Wasps started building a nest on our back door again.
A couple years ago I figured out a decent solution for keeping them from doing it, after checking out what other people on the web do. We just hadn't gotten around to putting one up this year. They build every year otherwise. This time they'd just started and I pinched it off while it was still just 2 empty cells. Sort of wish I'd taken a picture, oh well. I don't know why they like our door so much, none of the other townhouses in the row seem to have this problem.
Anyways, what I do is stuff a paper lunch bag with other scrunched up plastic and paper bags, and shape it into a cone. Then I tie off the top with a couple of twist ties, and stick it up on the wall by the door.
Scouting wasps think that the bag is some other wasp's nest, and they don't consider it a valid building site. They don't build new nests in other wasps' territories.
This has worked for the past two years without any problems. Here's some pictures, its neither stylish nor glamourous, but it keeps the wasps away.
Allen.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Bagels Nom Nom Nom
We went to the supermarket in the afternoon today, but we'd neglected to get a bag of bagels. Since I didn't feel like going out to another market, I decided to make some at home.
I dug up a nice recipe at The Hub that didn't require anything particularly special. Just 6 common ingredients, no milk or eggs or anything fancy. It was interesting cause I'd never made bagels before, and the whole idea of boiling the dough first before baking was weird to say the least.
I didn't measure exactly according to recipe - I added a cup of oat bran since we had some around, and went up to ~ 2 cups of water to compensate. I also added a sprinkling of sesame seeds as well.
Here's the basic recipe:
4 cups flour
1 tbsp sugar
2 tsp salt
1 tbsp oil
2 tsp instant yeast
1.5 cups warm water.
Put all the dry ingredients in a mixing bowl. Poke a dent in the middle and put the oil in there.
Then add the water a bit at a time, making the dough in the middle of your dry ingredients, adding more water to soak up more flour from the sides into your dough. Once most of the flour in in your dough, turn it out onto your clean countertop. Knead till you're happy with it, about ten minutes or so. Let it relax for about 20 minutes after.
Divide the dough into 8 pieces and roll them into cylinders about twice the width of your hand. Loop each piece around and press the ends together in a doughnut shape. Or you can roll it into a long snake and cut off pieces as needed for the bagel loops. Let them rise for a bit, maybe 15 minutes. For me, by the time I had done the last one, the first one was ready to be boiled.
Boil some water in a pot and drop in your bagels, a few at a time, don't crowd them. I did them 3 at once. I left them in the boiling water for about a minute and a half, then flipped them over to boil for the same. I scooped them out and dropped them on an oiled baking sheet to wait for the the next batch to be boiled.
Once all that is done, put them in an oven preheated to 425 Fahrenheit till they're a colour you're happy with. For me it was about 25 minutes uninterrupted baking time.
Anyways, here are the results, they turned out pretty nicely!
I tried several ways - punched down and not punched down, poked-hole (left) and looped snakes (right)
End notes: I like the way the looped-snake style bagels look nicer than the poked-hole ones. (You can see the poked-hole ones in the upper left, and second from the left in the bottom row) They have the same nice and chewy texture when eaten though. The punched down bagels dont have big air bubbles inside.
Allen.
I dug up a nice recipe at The Hub that didn't require anything particularly special. Just 6 common ingredients, no milk or eggs or anything fancy. It was interesting cause I'd never made bagels before, and the whole idea of boiling the dough first before baking was weird to say the least.
I didn't measure exactly according to recipe - I added a cup of oat bran since we had some around, and went up to ~ 2 cups of water to compensate. I also added a sprinkling of sesame seeds as well.
Here's the basic recipe:
4 cups flour
1 tbsp sugar
2 tsp salt
1 tbsp oil
2 tsp instant yeast
1.5 cups warm water.
Put all the dry ingredients in a mixing bowl. Poke a dent in the middle and put the oil in there.
Then add the water a bit at a time, making the dough in the middle of your dry ingredients, adding more water to soak up more flour from the sides into your dough. Once most of the flour in in your dough, turn it out onto your clean countertop. Knead till you're happy with it, about ten minutes or so. Let it relax for about 20 minutes after.
Divide the dough into 8 pieces and roll them into cylinders about twice the width of your hand. Loop each piece around and press the ends together in a doughnut shape. Or you can roll it into a long snake and cut off pieces as needed for the bagel loops. Let them rise for a bit, maybe 15 minutes. For me, by the time I had done the last one, the first one was ready to be boiled.
Boil some water in a pot and drop in your bagels, a few at a time, don't crowd them. I did them 3 at once. I left them in the boiling water for about a minute and a half, then flipped them over to boil for the same. I scooped them out and dropped them on an oiled baking sheet to wait for the the next batch to be boiled.
Once all that is done, put them in an oven preheated to 425 Fahrenheit till they're a colour you're happy with. For me it was about 25 minutes uninterrupted baking time.
Anyways, here are the results, they turned out pretty nicely!
I tried several ways - punched down and not punched down, poked-hole (left) and looped snakes (right)
End notes: I like the way the looped-snake style bagels look nicer than the poked-hole ones. (You can see the poked-hole ones in the upper left, and second from the left in the bottom row) They have the same nice and chewy texture when eaten though. The punched down bagels dont have big air bubbles inside.
Allen.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Living Room Changes
I picked up a wall mounting system for my LCD television. I'd always meant to, ever since we got the LCD, but I've always balked at the $300-$400 price tag on the nice swingarm mounting systems from Future Shop or Best Buy. However recently I picked up a Costco membership, and I saw the swingarms on sale there for less than $150. I snapped one up the instant I saw it.
There were a ton of parts that I didn't need in the kit, meant for every TV mount under the sun - I lucked out and ended up only needing the basic parts, none of the extensions were required. It was pretty straightforward, the parts were easy to assemble, and I have a ultrasonic stud finder to locate the wooden sections of the wall I had to drill into. There were plastic tubes that could stick to the wall to hold the cables running to the TV, which was very convenient. The only challenge was measuring out how high on the wall to mount the bracket, to make it the same height as before.
This wall bracket freed up an incredible amount of space in our living room. During the time Kathy was away in China, I had replaced the old TV stand with a full sized table for convenience. I used it to hold both the TV and a computer setup. Having the table space meant I used it as a table, so it was always a bit of a mess. And the space under the table was often used as storage, which was also not very pleasing to the eye. The TV was also offset to the right of centre compared to the couch. The worst part of this temporary arrangement was that it became temporarily permanent, and stayed that way for over a year and a half since the time I put it in.
You can see it in the picture below.
So after I had the wall mount in place, a whole bunch of things had to go. First the big table. Then all the bits of stuff that had been stored under the desk. Even the small computer monitor went, since I rarely use both the computer and the TV at the same time.
Now my oil-PC computer is in a spot where it can be showed off a little, rather than hidden away behind all the monitors. It's great for some light websurfing or Youtube. I rearranged the shelves on the cabinet unit for the electronics and moved it to the right side where it was much less in the way - I'm still a little surprised at how I managed to fit all of the wiring and a UPS behind the cabinet. I can now finally reach the couple of light switches on the wall without having to reach around behind the cabinet. The staircase is much less blocked away now too.
There were a ton of parts that I didn't need in the kit, meant for every TV mount under the sun - I lucked out and ended up only needing the basic parts, none of the extensions were required. It was pretty straightforward, the parts were easy to assemble, and I have a ultrasonic stud finder to locate the wooden sections of the wall I had to drill into. There were plastic tubes that could stick to the wall to hold the cables running to the TV, which was very convenient. The only challenge was measuring out how high on the wall to mount the bracket, to make it the same height as before.
This wall bracket freed up an incredible amount of space in our living room. During the time Kathy was away in China, I had replaced the old TV stand with a full sized table for convenience. I used it to hold both the TV and a computer setup. Having the table space meant I used it as a table, so it was always a bit of a mess. And the space under the table was often used as storage, which was also not very pleasing to the eye. The TV was also offset to the right of centre compared to the couch. The worst part of this temporary arrangement was that it became temporarily permanent, and stayed that way for over a year and a half since the time I put it in.
You can see it in the picture below.
So after I had the wall mount in place, a whole bunch of things had to go. First the big table. Then all the bits of stuff that had been stored under the desk. Even the small computer monitor went, since I rarely use both the computer and the TV at the same time.
Now my oil-PC computer is in a spot where it can be showed off a little, rather than hidden away behind all the monitors. It's great for some light websurfing or Youtube. I rearranged the shelves on the cabinet unit for the electronics and moved it to the right side where it was much less in the way - I'm still a little surprised at how I managed to fit all of the wiring and a UPS behind the cabinet. I can now finally reach the couple of light switches on the wall without having to reach around behind the cabinet. The staircase is much less blocked away now too.
So this should probably be the way things are for a while. I've thought about trying to put the electronics cabinet into the wall to free up even more space, but it would be a much larger project to consider at a later date.
The only problem with this setup is - where the heck am I going to sit when I want to play some games on the computer?
Allen.
The only problem with this setup is - where the heck am I going to sit when I want to play some games on the computer?
Allen.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Crayfish Moulting / Molting
Kathy discovered that our crayfish had shed it's shell the other day - we didn't see the actual moult but we took some pictures of the discarded shell. It freaked us out at first, seeing the ripped open carapace. I mean, we've heard of it before but this is the first time seeing it. I wonder how it gets its claws to pull out of the skinny little arm sections?
The crayfish is supposed to eat it's old shell - this one seems to be doing it over a period of a week or more, not all at once. Right now, it's eaten everything except the old claw shells and about half of the carapace.
Allen.
The crayfish is supposed to eat it's old shell - this one seems to be doing it over a period of a week or more, not all at once. Right now, it's eaten everything except the old claw shells and about half of the carapace.
Allen.
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Front yard fixup
More of a a shabby bit of dirt than an actual yard, we've neglected the front yard of our house for years. I mean, we mow it when it gets too long, and but we don't water it, and haven't really watered it since we started having watering restrictions a few years ago - the lawn mostly withered from lack of water and we stopped caring about it at that point. Looking out at it last week, it just looked really sorry, so Kathy and I decided to do something about it. We scraped away the mostly dead grass with a rake, and removed what was left of the back third to make a flower bed.
I went by one of those places that sell patio stones and various other concrete bits, and picked up about $70 worth of driveway curbing to use as the edge around the flower bed. It took 2 trips to pick it all up with our little car, but it wasn't too far away so it was all right I suppose.
After we laid down the concrete, we filled the flower bed with soil. We have a giant cube of soil in the back yard that we used while reseeding the back lawn, so I carted the soil over to the front with a hand truck and a garbage can. Since the distance was around the whole townhouse block, about 10 homes, it worked better than a wheelbarrow with a single wheel.
We also put a good amount of soil down on the remaining grass as well and reseeded the area. Kathy says she wants to plant some shrubs, and I think it should look pretty decent once it's all done.
Edit May 13 - a week later the grass is starting to grow back through the soil, and we planted some perennial plants:
Allen.
I went by one of those places that sell patio stones and various other concrete bits, and picked up about $70 worth of driveway curbing to use as the edge around the flower bed. It took 2 trips to pick it all up with our little car, but it wasn't too far away so it was all right I suppose.
After we laid down the concrete, we filled the flower bed with soil. We have a giant cube of soil in the back yard that we used while reseeding the back lawn, so I carted the soil over to the front with a hand truck and a garbage can. Since the distance was around the whole townhouse block, about 10 homes, it worked better than a wheelbarrow with a single wheel.
We also put a good amount of soil down on the remaining grass as well and reseeded the area. Kathy says she wants to plant some shrubs, and I think it should look pretty decent once it's all done.
Edit May 13 - a week later the grass is starting to grow back through the soil, and we planted some perennial plants:
Allen.
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