Good morning. The Home Repair shop is open and you are all invited to join in and share your experience and problems concerning keeping your home, at least the physical manifestation of it, operating correctly.
Home is more than just the box it takes place in, of course. The meta-physics of "home" you have to work out for yourself, with whomever you share it with; we can't help much with that aspect. But having that box to do it in is an important component of the process of home-ness, and keeping that box warm/cool, dry and safe is what we address here.
An ad hoc cadre of construction professionals and gifted amateurs gathers here to tell stories, show off our projects and offer up advice and encouragement for any who show up with issues surrounding their own homes. Empowerment is a revolutionary act and we work hard to de-mystify common tasks so you can do them yourself rather than pay professionals to do them for you. Even the most ardent activist can be distracted by a leaking faucet dripping through the night, not to mention a leaking roof or a stopped up toilet or a failed water heater. Many of these problems can be solved with a little experienced advice and encouragement.
I'll be gone the next two weeks, off to NN11 with the generous help of many of you who have been following this series, and then the following week off to a 40-year reunion of DFHs on some Land we liberated back in 1967, Land that remains Free and permanently removed from commerce.
boatgeek has offered to open the Shop next Saturday (June 18), and exlrrp will be hosting the following week, June 25. Thanks to both of you for the offer, and thanks to DaNang65 for also offering, I'll take you up on that at a later date.
Out here at the High Desert Caravansary work proceeds on multiple fronts: furniture refinishing, gardening, another room in our shack being reno-ed and finished out, more fencing, to protect the latest section of gardens. Fires in SE AZ have been spewing smoke all week, and we are right in the path of the smoke plume some days, despite being 300 miles from the fires. The sky is hazy, and the smell of smoke is in the air some of the time.
The Pecos River is at very low flow, and thus the acequia on our side of the valley only runs four days in two weeks, with ten dry days while the water is diverted to the other acequia on the east side of the river. There isn't much required of me as Majordomo of the acequia under these conditions of little water
During those four days I irrigate our pasture and pump water for the landscaping of the grass and shade trees that make this place an oasis. The rest of the time, my extensive drip irrigation system, supplied from our deep well, keeps the gardens and shade trees happy, as long as I keep up with cleaning filters and tinker with the timing and flow rates.
Wednesday I cast my self out into the world, off to ride the great silver bird in the sky to Minneapolis. It has been several years since I last flew, and it's always interesting to see how the world is out there away from our little cocoon. For someone from the "I get around" generation, I have become a homebody, quite content to stay home and be surrounded by the comforts of familiarity and routine. I have more than enough world to be engaged with right here.
OTOH, I need to have my lazy ass kicked out of my comfort zone on occasion, and Kossaks DO know how to party, so I'll be bringing my stored-up enthusiasm and will give it my best. I hope I get to meet some of you and put faces to the cyber-beings that make up our unusual community of on-line activists, and I hope my small contribution to the event will be useful.
Oooops!
Show time.