The Haunt: Finale!

     Okay, dear readers, the Haunted Library is finally over! So, as promised, I'm doing one more post about it, looking back on what I would (and likely will) do differently next year. Now, you may have heard the phrase "pics, or it didn't happen," as it turns out, none of us remembered this, so we have no proof that we ever performed this haunt. I have a few phone pictures of a few props being built, which I will put on a page HERE with the maze, but without pictures of everything installed in the library, I'll excuse your skepticism. As for the video I mentioned, It exists, but is really just five minutes of black with occasional flickers of faces and light. it's pretty lousy, so I've decided not to put it up.
     Now for the good news. On Friday, we put the haunted house up starting at about ten am, and finishing at about 5:10 pm. With a total of four actors in the haunt, we managed to scare the daylights out of a total of 378 guests, and earned as many dollars for the library to buy books with! Or, in other words, the Haunt was a huge success! While we didn't manage to get everything working that we wanted to, we put together enough of a haunt that people were going through more than once, and had a fantastic time.

Random acts of generosity ( I hope)

     Okay, readers, here we go, getting back into the groove of sharing thoughts.
I had an idea earlier this year that I did not get the chance to act on, but I figured since the tap has been dry here for so long, I'd share the idea with you, and ask for your opinions on it.

     I have a chainlink fence, five feet high on all sides of my yard, and for the most part, it does its job well, keeping dogs in and unwanted guests out. However, the chainlink fails in one critical field: Privacy. So, we've been pondering for awhile here about what plant we could grow to cover our fence, and prettify the yard. Local ordinances won't let us replace it with a board fence (there goes the white-picket american dream). Anyway, my idea is this: Plant my front fence with hops and tomatoes. The I could use the hops to try my hand at microbrewing (which is on my to-do list). and as for the tomatoes, that's where the title of this post comes in. I'd like to post a sign that says "Free if you pick them" by the tomatoes, and smaller signs identifying the types of tomato. Tomatoes grow pretty fast, and while they don't fruit all year long, they would cover the fence for a good half of the year, longer if i tend to them well. I think it'd be interesting to see if the neighborhood (and any pedestrians walking by) would stop and pick tomatoes. Maybe I'd leave a pouch full of plastic grocery bags (recycled of course) hanging on the signpost.

     So, readers, what do you think? Is this idea something people would take an interest in? Would the neighbors enjoy the tomatoes, or are people too distrusting? Are there any other concerns I am overlooking? Let me know in the comments section!

The Sky Boom!

I realize that this picture is neither incredibly exciting, nor clear, and yes, that is definitely my thumb, but what you are looking at is an awesome rig I built for watering my garden, and I am going to teach you how to make one!

Imagine a crane that follows you around your garden, but instead of a cable for lifting weight, the crane has a hose attached to it that lets you water your entire garden without fighting the hose. That is the SkyCrane. last year, we put soaker hoses through the entire garden, one in each of the raised beds. Unfortunately, the soaker hoses decided that one year of soaking was enough, and that from now on they are Spraying, leaky hoses. Obviously, I needed to find an alternative, so I decided to run a hose and water my plants by hand. It would give me a chance to get in there and notice the plants individually, and since I already had a garden hose, it wasn't going to cost anything. Perfect!
Then I tried lugging the hose through the garden, around the corners, and getting snagged on just about everything. That wasn't going to work for me. It was about then that I invented (okay, maybe I stole the idea from a self-serve carwash, but it definitely has a cooler name now) the SKYCRANE! (yes, I know, the skycrane is a heavy-lifting helicopter, but my nephew thinks the name is cool, so we're going to go with it.)
SO! Here, essentially, is what the Skycrane is: a T-shaped boom made out of lightweight fence-pipe, a set of counterweights, and a hose wrapped to the end, all supported by a fence post on the edge of the garden. It was incredibly simple to make, taking only about twenty minutes to put together, and because I built it out of scrap from around the yard, it was completely free.

Since I am not entirely convinced that my description is concise enough for you, I present a very technical digram rendered in exquisite detail:

Hopefully that clears everything up, but if not, be sure to post any questions in the comments section, and I will answer them ASAP. Hope you like it!

Free houseplans

I spend a lot of time on stumbleupon, which jumps you to various randomly suggested websites, relating to your interests. While I was on there, I found a website that stuck me as very interesting, so i thought I'd share it here, and talk about it a bit.

earthbagplans.wordpress.com is a website put up by an architect who specializes in houses built using the earth-bag technique. The Basic idea is to stack bags filled with dirt to create heavy, well-insulated walls for your house. The bags can then be stuccoed over, to create an adobe-finish, which would blend in in almost any neighborhood (at least here in southern California). It's a very cool idea, the main material for the house is found completely locally, since dirt is just about everywhere, and the thick walls make cooling and heating the home much less expensive, because three feet of dirt insulate every wall. The earthbag houses are incredibly environmentally sound, and are (sorry for this) dirt cheap to build.

All of the environmental stuff is great, but what really made this blog interesting for me, was the fact that the architect Dr. Owen Geiger, made all of the floorplans for these houses available for free on the internet! Every blog post starts with a rendered picture of the particular home, then he has the specifications of the house (sq. footage, #of beds/baths, and the overall footprint of the house), a short description of it, and then the floorplans, right there, available for download! It's an incredibly generous thing to do, especially when you consider how much money architects tend to make.

So, if you're planning on building a house anythime soon, or just appreciate architecture or free things, i encourage you to check out earthbagplans.wordpress.com.