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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