Month: December 2021

A quick screenshot:

If you don’t remember the rest of the words, they are HERE

No they aren’t rapey; it’s just innocent by-play between adults in a less adversary-prone era. Here’s the original scenes from “Neptune’s Daughter”, a 1949 musical romantic comedy film released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer starring Esther Williams, Red Skelton, Ricardo Montalbán, Betty Garrett, Keenan Wynn, Xavier Cugat

Over the past week we have been asymptotically approaching completion of the Conex boxes. We left off last week finishing up painting and installing fittings in the workshop container.

The next item was to install a 110VAC, 9,000 BTU Mini-Split system shown HERE. It’s both and air-conditioner and heat pump, so it should be able to provide heat so long as the exterior temperature is greater than -5 degrees (F). I made the decision to put the compressor above the container, sheltered from the weather.

The unit is designed for “professional installation” but after looking up various YouTube clips I didn’t see anything that I couldn’t handle. The installation instructions were very sketchy, intended for HVAC technicians so the YouTube clips (like THIS) were very helpful.

I’ve got the storage container set at 64 deg F. A side benefit is that the Mini-Split is very, very quiet. The vents at the bottom are turned down indicating that the system is blowing warm air out, but I literally cannot hear anything. I have to stick my hand below it to feel that air coming out. The pipe running down out of the unit is a condensation drain line that runs outside of the container.

In the workshop container I’ll be locating the inside unit opposite the door in the middle of the container to avoid the vent fan installed on the end. I can also drill the hole for the hose line just above the unit, avoiding the offset needed to avoid drilling through the reinforced end caps.

I will be installing the pegboard in 2’x4′ sections below the wall lighting that will provide hanging storage for tools & etc. Once the Mini-Splits are installed, the next major project will be installing the solar power system, but I don’t expect that to start before the new year.

This is written on Thursday, Dec 9th, in the evening; today we finished up the workshop container. We started out on Tuesday putting up the rest of the wallboard and Wednesday with taping and covering the screws.

Thursday Morning we set up for painting and spray painted the interior.

We finished up this afternoon, putting the covers on the outlets and switches, installing the ceiling lights. We are ready for final inspection for both the container & roof installation and electrical inspection. The inspection is scheduled for tomorrow, Friday (weather permitting). The forecast is for snow from 8pm this evening through 11am tomorrow.

Tomorrow morning we’ll reinstall the workbench, put up the pegboard sheets and put the shelves back in on the inboard side.

In other news, I was in Johnny J’s Diner on Monday (beef stew in bread bowl day) and noticed the following picture in the men’s room.

The first thing I noticed is that these are either right hand drives, or the negative was reversed when making the print. The next thing I noticed was that at least the woman’s pink car was a 1968 VW. The medium sized tail-lights were from 1966-1968; in 1969 they went to the larger round tail lights. The 1968 version had 4 sections of rear hood vents.

The whole reason for this post is that my first new car was a 1968 VW bug purchased in Hawaii with my first re-enlistment bonus. She was named Sweet Alice Blue and was the baby blue color of the car on the right. She was named after Alice of “Alice’s Restaurant”, which came out in 1967, by Arlo Guthrie. I drove Sweet Alice Blue cross county to Norfolk and then back across to Seattle when I was picked up for NESEP and attended University of Washington (UW).

It was the car I owned when I met Lindsay, and drove her to So Cal to meet the folks (another great story). I have a photo somewhere of Sis & others decorating the VW during our wedding reception. We kept Sweet Alice Blue until after Lindsay graduated and started working for John Fluke, waiting for me to graduate. The summer of 1976 we stopped a at VW dealer to get a replacement passenger side window crank. As we walked in there was a new 4 door VW Rabbit (now a Golf) with a rear seat you could actually sit in. Shortly after, Sweet Alice Blue was no more.

I purchased a Christmas tree recently. That, in and of itself, isn’t particularly novel but I’ve decided to start a new tradition.

When we lived in Silverdale, WA in the mid-1980’s, we went through a phase of getting live Christmas trees, in a large bucket, and planting them outside after the holidays. Over the years we had 4 or 5 reasonably sized evergreens beside the house.

One of my goals for the property is to plant and sustain a number of trees (i.e. The Bumpa Memorial Orchard) and while I was in Menard’s this morning (getting a 1&1/8″ auger bit) I stumbled across this:

It’s labelled as “My Surprise Tree” by “Santa & Friends” and contains a miniature evergreen, some tiny LED lights and decorations.

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So my plans are to every Christmas get a live evergreen tree/bush and to plant it outside after the holidays. This is year one.

Another week and we continue making progress on applying metal on the exterior. We’ve got the back pretty much complete, lacking only the corner on the left side.

We started adding metal to the front yesterday, it was cloudy but the afternoon winds started picking up.

We finished up on Thursday morning, we’ve had to order more metal from Bridger Steel. We submitted the original order before we added the rear door so we used up several pieces that we needed. It should be on the truck next week from Missoula MT.

Finally a beautiful sunset on December 2nd: Red Sky at Night – Sailor’s Delight. (the other half is Red Rash in Morning – Sailor Take Warning.)