Well, it was Interstate Highway System from Bennett to Abilene. Cruise set at 80 mph, no wind to speak of, an acceptable ride. Made it here in about seven hours (it's Tuesday June 30, in case you're keeping track.
Chores to do for my cousin:
1) Wire new back porch. Not bad, boxes and wiring were already in so my job was to add switches and outlets, then hook up power to the whole thing.
From here. Bottom left slot, just waiting to be used:
Yes, those are fuse boxes and old, old, old. Right now upgrading is not in the plan but having an electrician come in and install a breaker box from the main feed is probably a good thing to add to the list.
110V for all the switches and outlets, 220 for the dryer. That took a bit of thinking but I'll be using this fuse box, currently connected to a 220V plug but only with one leg actually connected. I'll probably disconnect and remove the one on the porch as it won't be needed.
One of the joys of living in a little farm house 25 minutes from town is that you live 25 minutes from town. So when you are planning your electrical work you make a list of everything you might need, you buy extras, and then you discover halfway through that you are short something.
Short a white outlet. There's an argument that I could just install one of the cream outlets, but then I'd have to take it back apart at some point and that's a hassle. So the project sits until I can get back into town. Today is July 4th, however, and I'm pretty sure that all the shops in town are closed, so that means either Sunday (they may be closed then too as it's a small town) or Monday.
Here's an interesting workaround that the drywall/wiring guys did so that the porch would have light in the meantime. Took me a bit to figure out precisely what they were doing, then I realized that the extension cord was just feeding the two wires that went to the light switch and then up to the light circuit in the ceiling. OK. That works.
2) The mice. The house sat vacant all winter since my cousin lives in the Philippines most of the year. The mice had free reign and now have to be reined in. I'm not particularly freaked out by mice, but I'm not a big fan of the poop everywhere you go. The house itself was cleaned by a friend of the cousin before she or I arrived, but that still leaves closets, behind furniture, etc. Plus a lot of small construction garbage that we are cleaning out, along with its poop collection. Traps, poison, etc. My cousin will be in the house til October, then back to the PI, which presumably means that she'll go through some of this again next year, but that's up to her.
Yesterday morning AND this morning, however, I woke to chewing noises. Today grabbed my flashlight and found a mouse in the closet just outside my bedroom door. He cruised off down the hall after we stared at each other for a while. Was he stuck in the closet or was it just a part of his route? No idea. Meanwhile there are banging noises coming from downstairs. Down I go, only to discover that a mouse has gotten stuck in one of the mouse traps but guess what isn't powerful enough to kill that mouse, just to trap it. I have no idea what cousin wants to do with the mouse so I just left it alone. It's been a couple hours and it's still banging away down there so clearly in no danger of dying from the trap. Cheap garbage but it did catch a mouse. I'm a "bait" guy rather than a trap guy but there it is. We'll see.
Update: Another mouse dead in another trap, this mouse was just big enough that it couldn't totally get him. Threw dead mouse and live mouse out in the field. Live mouse still in trap and he'll eventually die and we'll retrieve the trap to reload and reset. Peanut butter gets you two mice in one night. Comment if you want pictures of dead mice. 😁
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