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Showing posts from February 8, 2009

Carbon Monoxide!?

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Weird. The smoke alarm went off, not incredibly odd when I am using the fireplace, but it wasn't the smoke detector. It was the CO alarm. I was totally surprised. It had never gone off as long as I have had one, over many many years. Yep, after resetting it a few times. It was getting a reading over 200 ppm CO. When I took it downstairs I got a reading near 300 ppm. I started getting light headed at this point. After thinking maybe the furnace heat exchanger failed and puzzling around a bit I figured out what happened. As part of the huge winter storm that recently covered almost half of the US, we lost our electricity. So, being well prepared, I rolled out the generator and started doing what I normally do. The generator (although it was completely outside) was creating CO to get in the house. Using the fireplace draft (and possibly other leaks) the whole house created a vacuum around the seal of the basement garage door. After the CO got into the house the forced air heat...
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It has gotten unseasonable warm in the last couple of days. Anything above freezing is really welcome except for the mud that accompanies the warm weather. I still have the tire changer in the back of my truck because I don't want to create a mud pit with moving the machines around to unload it. I am selling furniture of my Mom's and charging extra for delivery. I often forget the conveniences of owning a pickup truck. I booked a vacation in Costa Rica. I will stop in in Florida to visit my Mom in her new home and then off to Southern Costa Rica. The destination is off the beaten path and there is not a lot of tourism there yet. There is fantastic fishing and it is really economical compared to other places. It is an "all exclusive" vacation. No tour, no resort, no planned meals, no organization. I will be checking out real-estate for sale. This is the plane at the destination airport for the last leg of the journey over the rain forests over Costa Rica.
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I am back from the most recent NYC adventure. It was an easy drive at about 3.5 hours and another hour onto Long Island. We had dinner with a couple of ardent and interesting Jazz musicians. One of them teaches music in the public schools in the South Bronx. The other was an Irish imigrant. There was some excellent conversation in, from and about the Red Hook District of Brooklyn. There is quite a revitalization going on. You can feel the tension between property owners. Overall, it looks like it is going in a positive direction. I also got to do a couple of city-firsts for me. I walked across the Brooklyn Bridge which was quite a thrill as well as visiting the Egyptian obelisk in Central Park. The view from Red Hook over to the Statue of Liberty was very nice. The Tire Changer turned out to be an even better than planned deal. The seller was a great ebay'r. The glove on the constantine wire spoke of an interesting tale. What made the context even more interesting was the Pol...
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