Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Lately

We
drove and ate road food for 2 1/2 days.  On the second day we stayed with
our good friends Sandy and Charlie in Midland. We made sure we got the
maximum payload out of our small car: I packed a tabletop drill press, a
12 volt cooling fan, a reciprocating saw and many other tools (pretty
much the remainder that had been left up North). Sara also got to bring
some of her stuff as well.


In
energy news, the fossil fuel industry has had a year full of disaster
and negligence. The Massy Energy mine explosion,demonstrated that to
some, production value outweighs safety and lives. With BP the cost of
redundancy was just too much, so instead it cost lives and tainted our
waters. Maybe BP should focus more on their solar panels -- on second
thought, maybe not. We all need to be more serious about the research
and application of alternative energies, and this is a commitment Sara
and I take very seriously.


On my way to the Ranch Lodge, I ran into this interesting sight along the road:
IMG_3746.JPG
The
bag says "Primate Feed," and behind the bag are about 80 jars of peanut
butter. Next to that, a jug of wine and (out of the photo) ten 2x4s.
Obviously there is someone with interesting plans ---  your guess is as
good as mine!  


Only in Terlingua.



Thursday, August 26, 2010

Travel

In our short time up north we manged to have a gathering of friends and family, most are excited about are new home and some don't quite get it. As far as far west Texas goes, you really need to go there to fully understand. We will be on the road tomorrow headed back and really can't wait to get back to our little off the grid home. I have both solar and automotive related customers waiting and Sara has here job at the ranch to get back to as well. Many new and existing allenergies.net projects are coming we promise.
Well if you see a red suzuki aerio with an allenergies.net bumper striker, give us a wave.


Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Set in Stone

Its been busy here. We poured our bathroom floor/ foundation yesterday in about 3 hours of hard work. Of course the preparation took up a bit of our spare time over the past few weeks, digging into the hillside, setting the plumbing, laying the re-bar, and gathering the washed river gravel.
Bathroom   The pour turned out great and we should have our bathroom closed in by winter. Just used a single drain with the whole pour sloping to it for the shower, and we used dedicated gray water lines for the shower and sink.


Bathroom Slab

    Business has been busy and we have two solar installations already scheduled for September, along with plenty of automotive and electrical jobs. We met some of our neighbors for the first time yesterday (they had been away) and today we gave each other tours of our houses. Very nice folks. Sara has been working at the ranch office for the past few weeks, which explains why the blog entries have been so sparse. We are going to do a quick trip up north to see our family and tie up some loose ends -- should be fun.