Just a little jealous - but we hit 63 today. I know we’ll be paying for it in more cold and snow to come, but this weekend and the upcoming week are Bonus Material for gardeners, for sure! :)
And with these temps we’re not as suicidal as we normally are this time of year up here on The Frozen Tundra, LOL!
Beau installed a brighter motion-sensor porch light for me today. I actually saw a MOTH last night when I let the dog out at 9pm. Very, VERY weird!
Our growing season is always a crap shoot. Plant too early and a sneaky freeze comes along and kills everything. Plant too late and the 100 degree heat of July will kill everything.
I think this year that planting in February will work out well. Hopefully I will have a lot of tomatoes and peppers by late May.
I’ve been getting a lot done, but getting further and further behind! This Friday - Saturday was in particular an almost (almost) complete rework of our OTA (outdoor) TV antenna and feed to our living room and kitchen. The LR is actually sort of the “hub”, but these days I hardly have any time to watch TV or listen to the stereo there. :-(
I really wanted to get this done before our main severe weather season (March - June) arrives, as our local stations do a good job on covering the Tornado warnings and the more violent severe t-storms. The rain that DIDN’T arrive on Saturday was a blessing in that regard. :-)
The whole project involved a lot of time on a 16’ ladder, and also getting up on the roof, but fortunately DIDN’T require bringing the mast down. A lot of connections, particularly those at the grounding busses just below the roof line needed cleaning up and resealing, and I added a little height to the main antenna. That and restoration of power to the signal preamp that mounts on the UHF portion of that antenna helped a lot with signal strength and quality. There are still some multipath problems with the closest station (the tower is under 10 miles away), so those big metal silos just to our west are still messing with the signal, BUT, it appears the preamp handles the (too strong) signal and reflections “better” when I point the antenna a bit north of that closest transmitter, which conveniently is a good overall direction for the weaker signals. I even got brief pickup of a couple St. Louis TV stations, tho/ most of the time they won’t come in.
I also revamped part of the FM radio pickup antenna & wiring, but, sound quality on FM is so poor any more that I don’t listen too it much at home any more - at least not for music. (I’d much rather pop a CD in my player, or pick out tunes on You Tube or listen to one of the Jay Sekulow Band concerts!!)
The feed to the bedroom TV needs work too, but should be much quicker, and is all indoors (in the attic though, mainly) - maybe next weekend?
All this added to the normal chores (with some catch up now that things are thawing out!) was really tough on all my joints below my belt line, so by the time it was time to go to a Valentines’ Day and “renewal of marriage vows” service @ my wife’s church yesterday early evening, I was in bad shape: My wife is Catholic and the long standing / kneeling gets a bit rough when the ol’ joints are calling for relief. The ceremony was followed by some really bland supper from some catering service, But, I hung in there, just insisting to come home early. Once back I took an Ibuprofen, flipped on the bedroom TV, kicked my shoes off & laid back... and passed out B4 getting my dress clothes off. Wifey just let me sleep... So much for V-Day romance!