Month: May 2013

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What’s Next, Brimstone?

YAY! The rain stopped!

BOO! The rain stopped because heavy winds chased away the clouds!

What a strange weather week…

At least there’s sun now and I’m actually getting some amps in!

And in other happy news, my internet connection has been GREAT all morning. I only have one bar, but I haven’t had any drops at all and I was even able to stream Netflix without it occasionally pausing for ages to load the next bit. Maybe the high gain antenna isn’t a total dud. Then again, I got good service like this occasionally with the stubby antenna, so it’ll take weeks of good service like this for me to believe it’s the norm rather than the exception.

Speaking of antennas, just before bed last night I heard the pot on which the antenna is resting slide across the roof. I ignored it until morning. I woke up around 7:00 to torrential downpour and decided to go see if the antenna was okay then go back to bed to warm myself up.

I went outside, and found the antenna on the ground. The magnet on that thing is really strong, so I that was rather surprising. I climbed up to the roof, holding on tightly since the ladder was slick, and found the pot right at the edge of the roof and turned over. I got the antenna resituated and wedged the pot into the space at the top of the ladder where it can only slide in one direction.

I was sopping wet by this point, even though I’d only been out for a few minutes, so I was glad to get back into my flannel jammies and under the covers! Some mornings just aren’t meant for getting out of bed…

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It’s Still Raining!

I never seen so much rain in all my natural life!

Wow, it’s like Vancouver Island out there! And there’s no end in sight! 🙁

I am desperate for power, so I’m taking the day off from computer-related stuff even though I badly need to keep working. 🙁

Once we get into June, it’ll get sunny, so I just need to hang in there. I am staring at a neighbour’s exterior electrical outlet, but he uses it for his sump-pump, so it’s not sharable. 🙁

What I don’t get is that I ran the engine for over an hour this morning with the computer plugged in and I got my amp hours right up, but I didn’t get more than 10% charge on the laptop. Very frustrating.

I’ll need to fill the big jerry can next time I go into town. Gas in the RV tank is down a full quarter from half, so I only have about 12.5 gallons left, or 12 hours of run time… plus I need to be able to drive out of here in the fall! I figure that if I add a jerry can of fuel every few weeks, I’ll be able to keep the gas level up high enough to make it to a gas station in the fall.

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Soup Weather

The weather today was YUCKY. Very cold and dark and humid and it’s now been raining for hours and hours. I just wanted to make a big pot of soup and go to sleep in it. Even though I ended up working a 14 hour day (I am so exhausted), I still had time to make a delicious pot of chicken soup by working at it during my five to ten minute breaks. Working from home is awesome!

Late morning, I started by making the stock. I used about four cups water, half of a chopped onion, one chopped carrot, and one chopped celery stalk, plus lots of salt and pepper and several cloves of garlic. And of course, the entire carcass of the roasted chicken I bought yesterday, minus the rest of the breast meat.

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Once I had a bit of hot water in the pot, I added some to the chicken container to get all the tasty bits on the bottom.

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I had quite a bit of breast meat left. I don’t like dark meat, so I just let that go in the stock for flavour.

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Several hours of olfactory torture later, the stock was ready. It was sooooo delicious.

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I strained out all the solids and then let the stock cool down a bit before transferring it to a smaller pot and putting it in the freezer to get the fat to congeal.

An hour before I wanted to eat, I took the pot out of the freezer, skimmed off the fat, and then transferred the stock back to the bigger pot. The stock was very rich and strong, so I diluted it with two cups of water, then added the rest of the onion (chopped) as well as carrots, celery, and a half cup of parboiled rice. I don’t really like pasta in soup as it gets mushy, so I’ll take chicken and rice over chicken noodle any day.

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I let that start simmering while I diced up the meat and then I went back to work for about 20 minutes. I added the meat very near the end (about 10 minutes left of cooking), otherwise it would have gone all icky on me.

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And here’s a bowl of the finished soup!

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This stuff was GOOD. I’m not just saying that because I made it, it just was wonderful! Very savoury with a rich broth and the right ratio of liquid to ‘stuff’ that wasn’t over cooked. Yum!

Lesson learned this week; a $10 pre-roasted bird is VERY good value for me and it’s worth my buying a whole bird even though I don’t eat dark meat. I’ll get about four meals out of this one bird. Maybe five if I make biscuits to go with lunch tomorrow.

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Wilson High Gain Antenna is a Dud

The coupler for my Sleek and high gain antenna arrived today. No exclamation point because there isn’t an iota of difference between the stubby antenna and the high gain one.

I’m trying to decide if I am going to live with this pretty much useless internet connection all summer or if I will try to get a partial refund and buy a different solution.

It is cloudy again today and very humid, which has definitely affected my signal since I got the Sleek, so I may give the bigger antenna a couple of days before I decide to return it or not.

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Water Filter Matters

Getting good drinking water on the road is always a challenge. Sometimes, I’m lucky enough to live somewhere like Campbell River with really good tap water that I can just drink straight up. Sometimes, I’m somewhere that the water is safe but tastes yucky and a simple charcoal filter like Brita makes it good.

But I usually find myself buying water. I don’t buy packages of the little bottles but rather gallon-size or larger containers. If I’m somewhere for a while, like when I was in Lethbridge, I buy a refillable water jug. Water is the only thing I drink, so I don’t think that paying for good tasting water is frivolous.

For some time now, I’ve debated getting a whole-house water filtering system, but the more boondocking I do, the more I end up with no water in the holding tank, so an undercounter or inline filter wouldn’t work for me. I also wanted more than just a charcoal filter, but rather something that would filter out bacteria and particulates.

Being here where buying water is getting to be cost-prohibitive, it was time to buy something to make the tap water here drinkable.

I did some research and came to the conclusion that the only countertop unit that would work for me is an Aqua Rain, which we used at the campground in Dawson. Great filter, but massive and super pricey.

But that memory did nudge me in another direction and reminded me of something I’ve wanted to buy since I first saw it, but couldn’t justify for the little I would use it. Dang, why did I only now realise it was the solution for my at home water consumption?

When I hiked the Chilkoot trail, we had unlimited quantities of delicious water thanks to an MSR microfilter.

This is the perfect solution for me as it will make just about all water sources safe and tasty and the filter is super long-lasting (2,000 litres/500 gallons, which should last me at least a year). I’ll also be able to take it along with me on hikes.

The filter fits over wide-mouth Nalgene bottles. I have a very worn one, so I splurged on a new one that will better match my house decor. 🙂

I was actually going to go with a competitor filter because it was Amazon Global Shipping eligible, but for whatever reason, they won’t ship here. So I went with my first choice, the MSR, and had it shipped to my best friend’s in Virginia. She’ll forward me the package and I’ll reimburse her for shipping via PayPal. I expect to have to pay tax and perhaps duty on the package whenever it gets here. A pain, but my only out of pocket costs will be the shipping and border fees thanks to some wonderful sponsors who shop on Amazon through my links. Thank you again SO MUCH!

And since I was sending an order to VA to be shipped back to SK, I added the adapter I need to plug my Macbook Pro into a TV L gave me (because the tuner went out and it’s only good to use as a computer monitor). I’ll soon be able to watch movies on a 19″ rather than 17″ screen! 🙂