Pearl Sutton

Microscope pic of an impact splash?

Coral or some other sea creature?

Just before sweet potatoes are mashed they become very quiet.

This is known as "the silence of the yams."

Final outcome on the weird insulating job I did on this rental for winter 25-26.  
There were 38 blankets and a collection of rugs involved as well as some odd things in some areas. Every door and window ended up with at LEAST 2 blankets and a sheet of plastic over it, some had more, a few had a LOT more, depending on how bad they of an air leak they are. All of the fake wood flooring in this place had at least one layer over it, some areas had a lot more, again, depending on how bad.

A couple of weird things that help a lot (this wasn't their first year) that may be useful to others: I made a thing like a fluffy loose filled cushion that I drop into the (DRY!!! Makes sure of that!!) tub every night, that helps a LOT. The fiberglass tub sits on a wood floor over a crawlspace and it's basically a radiator of coldness up from the crawlspace. The cushion thing stops most of that.  The other is a rolled up thin blanket that is packed into the kick space of the kitchen cabinets on the north wall. Where pipes etc have gone through through the bottom of the cabinets, the draft comes in. I block it inside the cabinets, but the dead space under the cabinets that gets no heat and is just one layer away from the crawlspace ooozes cold air onto the floor. The blanket keeps the cold air from getting out of that space. Makes a major difference in that kitchen.

Analysis of electric bills shows I dropped the electrical use in the house down around 800 KWH per month for 5 months, and that means I saved about $120.00 per month.

It was more comfortable in the house, not just temperature, but the feeling of "It just feels cold in here" that doesn't relate to the air temperature. The thermal mass of this place is minimal, so it usually feels cold all the time, as the minute the heat turns off, the cooling starts. When I took the layers off the hall floor, the next morning the thermostat was the same, the outside air was 10 degrees higher than the day before and it took me a while to figure out why the house felt so cold. It was making that much difference for the whole house.

Most of the blankets have been taken down now, some have been up full time for several years so they are still in their places, a few are still being good where they are. I am REALLY PLEASED that it worked so well, and am quite smug about it all.

I highly recommend watching for cheap blankets and misusing them, it was absolutely worth it.

:D

No, the stuff in my dream was like "temporary retaining wall on command"

I still think it was a cool dream :D I can thing of LOTS of uses!

I dream interesting stuff, and this one was fun...
I had 8 rocks, 4 black ones that looked like obsidian, and 4 cream colored kind of square ones. All a little bit bigger than a dice, but not much.

I could take the white ones and drop them on the ground up to about 3 feet apart, and they grew bigger, got to about 2 foot tall and around, didn't have to touch.....   and they stopped water flow! Once they were up to size, I could put the black ones on top, and add about another 18 inches of depth to the water it would retain. They'd hold somewhere around a month  if needed or could be just picked up and they'd shrink back down, go back in your pocket.

So what did I do with them? Early on in the dream I used them to divert the water away from a car that was stuck in a stream so we could get it out easier.  I also moved some water to fill up a pond faster. Someone else in the dream had a bunch of the black ones on his swales holding deeper for this storm to put more water into his soil while he could. He would take them back up when the swale was down to normal level.

I want a pocket full of temporary water retention rocks!! What cool things!!  

Check tomorrow night....
Flare that produced a CME, may be a pretty lights maker.

Not sure if this one belongs in "you know you are a permie when.." "you know you are a reuser when..."  or in a non-exstient thread "Technology misuse in the path of a more permie lifestyle..."
BUT!!
I need to clean my dehydrator trays, been way too long, they need a good soaking. I use the round ones in my electric dehydrator.  I generally throw them in the tub, but my back hurts today, I don't want to deal with that today.
AND!!
If you are a lunatic, you can take the agitator off the shaft of the kind of clothes washing machine I have, an older toploader, and then you can thread trays right down it :D  
I have a washer full of dehydrator trays soaking, another stack of the other half of them to be the second batch after these soak well.

:D

A bunch of bags people have made were discussed here:   Cloth Shopping Bags?
The ones I have made and would tell you about are in there, as are other types

:D

T R Stream wrote:thank you Pearl I did see your great folding oven find while I was searching for ideas -- if I were to strip this thing down to just the exterior shell it could possibly become something similar.

I vote leave the insulation, I wish mine had it.

as is, its about 70lbs -- not immovable, but kind of a PITA

I'd vote design someplace it can just live for good, so you don't have to move it, and leave the innards in (except controls and elements etc) Having the racks easy to work with, and the insulation, will make it a lot more usable.

I think I am going to end up hauling it to my place in order to try some of these ideas - I am salvaging several things, including a dead glass door display refrigerator that is going to be a seed start mini green house right now and maybe some kind of black-tank-in-a-box water heater later

ENVIOUS!! I want one of those glass front fridges!! It'll do both of those tasks well :D