Month: July 2007

A scorcher

My mom runs Vista on her laptop, and has it set up so that she can see the weather for Seattle, New York and DC (where me and my siblings live) in the sidebar on the desktop. According to her, I’ve been winning for the last week or so. Sunny and low 80s easily beats humid and upper 90s. Yesterday, though, started to get really hot (89 on my car thermometer at one point!), and today, we’re supposed to hit 98. Anything over 85 is severely alarming to the general Seattle population — we aren’t equipped for hot weather.

Kevin and I would merrily go to our air conditioned offices and then complain heartily when we finally got home to a baking apartment, and leave it at that, but the fish (as usual) complicate things. We generally have a few days a summer where we worry about the tank getting too hot. It’s stressful for the fish, and there’s real concern that our corals could bleach. You can buy a chiller to keep the water cool, but they’re expensive, and not really worth it for our climate. Usually we keep the tank reasonable cool (under 81 degrees) by closing the blinds in the apartment. If it looks like it will break into the mid eighties, we turn a fan on the lights, to chase away their hot air, and to promote evaporation, which cools the water.

Today, the tank was already over 82 at 8:00 am. Eek.

(And look at that salt creep!! When it’s hot, we have to wipe down the salt every few days instead of every few weeks.)
So, fan, upstairs windows open, shades drawn, and Kevin’s braving the heat to work at home so that he can do water changes with cool water every hour or so. We’re cooling the next bucket with a ziplock of regular ice (since it has chlorine in it, we can’t put the ice in the water directly).

Then, in a flash of inspiration, I remembered that I still had my ice cube trays from Boston (pre-ice maker). We poured some of our fresh top-off water into those, and those ones will be able to go directly into the refugium. Nice.

Keep cool, little fish!

Domesticated kayaks

The kayaks have, to my chagrin, become total indoor pets. They hang in their slings, they hold wedding veils and snuggle up to the hoarded packing supplies from registry gifts. It was time for them to go out and rediscover their niche: water, wildlife, and adventure! 🙂

We headed out on the afternoon of the fourth — rather a lot of adventure!! Between a slight breeze and plenty of boat traffic, the waves were *huge*. We paddled gingerly to the next beach, and then literally surfed back. Lots of fun, if short.

I got to try out my boat cart for the first time. It is MUCH lighter and easier to handle than tromping the whole boat down the hill. That part is a relief. I’m going to have to learn to get used to other bits… It is quite tricky to load the kayak onto the cart (there’s no kickstand, so the wheels roll wherever they please), and I had to stop to retighten the strap, but we realized midway down the hill that I had used the kayak leashes (made of thin elastic cord) to anchor the boat to the cart, so it might be a lot easier when I buy a real tie. 🙂

Our conclusion after lugging the things up and down the hill was that the “in & out of the apartment” is still the most difficult and stressful part by far. They have to come off the rack, around the fishtank, through the front door, and down from the 3′ high deck with a railing. It’s a lot of 90 degree angles and fear of property damage. Once again, I wish dearly that we had a garage.

Kevin was holding off on buying a cart, but it’s about a third of a mile down to the beach, and his boat is heavier than mine, so he (thankfully) succumbed to massive peer pressure and bought a cart, too. His cart rests under the cockpit of his boat, instead of under the stern, which may make it truly light to heft. It’s supposed to get here on Wednesday. I’m looking forward to weekends, and entertaining hazy dreams of kayaking before work when the lake is flat… maybe? Neither of us are expected until 10, and it gets light at 4:45, so it’s certainly a possiblity.

Deck gardening starts to look like a success!

The beans and tomato plant, despite the measly afternoon-only sun, are getting bigger by the day.

And look! A baby tomato!!

Once I saw the first one, I kept looking, and found several small grape-sized individuals, and then a whole cluster!

The beans are even more exciting. The little inch-long slivers have suddenly transformed into real vegetables!

I won’t show you every single bean on this plant, but it’s amazing to me how many there are. Looks like we have a plan for tonight: grill salmon, harvest beans to go with! Here’s one more photo — I think this is so, so exciting, that my little experimental plant is so huge and useful now. Here, another pair of beans, ready to eat!

Both plants still have lots of flowers, so I’m hoping that we get several more weeks of beans and then the tomatoes should be ripe.

How cool.

Restarting old projects

Notice anything?

Namely, that it’s been a solid year, and the fabric scraps and comforter still look like this:

instead of being a nice, pretty quilt on the bed. Luckily, no one who’s seen me work on projects expected faster progress, but I’ve been gearing up to get going again.

On Tuesday, I pieced together my plans, straightened out the strips, and finally started sewing again. Yesterday afternoon, I finished these!

Progress at last! Each of the squares is 5″x5″, and each strip is half an inch wide after seaming.

Before, I had been cutting each round of strips as I went. So I’d cut, sew, iron, repeat. This time, I cut all of the strips for my six squares ahead of time, and then pulled from the existing piles to do the sew/iron repeats. It feels a bit faster (though I do wish the ironing was speedier — that’s where all the time goes). Here are the 3.5″, 4″, 4.5″ and 5″ strips.

And one last parting shot of all the pretty blues next to my desk! Love that fabric!