Here we are - NFL Wild Card Weekend! So far - so good. Kaj is from Washington State and is a die-hard Seahawks fan - They won yesterday. Then the NY Jets won so they will play our Patriots next week. We really like beating the Jets! Tonight the NJ Evringhams will be rooting for their Eagles. We Maineiacs will be rootin' for them too!
The Maine weather has become "seasonal." In January that means highs around the mid 30s and lows in the low 20s with a bit of snow thrown in sometime every week just for good measure. We did get about a half inch last night. Just about enough to whiten up the landscape. We plan on heading south on the 20th (10 and a wake-up) so I'm hoping for very little snow between now and then. It sure would make getting the Winne ready to go a lot easier! The biggest problem may be the weather in the Phily area! Those folks have been getting a bunch of snow - much more than us Maineiacs! Hopefully it melts away fast!!
We plan on joining Eric & Jen and Kaj & Stacy for dinner tonight in Auburn. It's Mexican food night so we're headin over to Margarita's - not bad fare for Maine.
Mikee stayed out of trouble the last few days by installing a battery powered backup sump pump system here at home. Us Mainers tend to have houses with basements - and although ours has been mostly dry over the years - if we get a lot of rain in the spring - especially when we still have a bit of snow on the ground - the groundwater can leak in between the basement floor slab and the concrete walls. To keep that from happening - about 10 years ago I cut a big hole in the basement slab, dug a sump pit, and installed a sump pump to keeps the groundwater pressure off the slab. It has worked great since we installed the system - but it has one downside that has always made me a bit nervous. That big hole in the floor will definitely let in a lot of water in if the sump pump or its power supply fails at the wrong time. My main concern has always been losing power during a bad rain storm in the spring - so I purchased a generator to take care of that problem. Well ... that idea works great - if we are home at the time we lose power so we can get out to get the generator running and powering the house. This obviously doesn't work well if we aren't home. We did have that problem last winter/spring while we were gone and we lost power here at the house for several days. Fortunately Kaj and Stacy made it over to the house on day 2 and powered up the generator for several hours to warm up the house and pump some water out of the sump.
So to give us a little more "piece of mind" while we are gone - I installed a second DC powered pump in the sump which is powered by a pretty big Marine/RV Deep Cycle Battery. The battery is kept charged by a multi-stage charger to make sure the battery is kept ready to go. So that kept me pretty busy these last couple of days. Why did it take you so long you ask? Because nothing ever goes as straight forward as the instructions assume, because there were several football/basketball games in the way, and because I'm retired and I tend to take my sweet time. Anyway - I finished up the project this morning and the operational test was satisfactory! If the system specs hold true - the battery system ought to give us a day or so of protection if we lose power - depending on how much rain & snow-melt we are experiencing.
Now I can hope that the system is never called upon to function!
Hope ya'll are having a great day!
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