Routine house and car maintenance ; Invasion of the European hornets

(posted from home)

(This post covers 17 - 30 September, 2012)

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Sunday, 30 September -

This morning I received my monthly home-maintenance reminders and took care of checking the heat-pump filter, the water treatment equipment, and paying the storage unit rent.
I then rode down to Starbucks for a coffee-and-blog-update session. Afterwards I went to Rocky Ridge and did my five mile end-to-end loop. I felt great on the trail today.
That evening we watched ‘Mojave Phone Booth’, a John Putch film we had learned about in connection with ‘Route 30’ and ‘Route 30 Too’. I was surprised to see how good the production values were on this ultra-low-budget, ultra-small crew film. After seeing the Route 30 films I expected a silly film but that wasn’t the case. Again, kudos to Putch for doing something different.
We then watched a ‘Breaking Bad’ episode, one of the last three for Season Four. I think I’m ready to get this season done already.

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Saturday, 29 September -

First thing this morning we had a visit from the pest-control guy to spray the European hornets. He had a truck-mounted pump with a 300-foot hose and a tank of a permethrin derivative. The pump put out a spray twenty feet high so he was able to simply walk up near the nest and spray from the ground. We then watched the nest for ten minutes or so and the hornets were indeed agitated. He then mixed up a batch of another contact chemical in a garden sprayer and also did a treatment with that. I’m supposed to let him know if there’s still activity at the nest by tomorrow afternoon.
After our visitors cleared out this morning I washed Mocha Joe in preparation for my upcoming trip (assuming my oil leak gets fixed).
I then hopped on the bike and rode into town for a quick coffee fix and to look for a gas cap for the Miata. The current one is a ‘racing’ design which allows fumes make a black deposit on the paint. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a replacement in stock.
That evening we went in to the Democratic HQ to enter data from call and canvassing sheets. They had had a good day today so we had a large backlog. Afterwards we tried to get in at Holy Hound but there were no tables. We walked on up to Bistro 19 and got a table drinks and a late-night snack while listening to ‘Sxr Chixx’ (“scissor-chicks”), two young women playing covers of popular songs. Again, we were surprised how good the local music was.

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Friday, 28 September -

I spent the morning seeing what I could learn about treating a sulfur smell in well water. The house we last re-habbed in Chambersburg has developed a strong sulfur smell in the hot water. This appears to have come from bacteria in the hot-water heater. I learned it could be killed either via chlorine or by turning up the water heater to 160 degrees. I provided the info to Maypo who will take the latter course this weekend.
I spent an hour or so outside with Mocha Joe, trying to find an oil leak. I had noticed puddles in the driveway and believe the leak is coming from the oil pan. I drove up to my local garage and talked to the tech and scheduled an appointment to have it fixed next week.
I also talked with Orat and Maypo today about a tentative trip to West Virginia. It’s time for my fall trip down there and I invited them along for a hunting/fishing and ATV-riding trip in a couple of weeks.
I also spent an hour in the yard watching the European hornets. I determined that the tree-void nest I had found earlier this week is indeed the one. I suppose it’s possible there’s a second nest but this one is definitely very active mid-day.
I tried to determine how I could treat the nest and found a sprayer/duster mechanism to attach to a long pole. But as I added up the cost of the components I realized it would quickly add up, all just to pump some ant dust into the nest.
I decided I’d better first get a quote from a local pest-control specialist and found one via Google. I was impressed by his web site and after a short conversation found I could have a pro spray for about $60... less than the cost of the equipment to do it myself (and I’d still have to go buy the ant dust and a chemical spray). I made arrangements for him to come over tomorrow morning.
We also had a guest this evening. We had volunteered our guest room for a campaign volunteer and she showed up this evening. She’s a few years older than us, from Brooklyn, and took a fellowship position which will have her working in the area on weekends.
We spent a pleasant evening chatting and sipping wine.

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Thursday, 27 September -

This morning I drove over to Manchester to pick up my new glasses. This will be my first pair from my new optometrist. And after the disaster of my last pair, I was concerned. Those lenses were very difficult to clean and the frames began corroding within weeks, leaving green marks on my skin. What a mess.
All went well with today’s fitting and the new glasses look great. This frame is stainless steel so we shouldn’t have the corrosion problem. It remains to be seen how easy the lenses are to clean, though.
I spent the afternoon researching freeze spray and ant dust to kill the European hornets.
I found I can buy the ant dust at Tractor Supply but how the heck would I get it up into the tree?
That evening we drove in to the Democratic HQ to enter data. We had quite a bit to do and didn’t finish up until after 2130 again. We walked up the street to Holy Hound again and this time tried their mac-and-cheese and their pulled-pork sandwich. EVERYthing is good here!
We also were very pleasantly surprised to have live music while we ate. At first we weren’t paying attention but we soon realized this girl was really, really good. I asked around and learned her name is Jessica Smucker.
We didn’t get home until 2330 so went right to bed.

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Wednesday, 26 September -

I was sick most of the day today. That seems odd. I woke with a headache and just felt dopey. Usually I can take two Excedrin and have the headache fade within an hour or two. But today it hung on. I took two more pills after lunch and that seemed to knock the edge off but it still was a slow recovery.
Mid-afternoon I received a call to tell me my new glasses are ready. I don’t feel up to dealing with that today so it’ll have to wait.

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Tuesday, 25 September -

Well the seasons they are a changin’. The house was cooler than we liked this morning so we turned on the heat pump’s heat cycle for the first time (other than the tech checkout at installation last May). I was surprised to see it turned on the auxiliary heat (the ‘toasters’) but then realized that was because the heat had to go up three degees. If I set the thermostat a degree lower, it would exclusively use the air-exchange method and not turn on the expensive-to-operate toasters.
I spent the morning making two repairs to the French doors leading from our guest room to the back patio. We had a relatively small amount of water damage to the oak sill and to an exterior upright.
I drove the loaner car back to the dealer in Mechanicsburg that afternoon to pick up the car. The bill was nearly $200 for an oil change and the door repair. The latter was particularly galling since the car only had 57K on it and we don’t use the side door very often. There’s no way the door slider should have worn out in the 200-300 openings that door has had.
That evening we drove in to York for our data entry duties at the Democratic headquarters. We had quite a backlog to work off tonight and didn’t finish until 2130.
We then walked a half-block to the Holy Hound, a very pleasant little specialty-beers emporium. We’re not really beer drinkers but had a wine and a cider while enjoying some really good home-made guacamole and sesame-seed tortilla chips.
Afterwards we took a longer way home and stopped at the Hampton Inn to reconnoiter. We have friends coming to town in two weeks and they plan to stay at the Hampton a few days. We were surprised to find this one newly renovated and an upscale property compared to the Hamptons we’ve been familiar with elsewhere.

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Monday, 24 September -

This morning I took Labashi’s car in for an oil change and a sliding-door repair. I only waited about a half hour before the service guy came out to say they had diagnosed the problem but don’t have the parts on hand. I could take my car and return tomorrow and wait for the two-hour repair or take their free loaner car and not have to come back tomorrow until the repair is complete. I chose the latter.
Back home I researched European hornets and we spent an hour or so in the yard watching them and looking for their nest. We did find a wasp nest in a tree void but the wasps / hornets looked smaller than the big European hornets we’ve been seeing. We’ll have to keep looking.
That evening we watched the ‘Breaking Bad’ episode ‘Salud’.

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Sunday, 23 September -

This morning we took our guests to Bistro 19’s brunch in downtown York. We had recently had a great meal here (on our First Friday date) and the brunch didn’t disappoint today.
After our meal we took a walk around the block for our guests to get a sense of downtown York. We had driven down in two vehicles so our guests could continue on home so we led them out to a spot familiar to them and said our goodbyes.
It was such a beautiful day that Labashi and I wanted to walk more. We drove to Rudy Park and walked for about 45 minutes before heading home.
That evening we were back to the ‘Breaking Bad’ Season Four episodes.

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Saturday, 22 September -

Labashi went marketing this morning while I ran the vacuum in preparation for visitors later today.
Around 1330 we drove up to Mom and Dad’s apartment and later we welcomed Labashi’s eldest brother and his wife.
At 1600 we called Bonefish Grill (their opening time), hoping to reserve a table but were told there’s nothing available until 2100 for reservations but if we came over now we could be seated. We rushed over only to learn there’s be a 25-minute wait now-- they had had a rush since we called. An hour later we still hadn’t been seated. I had been checking status as the time wore on and had been told we would be seated in ten minutes, then, after twenty minutes, a table was being cleaned for us-- “we’ll page you”. After another ten minutes, “oops, the pager mustn’t be working--- we’ve been paging and getting no response.” And indeed it wasn’t working.
Then we had food problems. Mom’s side-dish came out cold-- TWICE. “Oh, we didn’t have the warming lights on. Thanks for letting us know...” I guess we had the new-restaurant blues tonight.
Back at the apartment we finished the catching-up and then led our guests home. We were hoping to sit outside with a campfire at the back patio but were surprised to find we had other guests.... unwelcome ones. We’ve been seeing European hornets around our paw-paw trees and tonight we learned they are attracted to light. As we entered the patio doors a hornet came through and we spent twenty minutes or so trying to get it out only to have another enter as we tried. I managed to get stung so now we had that to take care of. Not our best night out.

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Friday, 21 September -

Today I did a bit of preliminary work on the wall. I tried the wire-brush method of removing the scale and blistered areas and then tried a wire-cup in a drill. Neither did much. I may have to grind this. I researched cup-wheels and thought that might be the way to go but had to see one up close.
I rode in to Home Depot and Lowe’s to check out the cup wheels, hoping to use one with my sander/polisher. Home Depot doesn’t keep them in stock and Lowe’s only had a 7-inch, $90 one. But they DID have a $7 concrete grinding wheel and after seeing that, I figure it will work for my purpose. This search also led me to look for mechanical-removal solutions like air-chippers. I eventually realized our Bosch X-tool with an old scraper blade would be a very good place to start and then a bit of followup with the grinding wheel should do it.
That evening we watched ‘The Rage in Placid Lake’. That one was a disappointment.

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Thursday, 20 September -

This morning I did some research on how to fix our basement wall. I suspected the problem with the Drylok blistering off the wall (in a few places) had to do with efflorescence. After talking with the tech support specialist at UGI (the maker of Drylok) I confirmed that to be the case. The efflorescence is a powdery residue from water-soluble salts from the soil outside the wall. It has to be thoroughly removed using muriatic acid or Drylok Etch and I had not done that properly last year after Tropical Storm Lee overwhelmed the wall with a record-setting amount of water. I had merely chipped off the blisters and repainted.
I also talked to Melissa (the UGI tech) about hydraulic cement. The area of the wall where the brick was removed has compromised mortar joints and I could see these areas still are moist. My moisture meter measures the wall at around 4-7 per cent but these joints at 25-30%. Melissa says they don’t use the moisture-percentage measurements in their work but thought I should get the percentage down under 10 per cent before repainting. Also, any compromised mortar should be repaired with FastPlug (their hydraulic cement). She also suggested I cove the floor-to-block joint with FastPlug since that is typically the worst place for water intrusion. I later checked that joint and found it very dry while the next joint up measured 30% moisture. I will need to repoint the compromised joints, treat that entire area with Etch, then paint two coats of Drylok Latex or Extreme.
I took the GS to town and bought a concrete chisel, a pointing trowel, FastPlug, and Etch.

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Wednesday, 19 September-

I had scheduled an appointment for an oil change for Labashi’s mini-van and elected to have it done at the dealer so they could also check out a problem with one of the sliding doors. A ‘B2’ code said it was also time to have the engine filter and cabin-filter changed. But when I learned the dealer wanted $30 for an engine filter and $110 for the cabin filter, that’s just WAY too much. I spent a few minutes looking up how to change them on YouTube and then went out to the car to remove the old ones. The engine filter was very easy to access but the cabin filter is in a door behind the glovebox.
Removing the glovebox was a bit tricky but in retrospect would have been very easy IF you knew two little secrets. The big surprise, though, was finding the filter drawer empty. The factory had never put in a cabin filter!!!
I rode the GS down to Advance Auto and Pep Boys for replacement filters and ended up spending a grand total of $33 for the filters but of course had to make the trip to town to pick them up and had to use my tools and labor for the (easy) installation.
I also tried to trouble-shoot the sliding-door problem but couldn’t find anything so that one will have to be done by the dealer.
That afternoon I rode the Concours down to Rudy Park for my 5K walk. We then watched ‘Breaking Bad’ and two Nova specials “Making Stuff: Strong “and “Making Stuff: Small” with David Pogue, one of the columnists I follow on Twitter (and that’s how I learned the shows would be on)

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Tuesday, 18 September -

As a new Twitterer (one of the Tweeps according to some, the Twonks according to others), I spent some time exploring many Twitter feeds today and adding a few. My overall goal is ‘follow’ Twitter accounts which will provide notices of events at local venues (colleges, theaters, etc) as well as emergency notifications by various York County agencies. Also, I’m following a few columnists, both locally and nationally.
Today was rainy all day and in fact, we had heavy rain for an hour or so. Late in the day I went downstairs to check on the dehumidifier I had worked on yesterday and found a puddle. I found the drainage hose was not tight and took care of that. But when I turned to leave, I saw another puddle across the room. This one wasn’t from the dehumidifier but from rainwater coming through the east wall, most noticeably from the area where we had had the brick removed back in May.
I rolled the shelves and cabinets out of the way and quickly employed the wet-vac, ending up with about two gallons of water in the tank. I then set up a fan to finish the drying process. The cleanup only took a half-hour or so (thanks to the rollabout shelving and cabinets) but the wall will need to dry out over the next several days.
We’re still into ‘Breaking Bad’, season four eps.

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Monday, 17 September -

This morning we jumped in Mocha Joe and drove down to Crist Memorial Park for a short bike ride on this picture-perfect morning. Greg A. Crist Memorial Park is the south end of the northern-most section of York County’s Heritage Rail-Trail.
We rode to the construction site for the new pedestrian/bicycle bridge... the very end of the trail as it exists today... and then rode north. This trail section is only a mile and a half long but that was perfect for our purpose today. Labashi is having some muscle pain at night and we’re trying to determine if bike riding will help.
After the ride we drove to Lowe’s and picked up a spool of speaker wire to relocate Mom and Dad’s stereo speakers sometime soon.
That afternoon we drove up to Mom and Dad’s apartment and took them out to dinner at Theo’s in Mechanicsburg.
That evening we watched two episodes of ‘Breaking Bad’- Season Four.

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Setting up Labashi’s new laptop ; Fiasco at the Joe Biden visit

(Posted from home)
(This post covers 1 - 16 September, 2012)

Sunday, 16 September -

This morning we watched ‘Sunday Morning’, then I took off on the motorcycle for the day while Labashi turned her attention to some things she wanted to work on the web.
I took the Concours to give it some exercise though I do prefer the F650GS this time of year. I first rode down to the North York Starbucks and spent maybe an hour nursing my coffee while catching up the offline blog. Again, weather was so nice that I wanted to be out so I rode east to the Susquehanna and down through Long Level and then via 425 past Otter Creek and Indian Steps before winding back to SR74 south and then across the Holtwood Dam.
At Holtwood Arboretum I picked up a trail map for the Kelly Run Trail and then rode down to a locked gate. I parked at the gate within sight of the river and walked the half-mile in to Kelly Run’s confluence with the Susquehanna, then up along the Run. I had been here some 20 years ago and had only the vaguest memory of it. This is an astoundingly-beautiful little trail. It follows the gorge cut through the limestone by Kelly Run and the banks are covered in mountain laurel. The water of the creek is low now but ultra-clear. The rocks are a layered limestone and proportions are heroic.
I only hiked up the run to the third crossing. The trail had gotten narrow and a bit slippery and I had started too late in the day to be chancing an injury and a hassle getting out of there before dark and more than an hour’s ride home.
I returned the way I came in to the Concours and headed west to SR74 then up to Red Lion, then across 24 to York and then my regular back-roads way home, arriving just in time for supper.
We spent the evening on the web and I finally was able to catch up the blog and post an update.

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Saturday, 15 September-

Today was another date-day with Labashi. The weather was so perfect today that we felt we had to get out.
We drove her car down to little Greg Crist Memorial Park near Central York High. The northern terminus of the York County Rail Trail is at Rudy Park and a section runs a mile and a half south to the Conewago Creek at this little set of baseball and soccer fields. We parked there and first walked to the construction site of the pedestrian bridge (right next to the vehicle bridge). Then we turned back northbound and walked the mile and a half to Rudy Park. We arrived just in time to see a cross-country running event start.
After returning to the car we drove to the Isaac’s Restaurant location near the Galleria Mall for lunch, then spent an hour browsing books. We bought two tour books for our upcoming New Zealand trip.
That night we watched ‘Bride Flight’, a somewhat-sappy story about Dutch brides whose betrothed had gone ahead to New Zealand to obtain land and establish themselves before the brides were brought over. As I say, the story was a bit overly dramatic but we thoroughly enjoyed the New Zealand scenery.

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Friday, 14 September -

This morning I had an eye exam and then ordered a new set of glasses. I’ve had the same frame design for forty years (a timeless design, that one!) but I was very disappointed this time with the quality of the the plating on the frame. It very quickly broke down and left green corrosion marks on my skin. Things got so bad that I covered the temples with electrical shrink tubing to hide the corrosion.
I had been half-heartedly looking for a replacement frame for the last few months and had not found anything even close to what I wanted. Then last week I accompanied Labashi to her eye appointment (in case she couldn’t drive home) and found what appears to be a perfect frame for me. It’s very similar to my old design but it’s made of stainless steel.
I had my pupils dilated during the exam and had to wear two sets of sunglasses to get home in the bright sunlight. Even in the house all the lights were so bright I could hardly function for a few hours.
Once my eyes got back to normal Labashi and I drove to Rudy Park for an evening walk.

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Thursday, 13 September -


I slept very badly last night and then slept in until 0830 or so.
After my daily web patrol I decided to shoot in to Starbucks and take along the laptop to do a bit of blog updating. I decided I had better oil the chain on the F650GS. I’m supposed to oil it in 600-mile intervals and this one was creeping up on 900 miles.
I went back home and putzed around on the web for a few hours (exploring Twitter in search of good feeds for local events).
After an early supper we drove in to Labashi’s volunteer gig, where I’m now a volunteer too. We call ourselves the ‘Data Ducks’. We do the data entry which takes the data collected on paper worksheets the political canvassers use while making their calls and puts it into a database for further analysis and for managing calls. Many people now screen their calls so the majority of the contacts are simply marked ‘Not Home’ and those will be parceled out to another phone bank to try again.
Calling ends about 2130 so we then wrap up any backlog of data sheets and head home. Tonight we watched the ‘Dollhouse’ Season One extras.


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Wednesday, 12 September -

This morning I spent an inordinately long time writing two emails to my brothers. One was about my initial experiences with Twitter and the other about setting up Labashi’s new laptop. I get started jotting down some notes for myself on things and then think maybe my brothers might be interested and before you know it I’ve spent an hour on what should have been a ten-minute note.
We have visitors coming this weekend so I mowed the lawn this afternoon for the thousandth time this summer (or so it seems).
That evening Labashi drove in to her volunteer gig and I spent much of the time writing yet another email to my brothers, this one going into excruciating detail about what I’m thinking about for my annual West Virginia Fall trip this year. I may take the ATV this year and go on down to the Hatfield and McCoy trail system. I’m also thinking about visiting a good place for squirrel-scaring I found in the Monongehela National Forest.
That evening we watched a ‘Dollhouse’ Season One episode-- ‘Omega’.


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Tuesday, 11 September -

I spent a few hours researching scanners this morning and, dammit, that too is complex. I did find a high-density scanner to work with her laptop but there are questions about how useful it will be for scanning 35 mm slide film. We can use it for the regular paper-scanning tasks but when I read it could do 35 mm slides, I thought this would be a perfect time to scan in some of our parents old slides I have stored away. But some reviews say the scanner I thought I wanted has a very shallow depth-of-field and can only scan slides if you take the film out of the holder. Some of them come out easily but I think many of them would not. I’ll have to keep looking.
That evening we watched the last part of the ‘Route 30 Too’ extras, then stayed up late to finish off three ‘Dollhouse’ episodes.

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Monday, 10 September-

This morning I bought Aperture from the Mac App Store and downloaded it to Labashi’s laptop. I was about to do the same with Pages but thought it odd the App Store didn’t know about the copy of iWork (the bundle of Pages, Keynote, and Numbers) I have on my laptop. I dug out the DVD and saw it was a Family license. I attached Labashi’s external Superdrive to her laptop and a few minutes later had all three loaded and updated via Software Update, all at no additional cost.
I then took her laptop back to her office to see if I could get our Canon FB360U scanner working on it. I was a bit surprised to get nothing when I plugged in the USB cable. A search for drivers in Canon’s support section for this scanner soon showed the problem.... this device is not support under the current version of the operating system. Ah, well, that was an el cheapo I had gotten at a big discount (I only paid something like $30 for it) so this will be my excuse to get a 9600 bpi one (hopefully).
That afternoon I rode the F650GS to York for my coffee-and-walk ride, this walk back at good ol’ Rocky Ridge. I did the 5-mile loop and it was blissfully free of the gnats that had driven me to move my walks to Rudy Park for the month of August.
That evening we watched the extras on the ‘Route 30 Too’ disk. Incredibly, the extras cover every day of shooting. But seriously, Putch, you need to get something like a Steadicam Junior or a Steadicam Smoothee for whomever’s doing the behind-the-scenes shots.

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Sunday, 9 September -
Well, then! Happy bluebirds to ya!

I signed up for Twitter today. I don’t really have an interest in tweeting out my thoughts in 140-character chirps. I do, however, want to follow some interesting people and, hopefully, get a better handle on upcoming events. I’ve been unhappy with finding out about too many things after they’re over. Among my first ‘follows’.... David Pogue, Paul Krugman, Matt Taibbi, VisitPA, Route 30 Too, Car Talk, This American Life, RadioLab, Jad Abumrad.
Around mid-morning Labashi and I drove over to Park City Mall. After a quick lunch at J. Dawson’s (they had wonderful fresh-orange-juice mimosas today), we went to the Apple Store to answer some questions.
We put Alan and Nathan through the wringer as we played with Photoshop Elements 10 and Micrsoft Word on a Retina display. We learned Elements doesn’t look bad but simple Word text documents look bad. The fonts look fuzzy.
We also played with Pages and Aperture. By the end of the two-hour session we decided we’d go with the Apple products for now and see if they run out of capability for the more specialized things Labashi does with document publishing and photo editing.
On the way home we walked for an hour or so at Rudy Park.
That evening we watched the last two episodes of ‘Breaking Bad’ on the first disk of the 2011 season.

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Saturday, 8 September -

Today was movie-day in Chambersburg! We left the house mid-day and took the Route 234 way to Restaurant Sidney for a quick lunch, then on through the orchards of Adams County to US30. We stopped at Mister Ed’s Elephant Museum and Candy Emporium and bought a DVD of ‘Route 30’. We were on our way to the premiere of ‘Route 30 Too’ tonight so we thought we’d first watch the original in the van this afternoon.
We stopped at Caledonia State Park and walked up the hill to the site of the original Totem Pole Playhouse. The original had been torched by an arsonist in 1969 while we lived in Chambersburg and it had been quite a shock at the time. We were engaged then and had driven out to the park in my MGA. At the site of the fire we saw the collapsed and burned building and had picked up a burned program as a souvenir. So here we were 43 years later and Labashi had that program in a plastic bag in the car, hoping to get an autograph tonight.
Today the site of the old theater is merely a grassy plot with an oddly-shaped concrete-block building. I believe it’s the remains of the backstage area of the old theater made into a storage building. But years later the walk up the steep hill to the site still brings back memories of summer nights and the open-air theater.
We then drove on into town and, after several tries, found a great parking spot to watch the DVD of ‘Route 30’ on my laptop. The spot was in a lot in an alley behind the theater.
We spent two hours watching the movie and the extras, comfortably and judiciously hidden behind the blackout curtains of the van and using earbuds for the sound.
We finished the movie at 1830, giving us time to have a light supper in the van before the show.
After supper we exited the van and walked a few hundred paces to the theater entrance. And right there, just having a chat on the sidewalk, were the director and several cast members we had just seen in ‘Route 30’. Love it!
As we awaited curtain time a guy sat down behind us and I recognized him right away. It was Lee Wilkof, who plays a main character in both movies. We greeted him and chatted a bit about his experiences in the area while making the two movies. He was very complimentary of the Capitol Theatre and said he lives in a small Connecticut town and loves to go to a similar theater for music.
The theater was quite crowded but settled down quickly as director Putch introduced the movie.
Now let me say that I’m not the world’s biggest fan of farce and that’s what these movies are. And I certainly had been warned. Any movie that’s going to have ghosts, deer hunters, an elephant museum, a character named ‘Rotten Egg’ and space aliens probably isn’t going to have a lot of Shakespearean dialogue (I’m not a fan of that either).
We had, of course, been prepared for this by the first ‘Route 30’. And, you know what?, we loved it and so did the crowd. Yes, there was more silliness and more silliness. Silliness overload, WOOHOO!!
But there was also something mysterious going on here. It took a while for this to sink in but I finally realized we could literally see the delight the cast and crew has in playing out this over-the-top, ridiculous story. We could see them trying their best at --- and sometimes nailing --- the local accent and their expressions let us know we were all in on the joke. As a native of the area, my ear says there was a little too much ‘Ballamer’ accent (too much ‘hon’, I say!) in the movie but, hey, we’re all playing a game here... and it’s FUN!
And the production values were way higher than I expected. Photography, sound, music, and special effects are incredible for a low-budget film shot in 19 winter days with a skeleton crew.
We really enjoyed the Q&A session with Putch and 18 members of the cast after the show. We learned this is without a doubt a labor of love. The worldwide sales hub of the movie’s DVDs is Mister Ed’s Elephant Museum and only something on the order of 1000 DVDs of the original movie were sold. When the movie is shown elsewhere the crowd doesn’t quite get it (of course!). But to me that makes these movies all the more impressive. This ain’t about the bucks. It’s about love. Love for the place, love of summer-theatre-style farce, love of the planning and production process, love of fellow cast and crew, and, clearly, love of sharing the joy of it all with us.
After the Q&A Labashi stood in line for a few minutes to have John and Pam Putch sign her program (the burnt-edged program she found after the 1969 fire).
We were thinking we’d stay overnight in Mocha Joe in the driveway at my brother’s house but we were too wound up to sleep. We instead stopped at the Pizza Hut for a quick pizza and then drove on home.

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Friday, 7 September -

Today I looked through the video clips I had shot at the Biden visit. I found one where I zoomed in on Labashi at the other side of the gym and then panned back past the as-yet empty stage. I didn’t have any footage of Biden since I was behind the curtain lying down by that time (LOL) so this footage would have to do. I loaded it into iMovie and cut about a third of it off so the upload to YouTube wouldn’t take too long. After the upload I provided the address to Labashi to include in an email she was writing to family. The email also had two photos we had found, one showing me applauding a preliminary speaker, the other showing Joe Biden and my now-empty spot in the bleachers by the FORWARD banner. (Sigh)
That afternoon I had a call from Clayton, the motorcycle-transport guy. He said he’d be arriving at my house around 1400 and asked if I’d be home. He had called the wrong number, of course, and I didn’t have the phone number on the other end. After hanging up I jotted off a quick email and soon learned all was well.
That evening we watched the first two episodes of ‘Breaking Bad- Season Four’. Jesse, Jesse, Jesse. What the hell are you thinking?

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Thursday, 6 September -

Today I spent much of the morning researching Word versus Pages. It turns out Word does not yet support the new type of hi-res display on Labashi’s laptop. I concluded that Word and Pages are generally thought to be very comparable in features and capabilities so maybe it’s time to give up on the Microsoft world altogether. I also looked at Photoshop versus Aperture. In that case, the products are complementary rather than functionally equivalent. Many pros use both... Aperture for photo organization and management, Photoshop for advanced photo editing.
That afternoon we drove in to the Democratic HQ in York to see if they need any help setting up for the party tonight at the Yorktowne. I volunteered to help with data entry and went through the basics of logging on and learning how to use the web site. Other than that, we weren’t needed... everything was under control. We headed home for the afternoon.
Around 1730 we drove back in, this time to the Yorktowne for the ‘party’ and to watch President Obama’s speech.
The party in this case was a phone bank. There were something like 30 people making calls and we took their data collection sheets and entered the data into a web application. At one point I had an inch-thick bundle of sheets backed up but once the calling ended around 2130 we caught up the backlog in time for the speech an hour later.

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Wednesday, 5 September -

Today we spent the morning waiting for Clayton, an independent hauler. Clayton was hired by the guy who bought my old Honda CT110. I had gotten to the point where I was going to simply call up a cycle salvage company and tell them to come get it. So when Labashi’s school buddy offered me $30 for it, I jumped at the chance.
Clayton turned out to be a very nice guy who grew up in Calgary and now lives in Phoenix. He was driving a big Dodge Ram diesel (“Guts, Glory, Ram!”), towing a 19-foot boat and had a fancy piece of exercise equipment in his truck, both bound for Los Angeles. The motorcycle is being dropped off in Albuquerque.
We heaved the Honda up into the bed of the truck and Clayton tied it down and was on his way. As he tied it down I took a photo and sent that to the new owner.
That afternoon I walked the 5K cross-country course at Rudy Park.
That evening we watched the latter part of the Democratic convention and particularly enjoyed Bill Clinton’s speech. Finally, someone who will talk specifics.

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Tuesday, 4 September -

We waited all day for the cable tech to arrive and I made two calls to check on progress. I was going NUTS without an internet connection. Finally, he arrived at 1530 and ten minutes later I had internet service back. The cable modem had gone bad. I had been told a new one would be $50 but the tech said the price had just been cut to $25.
About an hour later I had an automated call asking if I was satisfied with the service I had received. I was happy with service once the guy showed up but not the overall experience. That led to a conversation with a live customer support agent and I was given a $10 ‘valued customer’ credit.

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Monday, 3 September -

Today we started our regular day on web patrol and noticed things were running slow today. Labashi called her Dad on Skype and complained of video delays. I was on the web looking for footage of yesterday's Joe Biden visit to West York and noticed videos were loading and running slower than normal. As time went on we were having more and more slow-downs.
I contacted tech support at our ISP and learned there don't appear to be any outages in the area so the tech suggested I connect directly to my cable modem. I went through the process of rebooting both the cable modem and router without resolving the problem, then connected my laptop to the cable modem and ran a few traceroutes. Oddly, I seemed to be getting some unanswered pings from the computer to the cable modem but some would get through. It wasn't long, though, till I wasn't getting any pings past the first node at the ISP. Trying to connect to the ISP's web page would simply paint the screen with the background color but then not progress beyond that point. The tech pinged my cable modem from his end and saw a 42 per cent packet loss. He said he thinks I have a problem with the cable modem itself or with a local connection.
The tech switched me to the cable provider and she said she had some urgent-repair slots so she'd send someone out yet today. We had planned to visit Mom and Dad today so I cancelled out of that to await the repair guy.
At 1630 a repair guy called to say nobody would be coming--- they only have line-down type technicians working the holiday. He scheduled us for tomorrow.
I also had a long conversation with Maypo today and regaled him with stories of the backstage doings at the Joe Biden appearance yesterday. He thought it hilarious.
That evening we watched the last part of 'Mildred Pierce' and then 'What I Want My Words to Do To You', the latter a documentary about a women's writing workshop in a New York prison.

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Sunday, 2 September -

Today was the big day to go see Vice President Biden's speech in York. Labashi had volunteered to help out at the site so she left around 0700 for the pre-visit training and then to get familiar with her duty assignment. The gates were to open at 0930 so I hung around home until 1000, hoping the greater part of the crowd would have gone in. However, a long line of people stood in front of the main entrance doors. Fortunately for me, Labashi's volunteering had gotten us a bump up in the priority scheme and because of my ticket color I was directed to a much shorter line. I was inside and through the security screening in a matter of a few minutes.
The priority bump allowed me a choice. I could either stand close to the rope in front and on the stage-right side or I could sit in the bleachers on the to stage-left side. I made a fateful choice....
Since we had more than an hour to go, I chose the bleachers. They were already nearly full but I saw the top row was open. Volunteers were telling us the top row had to remain clear but then I overheard one say that it only had to remain clear under the large “Forward” campaign sign. Great! I'd have a great view, would have a wall behind me (instead of someone's knees), and if I sat right at the end of the sign I'd have a bit of extra room. Perfect!
The only problem was the floodlights from the opposite side of the room were very bright. The camera couldn't see much. The lens flare was terrible when trying to take a photo. I also noticed that the lights were like mini-suns. I had to keep wiping a bit of sweat from my brow because of them. On the other hand there was a bit of a breeze coming from behind the curtins walling off the backstage area . The curtains were open a few inches along the wall, allowing a cooling breeze to flow toward us.
A volunteer handed out signs and gave us instructions to be very energetic for the speakers and shocked us a bit when she said we'd be given a signal to stand shortly and would remain standing throughout the event... which was still a half-hour away.
We were soon given the signal to stand as mayor Kim Bracey entered. A pastor then lead us in prayer and we had a very impressive rendition of the Star Spangled Banner and we followed with the Pledge of Allegiance. We then listened to speeches by local politicians Eugene DiPasquale and (sorry!) a state representative. We then had a bit of a break in the parade of speakers and I noticed at that point that I was feeling a bit light-headed. Since I was at the top behind a row of people I was able to sit down and I tried leaning over to lower my head between my knees, though not very successfully. That drew the attention of the couple beside me and they asked it I was all right. I said I was just feeling a bit light-headed but I could see I was worrying them.
The speaker introducing Vice President Biden entered and began speaking so I stood up again. I quickly realized I was not going to be able to remain standing or I would faint. I sat back down and the couple signaled to the support staff along the curtain that we needed some help up here. They passed up a bottle of water and I took a sip but was just feeling so close to fainting that I had to lie down. By that time a medical support specialist had come up into the stands and because there was room beside me (behind the campaign banner), had me lie down for a bit, then we'd go down off the bleachers. After only two minutes or so lying down I felt less foggy and told him I thought I could go down. He led the way and luckily we went down the end of the bleachers and therefore I had hand-holds on the metal end-rows.
The medical specialist, Tom, helped me get behind the stage area where he had me lie down on the floor and put my feet up on a chair. He gave me an ice-bag and told me to use it where it felt best. Another specialist took my blood pressure (147/100-something) and glucose level (115). She monitored me while Tom collected information about me and my medical history. I was asked if I was okay with going to the hospital to be checked out more thoroughly. At first I said no since I was by that time feeling the fog clear, though I was sweating heavily and quite clammy from it. But then my blood pressure was measured at 154/96. The specialists recommended I go to the hospital and told me I made a good decision when I agreed to go.
Two ambulance staff appeared and loaded me onto a gurney and into the ambulance. I was taken to York Hospital and en route was hooked up to an IV and an EKG. The tech said I appeared to be dehydrated because he had difficulty trying to get the IV in on the top of my hand and switched to the large vein on arm.
At the hospital I was checked in and given a quick once-over check of vital signs and connected to the monitors. A doctor eventually made it to me and reviewed my medical history and asked questions about what had transpired at the presentation, what conditions were like there, what food and drink I had had for breakfast and to the time of the event. I had assumed I had indeed become dehydrated but that was quite a surprise to me since I've been able to tolerate my walks in very hot weather without problems. But circumstances had conspired against me this time.
We hadn't slept well and Labashi's alarm went off an hour early so we got up and had a small breakfast very early-- around 0530. I got busy on the computer and didn't have anything else (as I normally would) when I realized I needed to get my shower and get on the road. At the event, I not only didn't have any water or food, I had to stand an unaccustomed amount of time and with the mini-sun lights keeping me sweating for the hour before Mr. Biden's appearance. I also realized I had indeed had something else this morning and it was my regular little can of espresso and cream (a Starbucks Doubleshot-Light). Oh, yeah....espresso is a diuretic, dummy!
I had been taken to the hospital shortly after noon, I'd guess and didn't get out of the hospital until 1600 or so. The quick checkover determined I wasn't in distress but it took a while to get another two IVs through me, run a blood test, run a urinalysis, and check into whether there might be any issues with some items in my medical history.
The incident is embarrassing and I never did get to see Vice President Biden.... not even a brief glance. It turns out the medical staff who treated me first work for the White House Medical Office. Like the ambulance staff and all the staff I encountered at York Hospital, they were completely competent, professional, concerned for me, and friendly.
After I checked out of the hospital Labashi drove me back to my car and we then drove across town to have an early supper at the new Cheddars restaurant.

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Saturday, 1 September -

Today I set up and tested the new Brother wireless printer. This turned into a much longer process than expected. To make a long story short, I found a recommendation on the web to use a procedure to identify the printer to my wireless network via an 8-digit number the printer can generate when I push a specific switch. In a run-through of the procedure I found a mismatch between what my router administration program showed me and what the manual for it said it would show me... and I needed that function to proceed. After a long, involved call with Apple Care I learned the function had disappeared in an automatic software update to the router admin software. I could either revert back a version to get that function back or use an alternative method of getting the network to recognize the printer. Once I switched to the alternative method I had the printer up in about ten minutes. But it took me three hours to get to that point!
That evening we watched ‘New Zealand to the Max: South Island and North Island”

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