Monday, June 17, 2013

Just About Time For a New Deck.

The deck on the front of the house was built early last winter. Kind of a quick slap together job. Eventually this deck is going to end up on the other side of the house.
But for  now, I'll just put it right here.
Then I'll take the steps that came off that deck and put them here. For now. Sure seems that I am going backwards, but sometimes one has to go backwards in order to move ahead. Depending on the weather, I may start digging some post holes tomorrow. If the weather is not nice, then I'll probably run into town and get me some supplies. I had pretty busy day today. Prepping from the deck, mowing grass, had to fix the overhead garage door, cleaning up a bunch of stuff. etc etc.
 
Today was a beautiful sunny day, all day long. The first nice day we had in a long time. The gloomy spell was a real good test for the power system. All system passed with flying colors. State of Charge was at 76% this morning, as it has been dropping a bit every day for quite some time. Time I came into the house for supper she was at 96%. Never did get up to 100%, but close. Any little bit of sunshine tomorrow should have me fully charged again. Power is totally free here in the summer time. Lovin it.

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Freezer, Rain, and a Dog Rant.

Well hello strangers. I know, it's been awhile. I've sure been busy for an unemployed bum it seems, yet don't really see a heck of a lot getting accomplished. There are all kinds of things going on in my life. I got a little more siding on. Periodically the weather is nice enough that I can throw a few pieces up without wallering around in the mud. It's been raining a lot for the last few days or more. Not much in the way of sunshine, but I hav'nt had to fire up  the generator yet. The batteries are running a small deep freeze and the furnace kicking in once in awhile and at this moment the State of Charge is at 81%. I think that is pretty good, considering the lack of sunshine lately. One of these days I expect to see the sun starting to shine and I'll be just counting those amps coming in.
Quite some time ago a purchased a smaller deep freeze. The picture above is showing my complete summertime refrigeration system. I freeze 4 liter water jugs in the freezer, and usually every morning, I swap a frozen 4 liter water jug out of the freezer and put it in the cooler. It's been working pretty good for me. The cooler keeps the drinks and eggs and bacon etc nice and cool and the freezer keeps more than enough frozen goodies for me so I don' have to be running to town all the time for meat etc. I keep a few jugs of water in the freezer, mainly just to take up some air space and to make sure I got a little extra if need be. I have not changed my cooking habits much in this rainy spell and the system is doing pretty good with all this running. I'm pretty proud of the whole power thing that I have going on. The winter will be a little different though. I think the freezer will go outside and only be powered when the weather warms up, and the water jugs will usually be frozen naturally just like last winter. I know the freezer would cause me a lot more charging time if I didn't do something like that in the winter. I usually shut the power right off in the winter when I leave the house, but the summer it's on all the time.  The freezer is 3.6 cubic feet.
Getting a little bit of siding up. I had a little bit of help occasionally. Thanks Jo-Anne and thanks Mom. Pretty soon I want to start on the main deck and the balcony above that. Then I can concentrate on my loft door and the siding on this side.
I sure don't have much of a garden, but I do have onions.
The odd time if I ever get bored (and I usually don't), I like to come out to the wood pile and buck some wood up or do a little splitting or sometimes even a bit of both. It's a great way to get some exercise and time to just think about things. I'm getting a pretty good stash of fire wood built up for this coming winter. Soon I will be trying to find the odd bit of wood for the winter after that one too.
This is my rental unit I have in town. My renter is moving out at the end of June. She had a pretty good run in there, but it is now time for her to move on I guess. I am not a very experienced guy when it comes to this landlording stuff, but recently I have been getting a pretty good education on things. And I have a real funny feeling the the educating has only just begun. lol. What I have just discovered about myself is that I am simply just too nice of a guy sometimes. But I think when it comes to renting something like this out, one has to be a little more firm and less nice. I don't mean mean or anything, just gotta look after me more. So that's what Im going to do. This is a nice little income for a guy like me. For the most part, this trailer has been paying my monthly bills, and gas in my pickup, until taxes or insurance or something like that comes along, then I need to dip a little deeper to get things paid. I recently put an add on kijiji to find a renter for this. About two minutes after it was on, the emails started coming in. I do have a new renter lined up for July, hope it all goes good. My new renter had nothing to do with the add I placed, which was good, because I was being to nice with the add and did'tn price it nearly high enough anyway. It still isn't as far as I am concerned. One thing I noticed while searching for a new renter is that probably more than 90% of the potential tenants had dogs. Usually more than one dog, and a lot of time the dogs these potential renters had were pitbulls or bull mastiffs or something like that. I am not running any one down, but I tell ya, I sure can't understand why anyone would want to complicate their life like that. The price of renting, plus feeding a dog or two like that, and then actually trying to find a place to rent. What about the mess in a small town yard? Someone please tell me why. lol. What ever, different strokes for different folks. All I'm going to say, you are the last on my list of tenants. I guess if you were all I could find, then ya. Hopefully that helps you out sometime. I sure don't mean to offend anyone, just take it as friendly advice from a simple and frugal guy. I like dogs, I really do. In the first picture way up top you will see my registered bull mastiff, pit bull, Irish wolf hound, snt Bernard  cross bred dog. I got nothing against the big dogs, I just think they should be outta town for your sake, mine , theirs and all the neighbors.That's just my opinion though.   
I think I just did a rant. lol.  
 
In other news, things are going good. Still playing around in the markets, but in all honesty, not getting real wealthy just yet. But it's coming. Not going broke either.  It's one of those things that's going to take some time to get real good at, just like anything else I have ever had to learn to do. I have no desire or plan to go and find me a job yet either.  Well hopefully the weather clears up and I can get started on the deck situation. I would really love to have my morning coffee way up on the balcony looking down on the world soon.