Life in Nebraska

Tuesday, May 13, 2025

Front Door Flowers

This year, due to the unemployment situation, JP did her own arrangements in the front door pots. I pushed the cart and then got back to finishing up the details on the kitchen floor (reinstalling appliances, baseboards, thresholds, etc.).

Mother's Day

CP came over and took JP out to a fancy lunch for Mother's Day. He let me tag along, too.

The boys went in together and got JP a window unit for the kitchen. In the summer, the whole house AC can't compete with the western exposure of the kitchen.

Flooring, Finally!

After we got back from Mississippi, it has been a full court press to wrap up the floor project before I start my new job. It two solid days to get the new tiles down. Half a day was spent adjusting the layout so that all the tiles around the edges would be adequately sized, and tweaking the layout so that it would line up with the tiles we already installed with the pantry project.

Done!

Puzzle Pieces

Every turn of the kitchen project has brought us new challenges. We had to re-wire some circuits where the unprotected romex had been run over floor joists between floorboards and we had to replace floorboards that had been cut up for who knows why.

The space under the stove had the blower hard-ducted to its duct, a gas line, and the electrical connection. We were able to go around all of them with only two pieces of plywood cut into mating puzzle piece shapes. It worked out super slick!

Turkey Takeover

The turkeys have taken over our neighborhood! There are three toms strutting around with their tailfeathers out and wings dragging. Their favorite activity is to block traffic and gobble in unison when honked at.

Cornplane

We've all heard of Cornhole, but how many of you have seen a Cornplane?!? This was part of an art exhibit in the Atlanta airport.

MS Vacation

We had a great short vacation in Mississippi with Gramma & Grampa & GG. The weather was perfect, and JP had fun taking the boat up & down the river.

The magnolias were just starting to bloom when we arrived. MB picked a flower from the tree in her yard for us.

Plywood Floor

Throughout the flooring project, S will only step on certain things. We used layers of tarpaper to shim low spots. He did not like that and refused to step on it.

We finished up laying down most of the new flat plywood on the shimmed and planed subfloor the night before heading off to Mississippi.

Floorboards be Gone!

As soon as the Gs left, we got back to the floor project. We moved all the appliances into the dining room and set to the task of removing the old flooring.

The flooring came up easily. The 1/4" plywood that was stapled every 6" was a different story.

We had nice weather and were able to work with some fresh air.

Tourist Activities

No visit to Minneapolis is complete without a stop at the falls.

We hiked down to the Mississippi and checked out the cave on the south side of Minnehaha Creek. The sides were full of modern petroglyphs, which makes you wonder if the old petroglyphs we find out west are the same sort of thing.

What goes down must go up. With no leaves on the trees, the stairs up look like the Great Wall.

Chilly Ballgame

The G's popped in for a fun weekend visit. Good thing that Twins Baseball is back in full swing!

We had our normal perfect seats above first base. Normally, we are glad to be out of the sun, but on game day, it was in the low 50s with a breeze.

The girls abandoned us and made their way to the sundrenched sections out past third base. By the end of the game, our original section had emptied out, and the cheap seats in the sun were packed.

Morning Swim

S is still put out that the ice has gone away, but he is enjoying getting back to his morning swims.

Patch Job

We are expecting guests, so we can't keep up the kitchen floor project. We put some plywood and the old flooring down and covered it up with a rug.

Portrait Setting

In addition to the long exposure setting, the iPhone also has a nice "portrait" setting that uses its depth camera to blur the background. A normal camera does this by having a large aperture lens. The iPhone has a wide aperture (f/1.66), but because the lens is so physically small (6.9 mm), it's difficult to get a shallow depth of field so that the background blurs. The camera knows where, in terms of depth, the subject is, and the distance to everything else in the scene, and it uses the depth information to artificially blur whatever is not in the same plane as the subject.

R30

We insulated the external foundation wall with some rigid foam and then added 10" (R30) of fiberglass between the floor joists.

Coots

We've had a ton of migratory birds other than the normal ducks, geese, & swans this year. For a few days we had a large flock of coots that refueled while they waited for the ice up north to thaw.

Subfloor Project

The kitchenette area is part of an old addition to the original house. The floor was insulated with an inch of cellulose that had long since fallen away. We want to put a radiator under the window, but the plumbing to it needs to be in an insulated space. Under the floor is a dirt floor about two feet down that is separate from the rest of the basement.

The old subfloor boards came up relatively easily with the Sawzall.

Naturally, the cat was very interested. She climbed all around and removed all the cobwebs for me.

Moving Day

We made our last trip to Lanark to help Nana move to OKC. We stayed at the motel next to the Lake Carroll bait shop and were impressed with their wine selection. Not your typical bait shop.

We hung out at the bait shop and had lunch while the packers loaded the truck. Too bad it was in the 40s; it would have been fun to sit outside.

Merganser Photos

The dog started baking at this strange thing floating in the water near shore. It took a while to realize what it was: a professional photographer in their blind shooting with a high-powered lens.

I'd love to have a setup like that, but I don't have a job and my phone is doing well enough capturing mergansers for me right now.

Long Exposures

The entire reason I switched to an iPhone was for its camera. One of my favorite features is the "live" setting that allows for hand-held long exposure shots. Normally you'd need a tripod to take long exposures. This is where the Lake Harriet flowage merges into Minnehaha Creek.