Home life

I enjoy giving praise to local businesses who provide a great product and excellent service. So this is my shout-out to Advantage Heating & Air Conditioning, who installed two Daikin Fit heat pumps at our house after our previous heat pumps reached the end of their useful life. We've used Judson's for most of the thirty-five years we've lived here in rural south Salem. They're also a fine company, but in the past few years we've noticed a decline in the quality of their maintenance and repair work on our American Standard heat pumps. Won't go into the details, as…

The Big One earthquake is a matter of when, not if, for us here in the Pacific Northwest. In 2015 an article in the New Yorker brought a lot of attention to the massive Cascadia subduction zone earthquakes that periodically strike our area of the world. I quoted from the article in "People of Pacific Northwest: Be scared, very scared. The Big One is coming." By the time the shaking has ceased and the tsunami has receded, the region will be unrecognizable. Kenneth Murphy, who directs FEMA’s Region X, the division responsible for Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Alaska, says, “Our operating…

Life is stressful these days. Well, actually, life always is stressful to some extent. It just seems that the state of our nation and the world is more distressing now. So I'll take comfort and relaxation wherever I can find it. Including when I sit on the toilet in the bathroom that I use the most, being adjacent to my bedroom. (My wife, Laurel, and I sleep separately.)  A few weeks ago Laurel had the bright idea of getting a bidet. She'd gotten back from visiting relatives in Indiana who had a bidet. Laurel didn't try it, but they praised…

A couple of years ago my wife and I got a Generac whole house generator after suffering through the Great Salem Ice Storm of 2021, which left us without power for twelve days (our 7000 watt Honda generator worked fine, but it isn't anywhere near as convenient and powerful as the 24,000 watt Generac). Aside from an oil leak, which was fixed by the company, Northside Electric, we bought the Generac from, the only problem we've had with the generator is a spotty wi-fi connection. Wi-fi is built into the Generac, but it requires some connection steps via the notoriously…

Yesterday I fell off a bridge into running water. Fortunately, it was a tiny bridge and the water wasn't very deep. How it appears to have happened contains a life lesson. Yesterday I was taking our dog, Mooka, on her usual late afternoon walk, which begins on our property in rural south Salem. I had her on a leash, since the area by a creek is favored by raccoons, and we don't want Mooka running off and tangling with one. I'd just crossed a little bridge that crosses the main part of Spring Creek, a short creek that feeds Spring…

We bought our rural south Salem house, which was built in 1973, from a couple in their mid-60s who said they were selling because the house on five acres was too much for them to maintain anymore. Well, 35 years later, Laurel and I now are in our mid-70s, taking care of the same house (extensively updated by us) and an additional five acres, for a total of ten, since we were able to buy an undeveloped neighboring lot quite a few years ago. Someday, probably, we'll have to move. In case I ever wonder why it took us so…