I was trolling satellite TV the other night when I stopped to watch an NSF lecture given by Angela Belcher of MIT.

Dr. Belcher is a professor with appointments in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and the Biological Engineering Division and has developed custom-evolved viruses to advance nanotechnology. What good is that?

Oh, my, the good is all over the place.

First, she's smart as hell and smart is hot. Second, she clearly loves what she does. She actually talked about designing experiments because they'd be "fun" and "neat." She used big words, too, but I found her enthusiasm adorable. Third, she talked about applying her research to devices like nanobatteries and semiconductors. Read more…

Happy Halloween, my little pirates.

Every year we go to the Pal's house in the Central District to scare the neighborhood. Her house was built in 1906 and is on asmall hill that rises from the sidewalk. It looms over you especially and when lit from beneath.

This year our theme is Circue du Scaree. A couple years ago, the Pal and I bought a bunch of stuff from one of those professional haunted house things---we have probably a hundred skeletons and skeleparts, dozens of cast masks and related costumage, even bollards with skulls on them to mark out the walking path. And we got the creepiest clown costumes ever. I mean, so creepy, my skin crawled carrying the headpieces to the car. And I rarely get creeped out. Read more…

Dear Santa,

I have been a very good girl. I recycle, am nice to stray animals, help old people across the street whether they want to go or not, and eat all my broccoli even though I hate it. Please bring me one of these. http://www.rockler.com/product.cfm?page=...

While your elves are handy, I'd prefer this Jet Benchtop Oscillating Spindle Sander as it's made really well (five stars on Rockler!) and will match my table saw. If this is too hard for you (or you just don't have the cash), please guilt someone reading this blog to buy one for me. Read more…

It's been a long time since we went on a ghosthunt.

The fab GF and our Pal have done several. Enough to be featured on a Discovery Channel kids' show easily debunking some true believers by replicating their "ghost" evidence and explaining what caused the phenomenon.

I am the skeptic. The fab GF is also a skeptic, but wants to believe in ghosts, while the Pal sides with the fab GF because it's funnier when they gang up on me. Those are the internal workings of our organization, The Bureau of Occult Occurences---B.O.O.

We have a woefully outdated website, a logo, and t-shirts. And we have equipment: non-contact thermometers (with and without a laser), decibel meters, video and still cameras, hidden microphones. And walkie-talkies. Read more…

Last Friday, our old septic tanks were decommissioned in a process known as pump, crush, and fill. Sorta like a certain Wall Street bail-out, only much more honest. The smell was about the same, though.

The septic guys then dug a big hole for the two new tanks. Now, before anybody starts a'wondering what's the matter with the fab GF and I that we need two 1,000 gallon tanks, let me point out that septic tanks work by separating liquid and solid waste. The liquid is pumped (or gravity fed) to a drainfield, where it is released into the soil, making some bacteria and plants very very happy. Read more…

700 entries. Blue ribbon in Open Class baking, the pink is second place in Best of Class, Heritage Recipe.

The final recipe: Read more…

I have some samples of wood pre- and post-planing, just to give an idea of what a planer can do. The first two photos are angles of the same stack of wood: Rough sawn yellow cedar from our tree, oak from a pallet, rough sawn maple from our trees, and some salvaged western red cedar.

and

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...Was it worth while to lay--
with infinite exertion--
a roof I can't live under?
--All those blueprints,
closings of gaps 20
measurings, calculations?
A life I didn't choose
chose me: even
my tools are the wrong ones
for what I have to do...

This is the kind of poem that makes me believe in poetry the way I believe in hammers. Read more…

Cocoon House offers transitional housing for homeless kids and kids booted out of foster care after turning 18. It’s a small organization, but they help a lot of kids finish high school and get some skills so they can make good choices for themselves throughout their lives. (Bet there are similar places near you, if you’re inclined to give them a hand.) Read more…

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along...

My hands were stiff this morning with scattered marks of blood from hammer and nails and wood unexpectedly sharp. My back aches from reaching and stretching around a roof I built with someone who was worker and now also friend. A roof to share with a lover and always friend. I couldn't sleep last night, I read a thriller and was bored, but sometimes if I can wear out my eyes I can fall asleep. Some nights are not meant for sleeping. Last night the rain bucketed like it does in winter. A year ago rain sounded like disaster. Now it sounds like rain. Read more…

Warning: Nine photos, big so you can see everything.

The inspector will be here before 4pm. I got all the low voltage boxes and wiring in and am sitting here covered with sawdust. Lucky me. This inspection is for our rough-in electrical. We still have the mechanical (heating and ventilation) and rough framing. Colin is delayed with the new babies, so I don’t know when he and Eric will be back to finish up. Read more…

Lots of photos. Read more…

It is hot and muggy and pretty much awful here weather-wise. I am sick of the sun and its relelntless cheerfulness. It rained last night just enough to make the air swampy. Dammit. But at least our heating system is coming along. Read more…

He slept on the Russian stove.

I first read the play when I was a kid and never understood what the hell that meant. Now I do.

Russian stoves are massive masonry structures designed to suck every last bit of heat from burning fuel that it possible can, store that energy in its masonry, and release it into the room over time. The heat is sent through a flue system that doesn’t just go straight up, but travels, and that flue system is covered with brick or stone. Koreans have a similar traditional heating system called an ondol. The Romans used something similar in the caldarium (though the floors would be too hot to walk on barefoot) to heat their bathhouses. The heat and smoke from a fire is sent through a series of chambers under a masonry floor to heat the house. Read more…

I know this guy trying to get Platinum LEED certification for the house he and his family are remodeling. He built an interesting above-ground rainwater catchment system that he was telling me about on the phone a couple weeks ago. Read more…

I don’t believe in god, but I believe in grace. A warm sun that will shine hot. The furious ecstasy of tiny pale green spiders rushing away as I pull weeds. I have broken their houses and I’m sorry. I wish they could carry their homes on their backs like snails, but I know they will rebuild what I broke knowing it will be broken again. Spiders are pragmatic.

The sting of nettles pierces a leather glove. Nettles regret nothing. It’s my own fault I wasn’t more cautious in the face of their ferocity. I have gotten what I deserve. Read more…

Warning: buttload of photos. I tried to compress them, but still…

I’ll start with the drawing for the rubble trench side of the foundation. The biggest change was the anchors weren’t j-bolts or cast-in-place, but these new Titen bolts. For shear walls inside the house, I was required to install steel all-thread in epoxy.

Installing these all are almost as fun as a root canal, which this is essentially. Drill drill drill. Scrape scrape scrape. Fill fill fill. Cry cry cry. Repeate three hundred times. I exaggerate--288 is the total as I recall. Read more…

Credit to all (and thanks to VL for being such a good host). Mistakes are mine. Please pardon me if I misrepresent your views or efforts.

Historical wrap-up: PB1.0 relied on the inherent goodness of human beings for honesty and fairness. Whoopsie.

The issues:
1. “Why should we post?” — principles, “we believe”, “progressive”
2. “Where should we post?” — decentralized structure
3. “How should we post?” — the procedures
4. “Who should post?” — those who adhere to the principles
5. “What should we post?” — truthful narrative

Why should we post? Principles

Who are we: PB2.0 is an honest broker on behalf of the progressive movement. Read more…

People have used marble chips, seashells, glass, and even porcelain from busted up toilets to create terrazzo. Basically, a cementious layer (concrete, lime-based, or now epoxy-based) is skimmed over a base, and then the aggregate is either tossed in or placed by hand and trowelled in. Then you grind. Read more…

The cupola at the top of the house has cedar siding that I stain-sealed over the past two days. That meant going up on the roof. We put a steel roof on the new house because we wanted a roof that would outlive us, was recyclable, and was safe for rainwater catchment. Capturing rainwater is illegal in this state, though no one is going to arrest you for keeping a rain barrel in your backyard.

We plan on having a cistern and wind-powered pumping system. Most of this water will end up in the front pasture, which will be pasture no more a year from now. I'd also like to have any wind-generator towers there as that pasture is farthest from the trees. Read more…

I got a call from Ryan, aka #424205, on Friday. He asked me if he was supposed to answer the quiz questions I sent him on the phone or by mail. Mail I answered. Then he said he didn't want to go to the law library because they lock you in for three hours and he thought he'd be able to define "habeas corpus" a lot sooner than that.

I promised to send a longer list. You should see the list I have for him now.

There is no lending library at the county jail. The only book you get is a bible (I did give him a bible verse to look up) and though they'll let you borrow other books, they're all stamped, "Chaplain." Ryan said he borrowed a book on meditation but he's using it for a pillow. Read more…

Several days of rain---well, the plants need it and it will replenish the creek.

The creek doesn’t cross our property, but it cuts across the property of our neighbors. Most of them stay well back of the banks to protect the fish and other wildlife. Some don’t give a damn. The tweakers across the street haven’t had electricity or water for almost four months and they use it for their water supply. Every few days someone slips out of the woods with a couple of five gallon buckets. Read more…

[Welcome, Suburban Guerilla readers!]

It’s raining. I think of the song, “Summer Wind,” as sung by the brainy kid Martin on The Simpsons after he’s been de-pantsed.

Summer rain sticks to everything. A year ago we would bungee down all the tarps we had on everything. The moment the sun came out, we’d tent the tarps up. As long as everything was on the ground it was only annoying. Once the bale walls were up, though, the tarps had to come down, then go back up, then come down, and back up.

We have too many very large blue tarps, several medium-sized white tarps, and some black plastic. I try to re-use, but plastic will rot in the sun, not to completely gone but only to completely useless. But we do the best we can, mindful that the goal of the house we are building is that after we are both dead, the structures can be demolished and every part recycled. With the exception of some plastic window sill pans and plumbing, we have so far succeeded. Except for the tarps.

The only person who hates the tarps more than me and the fab GF is our carpenter, Ryan. Mostly because the three of us would have to set them up and take them down and set them up and take them down ad nauseum. It was the only time the fab GF and I would bicker (my fault mostly) and it made him uncomfortable.

Late August last year we set blocking from the top plate of the bale walls to the cupola so we could hang the tarps. And about that time Ryan got MRSA. Read more…

Not because of horse races or laziness. No garden because we started building the house last year and I can't do anything outside until that is done.

We live on five acres in what hipsters would kindly call the bumfuckmiddleofnowhere. My fab GF and I both work at home, have for years, which is a house of less than 600 square feet and poor construction. I won't say the small house looks like raccoons built it as I'm pretty sure raccoons have better construction skills.

For fourteen years we planned and saved to build our house next to this one. Read more…