I am sorry that I have not posted. It has been awkward not having a computer. Still there is good news! My camera and card reader dried out and now work!
I have now got power in the kitchen. The outlet now works and so too does the kitchen light. As well, I have started building in the upper cupboards.
Last night I went to a poetry reading in Kingston. I was caught in the pouring rain which came to us at the tail end of the Issac storm. I knew I would get wet but I went through it anyway. To tell you the truth it was sort of fun! There was lots of water so it was a bit like a ride at a water park.
We have had so little rain this year that I was glad to see it come. It was nice to be soaked right to the skin. Thing is that when I arrived I ran right in and only at the half time break when I wanted to get a card from my purse (tucked safely in my trunk) did I run back out in the rain again.
Turns out, my truck did not lock properly and it was gaping open when I went out. The trunk was filled right to the top with water – about 6 inches deep. The terrible thing about this, is that my camera and my Mac laptop were both totally submerged. SUBMERGED.
Worse… My laptop had the only copy of the draft of my novel on it. Plus all other writing outside of this blog. Over a year of my writing disolved like sugar in tea.
I have brought it in to see if they can recover the data but I am not very hopeful. I am sitting now at the public library posting. I have huge tears rolling down my cheeks as I write and I feel like I have been kicked really hard in the stomach.
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UPDATE: After writing this – I remembered that I printed a hard copy of my novel, two months ago, so even with the data lost I can type it again! Feeling like I can breathe again….
For the past three days Hj and I have been busy installing the 12 volt lighting and power system at Tiny House Ontario. Like a lot of work that I do at THO, it is a longer task than I had expected it to be. This is due to two reasons. First, I have to be very careful when removing the wooden walls so that I don’t split or spoil any of the boards, which worked out perfect so far. Second my drill is old and not very powerful so drilling through the joists is not a fast thing to do.
We have installed four of the lights now. We put them up in order of our perceived importance, so the main floor, front entryway, loft, and the cloth porch all have illumination. Really bright: easy to read at night: see the lights as you come up the driveway, lighting! I have to say that he LED yacht lights are great! I would suggest to any off-grid person to put at least a couple of these in because you don’t need too much power to run them because they are straight up 12v and there is no inverter involved. They are a little bit costly but very, very bright! When I need to use the inverter, I will just plug this in!
My battery guy says that I have 6 times the power I need because of the awesome little LEDs!
You will notice in the bedroom that I maintained the LED battery operated lights. I have not been too thrilled with these because the batteries have a short life with them, still I think because they are already there, I might as well keep them as back ups. Then the Coleman LED camping lights are back ups of the back ups and then the flashlights are backups of these! Hilarious really – but I want to be sure that the lighting really works as I am sure it will, for a year before I start purging the extra gear despite the space that it takes up. Plus, for the bedroom the battery LED will be used to get up because it has a circular switch. I can turn this on/off downstairs/upstairs whereas the yacht lights are simply switched at the surface.
It took a lot more 16 gauge wire than I thought. I had to buy an additional 150 feet (!!!!). The cost was $75 plus tax. This means that it took 250 feet of the stuff to wire the little Tiny house! That is about six times around the house! There are only seven lights and one outlet so the wire that was needed for the job was mind boggling to me.
I have to say, if my camera worked better I would love to take and share some photos of the exterior of THO because it looks positively cute as a button in the dark with its new lights on!
It was a blue moon day. Tiny House Ontario was there to welcome my arrival, almost as I expected. She was still Tiny, warm and welcoming. The scent of wood and white sage were there to greet my nose when I entered. It was cool and comfy too. Still, when I went out to the cloth porch there was something amiss… a screw on the cement. Hmmmm… How did this get here?
Leo! Leo! Brilliant Leo! He slid in and completed THO last weekend. Now the South side is covered in milk chocolate colored steel and the fascia on the in-house is covered in antique white steel too. Fantastically, Leo also put the cloth porch back together using the old fabric, so I don’t have to replace that as I had thought.
This was $150 but I gave Leo an additional $20 for gas because he picked up the materials which I did not order the first time.
Now THO is safe waterproof and positively yummy!
Another confession:
I frequently make up stupid songs based on people’s music and sing them to the poor unfortunate people who are with me. GILLY GILLY OSSENFEFFER KATZENELLEN BOGEN BY THE SEA (Al Hoffman / Dick Manning) is my most recent victim… I posted the Beatles version of this some time ago and learned the tune and melody. After I learn a song then I plagiarize, pilfer, twist them depending on what is going on.
Here is this morning’s THO version based on my being on my way back home soon….
There’s a Tiny House,
in the Tiny Woods
Where a Tiny Girl
Filled a Tiny Dream
Now the house sits still
waiting there for me
It is Tiny House Ontario
Chocolate shed in forest
loved by me-e-e-e-e…
OK… so now you know, I am not much of a song writer but if you know the tune, as I do, it is kind of funny.
No?
Well, my dogs think it is funny. They told me so with their eyes. They had to do it this way, because of course dogs hardly ever laugh out loud. At least mine don’t. Do yours?
Tiny House Ontario 