Paradise ponders, slippery mud, wet wood, and sushi edition...

Paradise ponders, slippery mud, wet wood, and sushi edition...  I was able to spend most of day yesterday (and some this morning, too!) working on my stairs project.  In the first photo below, you see the results of the first round of sanding off the black (using 100 grit and the orbital sander).  The large landing has one round of sanding done (second photo is a closeup), while the smaller step is unsanded.  Quite a difference!  I ended up doing two rounds at 100 grit and a final round at 220 grit, and in the end I was pretty happy with how it looked.  The black color stayed in the dents as I'd originally intended, but it also was infused in some other areas in a way that resembles how wood weathers.  All good!  Then I started applying stain: two coats yesterday, another this morning.  The result (still wet) is in the third photo.  I think I'm going to stop at three, as it looks pretty good.  The stain has the side-effect of making the blackened areas a bit indistinct, again more like wood actually weathers.  Once these stairs are in the sun room, the little bit of red still visible will gradually fade, and the white parts will yellow slightly – both of these effects will, I think, improve the appearance.  So far I've only stained the top; later today I'll flip it over and start the process on the bottom.  By tomorrow I believe I'll be applying the matte polyurethane...

We went out for our lunch yesterday to a local favorite: Black Pearl.  I had sushi (my seafood nanudo roll at right); Debbie had their house pad thai.  Both were excellent!  We were both stuffed by the time we rolled out of there, and Debbie had some leftovers, too.  Not me. :)  On the way there we had an odd thing happen with the Model X.  From appearances, the GPS stopped reporting the car's position to the navigation system.  The car's symbol was stuck in one place on the map.  Nothing I did made any difference at all.  After we ate and started home, the position was still stuck – but only for a couple of blocks.  Then it suddenly started working again, and has been since then.  I've no idea what might have caused that.  The Tesla forums have a couple of mentions of the same problem, with the exact same outcome, so I'm not too worried about it.

Last night and early this morning we got slammed with a big rainstorm.  The snapshot at right shows the total storm accumulation; we got just over a half inch.  That wouldn't be so bad except that our soils were already super-saturated with water – so nearly all the water from this storm is either sitting on the surface or turning the first inch or so of soil into a slurry.  Some areas to our west and southwest got over 2" in this storm.  These are areas that are normally very dry, so this will likely cause a burst of plant growth – and wildflowers!  We have another storm approaching, too – starting around noon today we're expecting rain for 12 hours or so, with another half inch or a bit more in precipitation.  All this water is going to make our sprinkler project quite a bit harder.  I suspect Mark T. will be waiting a few days for things to dry out at least a little.  After today we've got 10 days with little chance of rain in the forecast, with highs in the upper 50s or low 60s, light winds, and lots of sun.  A few days of that and we'll dry out a bit, I hope!  The farmers around here who didn't plant this week are going to have to wait another week or so before their tractors can make it through the fields...