Your leaking thatched hut during the restoration of a pre-Enlightenment state.

 

Hello, my name is Judas Gutenberg and this is my blaag (pronounced as you would the vomit noise "hyroop-bleuach").



links

decay & ruin
Biosphere II
Chernobyl
dead malls
Detroit
Irving housing

got that wrong
Paleofuture.com

appropriate tech
Arduino μcontrollers
Backwoods Home
Fractal antenna

fun social media stuff


Like asecular.com
(nobody does!)

Like my brownhouse:
   snowy morning incident
Saturday, November 13 2004

Just a week or so ago Hurley experienced its first frost, but already this morning the outdoors looked like a desolate winter wonderland. Gusts of wind would occasionally dislodge wads of snow from the tall pines just west of the house and the air in the bedroom was cold and clammy. I felt somewhat liberated by it, as if some holiday had been conferred. Neither Gretchen nor I were especially interested in up. We postulated what it might be like to spend the entire day in bed. Instead of using the bathroom, maybe we'd just poop or piss over the edge of the bed.
At some point I decided I really did want to get up, but because (given the bleakness outside) the only reasonable justification was that I had to go to the bathroom, I said, "I have to get up and go poopy!" "Here," Gretchen, "Just go in my hand!" And she put her hand over my butt. "Fine," I said as I silently performed an inventory of available lower intestinal gas. What resulted was a shockingly powerful fart. It was a crime more of scale than anything else and Gretchen (somewhat hypocritically) expressed horror. A struggle ensued as she tried to wipe her sullied hand in my face. "Sorry honey!" I said, "I think that might have been a shart!" A shart, for those who don't know, is a function of bodily elimination that sits on the cusp between a fart and a shit. But I was just joking around. (I didn't think I was going to tell this story originally, but it's a really good example of typical morning zaniness in our household.)

I ran a number of tests on the basement boiler system and determined the major difference between the two inputs that return circulated hydronic water to the boiler. One of them is attached to a pump that can run at any time, whether the boiler is being fired or not. The other runs only when the boiler is actually being fired. The two returns pull water through two entirely different set of household heating zones; the one that can run at any time heats the two zones of the attic floor as well as the basement slab whereas the one that can only run while oil is being burned heats everything else: the hot water supply and three separate first floor zones. I can't understand why one would ever want to restrict water circulation to those times when oil is being burned; to do so seems wasteful of all the accumulated heat in the metallic mass of the boiler, which, once the burner shuts off, is left to simply radiate uselessly into the boiler room (unless, of course, one of the zones whose circulating pump can run at any time should ask for heat).

Fasten your safety belts and put on your thinking caps, it's time to visit a couple interesting destinations on the information superhighway:

Steal Your Election - one stop shopping for the latest on how Bush won the election despite what the exit polls were saying. (Gretchen sent this one out to her mailing list; lately our phone message has been beseeching callers to spread the word on the stolen election.)

The post-granite age - a guy who uses concrete to make beautiful interiors. The article contains a good example of how to cope with artistic accidents.


For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?041113

feedback
previous | next