New York Greetings From Hill-Billy Calvin, AKA Augie

C

Calzone

Gear Whore #1
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Nov 11, 2008
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Yesterday was my first day back at work, after I took two weeks off to close on my Baby-Victorian and to move in. I basically moved myself one van load at a time, except for the one day I snookered Devil Christian into helping me with the heavier and bulk items like the "Jersey Barrier" AKA Epson 7800 printer, my rollaway tool box, and prints.

Currently my full basement is kinda full with all my gear, and we basically gave away our modern furniture that furnished our Madhattan apartment.

So there are a few surprises. Already I started a feud with some neighbors, I found three holes in the ground in my back yard, Christian thought they were from Moles, but they are likely Chipmunks. This is not good if you are an avid gardener.

The high end Crown Furnace that also provides instant on hot water sounds like a racing motorcycle at I-DELL with the choke on every time it cycles.

My property actually extends about another 25 feet beyond the rear fence.

So NYC is 40 miles from from my house exactly, and Peekskill is a "rivertown" right on the majestic Hudson River. All the towns north of Tarrytown are kinda known as the Scenic Lower Hudson Valley with mountains on both sides.

Today I got up at 4:45 AM. This includes time to eat a breakfast and the walk (hike because of hills) took exactly half an hour to catch a 5:58 train. The walk is vigorous, and at one point I take off my Patagonia R4 sweater, R4 vest, and the Patagonia windproof shell, storing them all in my backpack. About a third of the walk I'm just wearing a short sleeved t-shirt and its December first.

At 7:05 I'm at Grand Central. I sport a Rolex that I call my "Cheap-Rolex" because it features the "No-Date" and lacks the "Cyclopes" that is a bubble magnifier on the crystal, but because I'm a lazy-slacker I use my watch to make sure that I'm at least 5 minutes late for work.

So rather than take the bus up Third Avenue, I decide to save the $2.75 Metrocard fare and walk uptown from 42d Street to 72d Street to my lab. At 59th Street and Third I discover that the Home Depot set in a basement of a highrise opens at 7:00 AM. Right next door is a Citibank so I get some cash to buy more LED light bulbs to replace the filament bulbs in B-V.

When I stroll into work it is exactly 8:05. This is why I were a Rolex. LOL.

So when I packed up all these boxes, I kinda kept the weight down so a single man could carry and load a van, they were heavy, but because I planned on this solo man on being me the boxes were kinda heavy in a modular manner loaded especially for me in mind, but not too heavy to be "nut-crushers," and the end result is that somehow this became some ideal strength training.

I was always trim, but then I became a skinny bitch when I became a 5"10" Welterweight (under 146 pounds), but now I think I'm likely a Junior Welterweight or a Heavy Lightweight around 135 pounds.

My Paul Smith jeans size 28 float on me and hang on my hips ghetto style. My underwear size small is now too big for me and pretty much I am now built like a muscular 15 year old with abs.

So one thing I learned is that if you are a self promoted lazy-slacker that one way to ruin your reputation is to buy an old house.

Funny thing is that I have never been more relaxed and care free.

In January I will be 63 years old, and don't tell my boss, but at age 64, thirteen months from now, I will retire. They "Frooze" my pension so it does not pay to work until 66 years 8 months, and financially I have enough money.

Fidel was right about how buying a station wagon could be the right car for me in another thread. Thursday I'll be looking at a Golf Station wagon AWD that has 11K miles on it.

Cal
 
I recently took apart the bottom of our furnace to clean it out before the winter really set in and I discovered (what I knew) was causing the idling motorcycle sound. It was the squirrel cage fan that was caked up with old dust, old hardened drywall dust, old cat hair from decades past, and whatever else found its way past the filter. I scraped all hundred or so of the fan vanes clean and used the shop vac to remove the stuff. I also vacuumed out everything in that furnace, a job that our landlord should have been doing these last several decades he's owned the house but has neglected. Probably a good 5lbs of caked dirt came out of that thing. Now it runs much quieter. So flip the breaker off, make sure you know where your gas cutoff is in case you need it and take that furnace covering apart to clean up whatever is causing your fan to become unbalanced.

If you're gardening, you're going to have to dig down maybe a foot or more, lay down a layer of good drainage stones, then a barrier of stainless chicken wire or fencing, then put your loamed soil in for planting. I learned this by growing 1/4 acre of potatoes in the year before I graduated high school. We had a big gopher problem out there in NM and I would sit in an office chair at the edge of my crop, armed with a 40lb recurve bow and a bunch of arrows, some with "thumper" heads on them, some broadheads, some target, depending what I needed to get through to the gopher. I would recommend against using anything that is poisonous, especially if you're going to be eating what you grow. Castor beans are as poisonous as I would use but I never wanted a rotting rodent underground, loaded with poison next to my potatoes. This is how and why I learned to do the stainless fencing underground for the next time I plant.

As for a station wagon, I'm right there with you, always searching for a Mercedes W123, W124, or W210 turbodiesel wagon.

Phil Forrest
 
Congratulations Cal ! You did it !
Very cool to hear that you made the move.
I hope that you have nothing but green lights in life going forward :D
 
Good-gooD!

Decent pensions and living in the house is kind of miracle for my generation from where I came from and where I'm now.
 
Enjoy your new home, I use 'Tom Cat mole and gopher remover' in my yard. It is spread with a winder fertilizer spreader. All it is is small pellets of castor oil beans. It will not immediately get rid of borrowing animals, but it is more of a prevention. Use it three times a year and they won't return. But like above said maybe not for root crops.
 
Phil_F_NM said:
I recently took apart the bottom of our furnace to clean it out before the winter really set in and I discovered (what I knew) was causing the idling motorcycle sound. It was the squirrel cage fan that was caked up with old dust, old hardened drywall dust, old cat hair from decades past, and whatever else found its way past the filter. I scraped all hundred or so of the fan vanes clean and used the shop vac to remove the stuff. I also vacuumed out everything in that furnace, a job that our landlord should have been doing these last several decades he's owned the house but has neglected. Probably a good 5lbs of caked dirt came out of that thing. Now it runs much quieter. So flip the breaker off, make sure you know where your gas cutoff is in case you need it and take that furnace covering apart to clean up whatever is causing your fan to become unbalanced.

If you're gardening, you're going to have to dig down maybe a foot or more, lay down a layer of good drainage stones, then a barrier of stainless chicken wire or fencing, then put your loamed soil in for planting. I learned this by growing 1/4 acre of potatoes in the year before I graduated high school. We had a big gopher problem out there in NM and I would sit in an office chair at the edge of my crop, armed with a 40lb recurve bow and a bunch of arrows, some with "thumper" heads on them, some broadheads, some target, depending what I needed to get through to the gopher. I would recommend against using anything that is poisonous, especially if you're going to be eating what you grow. Castor beans are as poisonous as I would use but I never wanted a rotting rodent underground, loaded with poison next to my potatoes. This is how and why I learned to do the stainless fencing underground for the next time I plant.

As for a station wagon, I'm right there with you, always searching for a Mercedes W123, W124, or W210 turbodiesel wagon.

Phil Forrest
Click to expand...

Phil,

Thanks, but the furnace is perhaps a few years old. I called yesterday to have annual service performed and to have the oil tank topped up (half full/empty) and I was told by the oil company that the furnace was just got its annual service in August 2020 paid for by the previous owner. Also I should wait till the tank gets to about a third from empty before requesting a delivery.

No neglect here.

In the back-backyard beyond the fence is about 25 feet of my land. About 8-10 feet extends before there is a rolling drop off that slopes toward a brook, a bog, and wetlands.

As if in China I might start terracing to plant a garden.

Also because of the dead end, no sidewalks I gain about 7 feet in the front of the house and 7 feet by 200 alongside the side. I figure my property is close to a quarter acre when you add everything up.

I blocked the three holes with top soil, and one got dug reopened. I studied chipmunks and evidently they store the dirt they dig in their mouths and puff their cheeks.

I esculated the feud and added some hot red pepper into the new soil. I like spicy food, but I hope chipmunks don't.

I know that deer don't like Butterfly Bushes, but I do. I grew them from seed, and they grow rather tall.

Remember in New Mexico they say, "Land of the flea and home of the plague." They say the black plague comes from fleas. Every year they still get a handful or so of cases.

Cal
 
Nice. Sounds good so far for you.

Sometimes I feel like we have our own personal zoo. Something dug up a basketball sized hole along my fenceline and uncovered an underground bee nest. And munched out. Maybe a racoon? Empty honeycombs are everywhere. So now I have to figure out how to keep the bees or whatever from coming back. LOL.
 
Nokton48 said:
Nice. Sounds good so far for you.

Sometimes I feel like we have our own personal zoo. Something dug up a basketball sized hole along my fenceline and uncovered an underground bee nest. And munched out. Maybe a racoon? Empty honeycombs are everywhere. So now I have to figure out how to keep the bees or whatever from coming back. LOL.
Click to expand...

Dan,

The seller told us that once a Bald Eagle was perched on the roof of the Baby-Victorian.

Devil Christian is an Architect, so of course I exploited those skills to my benefit.

My 20x21 foot garage is made of some sort of terra cotta Sin-DER block that I never saw before and there is a stucco exterior. To me it is kinda crazy, but Devil Christian has seen it before.

Then there are the four corner houses with all the same garage with a low hip roof. Hmmm... How did that happen?

So even in Peekskill I guess I'm a bit of a tourist attraction. One day two of my neighbors came by and introduced themselves. Then I met another, and then the other corner house that's diagonal from mine.

My diagonal neighbor is an architect and is also a designer. He says he gut renovated the house, new electrical, new plumbing, new heating...

When I asked him how long it took, he said, "About a week for the demo," which he said he did himself, "And about 4 months to rebuild."

His house is the biggest on the block, and the smut is that it was moved twice. How crazy is that?

So my version of a "Crazy-Dan" will be the garage. Devil Christian pointed out that the roof pushes outward with a snow load and lacks structural support, and that a lack of solid support over the door and windows are also bad design. There are small cracks in the stucco indicating movement and weakness.

The forensics of the roof display "sistered" rafters because the 2x4's bowed. Seems evident that I will have to replace the entire roof. So don't tell "Maggie" but I think I would like to replace the hip roof that looks like a squat pier-A-mid into a peaked roof so I could have a vaulted ceiling in half the garage and a loft in the other half.

I would also extend the peaked roof to initially have a covered porch that I could later enclose into an "observatory" as the say in rural England.

These 2x8 SIP panels would allow a ridge load beam design and offer a R52 value. These same unsheathed SIP panels in 2x4 form offer R26. I could even save money by building carriage house doors out of these SIP panels and in 2x6 form offer a R value of 42.

So not hard to build a super insulated structure. The stucco terra cotta would basically be used as siding. A heat pump would do well for heating and for central air. The idea here is to make the SIP panels the structure to support the roof.

So Maggie might think it is too much. Basically I want it to be more like a carriage house. The house is small and so are the rooms, the basement is mostly for storage and a darkroom.

So anyways I want to do a "Crazy-Dan."

So far I softened her up on a 10 Kilowatt solar array. She thinks they are Fugly, and I agree that from the street it lacks curb appeal, but the rear roof is of vast area and perfectly faces south. I should have free electricity for the house, and have free heat and AC in my carriage house.

BTW the Baby Victorian has a 200 amp service and the garage already has a 50 amp feed as well as its own breaker panel.

The garage floor is made of mortared blocks and is uneven. Devil Christian says the walls though are on its own separate foundation, so I could be a tough guy from Brooklyn and demo the floor and then have a mason guy pour me a level slab floor.

I had a friend named Ron who was almost a Major League pitcher. He spent a lot of time breaking up rocks with a sledge to build up his arm. He could throw a softball so fast that you could hear the air fizzle. His handicap was he was not tall and was only about my height. MLB pitchers tend to be six feet or taller.

Cal
 
Nokton48 said:
Nice. Sounds good so far for you.

Sometimes I feel like we have our own personal zoo. Something dug up a basketball sized hole along my fenceline and uncovered an underground bee nest. And munched out. Maybe a racoon? Empty honeycombs are everywhere. So now I have to figure out how to keep the bees or whatever from coming back. LOL.
Click to expand...

Dan,

Could it have been a bear?

Cal
 
robert blu said:
Wow, this is a good news! Congrats! enjoy your new house! Even better when retired !
Click to expand...

Robert,

"Working hard; or hardly working," my friend Dave use to say.

In a ways I'm already kinda retired. While moving did not hurt me, I could say that a hard days work might kill me. I have not really worked hard at work in about a decade.

"Just pay me," I say.

Cal
 
Cal, congratulations on your closing and moving to Peekskill. BTW, the Home Depot on E 59th Street is my 'hood.
 
Congratulations on the new place Cal! I did something similar in 1978, was getting fed up with job and made a move from Canadian prairies to Vancouver island. The place I bought had a large south facing backyard which over the years has turned into a mini farm. Thirty raised beds, eight fruit trees, six grape vines and a big greenhouse.
During the pandemic gardening has been a lifesaver, exercise, fresh food and lots saved for this winter. I’m only one person so extra above my needs gets shared. Great idea with solar power, my greenhouse uses a panel to run a cooling fan and have a couple more panels that hopefully can be rigged to charge my e-bike battery. Are you planning any fruit trees for the property?
When there’s been a huge harvest of pears or apples, friends help with the picking and get a share of the hard cider that’s produced.

I’ve had my share of raccoon problems here. Two of my trees are figs, and one year lost much of the crop to masked bandits. They came silently in the night breaking branches and taking a bite out of each fig until they found the ripest. The next day all I could think about was Davey Crocket hats. Finally found the solution with an E-fence, two wires, one 6”, another 12” above the ground. Connect a cattle control fence charger and raccoons won’t cross it. The place I got the charger supplied insulated posts and wire as well. It’s safe for small animals and won’t kill them only discourage them. I’ve gotten zapped when forgetting to turn it off and coming in contact, wakes you up but nothing serious. Also keeps feral cats from using my food source (garden) as a litter box. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to work for rats, rabbits or squirrels.

The house got a darkroom installed soon after I took possession but it hasn’t seen much use lately since I started scanning and printing with a 3880.
Still have Omega D6 and Valoy enlargers and all the gear but time flys by and dreams get sidetracked by the realities of life. Am getting into my upper seventies so am slowing up and finding the need to set more priorities that can cut into creative times.

Glenn
 
Cal,

I think we are all waiting for fine art photographic evidence of various things from gopher holes to 25' yard to steam punk geysers and sleepy commuters!
:)







Calzone said:
Phil,

Thanks, but the furnace is perhaps a few years old. I called yesterday to have annual service performed and to have the oil tank topped up (half full/empty) and I was told by the oil company that the furnace was just got its annual service in August 2020 paid for by the previous owner. Also I should wait till the tank gets to about a third from empty before requesting a delivery.

No neglect here.

In the back-backyard beyond the fence is about 25 feet of my land. About 8-10 feet extends before there is a rolling drop off that slopes toward a brook, a bog, and wetlands.

As if in China I might start terracing to plant a garden.

Also because of the dead end, no sidewalks I gain about 7 feet in the front of the house and 7 feet by 200 alongside the side. I figure my property is close to a quarter acre when you add everything up.

I blocked the three holes with top soil, and one got dug reopened. I studied chipmunks and evidently they store the dirt they dig in their mouths and puff their cheeks.

I esculated the feud and added some hot red pepper into the new soil. I like spicy food, but I hope chipmunks don't.

I know that deer don't like Butterfly Bushes, but I do. I grew them from seed, and they grow rather tall.

Remember in New Mexico they say, "Land of the flea and home of the plague." They say the black plague comes from fleas. Every year they still get a handful or so of cases.

Cal
Click to expand...
 
Glenn2 said:
Congratulations on the new place Cal! I did something similar in 1978, was getting fed up with job and made a move from Canadian prairies to Vancouver island. The place I bought had a large south facing backyard which over the years has turned into a mini farm. Thirty raised beds, eight fruit trees, six grape vines and a big greenhouse.
During the pandemic gardening has been a lifesaver, exercise, fresh food and lots saved for this winter. I’m only one person so extra above my needs gets shared. Great idea with solar power, my greenhouse uses a panel to run a cooling fan and have a couple more panels that hopefully can be rigged to charge my e-bike battery. Are you planning any fruit trees for the property?
When there’s been a huge harvest of pears or apples, friends help with the picking and get a share of the hard cider that’s produced.

I’ve had my share of raccoon problems here. Two of my trees are figs, and one year lost much of the crop to masked bandits. They came silently in the night breaking branches and taking a bite out of each fig until they found the ripest. The next day all I could think about was Davey Crocket hats. Finally found the solution with an E-fence, two wires, one 6”, another 12” above the ground. Connect a cattle control fence charger and raccoons won’t cross it. The place I got the charger supplied insulated posts and wire as well. It’s safe for small animals and won’t kill them only discourage them. I’ve gotten zapped when forgetting to turn it off and coming in contact, wakes you up but nothing serious. Also keeps feral cats from using my food source (garden) as a litter box. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to work for rats, rabbits or squirrels.

The house got a darkroom installed soon after I took possession but it hasn’t seen much use lately since I started scanning and printing with a 3880.
Still have Omega D6 and Valoy enlargers and all the gear but time flys by and dreams get sidetracked by the realities of life. Am getting into my upper seventies so am slowing up and finding the need to set more priorities that can cut into creative times.

Glenn
Click to expand...

Glenn,

We plan on doing blue berries and rasberries. The thing with blueberries is that you can have trees, bushes and low ground cover. They are easy to freeze.

One thing I learned is to go indigenous. Beyond the 30 inch tall chain link fence I have a 25x25 that I will terrace. This should be plenty to start. Already have a pretty big mulch pile. One of my neighbors used a leaf blower to create a pile onto public land near Route 9, and I think I will harvest these leaves as landfill.

In doing a clean up I think what was an apple tree was choked to death by a vine. I would like to at least replace this tree and add others.

They say that Vancouver Island has a mild climate. Is this true? If so you are lucky.

The keys to good health are diet and exercise. Next is low stress. The way I'm thinking is that I'm a likely candidate to be the oldest man alive. The current record is 115. I have the right genes, the right body type, and the right personality. On top of that I'm stubborn. LOL.

My biological life expectancy already is 106 based on my BMI, income, education, family history, and current health and lifestyle. I only see this getting better when I retire in 13 months.

BTW if I died my grey sideburns and my almost all white arrogant chin beard I could pass for 40. Inappropriately young girls say stuff about me having a great butt. LOL.

"Look at that," says one gal behind my back, and the other gal says, "That is so cute." Meanwhile I'm with my gal "Maggie" who remained clueless.

I think eventually I could kinda live off the grid with cultivating the land and having a 10 Kilowatt solar array. Maggie does not like how solar panels can kill curb appeal, but because of the layout and orientation of our house we have a perfect roof.

She mentioned putting solar panels on my garage, but there is not enough area. Hmmm... I would have to change the orientation of the pitched roof. The old hip roof needs to be replaced and is structurally deficient, so... Hmmm. Anyways that reorientation would make it more like a carriage house. Hmmm...

Cal
 
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