Hot and wet? Or just hot? [I suck at weather prediction, 73F and sunny]
Yesterday got pretty hot. Started overcast, then cleared to sunny and steamy. Mid 90s at least.
I worked mostly on the sprinklers yesterday. I spent way longer than it should have taken to put a new rain sensor on the system. I’ve had it for years, never installed it. Finally did today. Haven’t TESTED it yet, but it’s pretty simple.
Then I spent 3 hours getting the two zones for the front yard working. I never have winterized the system and only replace what’s broken each year, whenever I get to it… which is lazy and all kinds of wrong, but then I’m not super motivated by how my yard looks. It does make it easier to keep the veg gardens watered though, which was my primary motive this year.
So, fire up the system and see what doesn’t work…
Two zones with 4 heads each shouldn’t take three hours to touch up. But it did. As the mechanisms age, they wear, and the sun causes parts that are supposed to be behind a cover to break down. Those little parts are like limit switches as the head pans back and forth. I ended up messing with those A LOT. I had to swap parts around from heads I’d retired in previous years (hooray <s> hoarding </s> preparedness. Then a couple of the plastic parts needed some heat to reshape them a tiny bit… and I needed to dig out the valves because the handholes had filled up with debris over the years.
In any case, years of slapdash maintenance and patchwork replacements caught up with me. Still, I was able to get them all running and wetting the areas they are supposed to wet without any trips to the store or ordering parts. Today if it’s not raining I need to confirm they work with the control system and then get the other 3 zones sorted out too. The front yard will keep the neighbors and the HOA happy, but the other zones will all end up watering my gardens for me (and also keep the back yard nice for the kids.)
I’ll have to change out some heads and move some stuff because I’ve moved beds, and put a great big generator right in front of a head… which really shouldn’t have water sprayed into it every other day. I’ll steal one head to water my ‘window box’ planters too. More projects.
I’m also still ordering bits and pieces, and receiving them for the repairs and upgrades at my client’s house. I still need some income, and that’s a good way to get it. Not perfect as I have to leave isolation, but it pays well and keeps him happy.
Ebay sales were starting to get going again, and then the lockdown hit. I’ve sold only a few items since. I do have a bunch to list, and getting them sold and out of here would be a Good Thing ™.
WRT the wuflu, things are still changing. Blood clots may be the way it actually kills you, either the first time or the next. And it may have mutated in a way that changes its severity, as it appears we might have two main strains here, one on the west coast, one on the east. No idea what those of us in the middle might have. The economic impacts are just starting to arrive.
Disney posted a huge loss of income, United Airlines and American both posted ~$2Billion losses, Virgin is looking for buyers, and the others will be following soon. I was a proponent of the ‘pent up demand’ theory that the economy will come rushing back. Now I’m not so sure. Think about what it would take to get you on a plane, if you didn’t know you were immune? How about a trade show or a theme park? Cruise ship? Gold’s Gym is filing for bankruptcy protection, can 24HourFitness be far behind? Sitting in someone else’s @ss sweat didn’t have any appeal for me BEFORE it could kill me. Certainly doesn’t now. My wife is sure that pro sporting events will bounce back, because fans are crazy anyway, but I’m not so sure. They are a huge terrorism target, and attendance has been falling with the players’ political shenanigans. I don’t feel the need to sit in the nosebleeds, eating $15 hotdogs, just to see the ants move around in real life…
I’m pretty sure the world has changed for good, and we’ll be watching how those changes play out over the next decade. Short term, people try to cling to what they know, until forced to change. Things will continue on, degrading a little at a time, until they finally change.
Start planning for that. There will be opportunities.
Dinner was ham slices, mac n cheese, and the canned carrots left over from the previous day’s curry. Dessert was frozen cookie dough, heated up and oh so good…..
Stay in, stay safe, keep stacking.
n