Pondering away....

Ah, the life of a retiree...

It finally looks like Mother nature made up her mind and summer is finally here.
And with that comes lots of yard work and less clothing changes for Rudy thru the days, good thing he wears layered clothing.

Set up our hammock in a different spot this year.  We put it up were I had my “exploding chair” last year.  Works great, good location, good coverage from the sun.....

My last year exploding chair, All the pent up stress was released in one loud crack...!!!

As the sun was making its way west,  I also set up an umbrella to gave us more shade coverage.

Here in amazing techno colour (colour, cause it's Canadian, Heh!) is the view around our hammock, rotating counter clockwise.

Rudy wondering what are these two up to now??

But apparently after 5 years in the sun the fabric of the hammock has somewhat been weakened....
We were both enjoying a refreshment inside, when suddenly, it gave out under us....Oups!

The umbrella went down first then 

we quickly touched the ground ourselves in a loud ripping noise. 

Rip stop fabric my ass  :-)

Perhaps gyrating my big ass around for the amazing techno colour shots was the straw that broke the hammock?? Who knew? :-)  For the record, let me state that the crack in the fabric started under my big ass, so there, that's explain it, now that I think of it!

Humm,  I think we need a new one :-). Like the frame, very sturdy, but we will need to find a new hammock.  Lee Valley has replacements, but not cheap, Ouch...

Minutes before we both went down, the umbrella came down also in the wind.  Pretty wimpy base for the size of it, but it is intend to be used in the middle of a table, were it would have sufficient support.

Ok so back to square one  on that resting spot....
Have a few more spots to set up, similar to last year, but we will changed it up a bit this year.

Our gardens have rebound, and our veggies are coming up.  we are about one month behind compared to last year, but better late than never...

Wood working wise, finished up her necklace hanging frame.  She has to paint it then attach a bunch of small eye hooks to string braided steel wire to hang earrings in the bottom rectangle.

Spend a lots of time trying to update my tools inventory data base.  Normally I try to keep  on top of it as new tools comes in the house, but I have been slack in this regard.
Now im left scratching my heads (yap, got two, military and civilian :- )

Getting there slowly.  Taking pics of tools and updating Database.  For the first time in a long time, got all my wooden planes layout together and accounted for... Went from 4 short, to 4 over according to my records... probably in my moulders selection???
Finally got the bench planes selection sorted out, turns out I have more jointer, fore planes than I thought. Good, should have enough to make up 3 kits for my sons with spares :-)

And talking of shop, got it  straigthen up , just to end up  with woodies everywhere as I sort them out and accounted for each one in my Database records.  We will end up soon with the grand kids for a week each as they both goes to different summer camps. The shop will be ready for them to  play in  with Grampa :-)

Almost got all my H&R lined up and most of my Beaders on the same shelf, 

almost... got some overspill 

Isn't amazing how fast empty flat surface can get covered.

Law of gravity or something like that 

And the reason for the ladder in the view from our hammock?
Well since Dec 31st, I cut off my satellite TV service. Tired of paying too much for something I rarely watch. Since we had been relying on our Kudo box to stream from the computer to the TV. Think Netflix which I re-instated and others such apps.

Pretty good, very clear picture, recently upgraded the "dumb" TV downstairs  (2010 state of the art Samsung ultra thin Plasma TV), gorgeous picture can stream up to 4K but of course that TV tops out at full 1080P resolution.

Meanwhile we both been missing on local news, or we get to watch our news broadcast next day via YouTube. OK, but could be better.

We did trialled an older indoor rabbit antenna (anyone remember these :-)

Got one channel, local ATV news from Halifax, but kinda snowy.
Still, encouraged with these meager results tried the biggest local available antenna I could find, at Walmart.
an outdoor Yagi antenna good to 70 miles (that's about 110 kms), getting in the suburbs of Halifax.
Should get something decent..??

Directional antenna, may have to rotate it for various channels?

Got all the parts accounted for

Fully assembled ready to go.

Humm something look odd on it :-)

OK so that kind of work. If I stand up and point toward the window I get colour, yeah..

So of course being an outdoor antenna, Its gotta go outside, and a cable has to be run from somewhere. Did not really felt like doing like the cable or Sat guy and simply ran yet another cable. Instead used the cabling left behind by Bell.
That antenna got updated a few times during its service, one of them necessitated 4 wires and that last one drove the inside network directly, the mixer, amplifier etc, are all built in from the antenna, removing a few electronics inside.
So I just removed the ant to access the wires and used one to drive my TV in the living room.
Now, with 4 wires, the chances of getting the right one on the first try was... no but took only two tries :-)

At that bring us to this view from the hammock, the ladder still in place cause pic is not much improved and cannot rotate behind the house.

Will relocate bracket at the house roof eave top to be able to rotate 360.

And while I'm up there (need to drag out extension ladder) and repaint the eaves

Yeah well its colour, but it sure reminds me of my youth :_)

Good enough for us old folks, but not good enough for the grand peanuts I'm afraid :-)

Will have to try better. I did check out on line and found a site that maps out your geographic location in relation to the broadcasters locations using google map data with topography.  The resulting plot give you an idea of where the signal strength would be at you r coordinates and stated altitude for the antenna. If I bring it up to 100 ft I should get 5-6 stations, hum right across from an active military runways with often low fliers (choppers) don't think this is going to happens!

OK so there goes Plan A

Plan B, at least I know there are signals out there, would no doubts need some active amplification.

And that is why I was sitting up in my hammock with my lovely, when suddenly...rip came crashing down.
Obviously needs more pondering, so I managed to did a burn and cleared the yard while I sip and ponder at it some more for a while

Bob, pondering away