January

January just got a ton colder.  Below freezing.  I don't want to leave the house.  I have to put on so many layers of clothing. I wear thermal underwear, then my dirty work jeans and boots. On top, I have a tank top a t-shirt and a long sleeve shirt, then my windproof fleece jacket and a puffy blue coat.  We went to the thrift store and bought outer coats and hats for our project to get dirty.

We go, start a fire in the woodstove.  I go upstairs and start removing motherboards from their cases.  The cases are old and heavy steel which we will sell at the junk yard.  The motherboards and peripherals are technically hazardous and we will think about how to dispose of them. --Best Buy recyles! Accepts almost all types of electronics 3 a day per household.  I was warm doing that work. My right hand was gloved and my left was not. Neither were cold.  The monitors were another problem. They are CRT and we have to get rid of them properly.  Best Buy accepts them for $10 in which they give back to you in a BB gift card. Not as bad as the other places flat out charging you up to $15 dollars per monitor.  We have 23+ monitors up there. It's a headache. I count my blessings that Best Buy takes keyboards, motherboards, printers for free.  We have about 10 heavy keyboards, 15 printers (upstairs alone).

Then I went to my city's waste website. I discovered there is no regulation on disposing of electronics in household trash!  I feel kind of bad, but we have to get rid of them.

At a trip to Home Depot for some supplies, we got romex wiring, lined leather gloves for SO, and safety goggles.  There were no lined leather gloves for women or for my small women's hands. I tell Nick I don't want gloves and none would fit me.  I regret this later.

It's so damn cold and my dad's oily thin gloves do not help. I shove my hands in my pockets and watch SO cut up wood.  I need gloves.  It's 7 degrees.  Slight exposure to the frigid air and my fingers go numb.

Our problem isn't that there's not much to do, it's that we are stifled by our waste management situation.  We don't have enough containers to put the trash in, and we don't have enough outlets for it.  We have access to a commercial dumpster once a week.  We missed last week's because it was very cold and the roads were covered in snow and Dad worried the emptied pickup might get stuck.  We also did not take advantage of curbside pickup right in front of the house. Duh!

We tried to saw up some pieces of a dresser but the tablesaw wouldn't start, hummed and then out went the lights.  We then had an exercise in discovering which fuses went to which light fixture.

We also decided to try taking out a wall. A small wall. The drywall was easy and came out in chunks. No dust.  Then there was the lathe. Lemme tell you - lathe makes great kindling wood.  : )
We tried to use the jigsaw to slice up the lathe but it was underpowered.  We then tried a circular saw but it wouldn't turn on.  A circular saw would be fantastic though.  We set the depth to the dept of the drywall and cut out a frame of it to remove in solid pieces. Then the lathe would slice like butter.  Soon we shall do it.

But first I need some damn warm work gloves for small hands!