… on my palliase this morning, wide awake, thinking that I really ought to heave myself out of the aforementioned stinking pit. I have a lot to do and I’ve been letting things slide rather
And so after about half an hour of musing, I had a glance at the time. All of 07:10. It’s been a long time since I’ve been up and about voluntarily at that time. That early night last night must have done me some good.
It’s also been a long time since I’ve breakfasted and been for a walk and started work before the alarm clock at 08:15.
walk! Yes! It’s been a beautiful day today – a real and proper summer one. So much so that the water in the solar water heater reached 36.5°C and this evening I had my first solar shower since before I went to Canada.
The water in the 12-volt immersion heater (a black plastic storage box with a 12-volt electric element powered by the excess solar energy once the batteries are fully-charged) reached 69.5°C and so we had electric hot water to wash the dishes this evening.
And that’s not all – at least for now anyway.
while I was rummaging around the other day I came across an object that I had forgotten – a small 400-watt steam cooker. There are two banks of solar panels on the barn and they are almost always fully-charged. One of them is wired up to a 600-watt inverter and so if this weather keeps up I’m going to have a go at cooking some steamed vegetables and see what happens then.
As you know, I’m trying to get away from bottled gas. The new woodstove has given me some considerable help in this direction for the winter, but it’s clearly impractical to use it in the summer. The electric steamer, a slow cooker, and – who knows? Maybe even a microwave oven? That would work in summer if only it would stop raining.
This morning I had a pile of packing to do – another load of stuff to be shipped off to Canada in this little business enterprise. And it’s a good job that I have loads of old advertising flyers round here – the electric shredder shreds them all up nicely and the shreds make lovely padding inside the boxes.
I’ve also made a start on the web pages for my voyage to Canada just now and I’ve put the first one on line. I’m going to be doing this from now on – not waiting for a pile to be ready – just add them on as they are done.
This afternoon I did a pile of tidying up – emptying the bedroom of some of the stuff that I don’t need and putting it upstairs in the lean-to now that there’s a roof on it.
And then I emptied the cupboard at the back of the stairs so that I can work in there and do something with it, such as to store another load of stuff and get that out of the way of me tripping over it.
I even managed a huge pile of weeding on the path too while I was wandering around.
It’s all starting to look a little more healthy here now.
