Quote of the day:
Life will become more and more interesting when you are past 60. What you have accumulated in your mind until then will blossom. When you are past 70, you will have a fuller life.
Source: Meet the 84-year-old Japanese app developer who inspired Tim Cook
On a bleak and drizzly Sunday afternoon I enjoyed the excellent company of my partner while we watched Poms, Late Night and Cracker Jack. I really enjoyed all three. All featured women and women’s friendships. ‘Issues’ were also dealt with admirably.
mbnov 24-Nov-19: company
Excellent! Te Reo Māori support:
Microsoft Translator supports more than 60 languages… the free application can translate te reo Māori text into English text and vice versa. It will also support Māori into and from all other languages supported by Microsoft Translator.
For anyone wondering why the air is so hazy today that we can’t even see the Tararuas clearly:
The sky is particularly hazy … today due to the smoke from the Australian bushfires. Strong NW winds … are spreading this over much of central and southern NZ
Shih Tzu puppies can dramatically change colour as they grow. Take this little woebegone mite at only ~3 months of age: dark face and body. And at age ~13 years Oshi is really pale. He changed colour in the first year or so. He’s a Lhasa Apso cross.
mbnov 23-Nov-19: woebegone
Half my mouth is numb after a trip to the dentist. Sometimes if I hum it can be comforting. As I get older I have less and less tolerance for dentist visits, holding my mouth open, having tools in my mouth. I just wish my teeth didn’t keep falling apart.
mbnov 22-Nov-19: hum
Ahhh, breakfast, the most important meal of the day … except for dinner! 🐶
Did I break my feed with the umlaut problem in my earlier post? The more recent post about my tattoo isn’t showing up… // @help
When I was 30 I had a rose tattoed on my hip. Times were different back in 1985 and as a school teacher I didn’t think I could have a visible tattoo. Now I think I want a tattoo on my wrist to celebrate turning 65 soon. This artist looks right for me: Sian Montgomery-Neutze.
Something I see often now, the phrase: The proof will be in the pudding. In the old days the phrase was “The proof of the pudding is in the eating”. ‘Proof’ in there used to mean ‘test’, as in German, prüfen - to test. How things change…
The choice was murky. She was extremely selective, but one chocolate was rumoured to taste superb, while the other looked so much more appealing. Could she build a case to abate the appeal of the first and boost the second? She bit into the first and it was hollow! mbnov Week 3.
A hollow tube came in so handy for extracting 20,000 litres of rotten water from the tank.
mbnov 21-Nov-19: hollow
Why 20,000 litres of water had to go
Our house has beside it a concrete tank with around 20,000 litres capacity. Rainwater comes off the roof, through a first flush diverter that helps keep it clean of debris, and then into the tank. When we turn on a tap in the house the pump on top of the tank runs, pulls water from near the bottom of the tank and feeds it to the tap.
It's a great system that certainly makes us aware of whether or not it's rained recently and how much water we're using.
Until things go wrong.
A few weeks ago while I was showering I thought something smelled odd. Thanks to being unwell and some stuff going on, I hadn't cleaned the drain for a bit so figured that must be the problem. A good clean didn't fix things and over the next week the smell grew into a stench.
After some Internet searches which suggested various possible causes I went and stuck my head in the water tank: phew! That smelled bad and was definitely the source of the problem.
I bought water treatment (hydrogen peroxide with a little silver) and added that. Maybe the smell abated a little. I added more, for a shock treatment. We still had a problem and started buying expensive bottled water (~1 litre per dollar) for drinking.
Next up: clean the gutter. I tried asking around for someone to get on the roof and clean the gutter for pay, but that brought zero results. Finally, last weekend, I did it myself. I climbed the ladder to the one spot I could reach, pulled out a big clump of grass, and by stretching out one arm with my iPhone in it was awkwardly able to take a photo. The gutter was an inch thick in gunge. Yuck!
After disconnecting the first flush diverter from the tank, I then taped the gutter cleaning attachment and garden hose to a long pole and walked along below the gutter with arm stretched high, doing my best to wash out the gunk. I still need to go back up the ladder with camera to see how successful I was, but a lot of dirt washed out of the bottom of the diverter.
Next up was a test for E. Coli from the closest water testing lab in Palmerston North. They shipped me a sterile sample bottle, an ice pack and a polystyrene container. I followed the instructions for cleaning the tap, running water for a while and then taking the sample. Then I had to make a special trip to Palmerston North to get the sample back to the lab within 24 hours. Our rural delivery postie is excellent, but the sample wouldn't have arrived within the 24 hour period.
The lab culture the sample for 24 hours and then examine it with a microscope and count the bacteria.
Our results were not good. E. Coli should be below 1 per 100mL, our count was 11.
I contacted our local water supply guy, Reggie, who gave me a contact for a company who clean out water tanks. They came the next day. First they pumped out all the water from the tank — our was brim full, so that was 20,000 litres. Then Russell squeezed himself through the access hole, climbed down the ladder and vacuumed out the gunge from the bottom and walls. The gunk was extracted through a long hose back to the truck. Vacuuming was followed by water blasting and more vacuuming until the interior of the tank was spotless.
By that time Reggie had turned up with 14,000 litres of clean fresh treated water from the artesian source at Ōtaki (~46 litres per dollar). While the tank filled, Warren from the cleaning company added a strong concentration of hydrogen peroxide to dose the water and help clean out the pipes through the house.
Look how clean and see-through that tank full of water is!
Once everything was finished I had to turn on each tap in the house in sequence and let the water run for 5 minutes.
Our house was built in 2014 and we've lived in it full time for just on 4 years. While we've had to have a couple of tank fills because the water was running out over summer, this is the first actual trouble we've had with it.
Apparently there wasn't anything terrible in the tank: no rotting possums or whatever. It was just accumulated straw that birds had dropped in the gutter, along with sand and pollen and other wind-blown debris, plus, probably, a good deal of bird poop.
Today I had a glorious shower in crystal clear odour-free water!
Today our currently full 20,000 litre rainwater tank will be emptied. 😢 Then it’ll be vacuumed, cleaned, vacuumed a second time, cleaned, checked, then filled (14,000 litres) with a tanker of water from the town supply. ＄＄ Better than E.Coli though.
mbnov 20-Nov-19: second
The TV show Stumptown started strong. 6 episodes in it’s definitely one of my favourites. How can a show be so excellent from minute one?
Dark sky, green paddocks, low sun. Straight from the iPhone.
The dogs were supposed to be groomed last week but it was postponed at the last minute. Today, finally, they’ve been bathed and trimmed. Before: shaggy dogs; after: trim and tidy (and sweet-smelling). 🐶
If you’re having a bad day, or even if you’re not, and don’t hate dogs then look at this 6 minute video: Heroic labrador helps save small dog in the sea. 🐶
We’ve been trying to ameliorate the bad smell from our drinking water for a couple of weeks. It did abate, but we also got the water properly tested and the results are bad. Now I’m arranging to have the tank cleaned, inspected and refilled.
mbnov 19-Nov-19: abate
Geese by Lake Horowhenua in Levin.
