The Panels Are In

The solar panels are up on the roof. I have an app to monitor power consumption as what you cannot measure is not real. I am very glad to finally to stick it to PG&E. Our power bill in the summer is outrageous and so we finally bit the bullet and had solar panels installed. They look pretty good on the roof. So far the installation has gone well, they were even able to schedule us two weeks before the original set date. We decided to buy the solution outright as I never felt comfortable with the various rental and leasing schemes. It will take a while to pay for itself as our annual power consumption was on the edge of being profitable for solar, but it just feels right.

Here is a bad picture of the roof early this morning.

Coffee

Tuesdays are special. On Tuesday mornings I stop at Peet's on my way into work and treat myself to an Americano. The swill they serve here at Squint Central is undrinkable. The baristas all know me by now, I am usually their first customer at 5:30am when they open. My only complaint is that recently they stopped providing those little black stirrers that blocked the hole and stop spills. It's all part of that no more plastic straws moment sweeping California.

A bit of nostalgia. Sabich Tchernikovski, just off Allenby in Tel Aviv. It takes the dude ages to prepare, but it sure is worth the wait. There are no words.

It's Puzzling

Bdo claims her visit to El Dorado Hills was really a "puzzle bootcamp". Bwo discovered this iPad game called Jigsaw Puzzle Collection HD. It quickly became quite addictive. Unfortunately  Bwo is so much better at this than me and I'm convinced she has hidden mutant pattern matching talents. As soon as bdo was through the door we got her quickly trained and had her competing on the "puzzle of the day".

I am impressed with the game. It is very well put together and just challenging enough that it's not trivial to do even a 240 piece puzzle. It crashes frequently on my iPad, which is old, and I refuse to pay the $15 to get it ad free until they fix the frequent crashes, but it is still fun. Try it.

Rule no. 1 of iPad puzzling, No looking at the picture after you start the puzzle. Rule No. 2, you have to do the daily puzzle, no matter how much you hate the picture. There is no Rule 3.

Power is Key

I was all set for posting yesterday after dropping Bdo off in Oakland where she was visiting friends before heading back to the Holy Land. Well, PG&E our infamous power company had other ideas. At 7:05pm just as Bwo settled down to watch some of the third "Queer Eye" season, the power went out. 

Now let me remind you, yesterday was the hottest day of the year so far (today is going to be hotter apparently). When the house went dark it was a toasty 104°F outside and according to the PG&E website the power would only come on again around 10:15pm. We have been warned that due to the threat of fires (and based on the bad experience of the Paradise fire last year) PG&E may cut off our power whenever they please, but it seems this was some sort of unplanned event. Bwo, Rox and I hid in the relative cool of the bedroom downstairs for a while and eventually fell asleep. The power came back at 11:45pm with all the usual beeping, whirring and bright lights. It had cooled off considerably by then although it never seems to have the time to get really chilly when we have a string of one hundred plus days.

It always strikes me as amazing how close we live to catastrophe. Civilization balances precariously on the edge of societal breakdown and all it would take would be a few days without power. We take so much for granted. I wonder how long it would take without power for us to not get water in our pipes or food in the stores. When the zombie apocalypse comes at least we will have a lot of toothpaste (saving that for another day) and wool to keep us warm.

So it's summer here and my woodshop gets very, very warm and so I have been confined to working a few hours in the early mornings on the weekends. I have been making very slow progress on the current guitar (GS2). I did the owl inlay and progressed some on shaping the neck this weekend, but it's already too hot for me and it's only 9am.

GS2 is California walnut back and sides and a curly maple fretboard with a walnut and maple laminated neck. Spruce top, of course.

Wool

When Bwo gets into something, she really gets into it. Lately it's been crocheting (knitting with one needle). She has conjured up some excellent pieces, more art than clothing. Like any Bwo pursuit it starts small and then grows and grows. So it is with crocheting. I am happy she found something that brings her joy. So what, if we have crochet hooks hidden in sofas and chairs, at least they are not sharp. So what, if I've spent many an hour unraveling (hmm, can be spelled with one or two L's) knotted bits of wool, it's meditative. And so what if on a flight to San Diego Bwo trailed a line of wool from her seat at the front of the plane all the way back to the bathroom, the other passengers enjoyed helping roll the ball up as it was passed back up the aisle. It brings her joy and that's what counts.

I was not surprised when various shipments of wool started arriving at the front door. A few balls here and there, no problem. At least wool is not heavy. Then one day a huge box arrived. A few days later, the empty box reappeared in the recycling pile and I noticed the scene below on the dining room table.

I congratulated Bwo on a clever solution to wool storage, happy in the knowledge that I would not have to break down those terrible cardboard fruit trays from Costco for recycling. They are well glued together. We don't use the dining room table, or the dining room for that matter, so no worries.

I never noticed exactly when, but at some point the 144 balls of wool disappeared from the dining room table. Less crocheting was happening as summer kicked into full gear and the garden became a priority. Then last night, I went to refill my glass of water before bed in Bwo's bathroom (Yes, we have a two bathroom solution, similar to the two-state solution proposed by congress to fix the whole Israeli Palestinian issue). I noticed that her shower curtain was closed and had been for a while. For no real reason, I peeked behind the curtain and to my surprise, this is what I found:

Notice how the three fruit trays (144 balls) are not alone, they now live in the shower along with many more of their closest friends. 

T'is Hot

It's been hot the last few days. And by hot I mean over 100°F. Last night at 8:15pm the thermometer on the NW side of the house read 103°F (39.4°C). Granted that side absorbs the late afternoon heat since Bwo decided the house needs to be painted dark brown. This morning at 5:15am the thermometer read 73°F (22.7°C). That's the 30°F difference which makes the whole house fan so effective. I turn it on as soon as I wake up and enjoy the breeze as it sucks in the cooler air from outside and blows it out the attic. In normal summer heat (when it's below 100°F) the house stays cool until the early afternoon.

When we came to check out Folsom in for a week in Aug of 2016, the afternoon temperature never dropped below 107°F (41.6°C). "It's dry heat" they would say. Tell you what, anything over 40°C should not be allowed. It's so hot that walking across the black tarmac parking lot outside squint central feels like the soles of your shoes are melting. Of course, the corner of the building where I work as freezing as only an American would think acceptable. The shock walking out at the end of the day is like stepping into a volcano. Still Bwo agreed to move here. She complains bitterly about the heat.

No matter how hard the air conditioners at home work they cannot keep the top floor at any reasonable temperature during the later afternoon. So we huddle in the dark downstairs till bedtime. It stays really hot here till after 10pm, then it cools down quickly. I am usually way asleep by then though.

I recently found these pictures of the Les Paul I built in 2008. one of the guys in Algranati's electric guitar course was a professional photographer and he sent me a dozen or so pictures he took when I was done building. It looks quite good in the photo, although the sunburst should have had more lighter yellow to better show off the awesome curly maple. Unfortunately, I don't think my skill has improved much over the years.

The Parking Lot

Every morning I wake up around 5am, shave and dress, take blackroxyo for a walk, give her breakfast and head off to squint central. I usually arrive before 6. The roads are quiet. In summer the morning is deliciously cool and softly lit, in winter coming over the Folsom ridge I see the twinkling lights of Sac in the distance. It's not horrible.

After fifteen to twenty minutes drive, while listening to whatever audiobook is currently in my queue, I arrive. It's that drive into the parking lot that makes me question my life choices each morning. No matter where, it's always the same each morning. Going back as far as working at TI and the huge parking lot in Stafford, TX, on to the open lot outside SGI bld. 7 in Mountain View, to the covered lot next to Bld. 40, then the sharp turns down the circular parking lot entry on HaMenofim in Herzliya to parking near the elevators in Yakum, then having to unlock the parking lot and front doors in Egham, to today and parking each morning in the shade of bld 5.

My heart longs for parking in a forest, or next to a beach or maybe driving down a twisty tree covered road, or up a steep path to a spot with a 360 degree view of the world. It's that damned pay cheque that comes twice a month that keeps me driving into the same old lot each morning. At least I get in early enough to always get the same spot.

Today's photo is of a sunset. They are nice this time of year. This is from outside the front door.

Perhaps I'm back

I started this blog on Wednesday Feb 27, 2008. The first post went into an explanation on the 80%ness of Israel as a country. That was more than 10 years back and things have changed. Israel has probably changed, and I have certainly changed. We moved to the UK and then to the US. In the UK I struggled to find things to write about as things seemed to run quite smoothly although i never could understand why so many orange cones line the highways (motorways). I assume that the Department for Transport ran out of storage and just keep them on the roads forever. Then in 2016 we moved to the US, El Dorado Hills, CA to be exact.

I am undecided as to what exact global scale the US works on. Some things are close to 100% (Taco Bell?) and some things are barley manage to register on any scale (just try going to the DMV for a "Real ID"). Still we now live here and there are some things to write about. Which brings be back to the origins of this blog.

Some time in 2008, while we at GraphTech were still bright-eyed and bushy tailed and thought ourselves quite smart, we brought in some chap who was a social-media guru to talk to us. All this internet self examination was still quite interesting at the time. This chap claimed that we needed to put ourselves out there and thus our creativity would grow. So I decided I would give this "new" medium a try and the 80% blog started. It taught me a great deal. Having to clear up and virtually write down my confused thoughts helped me become a better writer. This helped me get through writing papers for an archaeology degree and helps me with every email I send through the day, everyday.

Skip to last night. The little book "Steal Like an Artist" has been sitting on a table in our second bathroom where bwo must have left it months back. My iPad was left recharging in the bedroom nearly out of battery after an intense session of puzzle HD (more on this in the future) so I picked up the little black book and started reading while relaxing on the toilet. It got me thinking. The book is filled with sage advice on creativity, and gladly it did not take to long to go through. What really got me thinking was the "just keep at it" theme that runs chapter by snappy chapter through the book. That's exactly what I am going to try do. I don't care if no one ever reads these posts. They are really only for me anyway.

Bwo says I need to always add a photo. This is a photo of one of the best things in our lives.