Frigid week,

This time of year I don't do much during the week, mostly just some cleanup and other stuff.  I did go and pick up the fixed tractor tire on Monday.  Ouch.  

Tuesday I went and checked on the tote of dirt I got from Uncle Jim, since it could still be generating its own heat and it is in a plastic container.  It was literally frozen into a single solid brick.  

 

It might have been because it was rather chilly outside though.  A nice frosty -7 Tuesday morning.

 

We had our Christmas potluck last week too.  I made ziti.  I made it in the crock pot and then just used the keep warm setting on the crock pot to keep it warm.  It worked, and the crock pot didn't crack in the oven, so it is something I might do going forward.

 

Late in the week, the first shipment from the new meal plan came in.   It was packaged quite well, and still very frozen despite being left outside most of the day.  

 

I got two weeks worth roughly.  It filled my little fridge.

 

I also rearranged the second room and folded up the futon.  I intend to use it to make a mockup of the box truck.

 

The weekend was kind of annoying.  It wasn't supposed to snow at all, but each day from Wednesday on I woke up to this.  This is why I quickly go from "snow is pretty" to "snow sucks, winter is getting old" now.  I literally lost the entire weekend because of snow that wasn't supposed to exist, since I am not pulling out my table saw and jackery when it is snowing.  Surprisingly I haven't had any troubles with the driveway, though the CR-V has greatly exceeded expectations with regard to its snow performance.  It is far superior to the truck to be honest, and doesn't even spin going up and down.  The truck I have to put it in 4WD and lock the diff, and it still spins going up and down.  And the truck has more aggressive tires on it, and several hundred pounds of weight in the back.  Too bad the CR-V doesn't start under 20 degrees.  I will be getting a new battery soon though.

 

I did get the tire put on the tractor and clear the edge of the road.  It is scraped down (other than the unplanned weekend snow) so there isn't a pile there anymore.  I tried to drive it up the hill for the carport work.  It made it, but it was on the edge of sliding down.  

 

I also finally got around to replacing the fill valve in the toilet.

  

 

It turned out most of the brown was silt and sediment, none of which should be passing through the filter, but at least most of it washed right out of the bowl. 

 

I replaced the seat too with a not-as-cold one.  If anyone wants the old one, it is in perfectly fine condition.

  

Afterwards I went and helped Anx with some shelving in his garage on Saturday.

 

Sunday snowed again (shocker).  I went and got all my Christmas presents and stuff ready, and started emptying out the car.

 

I also started to lay out the other room.  Just as a reminder, this is the floorplan.

 

It looks tight.  It also looks like I might have to find a new futon, one that folds better.  

 

This will probably be the last update before Christmas.   

Dull Snowy weekend.

Another week that was pretty quiet.  Friday I worked from home, so I had a little time to get stuff done during the day.  I got the tire taken off the tractor.  It turns out it doesn't use a standard lug, so my 4 way didn't fit, but thankfully I had the socket and a breaker bar, it is a 19mm.  

 

It turns out nobody keeps tractor tires in stock.  The Kubota dealer doesn't do any tires.  They sent me to a place in Westminster VT that didn't have any.  So I went to Bob's.  He didn't have any either, but could get one Monday, so I should have a new tire either today or tomorrow morning at the latest.  Those little tires are expensive, they are 100 bucks. 

 

While I was out trying to find tires, I went and picked up Heather's bike.  It admittedly wasn't cheap to replace the shifter that I broke when I tried to adjust it, but oh well.  The bike will be coming down at Christmas.   

 

Saturday I just didn't do much.  I did discover a new problem.  The switch that turns off the water in my toilet has failed.  It never turns off, but the float switch goes up and down.  That looks kind of grody for having a whole house filter too, which is something I still need to get looked at.  

 

Sunday I was getting restless, so I went out and did some shoveling.  I found a bunch of deer tracks in the back yard.

 

My goal was to get the CR-V free.  On my way down to the end of the driveway, I noticed some green in the driveway.  The only thing that has gone up and down the driveway at this point was the truck, so perhaps I will need to keep a closer eye on the coolant levels.

 

The turkeys have been very active down by the road. 

 

The rest of the driveway has settled enough for the CR-V, so it was only down by the road that needed to be cleared.  It took a while, and it actually peeled up better than I expected.

 

The rest of the driveway is still pretty rough, but not bad enough for me to care.  Everything I own can drive over it.  The CR-V didn't even spin driving up, despite the less aggressive tires.

 

It didn't want to start since I still haven't replaced the battery, but it did and I got it cleared off.  I took a trip into Keene since I was out of milk.  I didn't get to Home Depot for stuff for the toilet since it was Sunday and they closed early, but oh well.  My regular shopping trip is tonight.  

 

Annoyingly the back wiper on the car tore itself apart, and the auto parts store was already closed.  Another stop for tonight, though I might have a spare that I got with the car, I will have to double check. 

 

The other thing that I did was that I finally signed up for the next attempt at a meal service.  This time I went with Clean Eatz.  They are a cheaper one, but they are all frozen, so hopefully there will be less issues with shipping.  They also aren't a subscription, you just buy them when you need them, which is nicer.  But I got two weeks for less than a single week of Factor, albeit with a 30% intro coupon.  I of course had to try their Mac N Cheese set.

Unfortunate early winter. Trailer testing done.

Before heading down for Thanksgiving, I managed to get a little bit of stuff done.  I went and started the winterizing of my equipment, beginning with the push mower (since it is the only thing I have that runs right).  On my way back, I realized that I never finished cleaning up the stuff from the trench.  Oops.

 

The push mower really didn't want to start, but it did, and it ran like crap the first minute or so after starting because it was kind of chilly out.  To my surprise since I don't normally leave lots of gas in my equipment, it was completely full.  Since I run everything empty every winter (I have had too many issues with fuel stabilizer over the years), I finally went out and mowed for the first time since July.  I only did spot mowing; so I did the tall stuff on the hillside that hadn't been mowed since the first mowing of the season, the strip of thick stuff on the drain field.  

 

I also did the side over by the tiny home, which hadn't been mowed since June-ish.  It really needed it.  

 

I also took a pass off the stuff encroaching on the driveway.  

 

From there I just let it finish running out of gas, there wasn't much left.

 

After that, my help for the carport bailed for the weekend, so I took off to KY.  I remembered to turn on my gas furnace, just in case.  I am not sure I trust the mini-splits yet.

 

The sunrise in Maryland was quite nice.   The actual sunrise picture I took was completely blown out though, not sure what my phone was doing.  

 

A couple of things happened while I was down there.  I fixed the back door on the girl's place.  Realized that I didn't have enough stuff for the dishwasher cart, though I put the finishing touches on the design.  

 

I also got the ball rolling on their Christmas present, a new heat pump.  It was a bit more than I wanted to spend, but it will pay off in the long run for them, even despite not being a terribly efficient unit.  The furnace and AC in the place were original from 1985.   

 

The other big thing was the camper.  I helped Dad fix the awning clips and took it for a ride.  This was to gather the last data point I needed before making the decision on the box truck versus building a custom trailer; fuel economy estimates.  I have a pretty good idea of what I can expect from a box truck (~15mpg, maybe a little less if I don't do aerodynamic improvements).  I knew what hit naturally aspirated engines took when towing, but my truck is the new twin turbo smaller engines that are seemingly all the rage nowadays.  

 

I did a two part trip.  The first was to drive most of the way to West Virginia on the interstate.  I then took country roads (route 60) back to my parents.  Annoyingly on the trip all my drinks and everything were frozen since I had left them in the truck all week.

 

The results were a bit disappointing.  The truck towed really really nice, other than Ford's defaults for trailer brakes was to not use them which is stupid.  I set the cruise at 60mph, which is roughly where I used to run in the Tundra while towing.  I almost couldn't feel the trailer behind me, and had plenty of power, even enough to pass people.  That said, the gas mileage was significantly less than I had hoped for.  On perfect flat ground the highest instantaneous was 12.  The average with the hills and whatnot thrown in was 9.4mpg.  I expected interstate to be bad, but not that bad.  

 

The way back I averaged around 11.5-11.6mpg (I could math it out, but have been too lazy too), and the whole test averaged 10.3mpg (the computer claimed 10.6mpg, but the actual was a tiny bit lower).  The way back is country roads, where speed limits range from 45-55mph but you go through all the little towns.  11.6mpg is actually better than both my Tundra and my Dad's truck, but I was still expecting better.  My truck's baseline is 24mpg empty.  The Tundra's baseline was 18-19mpg, and my dad's truck is 17-18mpg.  So the drop for my truck while towing is quite a bit steeper.  I had intended to run a second test in tow/haul mode, but these results were poor enough that it wasn't worth the time or fuel.

 

My truck only has a 3.5L V6 with twin turbos on it, and on paper it puts out a lot more HP and tons more torque than the V8 it replaced, but when those turbos spin up the gas mileage drops like a rock, and with a trailer they were spun up nearly the entire time.  Just goes to show that there really isn't a substitution for a larger engine when towing.  But this data point more or less made the decision to go box truck really easy.  For a recap, see this spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1joS0cnFslyhG_VrULZ0k2euPrD8esFoRLtT72rFiR0Y/edit?usp=sharing  but in short, I concluded that the trailer was better as a long term house, mostly because the size limitations were not an issue, but had distinct disadvantages when traveling; the box truck was more travel friendly, but because of the parking situation, had significant trade offs with regards to living space.

 

The drive home was quite pleasant, albeit a bit windy.  

 

I got home before the first big snowstorm of the season.  Because it was dark when I got out of work on Monday, I pulled the tractor down (it was up by the shed still).  I still don't have the snowblower on it, but figured I could use the bucket, at least for the bit down by the road.  Turns out when I pulled it down I knocked the tire completely off the rim, and it would no longer take air this morning.  That is annoying.  Fortunately we only got around 8", so I just put the truck in 4WD and drove over it.  It will make an icy mess, but oh well, I don't have much of an option at this point.  The tractor started right up though, which was a relief since it hadn't started in months.  

While I have the truck out, I intend to go shopping and stuff tonight.  Before Thanksgiving, I was running a test of alternatives to the Kraft Deli Deluxe cheese.  It recently went up to $7.19 per pound, and I typically get two pounds a week.  It is the single largest line item on my shopping list.  Here were the results (scores were out of 10): 

• Cabot singles: 6 - Not enough cheaper to warrant a change
• Hannaford Deli cheese - 3 - This is still the buttery cheese that pushed me to Kraft in the first place
• Hannaford Deluxe - 6 - The cheese Aunt gets, it is rather weak flavored, but not bad. 
• Land o' Lakes pre-sliced - 6 - A decent cheese, but also not cheap, albeit cheaper than Kraft.  Slices were too thin though, so I consume a lot more of it.
• Walmart Deluxe - 8 - Probably the best cheese outside of Kraft.  A touch salty, but strongly flavored and about half the cost. 
• Market Basket deluxe - 1 - Disgusting, worse than eating straight butter. 
• Market Basket singles - 7 - It surprises me how different this was from the deluxe.  This was a weaker flavored version that tasted like the Walmart Deluxe.

Walmart is not part of my weekly rotation of stores mostly because I don't like going in there, and I already have three stores that I visit weekly.  That said, I do still get non-grocery stuff there, so I am there once a month or so.  So I think I will just buy Walmart cheese in bulk when I do go there, and if I run out, the Market Basket singles can bridge a gap if I don't want to run to Walmart that week.  I do have a few others to try, there are a couple of bulk options to try at Market Basket (Great Eastern Lakes cheese for example), but at least for now I will be moving ahead with Walmart cheese and Market Basket singles.  

 

The rest of this week will be spent dealing with snow, since it is too cold for the next week to melt off.  I definitely need to do something this weekend about the carport. My walk behind snowblower did not start, but I kind of expected that.  It is still up the hill, so I tried to pull start it (no electric) and it wouldn't go.  It doesn't start easy with the electric start though, so I am not surprised.  If I can't get it to start though, it might be time to buy an electric power shovel or something though.

Interesting ferry ride. Lots of turkey consumed.

Not too much happened last week, it was mostly unpack from the LAN, prepare for the next excursion.  As an addendum to my previous post though, winter definitely wants to come early this year.  It didn't stick for more than a day or two, but it is coming.  

 

I discovered something at work, I have never seen an ethernet cable with grease in it, but apparently burial rated ethernet is greased like this.  Interesting, and really messy to work with since I am making a bunch of patch cables for a new patch panel. 

 

I went to Krass' for a friendsgiving over the weekend.  I decided to take the ferry because Amtrak has jacked up their rates to where they aren't really really cheaper anymore, despite the fact that the ferry is quite expensive on its own.  The way down was quite nice other than the fact you have to drive through CT to get there.  

 

That is a big cleat.

 

After taking in the water for a bit since I had almost the whole outdoor deck to myself, I went and whipped up some dinner and started to disassemble the conversion.  I got the web of bungee cords that held the microwave and stuff on top in place taken apart.  I can see out the back again.

 

The friendsgiving was a lot of fun, and there was a lot of cheese.  Krass smoked some as well.  He used cherry, which came out better than the applewood that I tried.  I might have to try again.

 

Loki is getting long in the tooth, but still loves the attention.

 

Interestingly, there is still some color down on Long Island.

 

The ferry ride home was something else.  There was a gale warning, and the water was rough and reflected that.  Keeping in mind that this ship can hold at least 70 cars, so it is very big, the spray was reaching the passenger level above the car bay.  The announcer on the PA system at the end was them kicking people off the outdoor decks.

 

I tried but failed to catch a video of the cars bouncing the ferry was hitting the water so hard.  The boat was rocking really good too.  I did get a video of that.  For a ship that size, that is a lot of rocking.  

 

I tried to get video of the waves, but it didn't really come out very good, and the wind pretty much drowned out my voice despite the phone being about a foot from my face.

 

There weren't a lot of cars on it though.  Driving home through CT was only aggravating, it wasn't downright awful like normal. 

I still need to make a decision as to when I am driving down for Thanksgiving.  There is a possibility of heavy snow on Saturday (they keep going back and forth between rain and snow), and the latest report puts it on Friday, but if the weather is not going to allow me to work on the carport, I might drive down Thursday into Friday like I normally do.  If I can work on the carport this weekend I might drive down Sunday night into Monday