Weather Warning!

We have some wet weather coming at us in the next couple of days, according to the weather people. It is ironic that it comes at exactly the 1st year anniversary of the big 2023 flood that took out roads and filled basements and streets in so many Vermont towns. On Saturday Cabot is celebrating their comback from that awful flood - I hope they aren't struggling with more flood damage by then! 

Here at the pond - the water is going to come up and anything not secured is going to float away. Be warned, and tie stuff down or put it where the water cannot reach it. We may have several inches of rain from this storm, and I've been told the pond is already higher than normal.

I stopped at Marty's on my way home from Lyndonville and got caught in a downpour. Of course I had an umbrella with me - but it was in the car and I was in the store! I only had to wait 10 minutes or so, but it rained really hard there. When I got home I couldn't tell if we'd had a lot of rain at my house or not - my rain gauge has only about .30 in. in it - much less than I would have guessed from what was coming down in Danville, so perhaps it wasn't quite as severe here. I didn't have to wait for road work either going out this morning or when I came back, so perhaps the crews were taking a break when I left at around 10 a.m., and maybe were having lunch - or just got rained out when I was heading home around 1.

I had an appointment in the 'Ville, and also had to take my laptop in to Northeast Computer Systems. Jamie noticed a little over a week ago that the keypad of my laptop was raised a bit and warned me that it was dangerous when that happens. It means the battery is either going bad or has gone bad. Jamie told me to contact Josh at Northeast Computer, which I did right away, and he confirmed it was not a good situation. He warned me to put it on a flat surface away from anything flammable. I left it in the metal wheelbarrow in the garage until I could get it up to him. He handled it very carefully - and said it was really in bad shape and I was lucky. The darned things can explode! I had been using it in my lap off and on most nights to check on email and sometimes to play solitaire. Not a good thing to do. He told me to keep it on a flat tray of some sort when I'm using it. I rarely used it on the battery - I always leave it plugged in - so he suggested I forget replacing the battery. That's fine with me, and it saved $50 or more. I now have it on a small wooden cutting board I never use anymore. I think the radiation from these gadgets we have nowadays is something to worry about if we use them a lot or always have them with us like our cell phones. I checked online and there are warnings, but science hasn't yet figured out just what the long-term effects from cell phones, wi-fi, etc., is - they just warn that over-exposure can be harmful. Something to think about, for sure.

I had a message today that Wave Aimi, Andrea Aimi's 14-year-old daughter, is available for baby sitting this summer. If you have need of a sitter for young children, get in touch with Andrea. Wave will be here all summer and can be reached at andrea.aimi@gmail.com. 

An update on my pond and porch: The pond is nicely full and is home to a chorus of frogs. I hear them whenever I'm out on the porch - they never seem to stop conversing.  The porch is getting an new coat of stain. I used a whey-based stain on the wood (cedar) when it was first built. It went on beautifully - two coats on all the wood, dried quickly, had a nice luster, no odor, and it looked great. After the first winter, I had to retouch all the surfaces that had been exposed to the sun, rain, and snow. Inside still looks great, but now, two years since I first started using that stain, the wood was looking old, weathered and gray - really bad. The original stain peeled off flat areas and some areas in sheets - no protection from the weather whatsoever. 

Jamie and Marie just had their house re-stained using an oil based product. I wasn't aware we can still buy oil paint or stain. I picked some up a week or so ago and Brenden Greaves came yesterday and began putting it on. It looks great - better than the whey stain, right off the bat. The wood is dry and the stain gets absorbed quickly, and I'm very pleased with how it looks. I'm hopeful it will protect the wood far better than the original stuff. Brenden is sanding everything to get the old stuff off, and mostly that comes off pretty easily, but it's slow work. He's doing a great job and I'm thrilled with how it looks so far. He says even though the stain is sinking into the wood, it goes a long way. There really isn't a lot of wood surface to cover, but what there is does take a beating from the weather. I really think this will hold up much better than the whey stuff. I will still use the whey stain inside - it works well as long as it isn't exposed to the weather, and I really appreciate that it has no odor.