Busy buzzy

Mornings of haze and smoke from the Canadian Fires.
:(

 The Mini Split arrived and Dan the HVAC dude from 608 Plumbing and Heating came. When he backed the van up to offload the unit, I inquired if he need help getting it off the van and moved to its base.

He was surprised at first and then said "Sure!"

Inside the living room
where the indoor unit was to
go.

Outside the house where the mini split unit 
was to go.

With two people the unit wasn't that hard to maneuver. He said he often has to do these things alone and sometimes the office sends out helpers, but he didn't get one.

Here he is installing the bracket inside where the indoor unit will sit.

I helped him unpack the unit and get it up on the wall. I even pulled the hoses through the hole that he drilled through the house. Dan is a pleasant guy and loves to chat as he works. He explained everything he was doing which was interesting.

Most of the work took place outside. I made Rich go out to take a look.

Rich is talking with Dan. 

What the mini split looked like when finished on the outside.

What it looks like on the inside.

The old heater on the right will be used when the temps outside get below zero as a heat assist. Otherwise the newer and very efficient min heat pump will provide us with both A/C in the summer and heat in the winter for much less than we paid for the LP fuel.

Since we have a tiny home, this will be super efficient. I sure am looking forward to having a nice cool house when things get hot and humid out!

My impressions so far? YES!

This was a huge plus for our place. The heater - A/C is so quiet you barely notice it! Was it pricey? Yes, but since we have never had both A/C and heat before [other than a window unit in a unused bedroom upstairs] this will work wonders.

Color me happy.

Lights OUT

So just after chores the other night the power ... blam

went out.

I didn't get too excited because we have 'smart' meters. They notify the local electric company that the power is out and things get fixed. 
After about an hour, I texted my neighbor asking her if she was out. I had no internet, no land line [it sure makes a case for having a Hardwired phone and no wireless phone]. My cell phone was at almost nothing percent with no bars. 

Since I didn't hear back from the neighbor I started to walk up to the top of the hill to knock on there door. By this time ol' Grumpy was having fits. His mindset doesn't do well with things like no electric. They had power and she'd call it in for me.

I grabbed a headlamp and sat down to read a book. Grumpy started pacing and yelling. I should have called, I was wrong, why did it go out? How come? I explained the best I could that ALL technology had failed us at the moment. The Electric Company didn't get notified and we had no hard wire phone and the cell phone was useless unless I went to the ridge.

More yelling. I started reading wishing I had more battery so I could tune in Pandora. Hmmm. I could start the car and go charge up the phone, drive to the ridge and listen to music. 

"Lipstick Powder Horn Mushroom. Description: Fruiticose grayish or greenish slender, unbranched stalks arising from a finally scaled surface and topped with a blunt red tip..." I tore a scrap of paper and wrote on it:
Found March 23 in the morning midway up a hill on a mossy fallen oak log with 3 or 4 types of mosses mixed in. NW facing hillside--very shady in summer. No idea what all the different mosses are as of yet but will search the moss book.

[Photo taken but obviously not posted with no power]

Another note to self:
Look up a bit more info on macro and in camera stacking along with Helicon stacking. 

I got up to get a drink of water and there was more yelling. I was wasting water. I reminded Grumpy that we were on a shared well and the pump was up on the ridge and it had power so we did have water. 
Long ago I'd talked to a counselor regarding this sort of behavior. The best advice I ever got was to not think of him as the rational person I usually knew. But to call him in my mind Irrational Man. Really nothing I said or did would change Irrational Man's mind. 

I opened up a notebook and started to make a list of things I'd like to explore with photography this summer. Small things in particular. The nasty icky ugly weeds that grow. Fungi? Lichen? Mosses and Liverworts. Things close to the ground. Poison Ivy? Tick weed, wild parsnip, and hawkweed. 

Eventually two trucks slowly came down the hill. Vernon Electric. I walked out to talk with them. I kept my distance and the first guy checked the meter and then quizzically looked at me and opened up the box on the post next to the meter. 

"Here is the problem," he said and pointed his light at a switch. He pulled it down and then pushed it to ON. 
Apparently it is the original on off thingy that controls all the other thingies. 

"You might want to call an electrician and have him fix this. It is odd that its a 100 amp. It is old. Update it to a 200 amp." 
I shrugged and pointed out that I had no idea that box was something that was ours so I never touched it. I apologized for not knowing that but also was very relieved that this incident happened as we needed that box to be upgraded.

I suppose it was missed when we upgraded the house in 2016.

Grumpy was hovering when I came in. I explained to him about the box and that I'd call our electrician in the morning. 
He was calm and wanted to watch some TV. 

I marveled at how his mind worked. Crisis over and all was forgotten. I wanted to really get back at him in some way and remind him that he'd hurt my feelings. 

Irrational Man. It just works that way. 
Jake will be showing up in a few moments and I'll need to go back out. 

I asked Grumpy if he would be okay without power while Jake worked on the box.

Whaddya mean? 

He'd forgotten. 

Update sort of....
Don't feel bad for me, I'm used to this. Yes I was really upset at his inability to understand reasoning. I had to walk outside and stand for a while and take a few deep breaths. This is what a CareGiver does. Screaming back at him would not have made anything better.
I kept telling myself I was better than that. The worst part is not having a way to release the pressure. 

I so need to get back to CrossFit! Be well.

I did it...

I broke down finally after saving up and purchased the Olympus OMD E-M1 Mark III. It is NOT considered a pro camera. But wow, the features it has!

It will take me a while to get used to it. I've been a fan of the Olympus camera since owning my very first Olympus Stylus in 2006. I literally wore that pocket camera out. Being one of the first pocket digital cameras, it wasn't cheap. But it taught me so much!

I learned that a pocket camera is essential because it is so easy to carry around. I've 'killed' so many pocket cameras in the past 13 years. I even used a pink ugly camera for a long time. I purchased Pink Fugly camera so I wouldn't feel bad about dropping it in snow or demolishing it by accident. It was cheap, it was ugly, but it took great photos. I even lost it once in the creek. I dried it out and it kept functioning.

It lived another few years before the lens wouldn't open anymore. 

Last year I sent my old Olympus OMD EM 5 to be converted to a full spectrum Infrared camera. 

I replaced it with an Olympus OMD EM10 Mark iii. It was Olympus's version of a cell phone camera. Easy to operate by swiping the menu on the LCD. I could choose landscape, sunset, sports, indoors, and other options easily.

Imagine my disappointment then to read about Olympus selling out? 

Seeing as that my Oly OMD EM 5 was still creeping along after 7 yrs of hard labor [the only menus that work are... Program Mode and Manual mode at this time and the LCD turns a sickly green most of the time]...I decided to go for the gold and get the new higher end version when it went on sale.

The cameras are built to be exposed weather. I have the lenses I need and if I care as well for the newer model as I cared for the old one, they will last me a very long time.

So with all that goobldy gook aside...I decided to dive into this last upgrade. Note, better gear doesn't make me a better photographer at all. Nope, not at all. I've done very well in the past years of always purchasing a DSLR camera that was being discontinued or buying a used one. I favor Olympus because they are small and lightweight. Carrying my Nikon D5200 was like carrying a load of bricks compared to the light weights.

I like hiking and I like photography, but I don't need to carry extra pounds while hiking. This new one has two new features which I really like.

It has an in camera ND filter. What? It works like a neutral density filter contained within the camera settings. Wicked cool. The image stabilization allows me to take a longer exposure shot up to a full second Hand Held.

I used to lug around a tripod almost all of the time when going near any source of water.

Anxious to try this feature out, I headed to the creek before the winds started Saturday morning.

The shot on the left is just a normal shot of the little pond between my land and the neighbor's land [f 5.6 at 1/15th of a second]. On the right is a shot hand held with a in camera ND shot at f 5.6 at 1.3 seconds. 

Another sample of a first try. On the left a normal shot, on the right .25 of a second. Not a big deal right? But I really like the smoother water. Olympus says that the filter actually merges several exposures together at once. 

Rich wouldn't let me wander around off our property, he said there were too many odd balls bow hunting on the neighbor's 500 acres of land. So I took Charlie and we headed to Tainter Hollow. Alas, we couldn't walk the trails next to Tainter Creek either!

The USDA and DNR had put out traps for the beavers who have been causing a lot of damage to the trout stream. 

Charlie and I parked and walked the gravel road down to the bridge where I thought I could try for some more hand held shots. So these are shots for fun and not for any wowzer factor. I call them learning shots.

Internal ND 8 Filter. 64 ISO, one second exposure. Better! Things look pretty good.

Looking down on the other side of the bridge. Same exposure.

I took one more short walk on Sunday and had to try this again.

I will have to actually use a tripod for any longer exposures than 1 second. But now I don't have to add a filter or even carry one when using this camera. I think that is a bonus. 

There is one more feature I am anxious to try out. It is called Starry Sky AF. But with clouds and rain for the next week, I doubt I'll get a chance to try that. 

I will use the in camera focus stacking and use the focus bracketing.

In short.
I am pleased with this camera. And it will take a while for me to take it through its paces. I think it is built tougher than my old one and definitely can be taken out in poor weather. 

One last parting photo. This was taken in 2016 at Parfrey's Glen near Wisconsin Dells. I climbed rocks and carried my gear over precarious ground to get to this place at the end of the rock gorge. A 1 second shot on a tripod with an ND filter.

Still one of my favorite photos.

The end goal is to be able to not have to carry all the gear to get a shot like this in the future. I guess we will see!