Mostly social things have kept us close to home lately. Chris George had his 78th and is in good form. Great fun catching up with friends and hearing about their travels and families.

Lots of tech support and a couple days working on a rental.

Spent a Saturday doing a local Solar Home Tour with Carol Martin, where we learned something at every one of the 9 homes we visited. Saw installations on million dollar homes, an off the grid earth home and an Air B & B rental not to mention regular single family homes.  (BTW our latest installation is cranking out plenty of kW’s)

Most unusual home was built by an former Intel engineer that had almost every energy trick you could think of, including what he called a “battery” of hot water storage in 3 levels of Pex tubing under his garage cement floor.

Speaking of unusual, Mike Taylor needed help removing a pack rat nest in the ventilation cowling of his engine compartment.  Toyota wasn’t interested in taking that part of his newer truck apart evidently. The nest was about 8 inches in diameter and the rodents had dragged all sorts of things up into that secluded home.  A  missing glove was funny, but the book of matches was just plain weird.

A couple of arduous day hikes kept the legs limber, but nothing overnight on the calendar until later in the month when we’ll head to the desert. Eager to test out a couple of newer UL acquisitions.