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a little late to winterize
Wednesday, November 24 2021
There was a wintery chill this morning, with temperatures in the low 20s. And at some point I realized I hadn't done the winterization that I normally do prior to the arrival of such conditions. I hadn't drained the two rain barrels and I hadn't drained the plumbing in the brownhouse. (I haven't used the brownhouse in months, since I discovered what looked like a brown recluse spider living under the toilet seat.) Water was still liquid in the brownhouse plumbing, so that was easy to drain for the season. But the taps at the bottoms of the rain barrels were frozen in the closed position, meaning I couldn't even open them and hope for the next warm spell. I was forced to used some electric heat tape insulated beneath a knitted throw to thaw open the taps one by one. I left this running long enough for the barrel on the woodshed to start draining on its own, but the one on the northwest corner of the house also required me to use a long drill bit to perforate the ice in the barrel just upstream from the tap. When the bit reached the liquid water of the barrel's core, it started draining with enthusiasm.
It being Thanksgiving Eve, Alex told us all we were free to quit for the day at 2:00pm. So I went to make a booze run in the Bolt. Then I remembered the shopping I'd done at the Red Hook Hannaford yesterday morning, but I couldn't remember putting that food away (there were things like mushrooms needing refrigeration). Then I remembered that the stuff was still at my desk in the Red Hook office, and I didn't want to leave it there for the long Thanksgiving weekend. The office is 23 minutes away, meaning going there and back was going to eat up most of an hour. But I was going out anyway, so I crossed the river, retrieved the stuff, and then bought more stuff at the Red Hook Hannaford (mostly frozen vegan pizzas and beer, including a "Belgian-style ale" that tasted a lot like the mead my mother used to make. (It was 10% alcohol!)
On the way home, I stopped at Lowes to get another tube to caulk in a shade closer to the "platinum" grout I'd used at the cabin. I also got a big bench vise that I intend to install in the basement at the cabin.
Later I made another trip to the big abandoned quarry, where I found two more flattish pieces for the cabin's walkway.
Yesterday Gretchen had gotten vinyl flooring for Powerful's room, which I will be installing (due to labor shortages, Andy can't find anyone to do the installation until January). Unfortunately, the vinyl we'd installed everywhere else in the basement has been discontinued, so the stuff I'll be installing will be narrower "planks" of a lighter color that seems to use an incompatible edge locking technology.
Powerful had his weekly heart biopsy today, which (due to continued paperwork confusion) Gretchen had to drive him to this morning (though he came back some other way). This evening Gretchen's old high-school poetry student Natalie came over to visit. She and Powerful have become good friends and she just got out of some sort of eating disorder rehab (that is, for people who do not eat enough).
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