Mary back to school!

So Mary got the jump on the kids this semester... she went for her Graduate Orientation today. She will go again tomorrow too. I'm so very proud of her! She is very excited about the program, so much so that she didn't sleep much last night. She is not looking forward to the commute, however.

We got some much needed rain last night! All of the rain barrels are full, and I'll be moving more water (time permitting) to plants and trees and stuff. Trying to keep the soil hydrated too.It is amazing how quickly the plants turn green when a good soaking rain sets in. And the forecast is calling for some more showers tonight! I do hope we get some more.

Visit with Granny.

After our sky dive on Saturday, Mary, Eliza, Tori and I went the rest of the way down to Waynesboro to visit with Granny.

Granny had a couple of things that she wanted me to check for her. The oil in the car, the fluid levels and what not. I topped up the windshield fluid for her, but the rest looked great. Her car doesn't have 3000 miles on it yet. She also wanted me to check her downstairs toilet. It had a flapper problem. That was an easy fix. Replace the flapper.

She is doing very well these days. She says she still hurts, but is doing the best she can. We visited for a while, then went out to "linner" with her. After eating we stopped by the Lowes and I went in and found a new flapper for the toilet. She of course insisted on paying for it. So when we got back to her house, we had a little toilet repair class for Granny and my daughters. Really simple fix. I talked them all through the repair, showed them how to turn off the water, remove the old worn out part, and how to put the new one back on.

Like I told them, and easy fix. Now Granny can use the downstairs toilet and not have to travel all the way back upstairs.

It was a good visit. It was very good to see her and she was very glad to see us.

Skydiving!

Mary and I took Eliza to skydive yesterday. Now that she is 18, she can sign away her life and JUMP! We drove down to Skydive Orange. We got there at about 9 am, and signed in, went through the simple ground training and then Eliza and I filled out the long legal paperwork. Mary convinced me to take another skydive at the same time. We turned in out paperwork and then had to wait. We signed up for the tandem skydive.
While we were there, we noticed that the U.S. Army Golden Knights were at the dropzone, practicing and having a relaxing day of skydiving. One of the Golden Knights is an amputee, who lost his leg above the knee. He is still on active duty, working for the Army, and oh, darn they pay him to skydive!
We got into the airplane at about 12, and flew up to about 14,500 feet! The plane carried 20 sky divers on our trip, and Eliza had a blast! She had another skydiver taking video of her jump so that she will be able to prove that she did it! Anyway, I got to watch her make her jump and then my jumpmaster (Mike) and I headed for the door and followed Eliza and her crew out. What a ride! As I moved to the door, I thought to myself, "I'm really doing this again!" That was jump 18 for me.
As we were falling, I got to watch Eliza as she was skydiving, as well as that fantastic view of the world coming up to meet us. And, as always, the skydive is too short, and we opened our 'chute at 6000 feet. We had a nice long ride down. While we were flying, we flew our chute close to Eliza's and waved and smiled and hooted at each other. Then we flew away from each other and got to play with the wind! Mike (the jumpmaster) got us spinning around really fast and turning this way and that. Lots of wild fun. As we were flying back toward the dropzone, we watched Eliza and her jumpmaster land, and then we did a few more of those spins and s-turns and then we were down. I really love that feeling of flying!

Eliza said that it was great and fantastic.

I can now brag at work that I jumped with the Golden Knights! Oh, and Eliza can brag about that too!

Liza's Driving Lessons

Yes, I'm back in the passenger seat, while another one of my daughters learns to drive. I'm doing well, and Liza has done well. No shouting matches, just gentle corrections, and lots of practice. Lots of brain power for her to learn this new skill.

We've seen a lot of our neighborhood today, and Liza is getting the hang of driving pretty well. I think we will be doing fine, and will go out tomorrow evening after rush hour to the faster roads.

Working on Beehives and frugality

The next adventure on my sustainability path is beekeeping. For any and all who know me, that might seem a bit of an interesting change. I don't like getting stung. But I can only recall one sting from a honey bee, and I was about 4 years old then. The numerous other stings I've received have been from yellow jackets, wasps, ground hornets, and bumble-bees. Those stings have all happened when I stumbled into, mowed over, or otherwise disturbed their nests.

I have been reading everything I can about beekeeping. At first it seemed prohibitively expensive, but as I read more, I found something called a Kenyan Top Bar Hive. It seems that this type of hive can be built for very little, and is easy to assemble. So, I found some plans, and modified them to what I want to build, and used Google's Sketchup program to model it. Here is the link to the model. You can look at a sketch of the model, but if you want to view the entire thing, you will need Google's Sketchup program installed. It is free, and really cool.

Anyway, I've started construction of 2 hives. I had some old 2x4s in the shed, and milled them into 98 top bars. I will be using some of these to make into following boards and the rest will be used on the hives themselves. The top bars are what the bees attach the comb to.

I went to Home Depot today to get some of the other hardware and lumber and supplies that I need for the hives. I picked up wood screws, some bolts and nuts (for the legs) and linseed oil, and 2-12" extension clamps (to help glue up the boards). After I got all that, I went looking for lumber. That is when I got disgusted. Home Depot really does charge a lot of $$$ for warped boards, bent, skewed and twisted. I started going through all of them and the more I looked the more disgusted I became. These hives were supposed to be able to be built inexpensively! So, I started to walk around to the other side of the racks. Down by the large saws that Home Depot has, there was a cart with lots of 1x6's that were 10 feet long. There was a sign on the cart that said to buy the wood; it had 2 feet of the end of each board water damaged. Kinda like the truck that had been hauling it didn't put a tarp on the last 2 feet, and it got really wet and just sat. Anyway, I found an associate and found out that they were selling these things for $0.51 a board! I immediately found 14 of the best looking ones and loaded up my cart. Total cost for more wood than I will need to build 4 hives - $7.14. A huge coup for me. Besides, the bees won't care if the wood is a little damaged. And I'm planning on using linseed oil mixed with beeswax on the outside of them anyway. They will get weathered and water damaged eventually anyway. So Wow! Neat and cool! It really can be advantageous to look around, and not just settle on the first thing you see. And if I have boards left over, I can still use most of them anyway on nicer projects.
I love those frugal deals.
When I got home I told Mary of what I had found, she asked if I wanted to go back and get the rest of it. I didn't go back, because I don't have a place to store that much lumber here at the house. I can't keep it dry either. So I didn't go back for more. I reckon that some other people need a chance to share the bounty of that great deal.

I will get to work building the beehive bodies later this week. And the total cost of the wood so far - about $13 - counting the 2x4s I had already milled into top bars. Not bad.

Buddhist story

An email story that has been going around -

There was a blind girl who hated herself because she was blind. She hated everyone, except her loving boyfriend, who was always there for her. She said that if she could only see the world, she would marry her boyfriend. One day, someone donated a pair of eyes to her. She could see everything, including her boyfriend. Her boyfriend asked her, “Now that you can see the world, will you marry me?”

The girl was shocked when she saw that her boyfriend was blind, and refused to marry him. Her boyfriend walked away in tears, and later wrote a letter to her saying - “Just take care of my eyes dear.” People often change when their status and that of others who care for them change. Only a few remember who was there for us during terrible times.

We will never know how much others sacrifice for us,
while we hanker on how much we sacrifice for others. - Stonepeace

Toilet Repair.

The downstairs toilet leaked. Mary had turned the water off to it, and I had to figure out why it was leaking. So, I checked it out, and found that the flapper needed replacement. So off to the hardware store. Back after the trip to get the toilet working again. Replaced flapper, and fiddled with chain length and finally got it working so that it wouldn't stay "open" after the flush. I have kids, and they usually don't hang around after they flush to "jiggle the handle" if the toilet tank doesn't fill. So I got it working, and now it isn't leaking. About 15 minutes of fiddle time, and 45 trip time. Lucky me. One small victory in the battle of home ownership.