Oh so busy
We’ve been incredibly busy, so the crafting of new posts has lagged significantly. One side project has involved playing with random cameras, like setting up…
Author: stega
Another Time Lapse Video
I’m a tad behind on writing stories for the site, but the time-lapse stuff has been a fun diversion from daily chores and project wrangling.…
The Lightning Storm and Resulting Fire in the Santa Cruz Mountains
This summer, I’m monkeying about with a time-lapse camera pointed westward over the valley. The first camera was a simple Brinno on a stake at…
More Furniture Finds
After buying the lovely table online at Michaan’s, I started visiting in person during their preview hours and, thanks to a friend, also discovered their…
A Trip to the Auction House
Soon after buying this place, Agent Smith and I discussed ways to furnish it that did not involve rushing off to IKEA, Restoration Hardware or…
Vacation Part 2
The chimney was stripped, the pool leak repaired, the closet holes patched, the Murphy bed put together, and quite a few smaller projects were completed…
Filling in the Holes
One last project completed while I was on vacation was the final cleanup of the crawl space and plugging the many holes in the concrete…
Stripping Down
A big, big project went down while I was on vacation in March/April 2019–the chimney got stripped. You’re probably scratching your head at that statement,…
Additional Pool Cover Notes
A super cool thing Agent Smith created for the pool is documented in the image below. That black dot in the middle of the cover…
Blue Room Refresh, Part 2
Continuing from the earlier post–in early February 2019 we ordered a Murphy bed from murphybeds.com, and it arrived at the end of the month. I…
Midge and the SCU Lightning Complex
As most of the world knows, much of California is currently on fire. Right now, the Purgatory area is currently beset with wildfires started by…
Blue Room Refresh, Part 1
One of the first big changes I made to the house was painting the blue room. Originally a very deep purple, as it housed the…
Leakage
The pool resurfacing project was completed in 2017. In winter 2018, we started to notice that water was leaving the pool at a faster rate…
Another Vacation for Stega
In March 2019, I left the ranch again for a much-needed vacation. This time I spent 16 days on Little Cayman, where I dove a…
Linens and Things
Continuing the theme of quality-of-life improvements, a very simple one a year or so ago was reorganizing the cabinets in the linen hallway. When we…
Long Lines
So this post is more documentary for our own purposes rather than entertainment for readers. During the rainy week when the power wall was being…
Another Bit of Electricity
Before Shelter-In-Place, something I regularly did, especially in the winter months, was turn on the courtyard lights when Agent Smith was nearing home (yea for…
Lick the Cookie
One bit of decor we’ve added to the house is a long (and growing longer) row of patent plaques that Agent Smith received from his…
Contest Restart
Two years I was unsuccessful in finding a suitable name for our apatosaurus, so I’m restarting the contest! Details: this is the first large dinosaur…
Battery Backup: Hosed
The one casualty of the power wall project was the post that held the reel for a water hose we use a lot–sadly, the post…
Battery Backup: The Install
As detailed in the previous post, we decided to forgo installing a big diesel generator for backup power and opted for a power wall instead.…