nathanjw | Entries tagged with home

Following up on dining 2005, I present Dining 2007
(yes, 2006 happened, but I never bothered to post it. and the last four months of the year are missing anyway).

Days something was recorded: 252
Most frequent places for dining out: Joe Sent Me, Hana Sushi, Redbones.
Restaurants visited exactly once: 46
Most frequent meals at home: black bean quesadillas (again!), tomato/basil/mozzarela salad (despite only being able to eat it during a two-month stretch), pasta with zucchini and goat cheese.

( foooooood )

2004-2006 (Amherst): 91 bottles of wine consumed (61 were Charles Shaw). Monthly rate of 3.79 (2.54 chuck).
2006-present (Cambridge): 54 bottles of wine consumed (14 were Charles Shaw). Monthly rate of 3.6 (0.93 chuck).

The irony, of course, is that we drank three times as much Charles Shaw when we had to drive to Cambridge to get it.

Okay, so it's cold today. Good day to be a telecommuter, right? Well.. the house is a bit chilly today. I think the heat's been on since 6am and it hasn't quite made it to 64F at the thermostat, and the kitchen is about 60F. This is particularly annoying since yesterday I went on a caulking spree to try and avoid this very problem.

In addition to the one windowframe that had a nice gap where it fit against the wood, I had discovered that the kitchen cabinets on the outside wall had a nice cold breeze coming out from underneath them. The cabinet seens to have a flat base, but the frame it's on on the floor has sagged, so there's about a 1/4" gap in the middle, and the two interstitial spaces between the cabinet and the drawers open right out into the kitchen and were blowing cold air. I don't know where the cold air is coming from, exactly - I haven't found any holes in the outside wall or in the basement floor for air to get in, but clearly my mental model of what's behind the cabinets is wrong. It's currently 40F inside one of those cabinets, even after blocking the flow of cold air into the room.

A brick from the corner of the chimney just plunged to its doom in the yard, making an impressive racket on the way down. Figuring out what made the noise and finding the brick was not what I had in mind for a fun midnight game.

Having missed out on the Big Brew of National Homebrew Day last week, I'm declaring tomorrow to be the Little Brew and Local Homebrew Day (here at the Little House in the Big Office Park). I'm going to be making a hefeweizen in my all-grain setup; I expect to get started at about 10am and be done by about 4pm. If it's raining - no problem, I'll put up the canopy.

Everyone's welcome to come by anytime, watch, help, kibbitz, try out the other homebrews I have on tap, and so on. It'll be fun!

Drop me a line or call if you need directions.

In the spirit of people's "100 recipes" posts, I present "365 dinners". Well, okay, 309 after accounting for days away or when I forgot to write it down.

Random statistics:
Takeout or dining out: about one day out of four.
Most frequent place for dining out: Amherst Brewing Co.
Most frequent dinner vegetable: kale (usually with double garlic)
Most frequent home meals: Black bean quesadillas, spaghetti carbonara

( Full list )

The WindJammer window-sealing goop I discussed here turns out to also be avaliable in a standard caulk tube. It costs $5 for a 10-oz tube, instead of $8 for a 7.5-oz self-pressurized can. That makes it about as cheap as rope caulk.

Go forth and winterize!

WindJammer (or here for the flash-intensive advertising site).

This product is a rubber-cement-like liquid in a pressurized can that you use to seal windows, in the manner of rope caulk.

Pros:
- Applies quickly and easily, without the mess of unwinding the roll, deciding whether you need one bead or two (or three), and trying to keep the caulk up while applying it. Especially welcome on the top edges of windows.
- More adhesive-like than rope caulk - stays in place better (so far)
- Can be applied in as thin a bead as you like, for very small cracks.
- Clear gel is less aesthetically annoying than grey or brown putty.

Cons:
- About twice as expensive as store brand rope caulk. $8-9 for a can that covers two or three windows worth of cracks.
- Leaves a serious solventy smell as it cures. This is especially awkward since you're in the process of sealing air into your house.
- Hard to find; so far, I've only found one can, after looking at two local stores and a Home Depot. The local store that had it is selling it quickly enough that they were out the first two times I checked.

So far I think it's a good match for my renter-with-disposable-income lifestyle. I'll be sure to note new things as I learn them.

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Nathan Williams

Entries tagged with home

dining 2007

An analysis of corks archived in the kitchen drawer

Brr!

Reason #731 I'm glad I don't own this house

Sunday - Little brew day

dining 2005

WindJammer update

Product Review: Macco Adhesives "Windjammer"

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