[sic]

Assisted Pull-UpDate: Multiply This Daily By 10 (To Start)

Posted by Will under DIY, health
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Back last September, I was apparently the only one in the world who DIDN’T know of the existence of resistance bands and how they can aid those such as myself who are pull-up challenged (meaning with my long-ass arms, weak upperbody strength and my 200-plus pound bulk I could barely do one).

Since then, I’ve made some progress, but not much. I’ve gotten pretty good at doing assisted pull-ups but if I’m lucky I’m only able to do two without the bands (and the second one isn’t pretty).

So now I’ve turned it up a notch. Instead of occasionally cranking out one, two or three sets of 10, I’ve raised the bar so to speak and now do 10 sets daily of what’s shown in this clip: 10 pull-ups with the last one followed by a 10-second hold at the top. Then two more and a five-second hold. Basically I do this once every hour from the time I get up until I have to leave in the afternoon. With this extra dedication, determination and effort (which will eventually be doubled to twice an hour) I’m looking forward to finally weaning myself off the resistance band and getting to the point where I can count off five of the suckers completely on my own.

Equipment used:
Iron Gym
Workoutz Heavy Duty Resistance Band

Bamboo Charlie Lives!

Posted by Will under DIY, nature, outdoors
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You might remember last September when I wrote about visiting the garden of Bamboo Charlie (nee Charles Ray Walker) after I learned of his sudden demise. If not, you can read and see about it here.

Bamboo Charlie was homeless by choice and a beloved fixture in that area near the Boyle Heights Sears, carving out a quirky paradise on a slice of land near the east bank of the LA River. After I learned about him when his story made the LA Times, I failed to go see him when he was alive and so was heartbroken to only be able to visit his place after he was gone. It was a magical place.

One of the things I did when Susan and I visited was take a mature chili pepper from one of the many plants he had cultivated and put it in my pocket. When I got home, I harvested the seeds and planted them.

They sprouted and grew pretty quickly and even blossomed when pretty much everything else around the house was battening down for winter, but I wasn’t sure if the bees had pollinated any of the plant’s flowers. I should never doubt bees getting the job done because when taking out the trash yesterday, I glanced its way and was surprised to find two peppers have begun growing from where blooms had been, like so:

It’s a small tribute, but I’m happy to see Charlie’s legacy live on. Heretofore they are called The Red Hot Charlie Peppers.

A Ssssssssssssssssssss So Slight

Posted by Will under DIY
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You don’t remember that thing I wrote about DIY’ing a loooong-leaking hose faucet last January, do you? Of course you don’t. Imention it because after being proving myself to be so slow to put off what in essence turned out to be such an easy and water- and money-saving fix, one would think that if any other H2O-No! pops up around our 106-year-old domecile, my conservational self would hippity hop to getting it repaired, yes?

Not so much.

Case in point: the fill valve inside the toilet in the bathroom off the study. It literally has been running for about nine months. Not pouring, mind you. In fact, the flow was slight enough as to be almost imperceptible. But it was continuous nonetheless — 24/7/365. And I’ve been aware of it aaaaall thiiiiiiis time.

Suffice it to say it was ever on my to-do list, but always getting bumped to the bottom.

Not that I did nada. As best I figured it, the valve was not shutting completely after flushing. As the water would refill in the tank, it would almost-but-nooooooot-quiiiite close off. So hell yeah: I tinkered with it on a whole bunch of occasions — twisting a screw there, repositioning the floatball here… I even went so far as to buy a replacement assembly at the local hardware store about six months ago. But it was 15 inches tall, whereas the tank won’t accommodate anything more than a foot high.

So the fill valve went on incessantly overfilling. Draining water with juuuuuuust-so-slight a ssssssssssssssss and the occasional very quiet “gloip” noise that sounded as if the world’s smallest cottonmouth snake with a burping problem was living in there.

But of course, I wouldn’t be writing about this if there wasn’t a happy ending, right?

Riiiiiiight.

It came in the form of the Fluidmaster 400LS Fill Valve With Leak Sentry Technology, that I found in the back end of my closest Home Depot yesterday. Ten bucks.

Not only reasonably priced, but miracle of miracles, I dropped it in and it went to work without me having to do the slighest bit of adjusting.

And that makes me nervous. So whenever I’m at my desk I keep an ear toward the bathroom, to hear if the tiny burping snake has snuck back.

Sssssssso far, sssssssssso good.

Thanksgiving DAY, Thanksgiving DIY

Posted by Will under DIY
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Yesterday I followed rules 1 and 3 of the Fixer’s Manifesto and repaired our patio table umbrella, of all things. After almost eight years of exposure,  a foot-long section of the bottom part of the wooden pole, just above where it sits in the stand snapped clean through.

I figured this out yesterday morning after noticing the umbrella was listing to port exceptionally hard.

My first thought was just to remove the broken section and reseat the remaining pole in the stand, but that would have left the umbrella at basically my neck level, which would force me basically to either duck/cover and or limbo down first if I wanted to sit at the table beneath it. Doable, but inconveeeeeenient.

So my second thought was to write the entire umbrella’s obit, but then I was all: “Dang, new patio umbrellas run like upwards of a hunnert bucks!”

Realizing that spending money unnecessarily was stinkin’ thinkin’ I got busy working the solution instead of the problem. See, the pole is a top and bottom section joined in the middle by a metal sleeve, so I pulled the umbrella up and away from the table and undid the sleeve. At first I figured I’d just hunt around the house for a suitably sized dowel (or go buy one at the hardware store), saw it to an equal length and use that as a replacement for the bottom part of the pole. But that wasn’t going to work out because the part of the broken section that goes into the sleeve was threaded and I am inconveniently without the skills or machinery required to thread a piece of round wood.

So I started to write the umbrella’s obit again, but then I stopped abruptly because I remembered something. Wouldn’t you know there was this hollow metal pole that for years and years has been sitting under the steps on the south side of the house. I can’t recall where it came from or what its purpose is/was, or why I kept it all this time, but there it was.

And wouldn’t you know it was literally the same diameter as the pole. Sat perfectly in the stand. Problem was though, the diameter of the hollowed inside part of the pole was about a third-inch smaller than its wooden counterpart, which required me to get a rather large buck knife and risk amputating some finger bits while I whittled the end of the top part of the pole (the one with the umbrella attached) until the two pieces fit together pretty much perfectamundoly (as seen at right).

As you can see below, the umbrella now sits waaaay high above the tabletop, the result of the metal pole being about a foot too long (and me without the machinery too cut it down to a better size). I suppose I could saw the length off the top part and rewhittle, but for now having too much room to get beneath it is a far, far better thing than not having enough, not having it at all — or spending upwards of a hunnert bucks for a new one.

Final Backyard Pumpkin Patch Report

Posted by Will under DIY, nature
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There’s actually a couple other gourds out in the backyard still growing — one barely a pound in weight and the other probably about six or seven (and shaped awesome/ominously like a skull) — but they’re still mostly green and probably still will be by Halloween so I left them alone to continue to do their thing, and instead harvested the three that have orange’d up the most:

The most consistent thing is that we went five for five. We planted five seeds back on July 4 and each one ultimately produced one pumpkin — along with an hellacious amount of flowering vines. The least consistent thing was their size. I’m not knocking that… hell, I’m thrilled that we got something for our trouble. It’s just curious the differences.

Above (click it for the bigger picture), from the left: 3 pounds 11.25 ounces, 11 pounds even, and 1 pound 10.75 ounces

Special note: We call the smallest one on the right our “special needs” pumpkin because she leans over no matter which way you set her down (a product of growing up somewhat strangled between competing vines from the other two pumpkins.

Real Men Sew Up Their Own Uniform Armpit Seams

Posted by Will under DIY, slice of life
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And listen to ambient electronica while they do. So there.

Another Smoothie

Posted by Will under DIY, food
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After cranking out a lemon/lime/orange/strawberry concoction for Susan, I then went to work liquifying a banana/pear/strawberry smoothie for myself, as seen in the after and before shots below:

Don’t worry, this is the last time I’ll blog about how much I’m loving the manual machine and its results: