It’s been a weekend that could have easily supported a blog post a day. But I’m lazy and I really was hoping to get a new photo or two printed before posting…but other things happened and I still haven’t made any new prints. So here’s the updates instead!
This one will be long with a lot of photos…no teaser photo for the front though.
Still no safelight so I get frustrated quickly when printing, but that should be rectified soon. Even so I scraped an hour or so out of my schedule to try and crank out another print or two last night. Results were not quite what I had hoped for:
Better exposure, but neg was damaged.
Well the blog started with my first darkroom, this isn’t a sign that the blog is ending…but I now have a darkroom again! Well, kind of. A new camera store opened up in town and we stopped in on Saturday to check it out. Turns out they have darkroom supplies, so I couldn’t resist. We picked up some paper and chemicals and decided it would give us incentive to get a darkroom up and going! Read on for details about how we’ve pulled it off…kind of…. Continue reading →
So, less than a month between updates – maybe I’m getting better at this after my downward slide. Before I get to the reason for the title though a few “Off-topic” updates. I’ve been miserable sick the past week. Summer colds are bad enough in temperate weather…but when it’s over 100 out and you’ve got sinus pressure, runny nose and an annoying cough – life is extra miserable. Thankfully after a weekend of cold meds and curling up on the couch with tissues I’m feeling much much better today.
The solar lights mentioned in my last post have gone from bad to worse…only the two I repaired are now working. The others are in my office letting their batteries drain. Though about half of those seem like it may be bad batteries and not just overcharging. I’ll give them a few more weeks of darkness before putting them back out.
The backyard grass continues to grow and I continue to watch it. Still not quite grown in well enough for me to post photos…but a HUGE improvement over the bare earth and gravel that was there when we moved in. I think one more bag of fertalizer and one more bag of seed for the remaining bare spots and it will be looking good enough for photos. And hopefully by October or so when the weather finally breaks it will be ready for backyard party season! I’m already getting the itch to start making more pizzas remembering how great the last two experimental “grilled pizzas” came out.
And while I’m bound and determined not to let this disintegrate into a “Coffee blog” that is the reason for the title and what has again inspired me to put my lazy fingers to the keys and bang out an update. The corpse in question is our local Linens N Things which is one of the stores they’re closing to try and save their hides in the tumbling economy. Since I am as always about 180 degrees out of sync with the rest of the world bad economy for everyone else means time for me to score some great deals, kind of like we did with our house!
Living in one of the best areas for solar power in the entire country you would think I’d have better luck with said technology. But no, that’s not the case. Shortly after Amy and I moved into our new house we bought a set of solar path lights using one of the many gift cards we got from our wedding. They were fairly cheap, made of plastic, and having just a single amber LED in each they don’t give off much light. It only took a week or two for me to replace them with a set of traditional 12v lights. But the LED lights still worked so I didn’t want to just discard them.
Yep, I’m slacking again. And once again it’s not that I don’t have anything to blog about, just that I haven’t had time to sit down and do it. Believe it or not it’s not even that I don’t enjoy this – I do, typing is quite cathartic for me. Which is kind of the problem. I enjoy it too much and tend to zone out while writing. As a result I end up spending more time than I planed on it and instead of feeling unburdened when I’m done I end up feeling guilty that I spent so much time at it when I have so much more I should be doing. It also doesn’t help that WordPress 2.5 broke the smugmug and lightbox plugins I was using so posting photos is a bit more arduous than I really care to deal with. The new built in gallery in WP 2.5 is excellent, but I really have little interest in using it as I prefer to keep my photos on my smugmug site, uploading them twice annoys me.
But Amy’s most recent duet of posts on her blog seem worth of mention. So read on for my thoughts about the fickleness of freebies and whatever else I manage to bang out before accepting I’ve spent enough time and need to get back to using the keyboard for something more productive!
Well I got some bad news and some good news about some of our appliances today. Bad news, our main fridge may be having problems. Good news, I fixed the dishwasher – for real this time. I’ve also learned quite a bit about coffee the past few days and as normal I’m getting a little obsessive about my new interest. Continue reading →
Last sunday while we were recovering from the previous nights party, Amy and I remembered about the Yuma Bargain Warehouse and decided to go see if we could find a new tarp for the carport. I had guestimated that it would be a 20′ x 20′ tarp…and after measuring the tattered rempains of the original that was looking about right. At the warehouse we found a good selection of tarps, of course the one we liked best (green mesh) they were out of in 20′ x 20′. But they had black mesh, heavy duty white and silver in that size. The black mesh was tempting…but being a mesh we weren’t sure if it would give as much shade as we wanted – and it was over double the cost of a silver or white tarp. The silver we didn’t like the looks of so at $37 the white tarp won out. We also picked up 2 – $2 bundles of nylon rope and headed home. Last night we finally put the tarp up, took a little over 30 minutes. Continue reading →
Well, the winds are gone…and so is half of our carport tarp. As I mentioned in my last post the high winds on sunday really did a number on our carport. Here are some better photos of the destruction in action:
Continue reading →
Better photos to follow later but I wanted to test posting from my phone. As the title says the wind here sucks today. The front half of our carport tarp has been destroyed…it’s actually gotten worse since I snapped this photo and is now torn all the way to the very top – right through the double stitched anti-rip sections 🙁
I kind of knew it was going to happen. I was never very happy with the choice of material the previous owner used for the carport, he claims it was UV rated but it’s only a few years old and already it’s badly faded and I could tell it was getting weak. In fact just yesterday I was looking at some tears that had started around the grommets in it so I knew it wouldn’t be lasting forever.
I’d like to go out and take it down before it gets any worse…but with 45MPH gusts predicted (Though I think they’re bigger based on how much our trees are swaying!) I don’t think it would be a wise idea for me to go outside and play with a large sail in high winds on top of a ladder. Since it’s a total loss at this point anyway I’ll just let the wind have it’s way and start thinking about how to deal with it.
I’d love to make something that could be rolled back for occasions where we want some sun…or when the wind gets like this 😀 But for now I’m just hoping we can find something we can afford as a replacement. I’m hoping my old boss Gwyn at Racecraft can help me get some vinyl impregnated awning fabric like she uses and help me sew it up to be the right size. Going to have to make some phone calls this week it looks like!
