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Showing posts from June 27, 2010

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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I have an apartment in Duluth. What a great deal. It is a 1050 Sq feet with a wood burning fireplace in between the den and living room, washer, dryer, exercise room, gated community, swimming pool all for 713.00 a month. I chickened out on buying a place on the lake right away. There appeared to be good deals in this market, but I still have to learn more. I snapped this on a 777 aircraft the other day. Some people will bring anything on as a "carry on."
I was woke up last night about 1:00 AM. There appeared to be a party going on in the room next door. It wasn't totally loud. There wasn't any banging on the walls or anything. But it did wake me up and I didn't really get back to sleep for the rest of the night. When I went down for breakfast I noticed a "do not disturb" sign on my neighbors door. I was thinking these folks don't need that. So, I took it with me.
Here is a poem, sent to me, worthy of repeating. "Designed to Fly" by Ellen Waterston After ten hours of trying the instructor undid my fingers, peeled them one by one off the joystick. "You don't need to hold the plane in the air," he advised. "It's designed to fly. vA hint of aileron, a touch of rudder, is all that is required." I looked at him like I'd seen God. Those props and struts he mentioned, they too, I realized, all contrived. I grew dizzy from the elevation from looking so far down at the surmise: the airspeed of faith underlies everything. Lives are designed to fly.
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I drove down to Florida over the weekend to visit with my Mom and Sister. I purposely retraced some of the roads I used a long time ago. I rode my KZ400 motorcycle to Florida alone 30 years ago (almost to the day). The roads looked a lot the way I remembered them. Although there were more fancy houses and Dollar General stores. The roads commonly had that "go on forever" look and drove into the vanishing point of tall trees. And yes, I did get a speeding ticket from a local sheriff.