Shoveling it

Shoveling it was Originally Posted on October 5, 2004 by lavarock

It is that time of year when amny of us start dreaming (or having nightmares) of shoveling snow.

Here in the tropics (or sub tropics, I can’t remember) our only snow is up on the mountain peaks of Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea. If there is snow at Mauna Kea, you can see it here http://www.jach.hawaii.edu/JAClocal/cgi-bin/irtvid however, note that they have had some problems with their equipment. Currently, the thermometer reads -65.55 degrees C when it is probably about +3 degrees C. Know that the temp usually hovers near freezing most of the time.

A favorite pasttime I had on the mainland was to watch the camera for snow and then show others. It really blows their mind to see snow in Hawaii. I don’t know why; perhaps because they don’t think of tall mountains (or volcanos) when they think of Hawaii, yet, as I have mentioned here before, Hawaii actually has the tallest mountains in the world. Mauna Kea on the Big Island — measured from the seafloor — tops out at 33,476 feet. From sea level it measures 13,796 feet high).

I’ve saved a few photos from the site which shows 6 foot drifts and one day I’ll post them on my websites.

Also, speaking of shoveling, I need to cleanout many of my email addresses. Some of them get full with messages which I THINK I need to save, but probably don’t. Of couse, Mindspring would be happy to increase my limits in return for a few extra dollars a month.

For those who find they are always bumping up on their limit, can I offer a suggestion on a great way to make headway. Note that this also works for many other projects you may perform besides cleaning out email accounts…

Sort your email based upon size. Then find the largest email and see if you can delete it. Then pick the second largest email and repeat. You may find that the largest email has some photos in it and takes up 1/3 of your space allotment. By deleting it you free up a big section of space. As you go down the list in size order, it is harder and harder to make lots of space by deleting just one message and you will find that you need to do more work to make more headway.

Have a house that leaks air and gets too cold? Patch the biggest leak first. Makes sense, but some people go for the easiest fix than the one which does the most good. I used to have a porch which needed to be “winterized”. A neighbor once told me how to cheaply create storm windows. The porch was mostly glass with those jalousie windows (the ones with moveable horizontal slats of glass) that you can crank open. Well, they never seem to close tightly enough and this particular porch would have cost a fortune to have had storm windows.

What the neighbor taught me was to take the thick rolls of plastic from the hardware store and stretch it across the inside of the windows, then to tack it there with small pieces of molding like quarter round or whatever was on sale. This made a plastic storm window on the INSIDE of the porch which kept the wind and cold out. The cost was maybe $10 for a roll of plastic and some brads or tacks long enough to go into the woodwork around the window. You may have to be careful with this around children as toddlers might be able to pull down the plastic. Still, for a few dollars, it could lower your heating bill, even if it doesn’t look perfect. You might consider a clear plastic rather than an opaque one.

The TV show “Sell This House” also follows my line of thought. They try to help home sellers fix their house to sell when previous efforts have not worked. Often times it is spending a few dollars to make a big difference. The most often and obvious change is to just get rid of all of the clutter. Just bring in a backhoe and start shoveling People fill their house with knick-knacks and really need to pack all that stuff away when selling their house. Also the show will paint a wall to draw the buyers eye away from an “imperfection”. A few dollars for paint and magically the eye is distracted from that horrible hole in the other wall… still, it works.

So no matter what kind of “shoveling” you are doing (snow, trash or just BS), I hope you enjoy it!