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@Spicoli43 Today I learned the VP also lives at the white house. I had no idea. Thanks!
The VP does NOT live in the White House. VP lives at Blair House which is across Pennsylvania Av.
@Eddie_T That is correct. The VP's offices are at the White House, but the office-holder lives at the USNO. I was being sarcastic. Spicoli's statement was confusing since both the prez and VP are former senators with solid track records of trashing the constitution.
The VP does NOT live in the White House. VP lives at Blair House which is across Pennsylvania Av.
 
@mabloodhound You are correct the VP temporarily lives in the Blair House;
Current Vice President Kamala Harris and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff have not yet moved into Number One Observatory, due to the need for repairs to the residence. Instead, they are temporarily residing at Blair House.
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I had a good night's sleep, woke up in afternoon. Still a bit sore but feeling better. Trying to plan out the best way to fix up my plumbing in the well shed.
 
We made maple syrup! Five hours to reduce 2 gallons of sap down to about 3 cups of syrup, and I smell like a camp fire (used wood in the grill). I need a more efficient method because I have 6 more gallons of sap and my trees are producing about a gallon each per day, and I used up a lot of wood.

But the syrup is amazing, and of course so is the satisfaction of having made it myself.
 
One more thing I'll say about syrup-making: I tried to measure time using beers, the way I saw it done about ten years ago when I visited a small mom & pop syrup operation ("this batch has been going for about seven beers", "it'll be done in about three beers", etc.) but now I find that this method of timekeeping is ideal neither for someone of my age & number of kids, nor for someone who drinks as infrequently as I do. Two Miller Lites in and I was ready for a nap at 11:30 in the morning, still with plenty of work to do. Next time I will measure time with a clock.
 
@Flyover Many thanks for your posting. I had forgotten but now my sugar maple is tapped. Using a ¼" drill bit I drilled a hole at an upward angle and inserted about an inch of plastic straw to serve as a spile. It was dripping before I could get the spile inserted and the bucket (plastic coffee can) hung.
 
I learned you're supposed to drill the hole horizontally, but maybe it doesn't matter that much. You sound like you've done this before.

I used these 5/16" plastic spiles that come with long food-grade plastic tubes that you stick onto them (they're basically L-shaped), then the sap drips down the tube into whatever container you rest on the ground. I used clean gallon jugs with a small X cut in the caps so I could pass the end of the tube inside while keeping contaminants out. It's nice because when it's full I just swap an empty jug under the tube, screw on the cap that's already attached to the tube, and screw a non-cut cap onto my full jug.

Today I managed to get a friend to take 3 full jugs of sap off my hands because I know there's no way I'll get to all of it. I wonder if I could sell full jugs of sap on Craigslist...
 
I'm drooling thinking about that fresh maple syrup. It sounds so good. I hope you find a more efficient way. Perhaps you can pick people's brains on the homesteading forum? I think they talk about that sort of thing. There are all sorts of posts about various things there.

I went to the store yesterday to get a rotisserie chicken & some other stuff I was out of. I've started taking multivitamins that include potassium. I'm hoping they will make me feel better. Slept until 4pm today. I really needed that sleep and my body feels better. Still a few aches & stiff areas, but I'm moving much better.
Went back to the store with my brother. It's still out of a lot of stuff, but we got meat, milk, and tortillas.

My friend is still having no luck with getting that clog cleared in his sewer pipe. Plumber never came back even though he promised to show up. Friend waited around for him all day for a few days. Guy no-showed about 7 times now. Friend got a 75 auger and tried to snake the pipe out. Didn't work. 100ft garden hose with hot water. Still didn't work. They may have to tear up his concrete walkway to get to the pipe but he may also need to call a new plumber or call the city because it might be on the city's side now. Problem is, if the city tears up his sidewalk, they won't fill it back in or replace it. The mayor is a total greedy p.o.s. who pretty much steals funding for his own use.

I'm currently debating on whether I should spend over $200 on a Cycle Stop Valve and change my well/pump system to have a 4.6 gallon pressure tank (supposedly CSVs make it so you only need a small tank) or to spend a under $200 to try to change things to get the existing tank to work (if it isn't toast).
Or I could get a cheaper CSV and combine it with a tank tee. I'm trying to price things out.

If I get a tank tee I can go with either brass or stainless-- and I have hard water so stainless might last longer but is a bit more expensive & requires SS fittings.

My current pressure tank seems to have a 3/4" inlet/outlet but is not hooked up properly. It does not have a pressure relief valve nor a spigot. The tee that splits from my pump to my pressure tank is placed in such a way that I think a lot of the water bypasses the pressure tank.

I need to figure out if my current pressure tank is still good. If it is bad, I will have to buy a new one. But, I noticed that the drawdown gpm of my current tank is not sufficient for what my pump needs. It's maybe 12gpm drawdown and my tank needs 17gpm drawdown.

Allegedly with a CSV you can have as little as 1gpm drawdown and the valve lets the tank fill and the pump doesn't cut on and off as quickly. There are videos on how it works.

It's like $190 for the CSV1A that comes attached to stainless steel. It's around $70 for the plastic one CSV125 that goes inline (but I'd have to figure out if I need the one that cuts on at 1gpm or 3gpm). If I got that, I would need to change pressure tanks and I could get an AO Smith 4.6gallon vertical tank for around $60. I would also need a tank tee (ranges around $100 to $110). I'd need additional pipes and elbows to make it work, but the tees come with a pressure switch, pressure relief valve, pressure gauge, and hose spigot. Some come with a ball valve for the end. It's like $30 for the ball valve, but when I priced it out, I realized the fittings and ball valve purchased separately would cost about that much as well.

If I knew for certain which CSV125 I would need, I would go with that option, even though it's plastic (but very sturdy plastic).

I would need reducer fittings bc my pump's outlet is 1", CSV is 1-1/4", pressure tank is 3/4" and the rest of my water supply is 3/4".

I should probably talk about this in a separate thread. LOL.
 
Rain is forecast for the early morning hours so I went out and put a plastic bag over my maple sap spile and bucket. I couldn't place it on the ground with a cover and tubing for fear of the coons finding it. I hope they don't spot it hanging on the tree. If it survives the night I will try to plan it better tomorrow.

I learned you're supposed to drill the hole horizontally, but maybe it doesn't matter that much. You sound like you've done this before.
I've never done it before. I think the bore would have to be horizontal if buckets were be hung on the spiles.
 
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So far my ratio of sap to syrup is about 1 gallon per 1 cup. (That's 16:1.) I think we have very sugary trees. You can use sap from other kinds of maples but the ratio will be higher.
 
I went to the post office to get mail today. Mom said her notifications showed she had 2 packages. There was 1 of mine that I ordered and only one box for her. There were two slips in my box though, so I think they misplaced one of mom's packages. Picked up Burger King since stores are still out of stuff I cook for her.

Still trying to plan out my plumbing changes. I made a thread but ran out of space-- went over the character limit. Also got tired and decided to add more details later once my brain starts working again.
 
@Eddie_T Did you read that link?

Pfizer and Moderna did perform confirmation tests (to ensure the vaccines work) using fetal cell lines. And Johnson & Johnson uses fetal cell lines in vaccine development, confirmation and production.

But it's important to have the full context: Fetal cell lines are not the same as fetal tissue.

Fetal cell lines are cells that grow in a laboratory.
They descend from cells taken from elective abortions in the 1970s and 1980s. Those individual cells from the 1970s and 1980s have since multiplied into many new cells over the past four or five decades, creating fetal cell lines. Current fetal cell lines are thousands of generations removed from the original fetal tissue. They do not contain any tissue from a fetus.
(Emphasis mine)

This reminds me of the old "We've all breathed in 2% of Ceasar's last breath" meme.

I would guess you've probably already consumed medication/vaccines/etc. tested with fetal cell lines many times in your life already.

Note: I am pretty solidly anti-abortion, it's one of the only positions I've held consistently for my whole life, and based on my understanding from this article, nothing about this should bother anyone. Except maybe that the abortions 50 years ago were ever legal to begin with, unless they were emergency because the babies were about to die anyway which for all I know they were.
 
@Eddie_T Did you read that link?

(Emphasis mine)

This reminds me of the old "We've all breathed in 2% of Ceasar's last breath" meme.

I would guess you've probably already consumed medication/vaccines/etc. tested with fetal cell lines many times in your life already.

Note: I am pretty solidly anti-abortion, it's one of the only positions I've held consistently for my whole life, and based on my understanding from this article, nothing about this should bother anyone. Except maybe that the abortions 50 years ago were ever legal to begin with, unless they were emergency because the babies were about to die anyway which for all I know they were.
Yup, read it all and more. The stuff I didn't know about is on someone else but what I do know about is on me. I've been pro-life since 1979 and don't knowingly compromise. Any argument regarding the long chain from the evil deed to the present falls on deaf ears with me. I was waiting on J&J but it's the worst of the three as it actually uses cells which are descended from tissue taken from a 1985 elective abortion that took place in the Netherlands.
 
Moved a table out of the kitchen (which I have walked around for years) to make room to park my mobile kitchen island while I finalize its design. I figure it might be best to play around with countertop size in place rather than just by measurement. Also I can use it for temporary storage as I decide whether to use shelves, drawers or both. Scrubbed the floor and will re-stain the grout between the hexagonal tiles beginning tomorrow.
 
I took a nap earlier today for an hour. It was glorious, and I also made homemade vegetable soup. I must say, it's pretty good. I need to get my rear finger and start working on this Certified Inpatient Coder course that I paid for last fall. It's my way of ensuring that I am still marketable when I physically can't be a floor nurse anymore.
My daughter has been flooded in for several days and the water finally receded on her creek today. She lives in a garage apartment and had several feet of water in the "basement". They put their washer/dryer in the back of his truck, but the water came up too quickly for him to get it moved once they got stuff out of the basement in the back of the truck. It had water up to the bed.

Heres my soup20210303_191817.jpg
 
@shan2themax What's the brown stuff, mushrooms?

We had our trim/fascia/soffits replaced today. Well, they started today, they're coming back tomorrow to finish. Basically they ripped out all the rotted wood soffits and any rotted fascia boards, installed aluminum soffits, and wrapped the fascia boards in metal.

By the way if anyone knows anything about this kind of work, tell me what kinds of things I should look for and make sure they did or didn't do before they pack up and leave tomorrow.
 
@shan2themax What's the brown stuff, mushrooms?

Its beef stew meat. I wanted to put mushrooms in it but got outvoted... lol

I could take pictures of what you Don't want it to look like, as I got taken by a contractor in October 2019. Hopeful that someone will come along with the info that.you need.
 
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