When I parked Maya’s tiny house in the backyard last year, I did so with the aid of a rented 1-ton pickup truck. I wanted the house situated as close as possible to the walk-out entrance to my basement shop. This would make all subsequent finishing work that much easier. Unfortunately, this parking location was not level, causing the house to list 3.7 degrees to one side. This, in turn, we believe, is the root cause of some water leakage into the house. The challenge; how to lift in place one side of a 7-ton house so that it rests 6 inches above grade. I managed the task with the aid of two 12-ton hydraulic bottle jacks and a cross brace I fabricated from wood to perfectly position the jacks beneath the axles. Using a series of three incremental lifts, the tires now rest on top of a pair of stacked platforms I constructed from scrap wood. The entire operation took 3 hours and cost $50 for the bottle jacks.
It is very sad when the highlight of your day is passing a kidney stone. Fortunately, this was a relatively small one (a third the size of my last one) and did not cause much pain. My last set of kidney stones required surgical intervention, so as things go, I have nothing to complain about. Jeanine has been very supportive, encouraging me to drink more water. My diet during the lockdown, hours spent at my computer, and a general reduction in physical activity have not been helping matters. I can’t wait for a return to my normal work routine.
While our community remains in lockdown, Jeanine and I have been trying to get out for a late afternoon walk each day. Today, I grabbed my drone as we hiked on our local rail trail. The route takes us around a body of water that did not exist when we moved into our home. It was subsequently created by a couple of industrious beavers. For such a small animal, it is amazing the impact they can have on their local environment. Our house is located about 500 yards from the far shore.
Sunday dinner included this beet-based Rossoli salad and cheeseburgers. It was a very nice combination of healthy and not-so-healthy food. The recipe is from Jeanine’s memoir cookbook and we used the opportunity to get a proper photograph. For the book, I think I might replace the white background with a kitchen countertop background scene.
The Quabbin Reservoir is an hour and a half drive from our home. It provides the drinking water for Boston and is carried there by a series of underground tunnels the longest of which is 25 miles and terminates at the Wachusett Reservoir. When the Quabbin was created, the towns of Dana, Enfield, Greenwich and Prescott had to be abandoned and now lie at the bottom of the 150-foot deep reservoir. Soaring above the Quabbin are a number of Bald Eagles, reintroduced here in 1982. This morning, Jeanine and I and our good friend Aliza drove out to the Quabbin and hiked into a location known for good sightings. We were rewarded for the 4-mile hike when Jeanine spotted this mature eagle flying to a perch.
The collective noun for a group of geese on the ground or in the water is a gaggle; when in flight, they are called a skein, a team, or a wedge; when flying close together, they are called a plump. When they are swimming in family formation they are just called damn cute.
Jeanine joined me on my daily delivery run to Digital Alloys (some packages are being shipped to my house to provide a signature on receipt). Afterward, we did a little hiking in the nearby Shawsheen River Conservation Area. Less than a mile from the office it was one of my favorite noon-time walks when I was working at iRobot. Then it was on to Mikey’s Famous Roast Beef to pick up sandwiches for everyone at home. It felt great to be out in the spring air and I am really looking forward to getting out more often as the weather improves.
Despite an initially good wash cycle, my recent attempt to repair our dishwasher by replacing the turbidity sensor was not successful. Today, I removed the unit entirely and did a complete teardown of the drainage system. I discovered the drain pump impeller shaft completely wrapped in hair and the various drain hoses filled with all manner of gross debris. After an hour of thorough cleaning, I returned the unit to service and the first wash looked good. I will wait for a couple more days this time before declaring victory.
When I went to work this morning (in my study), I noticed that Kyle had set up his tent in the music room (which is currently serving as his office). He received it as a Christmas present from Jeanine and I. This weekend, he is planning to take his girlfriend camping and wanted to do a dry run of the setup. Initially, I thought he might be taking the whole quarantine directive way too seriously.
Dinner this evening was courtesy of Nico who prepared a chicken stir fry. He shares his mother’s passion for preparing delicious food and has become quite proficient in the kitchen. Mondays are always my busiest workday so I had little time for anything else today. We are trying to think ahead to when the non-essential business lockdown is lifted, potentially as soon as May 4. It will be anything but business as usual and we are thinking through all the ways we can continue to flatten the curve once operations recommence.
Jeanine and I enjoyed an afternoon 13-mile bike ride on the Nashua River Rail Trail. We picked up the trail in Groton and headed north. Because the trail was rather crowded, we decided to come back via back roads instead. I took advantage of the Superpedestrian Copenhagen wheel on my bike to keep up with Jeanine who is a far more fit cyclist than I. While the electric motor assist made the pedaling easy, it did nothing to address my biggest problems with cycling; a sore ass and palms. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the spring outing with Jeanine and may have to invest in a more cushioned seat and handlebars for future such outings.
Earlier in the day, I prepared a buttermilk pancake (from mix) breakfast for the family. They don’t compare to Jeanine’s scratch recipe but I did not hear any complaints, probably due to the state of shock induced by my actually preparing a meal.
We woke up this morning to 2″ of heavy wet snow, something of an anomaly for this time of year. As it turned from snow to rain, I ventured out for some photography. I love snowscapes and on this day also took some time out to build a little snowman, something I have not done in a very long time.
If I try to find something positive about the coronavirus epidemic, it has forced us to become more self-dependent and close-knit as a family. Maya is seen here giving Jeanine some type of hair coloring touch-up. I do not know all of the details of the process but it was clearly an intimate time for mother and daughter. Jeanine was delighted with the outcome. On a less emotional level, I was able to repair the dishwasher by correctly diagnosing and replacing the faulty turbidity sensor (pictured below). Lacking any relevant trouble-shooting information, I was very pleased with my sleuthing skills to identify the problem. With all five of us in the house again, a malfunctioning dishwasher makes for a lot of undesirable work and I can tell all were happy to learn that the repair was successful. The boys have been contributing as well by helping Jeanine with some of the shopping, cooking, and cleaning.
We live across the street from the Concord Country Club which includes an 18-hole golf course. After a successful virtual presentation to the Digital Alloys Board of Directors, I returned from the office to spend a couple of minutes flying my drone. Even though we are neighbors to the golf course, I have never really explored it from the air. The photo above only covers about half of the property. Perhaps I will visit again and gather images for a wide-angle panorama.
A few weeks ago I managed to damage my new car while pulling into the garage. Jeanine’s car had been moved directly outside of her bay to facilitate the cleaning of the garage. This forced me to use a significantly different approach angle and I failed to clear the inside jamb leaving a 2-foot long indentation in the door. Totally my fault and totally demoralizing. Today after lunch, I used a polishing compound to remove all of the transferred white paint and happily discovering that the body paint was totally unblemished. This left only the dent to deal with and it occurred to me that I might be able to pop it out with the right tool. It took me less than a half-hour to conceive and fabricate a simple device that had a reasonable chance of working. I used hot melt glue to secure the small block to the body panel and the threaded knob to slowly pull the dent out. It took a half dozen pulls at various angles to get the correct shape back and I am very pleased with the results. If you know where to look you can still detect an anomaly, but to the casual observer, it is as good as new. I am guessing these 2 hours of work saved me at least a thousand bucks and the hassle of leaving my car at a body shop.
Organized by her sister Susan, Jeanine and her extended family and friends celebrated her birthday with a virtual game of family feud. We used the same rules as the TV show with the Calabria family pitted against the Basile’s and Earle’s. There are few things Jeanine enjoys more than playing games with family so this was a most appreciated gift. Later she fell asleep on the couch and looked so serene that I had to take a picture of her.
This year, Jeanine’s birthday is coincident with Easter. The family did our best to make it a memorable one using telepresence technology. We “attended” church together in the morning, joined Jeanine’s side of the family for Easter dinner, and my side of the family for her evening birthday celebration all by Zoom. She also took advantage of the perfect spring day to go on a nature walk with a close friend. While she was out, I had a little time for some outdoor photography. When I left the house, I was not expecting to return with a photograph of a chicken and pig riding scooters through a deserted downtown Concord. What can I say? We are living in unusual times.
Jeanine and I enjoyed a short 2.6 mile walk into the Great Meadows National Wildlife Refuge this afternoon. Muskrats were in abundance as were geese. We also spotted a pair of Merganser Ducks but I was not able to get a decent shot of them. The kids did a thorough house cleaning as a partial present to Jeanine on her birthday weekend.
Nicolai was in charge of appetizers this evening and knocked the ball out of the park with one of my favorites, bruschetta. Dinner was followed by a very competitive game of TENZI in which the normal rules were augmented to include projectile warfare to defeat an opponent’s tower on the verge of completion. A video would have been priceless. Earlier in the day, Jeanine spent time dry roasting herbs for a Shawarma dish she is planning for the weekend.
Working from home these days entails a lot of video conferencing. I hope when we reach the other side of the immediate COVID-19 crisis we will not have grown too accustomed to working remotely. While I appreciate the options this technology provides, I think the best engineering happens when teams are face-to-face, preferably with a whiteboard at hand. Although I am well suited to working alone as a genetically programmed introvert, I much prefer working in close proximity to my engineering teams so that we can spontaneously brainstorm and rapidly share ideas and thoughts.
I try to use a new virtual background every day taken from my collection of landscapes or other interesting images. It makes for a nice distraction from the same office backdrop every day.
Jeanine is doing her best to keep us healthy as the whole family continues to hunker down. This evening we enjoyed a kale salad and also a very nice fried rice dish prepared by Nicolai. The amazing thing about both dishes is that they were the result of looking at the food we had left in the refrigerator and deciding what could be made from it.
Last night we were also treated to a Super Pink Moon. This full moon appeared larger and brighter than usual because the moon was at perigee or the closest point to Earth in its elliptical orbit. With this ultra-close event, the moon was just 221,772 miles from Earth, compared to its average distance of 238,855 miles. This closer proximity makes it appear about 7% larger and 15% brighter than the average full moon. The Pink Moon does not actually appear pink. It is named for a pink wildflower, Phlox subulata, which commonly blooms in eastern North America in the early springtime, as it was delineated in The Old Farmer’s Almanac. Full moon names in the almanac, like with this “pink” moon, often come from names originally created and used by Native American tribes.
Kyle started his new job with Touchplan yesterday as a Senior Business Intelligence Analyst/Developer. He has transformed the music room into an office with a line of sight from my office. Who would have ever guessed that we would be “working together” like this? Through the other door to my study, I have a line of sight to Maya who is completing her study abroad course work in the kitchen breakfast nook. Meanwhile, Nicolai is teaching classes via Zoom using the dining room as his base of operations. It is not uncommon for at least three of us to be on a Zoom conference call at any given time which has necessitated upgrading the internet bandwidth to our home. Jeanine has been relegated to the living room and is not all that happy with her sabbatical “office.” Now that the kitchen makeover is essentially finished, she may choose to return to her desk that is built in there.
Jeanine and I got out for a nice 4-mile walk, taking advantage of the perfect spring weather. Rain is forecast for the next couple of days so we were keen on making good use of the opportunity which took us past a number of interesting scenes in the nearby town Lincoln.
At Digital Alloys we have been having “virtual lunch” together since the start of the Covid shutdown. Everyone joins in via Zoom over the lunch hour to keep in touch. Today, I made a premature departure when I heard seemingly incessant car horns honking and left my office to investigate. I discovered a caravan of something like 50 cars making the loop through our neighborhood. The caravan led by the Concord police was composed of the teachers and staff from Willard, our local elementary school. They just wanted to let their students know they were keeping them in their hearts. One teacher yelled out of her car as I was photographing the parade, “Hello Mr. Calabria.” It took me a moment to realize she was addressing Nicolai. Boy, do I feel old today.
I spent the bulk of the weekend creating four photo journals from trips I took during my failed attempt at retirement. The company I use was running a 41% off sale which was sufficient motivation to see me through the effort. I have now completed ten such books and have material for at least 30 more. If you click on the photos you will be able to view the books online. Just click on the icon to expand to full screen for best viewing. Be patient as the images download.
I joined Jeanine, Kyle, and Nicolai for a nice hike today. We returned to the Sears Conservation Lands where we had ventured earlier in the week. We encounter more than a dozen small Garter snakes in a very small area suggesting that they were recently born in the immediate vicinity. We were also treated to several nesting blue herons.
As part of our kitchen makeover project, we decided to remove the doors and wood shelves from the cabinets over our drink bar and to replace them with glass shelves and no doors. This also required removing the center stiles from each side of the cabinet which I did several weeks ago. Today, the shelves arrived and took less than 15 minutes to install. Only the backsplash remains to be completed, a job we plan to sub out.
I ordered a bulletin board (4’x3′) from Staples last week. I will cut it down for use on the wall behind the kitchen desk. Not quite sure why they needed such a large truck to deliver it. I guess anything over a certain dimension automatically goes this route. It seems like overkill for a package weighing just a couple of pounds. When I get some free time I will cut out openings for the wall outlets and cover the board with linen cloth before installing it.
I am always the first one up and generally eat breakfast right after my morning shower. Today, however, I waited until the rest of the family was awake having caught wind of a plan to make waffles for breakfast. The wait was entirely worth it.
This website is dedicated to sharing, with family and friends, the day-to-day adventures of the Calabria family.
