Progress in Paradise...

Progress in Paradise...  Debbie is much more cheerful the past week or so, as she now is able to get about a bit on her walker.  She can also do some (relatively) easy physical therapy that's getting her range of motion back, and building her strength.  Several times now when we've had visitors, she's been up and out of the bedroom to see them.  She took a real shower, too, now that she can maneuver into it.  All good.  Progress!

My shoulders, they burn!  The physical therapy exercises they gave me are deceptively easy.  The first few repetitions seem like nothing at all.  But by the time I'm halfway through them, they're starting to squawk.  By the time I've finished the prescribed 20 repetitions, the burn has set in.  I suppose that's probably good for me, but it sure doesn't feel like it right now.

The past couple of days I've been working on a long-delayed project: building the bed for the ATV trailer chassis I bought. At right you see the bed in progress.  In the right-hand photo it's nearly done – I just need a few corner brackets on the “rim”, a bit of wood putty, and paint.  That rim will also get steel “pockets” to hold the stake sides.  The bed is 8' long by 3'10" wide; lots of room for a big load of brush or weeds.  The stake sides will be 30" high, so I'll be able to pile it pretty high!  Right now that bed weighs about 160 lbs, mainly because the lumber (2 x 8s and 2 x 6s) is still pretty wet.  It's amazingly hard to buy dry lumber any more.

This afternoon, Tyler from Golden Spike Electric came by to look at what it would take to put backup generators in for our house and the shed.  The house turns out to be a bit trickier than I would have thought, mainly because it's got a screwy service with two main breakers (one for 200 amps, the other for 100 amps).  I also got some wisdom from him about which models to go with, and on sizing.  Looks like we're going to go with a 45 kw unit for the house, and 22 kw for the shed.  That will let us run everything, no restrictions, during a power outage – and we won't have to have a split system on our breaker panels.  For things like this, simple, ample size, and straightforward are my preference.  I just want the backup to work, without any futzing about...