We've been rather busy over the last few weeks. Cecilia has been feeling much better over the last month since she's started taking a suite of vitamins. This is the busy season at Progress Energy, so the stress level is a little high at work, but she's handled it well. She's looking two months out when the work level drops, and she'll be able to take a week off for her own personal enjoyment.
Speaking of time off, our group at work accomplished two goals last year. 1) We successfully implemented some physics modules in a new weather model and tested, so we're ready to transition from an older model to this "next generation" weather model for use with our air quality model. 2) We developed what is termed a coupled meteorological-air quality model. Basically, the weather model above was connected "in-line" with our air quality model, so they are both running in synchronicity. The weather model passes atmospheric conditions to the air quality model, then the AQ model uses that to move pollutants around as it steps forward in time, then the AQ model passes pollutant information to the weather model, which impacts the amount of radiation, it steps forward in time and passes the new info to the AQ model. At any rate, this was a big project and although our computer science expert did most of the programming, I helped with various parts around the edges. Back to time off, my boss came to me this week with a piece of paper and told me I got a bonus for last years work. I thought it would be a little money or a day or two of payed vacation. When I read the bonus it said 40 hours of time off. Needless to say, I was estatic to get a whole extra week off this year. I looked at what I have saved up now and have 60 hours already in the bank this year.
On to the projects underway... I should have my fence complete today. After work this week, the prep work on the last section of fence was done. All that needs to be done today is laying out the woven wire, stretching and driving the metal posts. Here is the section of fence I completed last weekend.
A couple other projects done over the last few weeks are my worm bin and seed starter table. Thanks to Mother Earth News and my neighbor who's sister is really into worms, I decided to turn our scrap food into prime fertilizer. We have been composting our scraps for the last few years, but it just seemed you have to wait too long to get the good soil. So, I got a couple of rubbermaid containers. Holes were drilled in the bottom of one container, food scraps, minus any meats is placed in the bottom and covered with a mixture of loose soil and shredded newspapers (I have a lot of newspapers that need to be recycled). 4 dozen red wiggler worms were bought at the local bait shop and placed in the bin. The worms dig down and process the scraps then turn to worm castings. After one week all the food was gone, so I dumped the next load of scraps and covered. Evidently, after a few months the bin will have thousands of worms and a harvest of worm castings I can use for starting my plants. So, with very little effort you can basically nourish new plants that you'll eventually eat with the scraps of the plants you just ate. It's a neat sustainable and efficient system.
The other small project was to make use of a table we bought a while back only for the top. Part of the top (butcher block) was used for the back splash in the bathroom I did a yea
r ago. Last year I tried to use the table to start seed with one small grow light, but it did not work that well. My neighbor told me his Dad always used flourescent lights to start seed. We had a 2 ft flourecent light fixture in our bedroom closet that was replaced. This was the perfect size for the small table. My problem was two fold. 1) A reflecting hood to focus the light downward was needed and 2) The light needed some type of bracket that would allow for easy adjustment as the plants grow. The fun part was trying to figure out how to do this at minimal cost. My answer to the hood was a cheap aluminum vent pipe, and for the bracket, PVC pipe and parts. All of the parts were less than $10, but the bulbs with correct light for plants did add $12. Here is the final product. The light is hooked to a chain that can be adjusted.
