Search Results for “heat”

So, a President and a Juggler Walk Into Ford’s Theater…

March 25, 2024 No Comments

Many, that is pure cornball stuff. It’s the kind of show you avoid like the plague if you read a description of it, because you’re too cool for school, yo. But if you’re dragged to it, you end up laughing like a hyena. One wonders just how much dragging it takes to get a president back into Ford’s Theater. It’s vaudeville and the circus, but edgy. It’s staggering to think of how much practice it took to make the juggling look like an offhand detail in the act. If you’ve never tried it, juggling is really quite interesting. There was

Much Ado About Heat

November 27, 2023 6 Comments

What to do, about heat? That’s not to say much ado about heat. I live in western Maine. Heat matters. You can insulate all you want, but believe me, you’re going to have to make some BTUs in the first place before you start chasing them around the house and shooing them away from broken windows and mouseholes. I’ve been making heat in This Old Hovel for a while now. I’ve tried various things. Let’s review: When you buy an old wreck of a place in Maine, there’s a pecking order for utilities. You can’t get any water until you

Let’s See if Sippican Can Tie His Heating System Into His Sewer System

February 21, 2016 8 Comments

I know it sounds like a tough transition, but I believe I can tie my heating ducts into my sewer pipe. You might wonder why I would want to do that. Well, I didn’t. I wanted to save my widdle pennies for a longish time, buy some tin, and knock it in place. It was supposed to bring heat from my dining room, where my pellet stove resides, into my children’s bedrooms, where my two human bowling alleys reside. It was a good plan, as it turns out. Better than I anticipated, really. But then I had to go and

Eight Things That Won’t Happen in Heating

January 20, 2016 18 Comments

Before I continue my peripatetic recounting of trying to heat my children’s rooms, we need to go over some fundamentals. Well, they’re fundamentals for me. For you, they are black arts, voodoo, base lies, mistakes, tomfoolery, and blather. You’ve been reading the newspaper again, and everything sensible begins to sound like black arts, voodoo, base lies, mistakes, tomfoolery, and blather after you do that. So I’m warning you: I need to talk sense, and sense is going to sound weird. You see, articles on websites are written by the girls that used to sit next to you in grammar school

HEAT: Some Assembly Required

April 5, 2011 9 Comments

In a Surprise to Exactly Nobody, This Is From Switzerland

May 8, 2024 1 Comment

So, the Swiss want to repave a busy road. As you might expect, they go about it in a very Swiss way. I’ve had to supervise the paving of a few short stretches of road, and lots of parking lots, so maybe I can tell you what’s going on in the video. First, they’re scarifying the road. This is done by a big machine with lots of nasty teeth that can handle grinding away at little rocks suspended in emulsion all day. They’re removing what is called (in the US) the wearing layer of pavement. What’s underneath is sometimes referred

Well, That’s Just, Like, Your Opinion, Man

May 4, 2024 23 Comments

When our younger son was a little boy, we sent him to school like good citizens do. We didn’t think the public school would be very scholarly, or up to the task of educating either of our boys at the level they were capable of. We felt like our children were a sort of gift we give to the world, and that we should share that gift with our neighbors. That was back in Massachusetts, which I do not miss. Our younger son was hounded mercilessly by his public school staff, although he was a quiet, intelligent, well-behaved, cooperative little

A Marvelous Mérida Maisonette

April 8, 2024 6 Comments

[If you’re just zooming in, I’ve been desolating the internet landscape with recollections of our recent trip to Mérida, Mexico for a week now] There I go with the French again. It’s just not done in Yucatan. But no other word can describe our little rental house in Mérida as accurately as maisonette, or at least none with the amount of alliteration I require for my headlines. The only thing better than alliteration in a title is some succulent sentence sibilance, and we ain’t got any. Pied-à-terre falls short of describing the housing stock in the Barrio Santiago where we

The Mérida Method Seems Superior, if Somewhat Less Exciting

April 4, 2024 6 Comments

[For the uninitiated, I’m recounting a recent trip to Mérida, Mexico in excruciating detail. I’m on day four, and I’m still in the airport. When I was born, I was inoculated with a phonograph needle. Sorry] First there was a short line to talk to one of two immigration officials. They smiled and greeted us in ingles, because certain things are obvious. White as a sheet and a foot taller than the population is a giveaway, I gather. We tried our pidgen espanol on him, which got a smile, if not a true exchange of information going. How long are

Heart of Lightness

April 1, 2024 7 Comments

How can I tell you about Yucatan? I feel that I must. I’m like that forty-five year old woman with her hair in curlers as big as spent toilet tissue rolls, with a tarp of a kerchief stretched from ear to ear over the tubes like a bivouac. She’s holding a sponge mop and freighted with gossip and looking for victims in the neighborhood. I have to tell you about Yucatan. I’d never been to Mexico. I went to Guatemala a lifetime ago. I was a teenager, and broke free of my traces and wandered loose from the shafts of