LittleJoe

Great Thanksgiving weekend draws to a close

As has become our tradition in Florida, our Thanksgiving day turkey was cooked on the outdoor grill. You really can't beat that. I just rinsed the bird, rubbed it inside and out with olive oil, sprinkled on some garlic powder, and tossed in on the grill (indirect medium heat) for just over 3 hours. The 17+ pound turkey was perfect. Shirley had prepared the rest of the feast - various veggies, potatoes, sweet potatoes, etc. Mmmm.

Ben came down from North Carolina, arriving Wednesday evening. Jon, one of his roommates from last year - who now lives and works about an hour east in Orlando - joined us on Thursday. Bob, one of our buddies from our local Drinking Liberally gang was also able to make it. And Paul and Rachna, our very good friends who used to live across the street came over as we were starting on dessert. So it was wonderful. It was a beautiful autumn day in Florida, which meant we were dining outside on the lanai by the pool.

Ben was able to see a couple of his other friends - Yeon, who met him at the airport and had lunch with him before she left to head south to Naples and then over to West Palm Beach to spend the holiday with her family. And another of Ben's roommates from last year, Mo, just got back into town this weekend, so he and Ben were able to grab some sushi. And of course Ben was able to spend time with Brittany - including helping her move into the apartment that she and another woman have just leased. Yup, welcome home for your visit, Ben ...now grab that box, would ya :)

But alas, the weekend flew by as even 4-day weekends are wont to do. This morning we got up at 5am and took Ben to the airport for his trip back up to Durham. The good thing, though, is that in just a few weeks he'll be back home for the Christmas holidays ...and another grilled turkey :)

Freecycle: lightened my load :)

During the past year we've switched to using an electric mower instead of a gas-powered mower, electric grass edger and string trimmer instead of gas-powered devices, and disconnected our gas-fired water heater and installed a solar water heating system. A side effect of this is that our garage was now cluttered with the devices that we were no longer using. I was enjoying a beer Thursday evening with some friends and mentioned that I needed to get rid of this stuff. Smitty suggested I list the stuff on Freecycle. Duh! I'd heard of Freecycle a year or more ago and had forgotten about it. It works like this: instead of tossing something in a landfill, thereby polluting the ground and taking a useful item out of circulation ...'gift' it on Freecycle. Or if you need some item, check Freecycle and perhaps someone has the item you need and is ready to pass it on to a new owner.

In the words of Freecycle:

Please be gentle in your expectations, gracious in your giving and appreciative for the things you receive. Please treat each other as you want to be treated and remember, you are making a difference, one gift at a time!

How cool is that? So I popped on to the Tampa Freecycle group. I listed the items earlier today, and by mid-afternoon the items all had new homes. I have more room in the garage, and these perfectly good devices will continue to provide useful service. Words really can't express how much I enjoyed this.

Now I'm looking around seeing what else we can release :)

CatalogChoice.org: reducing paper waste

From their website:
Catalog Choice is a free service that allows you to decide what gets in your mailbox. Use it to reduce your mailbox clutter, while helping save natural resources.

This is pretty cool! I just signed up today. I created a free account, listed our address and the names to which we receive snail mail. I then went through the rather extensive list of catalogs (using the search feature a time or two) and selected the various catalogs that the US Post Office delivers to our mailbox - and that we then deposit directly into the recycle bins. As Shirley and I were talking about it, we kept remembering more junk that comes to us. So now, ever so slowly over the coming months, the volume of junk mail that is delivered to us should diminish. The number of wasted trees will be reduced a little. A little less fuel will be wasted in the transport of the catalogs. And the companies who produce the catalogs will be wasting less money, since we don't buy from these catalogs anyway!

So lighten your load. Go sign up and reduce your junk mail.

Reid stops recess appointments

Harry Reid has surprised me. After so many long months of the Democrats pretty much doing nothing ...lots of talk followed by giving in to Bush over and over and over ...Reid has maneuvered to technically keep the Senate in session over the next couple of weeks, according to this Washington Post article.

So why does this matter? Because it prevents Bush from doing more recess appointments (remember John Bolton?). What this also means is that we can most likely expect Bush to leave more and more departments and agencies being run by 'acting' directors and people with similar titles who are able to avoid confirmation hearings.

Now, the question this does raise in my mind is why the Dems caved and allowed Mukasey to be confirmed. Feinstein, being her pseudo-Democrat self, wrote a piece explaining her vote for Mukasey. She stated that one of the reasons was to avoid recess appointments. Well gosh, so soon after that vote we see that Reid is able to prevent the recess appointments. What the hell is going on?

But at least this is a positive action from the Dems. It's about time.

Tankless water heater installed

Back in April of this year we had a solar hot water heater installed. It's 100% passive, and I love it. But if we have a day with no sun (or several guests in the house) there's not enough hot water. We'd considered that this might be the case, and so had factored in the cost of a tankless gas-fired water heater as a supplemental system when we first decided to get rid of the original hot water tank. Fortunately for us, the local gas company (TECO Peoples Gas) has a program that allows customers to purchase a tankless water heater - installed - for US$25/month for 5 years. So it's a total of $1,500 (a little high), but the monthly payment gets included in the regular gas bill. So it's painless. I called ExpertGasPlumbers and booked it.

Here's the inside of the garage where the old tank used to be. If you click on the image and view it enlarged, you'll see the comments pointing out the piping from the rooftop solar water heating system.

And here's outside where the tankless unit gets mounted. Because we're in a warmer climate, it works well to locate the heater outside, and there's no special venting needed. It does use a little electricity for the thermostat and the ignition (there's no pilot light).

Things don't look much different on the inside with the installation all done. There is a small thermostat control, and a little extra piping. I went out to check during the installation and noticed that the guys had originally routed the pipes in a manner that would have bypassed the solar heater completely. D'OH! So I showed where things needed to be connected and they were extremely nice about it and rerouted things as needed. Whew! That could have been a fiasco!

Things look quite different on the outside, of course. Our new Rinnai R70 unit is up and running. When I first turned on the hot water inside, the new unit fired up ...once the hot water from the solar unit had flowed down, the gas-fired unit detected the water temp and shut itself off, letting the solar-heated water just flow on through. Perfect :)

More bamboo removed - more to go

Oy! This bamboo takes a while to dig up! We're past the halfway point, but that is one bugger of a plant to remove. Today we made it a few feet into it and I broke our old shovel. The good news - I guess - is that I got to pop over to Lowes and buy one truly awesome shovel. Completely steel and made with a much more reasonable design. And that baby is my new friend. But after thinking we'd finish the job today, I'm now thinking that maybe - maybe - if we do a little each evening this week and several hours on the weekend, then we ought to be able to get that bad boy DONE by this time next week. ...and then it's on to planting whatever we decide to use for our new plant screen. I do believe it's time for a glass of wine :)

Semper Fi

Today is the birthday of the United States Marine Corps. Regardless of my opinions about the Commander in Chief, I have the utmost respect for those men and women who serve and have served in the Marines. I have worked with a number of men who had served in the Marines. Two of my nephews are Marines. Both have served in Iraq and one of them is preparing to return for his third tour.

So to Jake and Josh, and to Tom, Paul, Curtis, Duane ...and countless others ...many thanks for your service. You are truly appreciated.

smart USA *very* prompt with refund

Many months ago we had placed a US$99 deposit with smart USA. We had planned to purchase a smart car in 2008 when they become available here in the US. But after test driving them, we decided that it wasn't for us, so Shirley bought a Honda Fit and I should be getting a Toyota Yaris within a month or so (we did a special order on the Yaris, so it takes a little while.

One week ago I sent a letter to smart USA requesting a refund of the deposit. Today the check arrived. I had read comments from people on a number of web sites, with the folks wondering how easy/hard it would be to get a refund if one were to decide to cancel the order. Well, at least in our case, it was a very simple process: mailed a letter and received the check a week later.

For anyone who might need to send for a refund, just write a letter listing your reservation number and stating your request, and mail it to:

smart USA C/O Internet Brands
ATTN: smart Representative                                
909 N. SEPULVEDA BLVD., 11TH FLOOR
EL SEGUNDO, CA 90245

Like Shirley said, on a scale of 1 to 10, these cars get a 12 for appearance. But she was going to drive it in automatic shift mode, and felt it just wasn't responsive enough. Bummer. In manual shift mode (the way I'd tested it) I thought it was pretty nice. Oh well.

Brief visit w/ Barry and Karen

My good friend Dr Lavine (not a real doctor);his wife Karen, esq. (a real lawyer); my wife Shirley, MT (makes teeth); and I - Joe, SBG (short bald geek) all met for a brief visit today at Tampa airport. Barry and Karen were heading back home after vacationing with relatives, and had a bit of a layover in Tampa. Gosh, I don't think I'd seen Barry since I was up in the Pacific Northwest in August 2006 after my dad had passed away. And I'm guessing it'd been a few years since we'd seen Karen.

So we gathered at the Wharf pub in the airport and bs'd for an hour or so. It was like being back up in Portland, just shooting the breeze with friends. Very cool. Oh, and I tried to take a pic of the four of us by holding my camera out and shooting semi-blindly. From the left, going clockwise, that's Karen, Barry, Shirley, and me.

Garage hose - possible thanks to solar water heat

Back in April of this year, we completely disconnected our gas-fired hot water heater/tank, and had a passive solar water heating system installed. In the pic to the left, the silver tube hanging down is a vent hose from the old water heater. We'll need this if we hook up a tankless water heater as a backup to the solar system. Over to the right are the 2 water pipes for the solar water system. The nearest pipe (wrapped in black insulation) is the cold water feed, running up to the unit on the roof. The far pipe returns the heated water down to the house.

Well the installation included a spigot on each of these pipes, and given that there's really not a convenient outside spigot if we need a hose in the driveway (like to rinse the car off), today I picked up a hose and a hanger and hooked it up. Shirley's been wanting this for a while (I believe since April), so a few minutes time, and it's done. She only had to wait 6 months :)

Cool-N-Save - easy way to reduce A/C costs

We enjoy watching Living with Ed on television. Ed Begley, Jr. has been working to live ever-greener for 30 years, and the show never fails to give us several great ideas. A recent episode featured the Cool-N-Save product. The idea is to provide a gentle mist of water around the air conditioner condenser - only when the condenser fan is running - so that the evaporation of the water will help the air conditioner with its cooling chores. The projected energy savings are up to 30 percent! Given that the Cool-N-Save costs under a hundred bucks (US$87), it will be worth it even if our savings fall far below 30 percent. Here in Florida, air conditioning is one of the main power consumers of a home (for all-electric homes, water heating is the other real biggie).

Well, I've got quite a list of chores I've been wanting to get to around the house and the yard, so I took a vacation day today to tackle some of them. One of those jobs was installing our new Cool-N-Save unit.

The installation is very simple, although some might find the adequate instructions not quite detailed enough. So Shirley snapped a number of pictures as I installed the unit. We probably took 30 minutes to do the installation, but that was largely because we kept going back inside to fetch a felt pen, a wire cutter, a cable tie, etc. We've posted the installation sequence up on Flickr.

And with that, we are hoping that our footprint on the earth has perhaps become just a little bit smaller :)