The title refers to (no pict) finally getting a water filter installed in the kitchen. I was going to drill a hole in the sink to mount it but the "instant" hot water unit it turns out kind of exploded when it froze. So after sawing the heater off the sink (I'm sure there is a proper way but I couldn't find out how one removed it and even after I sawed it off I can't see how you would take it off) I put the new filter tap where it was. A monster filter that is supposed to remove the lead, mercury, arsenic, you name it. It was a long search for a filter that did what I wanted and didn't cost a fortune in filters, or water. I was drawn at one point to the reverse osmosis filters that are really good. Except you looking at about $60 in filters every six months AND a little thing they don't print in bold, RO filters wash 5 to 10 gallons of water down the drain for every gallon they filter. That just seemed insanely wasteful.
Bottom line I can drink the tap water with out getting a big dose of heavy metals.
This stuff started coming down the other day. Obviously some seed thing but it collects like snow drifts.
It piled up all over the place.
Probably the result of the strange heat wave but? This is a weird part of the world.
If you look close you will notice that the outside temp is 86 and it's 2:43 AM!
I have had just about every weather advisory since I moved here except hurricanes and blizzards. We are probably pretty safe from hurricanes (though they do get a lake version on the great lakes so...) but I'm sure the blizzard is just because I got here too late in the year.
This day it was a heat advisory. A lot of places shut down or went home early. Pretty much all out side work stopped after noon and they closed some of the schools and opened "cooling centers" to keep the death toll down. It only hit about 96 but the humidity was around 60% and the "heat index" was 9.9 on a scale that only goes to 10.
It's all so exciting! I only had to deal with earth quakes before. And in a lot of ways I still do. There is enough bounce in these old floors that when the dog shakes the right way you get a little wiggle and a lifetime of training puts me right into Fight or Flight. It can be really nerve wracking.
I may have complained here about the new (to me) iPhone 3Gs. It has been a royal pain because the screen was staying active so my cheek was accidentally hanging up, muting, launching other apps etc.
Turns out that, well, it's more my fault than Apple's. They moved the sensors that tell when you get close to the phone. The sensors blank the screen and disable the touch function when you have it up to your ear so your cheek doesn't do all those things. I liked my case for the old phone (I find the iPhone really hard to hang onto with it's sleekness and I don't like dropping phones) so I reused it. Any way the old case was blocking the new sensors... So the surgery you see above fixed all the issues. Once I dig out my leather tools I can clean it up a bit so it doesn't look so much like a rodent got to it.
The big adventure was to get my first batch of beer going east of the mississippi. I had big plans of making a brewery out of a hunk of the basement. Well I found out there is a reason it's always damp down there and has the faint aroma of "eau de toilette", but not the french kind.
I was cooling the wort which uses a small but constant stream of water. I used to run it into the garden in SF but I was experimenting with working in the basement. Then I noticed the plug on the site of a long ago removed toilet.
So the sewer backs up and flows up the old toilet and across the floor to the floor drain. That also goes to a sewer line but maybe less clogged?
Isn't that special? I sure think so. Anyway since beer works by having bugs eat sugar I moved the wort upstairs because I don't want to drink what the bugs in the basement might produce.
It's safely bubbling away in a closet upstairs now.
Cheers from the big D
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