Snowball

Ceres (image snagged from google images)

On my last visit to my sisters, I got to reminiscing about my old thoughtHobby posts to old online service GEnie, and maybe a bit later when yahoo started up, as I seem to recall posting images of my ideas drawn in HyperCard on the mac...I have them still, and maybe will dig them out and start up a blog of my thoughtHobbies...I'm not sure why I think these things up...I think it's city stress...such stress tends to turn ones thoughts to ufos and such...:)...anyway, back on GEnie, in Jerry Pournelle's 'original blog', his GEnie forum, there was chit chat about space travel and space ship designs...last I looked,  Pournelle on his blog, which he has doggedly maintained to this date, reported failing health...on GEnie, I was much charmed that one could post chat to a known author's threads, and while hesitant at first, I actually got some attention for a couple posts...one was about the atmosphere that would be made on the moon if industrial work and mining was done there...and I went on about what would a volume of water would do in earth orbit...would it freeze solid, or ablate, and melt away...I think one argument for no water on the moon then was that it would just evaporate away--light gravity, sunlight...but on my own, I studied out what would happen to water, and to be certain, I'm still not certain, but earth's distance from the sun is called the 'goldilocks' zone...it's where water can have it's three phases--ice water gas...and I think they have found frozen water in the moon's soil at the shaded poles...so I went with the thought  water would freeze solid  in earth's orbit, and one could build a spaceship with it...I've just been googling 'ice spaceship', and remarkably, there's not much...it's seems a natural, doesn't it?, to build things in space with ice--igloos on the moon!..."How big a spaceship we talking about, DavidDavid?"....oh...a mile in diameter at least, ten miles would be nice...."And where will you get that much water!!???...One very long straw...but making one wasn't my thought so much, I was considering there might already be one....Arthur C. Clarke wrote of a generation spaceship...these are spaceships that travel at modest speeds, and take generations to travel from one star to another...Brian Aldiss did a great novel about one...and Clarke's was huge...had a dinosaur habitat inside....anyway, invisioning my Snowball:...the surface was thick and frozen...the middle had like a nuclear power plant for heat...so between the middle and the surface, there was liquid water...the one idea for an ice ship I saw in the google images, proposes a torus that would rotate, and so provide gravity...there are like three real big drawbacks to space travel...radiation, no gravity, and distances...and of course getting off and on planets and moons...radiation and no gravity adversely affect our health, and we just don't live long enough to travel the long distances...but back to my Snowball...the frozen surface I imagined could be landed on by a conventional metal spacecraft, and melt it's way into the interior through the frozen surface, making an effective 'airlock'...remembering this feature, I wonder if an airlock of ice could be made, and one could melt they're way back and forth in a pod for such...climb in your suit, climb in the pod...heat, melt, exit...rinse..."This is all too far afield, DavidDavid!"...yes, I knowknow...but I like to watch the TV show 'Elementary' about a modern day Sherlock Holmes...in one episode, Sherlock was falling asleep standing up, and had a contraption that dropped a metal frying pan or something on the floor when ever he leaned over with sleep, so waking him in the self same moment he was falling asleep...explaining what he was about to Watson, he referred to Salvador Dali the artist, who would do such things to study his dreams....I googled that, and it's a real thing...Dali did that...that, is a thoughtHobby being pursued!...and in another episode, Sherlock is studying a mysterious book of plants and writing from the fifteenth century....another one!...very odd show...but the nice thing about thoughtHobbies is they are safe in one's own noggin...or blog...but the Snowball has had my interest of late, because there are real Snowballs out there...giant balls of water with frozen crusts...Ceres, Ganymede, Pluto, and likely many more out there in the ort cloud...and as things would have it, the space probe Dawn is approaching Ceres, and the space probe New Horizon is approaching Pluto, both soon, like between now and July, to begin providing close up pics!...Very cool...

Carrot Tops

Maya looking out the dog door....

vanity, vanity...

Carrot tops....

...the last layer of stucco, stuck!...success!

There isn't a single square foot of the old House that doesn't require something...I made a hinged drop door ramp for a dog door door, and Maya was slipping on it, so I found at Home Depot some turf to put on the board, I used rounded headed screws, but Maya chewed it all off, so I put another piece down today with waterproof wood glue, and she's started to chew it off too, but maybe by tomorrow the glue will set and it'll stay...that was one dog door frustration...the other was I wanted to use eye hook clip things to keep it up and shut sometimes, and I've done that, but they only just hold, as the wood they're screwed into around the dog door is old and rotten, subterranean termites I suspect, which seemed to have left due to the dryness...Maya is sure to pull the hooks out..new ones today have the locking clips...the ones without didn't deter, though I'm pleased at her clever persistence...my folks had a handyman enclose the back porch and make a small room...it's nice, but musty because of the old wood...I sleep out there with Maya most of the night, and she's learned to go out the dog door for poo and pee, so I don't have to walk her...my tenant gets up before dawn, and so she can water her garden and such, I trundle back to my room, the den, put Maya in the carrier, and back to sleep until sunup, sometimes past sunup...and then feed Maya and get myself going...a routine...but the whole porch needs to torn out for the most part, a realization from just trying to get the dog door to work...overcast, some clouds, cool...a good evening for the final stucco coat, and with much trepidation, went about it...got a good tip on youtube how to mix the cement in my wheelbarrow...use a hoe, one with holes best, and pile the cement in one end of the barrow, add water, and hoe it bit by bit...my own innovation was to get it too soupy, and then add dry cement until the right consistency...a bit like doing bread dough...I made pizza pie blanks for awhile!...when I thought I had the right mix, I put some on the trowel, and trowled it on the wall, and it stayed on pretty much like in the youtube clips!...and I quickly covered the whole patch...and feel very lucky the stucco is on there...I've even got it pretty level with the rest of the wall...keeping it wet now all night and tomorrow...meanwhile, this morning I spied in the garden experiment plot, carrot tops, so not a fail, not very many, but, carrot success too!

Radishes

if I should perish
these words do cherish
'would you like a radish?'

devil grass

no id weed

no id bug

Last two rows are the radishes...first three were the
carrots which didn't sprout--planted too deep, I think...

Stuck on Stucco

The radishes, like Puppy Maya, grow overnight, and this morning I was delighted to see their red tops!...carrots are a fail, I planted them too deep, and having watched the youtube clips, know now how to plant them...the devil grass, and one weed of some sort, have come up too, which was expected...a few of the radish leaves have been nibbled on....don't know if the black bug was the culprit...put another layer of stucco on the wall patch...different mix, faster drying, and too fast...dried before I could scratch it deep enough...but it will be okay I think for next final layer...used different mix because the bags were lighter!...fifty pounds as opposed to eighty...sigh...wimp out now at eighty pounds!...and studied more stucco youtubeclips...it's a fascination, kinda like repairing teeth!..to patch the hole in the wall properly, I gather, I would have to break out enough for eight inches of the old paper to be available to slide the new under at the top, and like six inches on the sides...in front of the house, one small area of stucco has bulged out, and some fine line cracks here and there on the house...nothing with the stucco is a serious problem, the hole just had a board over it for years, and behind, the interior wasn't damaged...just a tiny bit of black mold...but the house, and all the neighborhood houses, are getting up in years...many have re-stucco, and I'm curious if the new stucco was put on over the old...I'm keeping an eye out for building sight doing stucco--curious to see just how the commercial application is done...a job doing stucco would seem a pretty secure career choice!...early overcast, clearing sunny warm...it being Earth Day, I thought to link a satellite web cam, but can't find one...hmmph...and here's a Mother Earth article about dioxin pesticides...which I happened on while re-reading tales of agent orange...Maya is incorrigible,  chew chew chew......

Maya Sand

Gathered the cameras, dusted, recharged the batteries, and wrestled Maya into Silver's passenger seat, and off...rolled out to Balboa in the Evening...okay for Dogs on Beach there after 4:30...Maya likes sand...and my shirt sleeve and pant cuff...took the Ferry back and forth...and wanted to go out on the Pier...but sign said 'No Dogs on Pier'...but I've seen them on Pier...I have pics of Dogs on Pier...hmmph...but being sign obedient sort, I was content with being able to go on the Beach with Maya...most OC beaches don't allow this, at least my favorite, Dana Point...but I've seen Dogs on Beach there too...maybe pics....sunny hot clear blue...radishes okay, but I don't know what's going on with the carrots...I planted them too deep, I suspect...I've been back and forth to Bakersfield three times to visit, and go to vet, but Beach this evening was Maya's first out and about in the Big World...seeing through Puppy eyes, it is a really Big, and very strange, World!

Stucco patch progress...

Rolled over to Home Depot to get some smaller trowels...the triangular one did the trick of getting the stucco cement into the edges...and I mixed the cement better...not so much fell off!...the right consistency is nearly dry...just a few sprits past dry with the hose...and thorough mixing...but I don't think the scratches I've made are deep enough to hold the next 'brown' coat...but will see...doing the repair, I've contemplated how ubiquitous stucco walls are in SoCal...and how ancient a tool a trowel...sunny hot clear blue...Maya looked on impatient for a walk, and to play with her favorite chew toy...me!...oh...I've been going to school on this site's youtube clips...they're very good, and entertaining!...link to one, at conclusion one can link to more:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIO4dlgvdyE and here link to their 'profile': https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZ1wkNnjD06gYLeDFRW7hNQ

Deer House Garage

My photo of the Deer House (a site with some thoughts on the Deer House) Garage photo isn't very clear, and the photo is very clear, taken I imagine with a big format camera, and it has an unusual mix of darks and lights..sometimes I browse for old Valley things...it was offered by a site called 'HistoricMapWorks'...photo was taken when House was new, like 1920s or so (link to photo) (update:site has it photo taken in 1978!)...and it's a copy of an original negative the site has, I'm guessing...sunny hot blue...the stucco repair goes slowly...kinda feeling my way with it...problem with the prep is I couldn't really match the new barrier paper with the old...one is supposed to slide new under old, like shingles...but that just wasn't possible where the studs are...broke out to the studs on either side, so hole is a giant now!...and on either side, don't see quite how to make the papers match properly...one thing I picked up from youtube, is to put some insulation in the wall for support...but found that after I nailed everything in place, and just crinkeled the paper with wire mesh at the edges and jammed it in...not code, I gather!...the first substrate for a stucco wall is the black barrier paper...I'd planned to get a roll, and put on two layers like recommended, but Home Deport sold me the paper with mesh, which is like the paper with mesh on the House already, so went with that...hmmph...I'll get the stucco on for now best I can (yes, it falls off easy), but at some point may tear it all out, and do it over...thought is to use a small hand star drill, and carefully widen the hole trying not to damage the old paper and mesh so I'll have enough to work with...though the studs are stll a puzzle...another puzzle is how to score better with my WOW Feral Druid...scoreboard is best I've had so far, and usually my damage score, and a lot of others running Feral Druids, is like only a third of what I did in that game, which was unique...a close game, long lasting, and I get healed and stayed alive a lot...game was in the 90-99 bracket...my toon is over 100 now, and can get Honor gear like I have on my Death Knight...and I'm finally playing with keybinding instead of using the mouse...in fact, I don't use the mouse at all...I still use the keys for my movements, and have bound keys all over the board so I don't hardly need the mouse...much fun to play this way, as I can keep my eyes on the game, and I stay at one view point for most part, and it's pretty close up view...using the mouse roller button, one can go from a far away bird's eye view, to so close you don't see your own toon...I'm not that close up, yet...it's a different sorta challenge to play close up...curious if I can hide the action bars and still use them!...Maya sleeping at my sister's during my last visit there...she's outside now here...I'm trying to get her to like being outside in the backyard so much that that will be the one place for pee and poo...not so at the moment!....the radishes are coming up, but no carrots, yet...my tenant is harvesting cucumbers in her little garden patch in the backyard, which has survived Maya's curiosity so far!

Carrots and Radishes

 

Today, I got Maya Big Dog rawhide chew bones...she's going to
be a Big Dog!



Carrots and Radishes

Maya a week ago...in the shade...

(...evening before dig...)

...while I was in the Sun picking out the Bermuda grass...

...shoveled the dirt back, and cleaned up...

...the lower window frames' bottoms are warped, and a giant hole
in the stucco by the faucet...I..I delay painting while contemplating
how to go about such repairs!

...found another use for my backpacking sleeping pad...and shovel...

Oh, while making the post, Maya figured out the Dog Door...it's in the end wall of the Porch made over into a room...she came in once this morning, I'd left it open, and after some scratching on the screen door that I heard, she showed up on her own in my den...but the real success is this afternoon, after I had loosely blocked the door, she knocked that away, and came in...I'm not safe anymore in my bunk...it's about two feet off the floor...and Maya can stand, put her paws on top, and grab anything near the edge, usually me!...soon enough she'll just be able to hop up...and hopefully by then the incessant chewing growing stage will be over!...sunny hot blue...preparing the little garden was exhausting...still have most of it to plant the seeds, but want to try and paint this one side of the house, and then plant the seeds, and then move on to next house section with same routine, working from the ground up...prepping a garden is a bit like prepping a canvas...one wonders what will show up!