Month: July 2017

Posted on

Pause and Take a Deep Breath

We had a mini crisis at our new home last Thursday. When we stopped by in the afternoon, the electrician was laying out the heating mats for our “working” garage floor. I refer to it as the working garage, because it’s where my husband will be washing/working on cars. As opposed to the main garage, where we will actually park our cars. The intent is to keep the main garage clean enough to use as an overflow entertainment space.

One of the features of the working garage will be a car lift. The lift bolts into the floor, so the architect specified extra thick concrete in those areas. That was before we decided to heat the floor. So now we are trying to make sure the heating elements don’t cover the areas where the bolts will be installed. The heat mats are going over floor insulation and the whole area is flat, so I couldn’t see how the concrete could be thicker in just those two areas.

Of course the construction manager was on vacation last week and our builder had gone into the Boundary Waters and was unreachable by phone. This led to a mini-crisis where the electrician was on the phone with someone in the builder’s office while I was texting the architect to get clarification on the floor. Total shit show. We finally just left and went to dinner. Conflict avoidance.

At the end of the day I received a phone call from the mechanical engineer, assuring me that he was taking care of everything and they would be pushing back the concrete pour one day (to tomorrow), so everyone could meet on site Monday (today) and make sure everything is absolutely correct. You don’t get do-overs when pouring roughly 3500 square feet of concrete. If all goes well, we should have a basement floor by the end of the day tomorrow. Huge milestone.

Posted on

Not Just a Hot Flash

On our third and final night in Phoenix, I woke up feeling exceptionally hot. This is not an uncommon phenomenon, given that I occasionally have hot flashes, but for some reason this felt different. I had woken up a few times earlier and never noticed the air conditioning running. The ceiling fan over our bed kept it from feeling oppressively hot, but the temperature in the room was definitely high.

I got up and went downstairs to check the thermostat, filled with dread. Having the a/c fail on our day of departure would be a nightmare. I was greeted by a display that was completely blank, except for the words “Replace Battery.” Huge relief. This was an issue that could be successfully fixed at 1:00 AM by a middle aged woman in her nightgown. You can’t say that about many problems.

I struggled getting the face plate off the thermostat, finally resorting to prying it off with a screwdriver, which I located using the flashlight app on my phone. I feared the thermostat would require some odd battery, rendering my middle of the night efforts moot. Nope, just two plain old AA batteries. Sweet. We keep spare batteries in little plastic cases in a kitchen drawer. I pulled out the AA case, only to discover it held a lone battery. Cue scream of agony.

I was racking my brain, trying to think of some item I could “borrow” a pair of batteries from, when I noticed there was a nearly full package at the front of the drawer. When I replaced and reset the thermostat, the temperature was 83 degrees. By the time I returned to bed, I was soaked with sweat and wide awake. It took me nearly an hour to fall asleep to the sweet sound of the air conditioner running.

Posted on

Here Kitty, Kitty

I have just a few photos left from my trip to Jane’s cabin. I haven’t been out with my camera since then, so I’m trying to make them last.

Jane’s mom’s garden is frequently visited by a feral cat and her litter of four kittens. One of the kittens is white and ginger and the other three are grey tabbies, similar to our resident furry terrorist.

Surprisingly, the mom cat looks nothing like any of her kittens. I wish I could have gotten closer to these cuties, but they were understandably skittish. Only the bowl of milk allowed me to get this close. I could have put on a longer lens, but that seemed like too much effort.

Of course these photos remind me that it’s been a very long time since I took any photos of our own (no so) little ball of fur. It’s just way nicer to work outside with good lighting and interesting background material, rather than in a dark house. Plus, Ripley is so fascinated with the camera that he tends to lunge at it, so I end up with a lot of blurry shots, unless he’s asleep. I guess that makes me a bad mom. Sigh.

Posted on

Bugzilla

Yesterday afternoon I walked into our TV room and was horrified to see an enormous centipede on the wall. The thing was at least two inches long and had about a million legs. I am not embarrassed to admit that I immediately started shrieking for my husband.

He came running with a rubber band (his weapon of choice for pest control) and shot the thing at close range. It dropped to the ground and promptly disappeared. As in, we could not find it anywhere. We looked under the sofa and footstools, lifted up magazines, checked everywhere we thought it possibly could have landed (dead, hopefully) or crawled off to (mortally wounded). Nothing.

Every time we thought we saw something move, we jumped. Picture two grown ass adults completely freaking out over a bug. (Seriously, this thing was HUGE) We could not find bugzilla. Consequently, I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening on edge, certain this hideous creature would make an appearance when I least expected it.

As of this evening, it had still not shown itself. So I am hoping it crawled off somewhere to die and we’ll either never see it again or just find its desiccated corpse lying in a corner. I’m trying not to dream of vengeful kin.

Posted on

Actual Signs of Progress

We came back from Phoenix to find not a lot of progress on our new home. Some additional plumbing had been done, including the installation of two bathtubs, but that was about it. To be fair, we were only gone for two week days. We’ve been home for just over a week now and the pace is starting to pick up again. Last week the plumbing passed inspection and all of the piping in the basement was buried, so we can now walk around without it being a major tripping hazard.

We had a meeting with our builder’s mechanical engineer on Monday to talk about the solar panels and about half of it got hijacked with questions from the electrician. Tuesday when we stopped by, we found a couple of guys starting to level out the basement floor in preparation for pouring the concrete. Yesterday, we were loading the car with stuff for our storage unit, when the electrician called with some additional questions. We hadn’t even finished loading the car when I got a call from the mechanical engineer about the solar.

When we got to the site, there were so many vehicles it was difficult to find a place to park. Our basement floor insulation was in the process of being installed. We ended up spending well over an hour there, talking to the electrician and the mechanical engineer, primarily about the location of all our major electrical components – main panels, solar inverters and transformers for the electric garage floor heat. We actually got shooed out of the garage so the concrete guys could finish insulating.

So it looks like we’ll have a basement floor sometime next week. They keep telling us that things will start happening “crazy fast” once that’s done. We’ve heard that so many times now, I’m starting to feel jaded. I’m hopeful it’s true, but I’m still not holding my breath. Still, it’s nice to see actual, dare I say, concrete progress. Let’s hope it continues.

Posted on

Clear Signs of Insanity

Sometimes the universe sends you a sign that you have clearly lost your mind. I received one a few days ago. The hem started coming loose on a pair of my shorts, so I had to dig out a needle and thread to repair it. My “sewing kit” is a plastic shoe box that is largely filled with spare buttons, mostly from clothes I no longer own. I’m too paranoid to get rid of the buttons, because I’m sure as soon as I throw one away, I’ll need it.

That’s not the insane part. When I opened the box to retrieve a needle and thread, I found a folded piece of paper inside. It was a list of the photos I wanted to process from our trip to L.A. last December. A list that I made while we were still in L.A. and that I brought back in my laptop bag. A list that I last saw sitting on top of the island dresser in the closet soon after we returned home.

A list that I spent days hunting for when I finally got around to processing said photos. I looked everywhere I thought it could possibly be, to no avail. I finally gave up and went back through all of the images and created a new list. Then forgot about the whole thing. Until I opened my sewing box the other day.

I can’t come up with a remotely plausible reason why the list ended up there. The box gets opened only a few times a year, when I chuck in a new button that will never get used or retrieve a needle and thread for some desperate act of sewing. (I am hideously bad at even minor sewing tasks) It’s possible one of those things happened around the time we returned from the trip, but making the leap from that to the list actually ending up inside the box is a big stretch.

I have officially lost my mind.

Posted on

The Yellow Calla, Part 2

As promised, more of the yellow calla lilies. My first post featured all side shots, while these were all taken from above. I would consider this to be more classic calla lily composition. I struggled with these images, because I really wanted more depth of field. (Weird for me, I know) No matter where I chose to focus, I always found that something I wanted to be in focus, wasn’t. It was a tiny bit frustrating.

Not that I’m completely unhappy with these images. They just make me want to take a calla lily into more controlled conditions and focus stack the crap out of it. Someday.

They also make me want to grow calla lilies in the conservatory of our new house. I can see me choosing a lot of flowers based on their photographic potential. Not that I consider that a bad thing.

Meanwhile, I’ll have to make due with opportunistic garden photography, because that’s all I have time for right now.

Posted on

Black & White in the Garden

Of course I have more than just calla lily images from Jane’s mom’s garden. Today I’m featuring three that I thought worked better in black & white. The first one features one of the many little statues that are scattered throughout the garden. It’s not a really formal garden and there is a fair amount of whimsy to be found. This lone daisy in front of a cherub caught my eye.

Next is an echinacea flower that’s starting to fade. I don’t usually center the main subject of an image (rule of thirds and all that, you know) but sometimes it just really works. I spent so much time photographing the calla lilies, that I’m afraid I gave short shrift to the rest of the garden, which is a shame.

Speaking of calla lilies, I converted some of those to b&w as well.

This is probably my favorite among the black & white calla lily conversions. Don’t worry, I’m not done featuring this beautiful flower.

Posted on

Here We Go Again

I’m taking a short break from posting cabin photos to bitch and moan. (Sorry Jane) About a month ago, during an overly enthusiastic session of ripping out wild grape vine, I injured my left arm. I went through my usual period of denial, babying it during workouts and periodically icing it, thereby cycling through hurting a lot/hurting a little/almost not hurting over and over. Really not fun.

The final straw was when we got back from Phoenix and I did some pretty heavy bicep curls during training the next morning. My arm just throbbed afterward. I finally faced up to the reality that I once again have tendonitis. This is the same problem in the same arm that first got me into acupuncture, some eight or nine years ago. My trainer is taking next week off, so I’m using this break to go back to acupuncture and try to get this cleared up.

I had my first session yesterday and have three more scheduled for next week. It took ten sessions last time, twice a week for five weeks. I’d like it to resolve more quickly this time, so I’m hoping three times a week for three weeks will take care of it. I do not want to be schlepping heavy camera gear with a bum wing on our vacation in September, so I’m determined to get this fixed.

Posted on

The Yellow Calla

When Jane invited me to her cabin, she sweetened the invitation with promises of loons, eagles and yellow calla lilies. The loons and eagles failed to make an appearance, but the calla lily delivered. The lilies were blooming in pots outside of Jane’s mom’s house. Of the (literally) dozens of images I took, this one at left is my favorite. I know you’re supposed to save the best for last, but that’s not really my style.

The lilies were actually a little harder to photograph than I anticipated. Some of that was due to the location of the pots and some of it was due to my wilting under the heat and onslaught of ravenous mosquitoes. If only I could have absconded with one of the pots and put it in an air conditioned environment with controlled lighting. I would have done some focus  stacking with a macro rail and then…wow.

But real life doesn’t work that way and you have to play the cards you’re dealt. Which in this case meant photographing these beauties low to the ground in swampy weather with a messy background. This is one of those rare occasions when I was craving more depth of field. I couldn’t quite get everything I wanted in focus. Don’t worry, you haven’t seen the last of these lilies. I’ll be featuring them again.