A Firkroy Homecoming

After being on the road it’s good to be home. My neighbor Daryl is up to something, what could it be?

Driving up to your home after being away for over a week is always a good feeling, it was a fun trip but there's no place like home Toto. Speaking of little dogs there was Mausa, our little dog getting walked by the neighbors as were driving up. My oldest son stuck his head out of the minivan’s window, and stated calling his name as we approached the dog walking group. Mausa stopped dead in his tracks with ears at attention, and eyes all bugged out. I’m sure he thought we had abandoned him, he was just getting used to living with the neighbors with the little horse in the back yard, and a bunch of cats. He was in a jumping frenzy when the horde piled out of the minivan.

What's this? I look over at my other neighbor Daryl's house, there is a new platform under the solar panel in his garden, and on the panel is sitting a bunch off stuff. After parking the minivan in the driveway, and then unloading all of our things I get curious. I discreetly spy to see what secrets the platform has to offer, and what do I see? On the platform there is a car battery that is attached to an AC inverter, the kind that converts the 12 volt DC from the car battery into 120 volts AC. And what is all of this powering… a boombox.

OK so, let's see. In order to power a boombox in front of your house (so you can listen to Led Zeppelin) you can either:

1. Create a stand-alone solar power station to power your boombox by:

• Digging a hole.
• Planting a pole.
• Hiring a cement mixer to cement in the pole.
• Purchasing and placing a solar panel on top of the pole.
• Building a platform.
• Buying and placing a car battery on the platform.
• Buying and placing an inverter on the platform.
• Plugging the boombox into the inverter.
• Turning on boombox.

Or you could:

2. Put in four AA Energizers into your boombox, and then turn it on.

Now I’m sure the permanent solar powered boombox station could be used for other things, like lighting up the glowing orb on top of his flagpole for instance, or for a charger for AA batteries, or maybe even an automatic beer bottle opener; the possibilities are endless.

After seeing the contraption that Daryl built I decide that my iPod is seriously in need of some more music. Lucky for me I’m over 50 so everything I like to listen to is cheap. I don’t buy music from Apple, I go down to CD World and get used CDs of Alan Parsons Project’s greatest hits for $5.95 and then rip the CD with iTunes. Hey, I’m thrifty what can I say, my blog address has cheap in its name. I inherited thriftiness from my dad that’s for sure; I just don’t have his fondness for duct tape and super glue.

While I’m writing this I’m listening to my iPod to drown out all of the kid noises that are usually being produced, especially during the summer with school being out. Today my oldest boy had a friend stay the night and they’re busy killing armies of mechanized robots at 8 AM. Ah, to be young with armies of robots with lasers mounted on their shoulders at your disposal. The sound of never ending explosions on a sunny summer day, not quite the smell of napalm in the morning but they’ll have to wait until they’ve moved out of the house before they can blow up real robots.

I was able to finally get caught up on my blog a bit, and review a couple pieces of free software. Next week I’m back to being a reluctant carpenter with all sorts of summer time projects to work on. I also have moss removal duty this week; moss will grow on anything that doesn’t move in western Oregon. It will grow on your driveway, your lawn, and it will even grow on your car if you don’t drive it enough. I’ll be scrapping moss off the roof of our house today; I couldn’t get the roof to move around so of course moss grew on it. I have to get in as much outside work as I can get done in the few dry months we have.

I’ll be enjoying my oatmeal this morning with strawberries sans bug killer, and I’ll be wearing my sombrero today so I don’t get sunburned while scraping moss off of the roof. Enjoy the rest of your Monday morning, and don’t drink instant coffee, it will melt your tongue.