I am deeply struck by the emotional responses of the people in this post, when something they own and wear has been repaired and returned to them:

https://www.instagram.com/p/C4SxP7gOura/?img_index=5

This artist's work looks pretty amazing: https://www.amymeissner.com/
rebeccmeister: (Default)
1. The cats are continuing to cope with S's absence (and mine as well due to long work days) by playing with each other more. Here's a brief pause in the midst of a wrestling match this morning:

Morning antics

They still both want cuddles whenever they can get them, though.

Martha naps

2. The backpack-pannier had a catastrophic failure this morning:

Pannier failure

That's one of the rack straps - the strap that holds the top of the pannier onto the rear rack. I had to put the pannier into the front basket, as seen here, just to make it the rest of the way in to work.

I have to conclude that the fabric and stitching are just not robust enough on this pannier for the way I use panniers every day, which is a shame, because there are multiple aspects of the design that I really appreciate, and I also enjoy the colorfulness. I probably just need to allocate time to do some of my own reinforcement, much as I did with the Arkel shopper-pannier way back in the day. I really hate the thought of tossing this bag in a landfill and buying yet another one after less than a full year of use.

Meanwhile, I'm thinking, the main thing that has worn out on my bike rain pants is the seat. So...maybe I just need to figure out how to replace the seat? This is easier said than done, because this is the bike saddle contact point, so fabric types and seams need to be strategically chosen. I'm reminded of my prior efforts to repair jeans that wore out in the crotch (also from wearing them while riding bikes). There are people who can do these types of repairs well, but that might require more time, tools, and knowledge than I currently have.

I also need to deal with Old Faithful, the Schwinn Collegiate. I was hoping to get the bike out for students to try it out, but the front tire is flat again after I reinflated it ahead of class time. I'm thinking it might be time to see about an updated front wheel for it.

3. In completely unrelated news, yesterday during the Animal Physiology labs, I actually had enough downtime that I spent a bit of time working on some lab archaeology. My lab has an old micro bomb calorimeter in it, so I just looked through what was there and put the instruction manual in the box with all the various parts. I also looked briefly at a chart plotter from 1984, and eventually decided it should get mothballed in a more out-of-the-way location.

And I found these cables:

Lab relics

Any idea what these might be for?
rebeccmeister: (Default)
I can't claim I've gotten a ton of paying work done today, but on the other claw, I am SO GLAD to have a chance to tackle the lingering list of random tasks right now.

For instance. On that trip to Hawaii in December, I wound up giving away the Keen sandals I've been using to wade around in the Hudson River apparently since 2021: a hiker lost her hiking boots trying to wade across a stream that we'd deemed too dangerous and swiftly-flowing to attempt, and was then faced with a 2-mile barefoot hike to get back to the trailhead. While we did observe multiple people intentionally hiking barefoot, she appeared to be struggling when we went past. An unusual option for disposing of old sandals, for sure!

That motivated me to finally take action on getting my Chacos re-soled. I'm so glad that they offer this service. It isn't cheap but it will at least keep some footwear material out of a landfill.

I really appreciate companies that do things like this.

https://www.chacos.com/US/en/sandal-repairs/
rebeccmeister: (Default)
I don't think I've mentioned much about this on this platform, but in a couple days' time I'll be headed to Kauai with [personal profile] annikusrex and her son F for about a week! This all came about because A and F happened to win the trip as a door prize at a luau earlier in the year.

I've never been a person who has had Hawaii as a dream vacation destination, although I have no doubt the trip will have some wonderful moments to it. Still, given the chance, here we go!

I've chained together this trip with travels to Seattle for Christmas and New Years, plus an annual scientific meeting that also just happens to be taking place in Seattle this year.

Collectively, all of this has me thinking a lot about shopping. Aside from the amazing co-op, the shopping in this area is dismal. To give you an idea, there is a single, small used bookstore in downtown Albany. There are exactly zero stationery stores. You might recall that I did once take my life into my hands and go on an expedition to a local art supply store.

The majority of the potential shopping destinations are in and around two malls, both of which are on the outskirts of town in locations that are time-consuming and/or unpleasant to reach by bicycle or bus.

So, yeah.

A friend who recently posted about an interesting thrift store find got me wondering about thrift stores in Kauai; that seems like an interesting kind of destination to seek out.

Once I'm back in Seattle, I'm starting to think about the places I want to go to. A lot of this is in the name of being able to actually feel the fabrics, and avoid dealing with the hassle of shipping. I have no organized plan just yet, but it's going to happen.

And before I work on that organized plan, I need to finish tackling this Giant Stack of Grading. As they say, here goes nuthin'.

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