Category: Fun

Headed East at sunrise.

Today is the first day of December 2018. It is also the first day of my dear friend Lori’s cruising dream realized.  After a lifetime of planning and one hellacious year of hard work, she left Galveston this morning, setting sail for Florida, and then on to the Caribbean.

She and her crew on this leg, Mike, Janet & Will, will take S/V Trident across the same Gulf that Monte, Joe and I crossed with her back in February.

My heart is full, as I see them pull away from the dock this morning. You did it, Lori. 🙂

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Fair breezes, safe seas, and Godspeed my friends!

G’nite y’all.

We had a bit of a Wii frisbee golf-a-thon tonight. As I turned out the kitchen lights at the end of the night, the silhouetted tulips caught my eye. Keeto says, “night night go seepies.” So, off I go… 🙂

A roof with a view.

This is the fantastic Austin skyline view from Mike’s new condominium rooftop.

Mike just moved in after a many month delay. And today he is headed to the coast with Lori to sail through the Caribbean for the next six months. We’ll hold down the fort ’til they return. 🙂

Girls night IN.

Just because we’re not 10 years old anymore doesn’t mean we can’t have slumber parties!

Last night I joined several friends for an evening of wine, games, talking and laughing.  We wrapped it up with a good old sleepover.   We missed some of our BFFs who couldn’t make it, but had a very fun time.

One of the games we played was Apples-to-Apples, the G-rated and tame precursor to the naughty game Cards Against Humanity.  Fun.  It’s a great staple game to have in the hall closet, always good for a laugh no matter the age of the players.  At the end of the game, for another laugh, you can read the adjective cards you’ve won to see if they describe you or not.  Seven out of eight aint bad….   🙂

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What I did today.

Monte built a set of bookcases for a client and I spent the day helping him install them.

Nice, very nice…

I also learned a new joke from a friend who called just to share it with me. I’m working on trying to remember it, Pilar.

🙂

Pumpkin spice.

I guess I should take a break from talking weather. Here’s a local pumpkin patch. ‘Tis the season!

Learning new tricks.

I drove down to the coast this week to join Lori and Mike on Trident to work on some boat projects.  We sat through a day-long, hands-on class for “Marine Diesel Engine Introduction and Maintenance” which was delivered on-board Trident.  I learned a tremendous amount, and now feel like I have a basic understanding of how a diesel engine works, and how some maintenance can be done.  At night I dreamt of primary fuel filters, lift pumps, fuel pumps, engine fuel filters, injector pumps, injectors, oil extractors, heat exchangers, impellers, strainers, shut-off valves, stop-cocks, oh, my!

Today, after the lecture part of the class, Lori and Mike performed the following maintenance to Trident:   primary fuel filter change, engine fuel filter change, impeller change, oil change, oil filter change, belt tension check, transmission fluid check, heat exchanger coolant check, raw water strainer cleaning).  Nine hours of learning and doing.  I’m looking forward to opening up Nirvana and seeing if I can identify all the components on her 3 cylinder, 30 HP Yanmar diesel.

Why do they put such big engines in such small places?

The engine and generator are inside this compartment, comically called the engine “room.”  There is actually a guy (the teacher) sitting on the generator inside this compartment, pointing to components on the engine behind it.

 

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Lori is changing the primary fuel filter here, reaching through the aft access door to the engine “room.” IMG_6057

Sewing project for the boat.

The grill on our boat uses propane, the kind in the little 1 lb green Coleman canisters.   We have been stowing them in one of our cockpit lazarettes.  However, that compartment is not made to hold and properly vent propane gas, which sinks.  That means if a canister were to leak, the gas would collect in the lowest point of the boat; the bilge, waiting for an errant spark to ignite it.   Not good.

You can purchase a storage bag to hang on the rail of a boat to hold a few propane canisters, allowing any leaked gas to dissipate in the air over the water.  Magma (a marine grill vendor) sells one for under $35 which holds 3 canisters.  But it only comes in black and royal blue.  Nirvana’s canvas is navy blue (Sunbrella marine canvas in the color called Captain Navy).   For that reason, and also because I’ve really been wanting to try to sew something made out of sunbrella with my 20+ year old Kenmore 385 sewing machine, I decided to make it instead of buying one.

Lori happened to have an old bag in need of repair that I could use as a pattern, which was really helpful.   I ordered a yard of 60″ wide Sunbrella from Amazon, several 110/18 sized sewing machine needles, some size 69 bonded UV-resistant polyester thread, a heavy duty zipper, and some nylon webbing and plastic buckles.

The prototype:

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You can’t see them in the above picture, but there is a brass grommet and hole in the middle of the bottom of the bag, under that loop in the strip of webbing that runs along the bottom.  It is intended to allow water out of the bag when it’s hanging, if it rains.   The loop, I assume, is to tie a downhaul to the bag when it is hanging, so that it doesn’t swing back and forth while you are underway.  I decided to make my bag with 3 loops, and 3 grommeted drain holes, one under each loop.

The pattern I made, and some notions.IMG_6027

The first step was to install the brass grommets (which you can’t see in this pic either, but they are under the black webbing running down the middle of the canvas in the picture below).  Next step: pin and topstitch the webbing onto the outside of the bag, allowing for loops and buckles to be sewn in as you go.

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The next step was to sew the zipper on, and then sew the other two seams.  And VOILA!IMG_6043

View of side zipper.IMG_6044

I’m so thrilled that it turned out, AND that my current sewing machine was able to do the job.  I will definitely plan a few more boat canvas projects.

*smiling a satisfied smile*  🙂

Fountain 4.0.

A year or two ago, I installed a small water feature under the oaks next to our back patio. It was a small fountain powered by a tiny water pump (4W, 80 gallons per hour). The birds have enjoyed it almost as much as I have.

The first pump lasted about a year. I clean it every few weeks. But one day it just stopped working. No problem. I ordered another pump from amazon and installed it. A week later some varmit pulled the pump out of the water basin, and it ran dry until it melted. 😦

I bought a third pump and the same thing happened; probably by the same damn varmit. 😡

This time, I’ve placed the pump under a rock and added a piece of plastic tubing to carry a stream of water through holes in the rock onto the pebbles below.

Wish me luck!

Happy anny.

We recently celebrated our anniversary.  Tonight, we had Lori and Pooh over for dinner and popped open one of our oldies.

It was a bottle from a winery that we visited on our honeymoon – an almost 20 year old chianti that we brought back with us.  The cork didn’t leak or budge in the last two decades, so the wine was really pretty good!  I am very happy to be able to share it with friends.

Fall festival.

September 22. Autumnal equinox. I just googled it, and it’s happening right now – 9 pm central. Timing!

In honor of the season, we visited Live Oak Brewery today for their OAKtoberfest. Fun. Nice brews. Oompah music. No rain!

His and hers beer steins…

And the Austin Polka Band…

Prost!

I ♥ d’Orsay.

TripAdvisor just announced their list of top museums in the world, ranked by their travelers.  At #1 is my favorite, the Musee d’Orsay in Paris.  I’ve visited Paris on four different trips, and hope to make it a few more before I’m through.  And when I do, I will walk through the entire d’Orsay again.  It’s beautiful – a restored train station, the Gare d’Orsay, that was built for the 1900 World’s Fair.  It opened as the Musee d’Orsay in 1986.  Its exhibits are diverse and gorgeous.

Here is a pic from my last visit, it looks just like any other taken of its expansive great hall, around and through which its galleries are placed.

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And another pic of the old clock, with a bit of my own artistic treatment (using the Brushstroke app).

You simply must visit on your next trip to Paris.

Shiver me timbers.

It’s Talk Like a Pirate Day!

Sterling silver jewelry cleaning technique.

I’ve read about an easy do it yourself way to clean up tarnished sterling silver jewelry. I finally got around to trying it today.

You’ll need:

– a piece of aluminum foil
– bowl
– boiling water, 1-2 cups
– baking soda, 1 Tablespoon per cup of boiling water
– some tarnished silver jewelry to clean

Crumple up the foil really well, place in an empty bowl, and nestle each piece of jewelry into the foil so it is making good contact with the foil. This is really important to ensure the electrochemical reaction required to clean the silver.

Boil the water, add baking soda, stir well and then pour into the bowl with jewelry and foil. The chemical reaction to remove the tarnish from the silver will bubble while it’s happening.

Wait 15 minutes or so. Remove jewelry and rinse well.

Tarnish results from silver reacting with sulfur-laden substances in the air, forming black silver sulfide on the surface of the silver. This technique reverses that reaction, causing the sulfur to instead move to the aluminum in the foil.

Before:

After:

Wasn’t that easy?! 🙂