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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Oh BTW SIX, I found a weed spray that I'm a lot more comfortable using than glyphosate. It's more expensive but it acts within 24- 48 hours, so I can see where I missed and respray. Also, I was looking for something that could be used in organic gardens, and while this product doesn't have OMRI certification, being the chemist that I am, I looked up its Safety Data Sheet (SDS) - which is supposed to list all chemical hazards - and found that it was 80% of a combination of C8 and C10 straight chain saturated organic acids, which are derived from coconut oil, and 20% "other". (Probably a surfacant of some kind to help it mix with water bc it's pretty oily.) I have to assume since they didn't list what the "other" was and didn't claim it was proprietary that it's considered non hazardous.

Unlike glyphosate, it doesn't migrate thru the plant, it only "burns" the leaves, so if the weed has a substantial root system where it can store sugar and nutrients, it won't work. Not all weeds are susceptible, but right now my big problem is annual grasses like foxtail which are just sprouting. I'll use my flame thrower in back, where the neighbors can't see me because somebody complained last time I used it up front.

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It doesn't list Diquat dibromide or dihydrodipyrido anywhere on the ingredient list, does it?

I've made a note to check my own weed killer to make sure that's not part of the cocktail that I've been using.

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*****

Today my plan is to spend some quality time decluttering the office, which means filing all the papers I haven't filed for over a year, tossing all of old papers I don't need anymore, and recycling some bottles and containers I haven't used a won't need.
Then I plan on sitting on dear daughter's neck so she gets rid of all the recycling built up in the house from various deliveries (she's very laggardly with that). THEN I plan on doing some digging in the front yard bc I took a look where the water was flowing during the last rain event and it was going on an unintended direction.

Then it's dinner prep time!

The past number of weeks have been going like that!

But one good piece of news: I had my last cardiac followup. From now on my care will be transferred to my regular doc. So that's one appointment off my list!

*****

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Good medical news.

Sounds like you're getting some good stuff done.

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EDITED TO ADD: So, how it actually goes is ... start filing.
Hubby and dog emerge from bedroom.
Walk/jog the dog. (We usually go about a half mile. Her normal pace is a brisk trot, which for me is a slow jog or FAST walk).
Make hubby his favorite Sunday b'fast: four fried eggs with the yolks still runny, and two pieces of toast with butter. (It's one of his few indulgences)
Feed the dog and clean out her water bowl.
....
Go back to filing
....

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Glad to hear you're getting stuff done and your husband is stable. I hope he gets better. How you feeling?


Got all my trim painted and everything cleaned up. I think the first thing I'm going to do tomorrow before painting walls is take some sandpaper and sand the walls along the trim. I did get the high-gloss paint on the walls on purpose, as cutting in the wall paint will be much easier to do when the trim is all nicely caulked and over-painted, similar to how I overpaint the ceiling onto the tops of the walls before cutting the walls into the ceiling.

But it just occured to me that ceiling paint is flat paint, and now I've got a bunch of high-gloss white paint along the tops of the mid-level trim and the sides of the windows that probably is not going to hold the wall paint very good if not scuff sanded real good.

Not a huge deal, but it will take some time now to sand this all down and clean it up before painting the walls, so I can't just get up in the morning and start doing that.

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Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Originally posted by Brenda:
I am off to work tomorrow. Boss wants me there by 9:30, so will be leaving a little earlier than I usually go. Also looks like the dry will hold for another day.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Glad to hear you're getting stuff done and your husband is stable. I hope he gets better. How you feeling?


Got all my trim painted and everything cleaned up. I think the first thing I'm going to do tomorrow before painting walls is take some sandpaper and sand the walls along the trim. I did get the high-gloss paint on the walls on purpose, as cutting in the wall paint will be much easier to do when the trim is all nicely caulked and over-painted, similar to how I overpaint the ceiling onto the tops of the walls before cutting the walls into the ceiling.

But it just occured to me that ceiling paint is flat paint, and now I've got a bunch of high-gloss white paint along the tops of the mid-level trim and the sides of the windows that probably is not going to hold the wall paint very good if not scuff sanded real good.

Not a huge deal, but it will take some time now to sand this all down and clean it up before painting the walls, so I can't just get up in the morning and start doing that.

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Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Oh, all that sanding. What a bother!

But I'm curious. It seems to me that scuff sanding paint would clog up sandpaper especially with gloss paint, so ... what do you use to sand with?

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Looking forward to hearing how that went, SIX!

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I'll do you one better and have some pics for you... soonish.

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****

Having a written up a menu, checked the grocery sales, and made a grocery list for tomorrow, made b'fast, and walked/jogged the dog with dear daughter, the plan today is to tackle the kitchen, which has been neglected for a couple of days and looks like a bomb hit it. Then, dig that trench before the rains come.

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You're getting a lot of stuff done lately. You must be feeling better, huh?

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Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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Originally posted by Brenda:
I am off to work tomorrow. Boss wants me there by 9:30, so will be leaving a little earlier than I usually go. Also looks like the dry will hold for another day.

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It looks like your dry has turned into our firehose.

No need to be jealous of our weather now. If the forecast is right, it'll rain almost six inches over 7 days starting late Wednesday, and the 8th day looks like rain too ... they just haven't estimated how much, yet.

Better get that channel dug tomorrow!

Saturday we're going to take advantage of a two- day rain break to go out for lunch.

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

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Originally posted by Brenda:
Bunch of stuff to do before my afternoon pick up game of mah jong tomorrow.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Unlike you SIX, I over planned my day. I usually do. Kitchen work took a it longer than I thought, and I got a late start so I really didn't finish everything including cooking dinner until 8:30.

OTOH the dishes are washed and the countertops cleaned, the microwave got cleaned, chicken got cut up, the most tedious part of making cilantro pesto got done, the mats were vacuumed and the floor cleaned so....

I'm satisfied with the day.

Fortunately I still have tomorrow to dig that channel, and since the kitchen is done if I don't do any office cleanup I should be able to do weeding and binning as well.

Since it's going to pour buckets on Thursday (they say) I have some payments to arrange and a telemed with Dr Infectious Disease and some other stuff to take care of. All indoor work.

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I messaged Dr ENT and Dr ID with a list of all the symptoms that really ratcheted up over the past few weeks. I got an Rx for steroids, which should help. Hoping for an antibiotic. Fingers crossed I get one!

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
DONE!

Looks amazing. Once I get those outlets/switches and the trim up I'll have pictures.

Can't wait to show this off to people. It's like I've got a totally different house now.



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Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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Originally posted by Brenda:
Bunch of stuff to do before my afternoon pick up game of mah jong tomorrow.

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It's going to be raining then, right? I hope you have a dry way to get to your mahjong.

And best of luck with your games!


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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Your "praise the sun" picture, I love it! Made me chuckle

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Your "praise the sun" picture, I love it! Made me chuckle


SIX::That's my boy Solaire.

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Had to look that up. Interesting character.

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SIGNY So glad that you finally .... FINALLY ... you got some sun. Yay!
And it sounds like you're getting a lot of things done, too. What a lift to the spirit to look around and see what you've accomplished. Another Yay!

SIX: Yeah. Didn't get get done what I wanted to get done today. Errands all finished, but hardly did switches and outlets at all.

A little bummed about that since it won't get done before my dad shows up tomorrow, but it's for a good reason. Turns out my old breaker map from 12 years ago wasn't very good. I spent a few hours today re-mapping it out and marking what I verified as correct.

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That's something that works MUCH better with two people. Preferably with cells phones!

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SIX: I actually won't even be putting the final touches on the 3 switches leading into the basement any time soon since I have 2 separate circuits in there, and they're both different than a third one on the opposite side of the wall with a light switch for the crawl space. And all 3 of them are different circuits than the one the current sump well is on.

This is actually great news. I now have access to my choice of 3 different circuits to put the 2nd sump pump on without having both pumps on the same circuit. I just need to remap everything in the house and figure out what the best one to use is.

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I was told by someone studying to be an electrician that they do that on purpose, so that if a circuit breaker trips the room won't be completely without power.
It's against code to have just one circuit to a room, or something.

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SIX: That's an entire day of work at least, but it will be worth it.

I did decide to swap out all 3 of those switches though while the breakers were off, but of course.... the little nubs of wires that were in there were useless. Not only that, but they were stranded wire that didn't have prongs installed. So I had to spend more time making pigtails before I could put the new switches on. And on top of that, I forgot that one of them was a 3-way switch for the light in the hall down there, and I don't think I even have another 3-way decorator switch, so that went back as-is until I dig through my stuff and figure out if I need to buy another one. No biggie, since I won't be putting the cover on until I route power into the crawl for the 2nd pump. By that time it was dark outside, and even though I could now put the can lights on again my heart just isn't in the work anymore today.

We'll see how the morning goes. If I can get the place cleaned up and still have time left I could probably get around to switching out all of the outlets and putting the nice covers on them before my dad stops by.

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Well, I didn't get everything done today that I planned either. But I had a good TELEMED with Dr Infectious Disease and she put me on 14 days of Cipro, which is suitable for what was cultured from my nose, and with the 15-day of steroids from Dr ENT I should be ok until almost surgery day.

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SIGNY: I have a bunch of crappy little things to do today. Have to reschedule our dental appt bc next week got suddenly filled up with Dr appts, mostly prep for procedure. Portal dear daughter's doctor with how treatment is going so far (no improvement). Put a payment back on auto pay bc somehow it slipped off the list. And more filing! But the piles are getting smaller and the recycling bin is getting heavier, so that's all good.

It rained a lot last night, looks from here like about 2". Unfortunately I was asleep so I didn't get to check the rainfall management system. But it's supposed to rain a bit today so if it does I'll step out and look.

On with the day!

SIX: Wow. You're getting a lot of rain, huh?
Good for you, but hopefully not bad for me in a month or two.

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I don't think our storm systems get all the way there. Seems to me they kind of peter out by Four Corners or Colorado.

I think most of your weather comes from warm moist air from.the south meeting cold air from Canada. So if you get bad weather, it's not from me!


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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

Quote:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Your "praise the sun" picture, I love it! Made me chuckle


SIX::That's my boy Solaire.

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Had to look that up. Interesting character.

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Yeah. I don't talk about it too much around here, but I've always been what you could label a "gamer", ever since I was a little kid. Like really little. I was playing the Atari 5200 at home when I was old enough to hold the joystick, and playing arcade games when I was tall enough to stand on a milk crate and reach the controls.

So I've kind of been witness to the evolution of the media over decades. I missed the very early stuff... the Pong clones and the Odyssee home consoles. The 70's era simple arcade games and such. I've also tapped out of the newer generations of stuff with all the online marketplaces and micro-transactions too.

Dark Souls is probably my favorite game of all time. At least in my top 3. Solaire is one of the only few characters in the game that isn't hostile, and in an even smaller group of people who go beyond that and is actually helpful. In a game that was designed to be brutal to the player every step of the way, especially during the first time you play it and die repeatedly, players tend to really develop a connection with him. The voice acting in that game was phenomenal too. Not just Solaire, but everyone you interact with.

There's an insane amount of story behind the scenes of the game too. I didn't realize that on the first time I played through because I didn't sit and read all of the item descriptions and various other things you're presented with along the way. But there are youtube channels out there that delve deep into the lore and history of the world, and characters like Solaire get half hour videos made about their own history and how they fit into the world.

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SIGNY So glad that you finally .... FINALLY ... you got some sun. Yay!
And it sounds like you're getting a lot of things done, too. What a lift to the spirit to look around and see what you've accomplished. Another Yay!

SIX: Yeah. Didn't get get done what I wanted to get done today. Errands all finished, but hardly did switches and outlets at all.

A little bummed about that since it won't get done before my dad shows up tomorrow, but it's for a good reason. Turns out my old breaker map from 12 years ago wasn't very good. I spent a few hours today re-mapping it out and marking what I verified as correct.

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That's something that works MUCH better with two people. Preferably with cells phones!

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I bet it would be. Apparently it also works much better when you're sober.

Not that I was drinking during the day when I did it back in 2012 or so, but what else can I blame the inaccuracy on other than drinking if not just being impatient while doing it?

My old map is probably 80 to 90% accurate, and it hits all the major things. The sump pump, the microwave, the stove, the removed dishwasher... they were all mapped correctly. But I've already discovered that the outlets in the basement were all pretty split up per room when I had them on the map all on the same circuit in each room. I'm hoping that is the case on the 2nd floor as well, since my current map shows pretty much every light and outlet on the 2nd floor and in the attic all on the same circuit.

I need to take care how I'm going to further split anything now, so I need an accurate whole house map. The 2nd sump well isn't the only thing that I want to add down there. I also want to add 1 or even 2 heat pumps in the basement as well. The good news is that there are already plug outlets on the upper part of the walls above the foundation and they appear to be split up pretty well, leaving me some options. The bad news is that if all of those circuits are already far too busy to accommodate a heat pump that could lead to quite a lot of future demolition to get that job done.

I think the strangest thing is that there are two outlets on the upper wall on either side of the breaker box that didn't turn off with any of the other breakers that were marked for any of the basement rooms. I had a breaker listed as "UNKNOWN: Possibly for the garbage disposal". Well... that couldn't be right, I thought. I was sure the garbage disposal was the same circuit as the missing dishwasher because it was only a few years ago I removed that and saw how they were connected. On verification, I was correct there. So I turned off that breaker and sure enough those two outlets by the box went out. But there's apparently a lot more going on with it because the one to the left of the breaker box has quite a few wires jammed in there and it goes up from there. I need to figure out where that goes, because if it's not powering much else upstairs that would be an ideal circuit to convert one of those outlets into the power for a heat pump.

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SIX: I actually won't even be putting the final touches on the 3 switches leading into the basement any time soon since I have 2 separate circuits in there, and they're both different than a third one on the opposite side of the wall with a light switch for the crawl space. And all 3 of them are different circuits than the one the current sump well is on.

This is actually great news. I now have access to my choice of 3 different circuits to put the 2nd sump pump on without having both pumps on the same circuit. I just need to remap everything in the house and figure out what the best one to use is.

---

I was told by someone studying to be an electrician that they do that on purpose, so that if a circuit breaker trips the room won't be completely without power.
It's against code to have just one circuit to a room, or something.

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It makes a lot of sense to me now. Back in the day it didn't. I've seen people do really dumb stuff like route power through the basement and up into walls of the main house using flex conduit that was obviously much longer than the 6 foot code before. I just assumed that people were cutting corners before. I'm going to make that sump pump work for sure, but if it turns out that I don't have any circuits available to me for heat pumps that aren't already at full (or even overloaded) capacity, I might have to make the choice to abandon that idea completely if I don't want to do a ton of damage to the walls to add an additional circuit.

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SIX: That's an entire day of work at least, but it will be worth it.

I did decide to swap out all 3 of those switches though while the breakers were off, but of course.... the little nubs of wires that were in there were useless. Not only that, but they were stranded wire that didn't have prongs installed. So I had to spend more time making pigtails before I could put the new switches on. And on top of that, I forgot that one of them was a 3-way switch for the light in the hall down there, and I don't think I even have another 3-way decorator switch, so that went back as-is until I dig through my stuff and figure out if I need to buy another one. No biggie, since I won't be putting the cover on until I route power into the crawl for the 2nd pump. By that time it was dark outside, and even though I could now put the can lights on again my heart just isn't in the work anymore today.

We'll see how the morning goes. If I can get the place cleaned up and still have time left I could probably get around to switching out all of the outlets and putting the nice covers on them before my dad stops by.

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Well, I didn't get everything done today that I planned either. But I had a good TELEMED with Dr Infectious Disease and she put me on 14 days of Cipro, which is suitable for what was cultured from my nose, and with the 15-day of steroids from Dr ENT I should be ok until almost surgery day.

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Good luck Sigs. I hope this works for you.

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SIGNY: I have a bunch of crappy little things to do today. Have to reschedule our dental appt bc next week got suddenly filled up with Dr appts, mostly prep for procedure. Portal dear daughter's doctor with how treatment is going so far (no improvement). Put a payment back on auto pay bc somehow it slipped off the list. And more filing! But the piles are getting smaller and the recycling bin is getting heavier, so that's all good.

It rained a lot last night, looks from here like about 2". Unfortunately I was asleep so I didn't get to check the rainfall management system. But it's supposed to rain a bit today so if it does I'll step out and look.

On with the day!

SIX: Wow. You're getting a lot of rain, huh?
Good for you, but hopefully not bad for me in a month or two.

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I don't think our storm systems get all the way there. Seems to me they kind of peter out by Four Corners or Colorado.

I think most of your weather comes from warm moist air from.the south meeting cold air from Canada. So if you get bad weather, it's not from me!

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Haha. Yeah. I might be basing that off of one really bad year here where you just happened to get a lot of rain before the floods came.



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Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Glad it was dry for you Brenda.

How's the rest of your winter looking?

The extended forecast around here makes it look like we're basically done. The lowest high temperatures I'm seeing through the middle of march are the high 20's now, so barring a major shift if we get any snow for the rest of the season it will probably melt pretty quickly. Lots of days in the 40's and a few in the 50's I'm seeing too.

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Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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