One of our outdoor fairy figurines receives a summer dusting of fresh paint at Roni's artistic, steady hand. Roni has been unstoppable with her paintbrush these days, attempting to refurbish some of our neglected yard ornaments as well as get a jump on the weeds before they return in the fall. Photo by Glenn.
July 30, 2022: Slowly but surely, our house is beginning to resemble an art studio. Or maybe a concrete fabrication facility, take your pick. So it goes with our ever changing interests or lack thereof.
They say it's your birthday... We're gonna have a good time... I'm glad it's your birthday... Happy birthday to you! Photo by Glenn.
Glenn celebrates his big 5-7 with a family dinner at Papa Chen Restaurant in Brentwood. He's got his chow mein, Vietnamese coffee and his family to help him enjoy the evening. What more could a guy want? Photo by Roni.
Ben's sporting a new look, and no, we're not talking about the mask. He picked up the glasses because he was tired of headaches caused by his changing vision. He says they've made a world of difference — and he looks very studious in them! Photo by Glenn.
Our birthday dinner at Papa Chen's. It was sooooo good. Photo by Glenn.
Back at home, we dig into some Neapolitan ice cream cake from Cold Stone Creamery. Photo by Glenn.
Glenn received one of the last Apple iPod Touch devices ever made. The company stopped manufacturing them in May, so we scooped up one from the remaining stock. Photo by Roni.
The iPod didn't come with a case, so here is what Glenn came up with as an interim protective measure to keep the glass screen safe. It's a simple felt-lined foam box. Not the most ideal case for accessing the audio buttons, but it does what it needs to do, and it was free. Photo by Glenn.
Roni has been trying to create art for the planter box we built last month. One of her ideas is this birdbath made from clay pots. She's adding a bird decoration to the base, hoping they'll take the hint. Photo by Glenn.
Here is the finished birdbath with its saucer that includes glass beads and resin heart. Even if the birds never come, at least it's pretty to look at. Photo by Roni.
Some of the backyard beautification effort includes sprucing up objects we've had there for a number of years Our garden fairy figurine was so faded that we couldn't remember what color whe was originally, but she looks much prettier in her new coat of paint . Photo by Glenn.
Roni gets her first experience using the cordless drill while creating a "screw ball" flower. She ordered a trio of wooden balls from Amazon and had to drill holes before adding screws and nails to create the art. Photo by Glenn.
Here are the finished screw ball flowers, which have been spray painted with Rustoleum and placed on decorative metal stakes we got from Home Depot. Photo by Glenn.
The new planter box is certainly gaining character after barely a month of service. Roni did most of the work herself, adding the stepping stones and rocks over a series of weekends. Once finished, we will have more pots and statues to display at the corners. Photo by Roni.
More of Roni's handiwork. The pig is pink once more, and the fat cat has been reimagined in the image of our very own Phyre (who isn't nearly so chubby.) Photo by Glenn.
Our yard shadows, Annie and Oakley, sport a new coat of black paint and colorful bandanas. The coyote, Frasier, still needs a refresh now that we've found the right color of paint for the job. Photo by Glenn.
We're trying our hand at molding concrete planters, using some plastic pots we picked up from Home Depot. Here we see the inner mold weighted down with a bag of sand while the fresh concrete sets in the lower pot. Photo by Glenn.
A couple of days later the pot has been removed from the mold. It is a little lopsided, so we've got it sitting in a pan of sand while we figure out what to do with it next. The base should be easy to repair with some more concrete. Photo by Glenn.
Runners hit the pavement at Ironhouse Sanitary District for the start of the Oakley Summer Fest 5K. Roni spent weeks helping to get the course ready for the event. Photo by Roni.
The Oakley Summer Fest replaces what had been the Oakley Cityhood Celebration. The city ditched the fireworks show but kept the booths, music, food and games. This is Roni's booth for Ironhouse — the first major festival she's done in more than two years. Photo by Roni.
Does Roni look happy to be here? Probably because Glenn and Ben brought her a Big Ass Sausage for lunch. Photo by Glenn.
Ben tries to decide what to buy for lunch from one of the food trucks at the Oakley Summer Fest. The options were rather limited unless you wanted funnel cakes, kettle corn or other sugary delights. Photo by Glenn.
It's that time of year when the peacocks start to emerge with their new broods in tow. One of our local ladies parades through our court with five chicks. It looks like the birds will be around for years to come. Photo by Roni.
Phyre loves chilling with his people. Any leg can become a pillow at a moment's notice. Photo by Glenn.
Brotherly bookends. Photo by Roni.
Last month we told you about our new planter box and Glenn’s recreation of the famous “Love” sculpture that he lovingly rendered in two parts sand to one part Portland cement. Those two projects have spawned others as our minds have been filled with possibilities for all things concrete and the processes behind creating them.
Our current endeavor: pots. Or rather, pot. Not the mind-altering substance, but rather the large casting that has been taking up space on our front porch for the past week or so. From our travels through the YouTube universe we have been watching tutorials on how to turn ordinary objects such as plastic planters from the home improvement store into concrete containers that can last a lifetime if done correctly.
“Correctly” is the key word. Just because something looks simple to do when someone on YouTube does it, doesn’t mean your personal experience will be the same. After building the Love sculpture, Glenn decided to step up his game with a pot made from a foot-tall, circular garden container we picked up at Home Depot. We chose it for two reasons: it has an interesting pattern on the side that looks good in a casting, and it was dirt cheap at around $7.
We already had a bunch of sand and cement leftover from the earlier project, so it was only a matter of mixing up a batch of concrete and pouring it into the mold. First we greased up the inside of the planter with some old motor oil, which serves as a release agent so the concrete won’t stick to the mold, then we placed a couple inches of sand at the bottom in preparation for the next step.
To make a pot requires both an outside and inside mold. The inner mold creates the void for plants and other things in the finished pot, so it needs to be large, but not so large that it leaves too thin a wall of concrete in the finished product. We picked up a no-frills 7-gallon plastic container that cost about $5 at Home Depot. It already had drainage holes in the bottom, so we taped those closed to prevent liquid concrete from leaking into the inner mold.
Inside the outer mold we inserted a piece of foam in the sand and poured a layer of soupy concrete around it. When dry, this would serve as the base of the container with a drainage hole already cast in. On top of this layer we nestled the inner mold and weighted it down using an open bag of sand. Then we filled the space between the inner and outer walls of the mold with runny concrete — lots of concrete. Having never made one of these before, it was easy to underestimate how much concrete would be required, so we mixed about four separate batches.
Concrete gets weaker the more water that is added to it, so normally you wouldn’t want it too runny. But with molding it is important to have a liquid consistency in order to capture fine details, so our mixture sloshed around in the mold, especially after we tapped down the sides of the mold to release bubbles and such.
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HE FOLLOWING DAY it was time to check the pot’s progress. Generally it is a good idea to let the casting sit for at least 24 hours before attempting to remove it from the mold. The excess water had evaporated overnight and now things had firmed enough to take the pot out of the plastic container.
First Glenn tried to remove the inner mold, but it held fast. The plastic was able to flex away from the concrete casting, but not enough to free it and remove it. So we resorted to a trick we’d learned from the YouTube pot-making masters who pour boiling water on the mold. This helps heat up the mold release agent — motor oil, in our case — and enable it to slide off more easily. Well, still no luck. We poured an entire pan of scalding water on the plastic walls of the inner mold and the plastic refused to budge.
So we gave up on the inner mold and decided to work on the outer one instead. We flipped the pot upside down and took it out to the driveway where we doused the outer layer with the boiling water. Immediately the plastic gave way and we were able to slide it off the concrete to reveal… um, our creation.
The concrete slurry mix had beautifully rendered the details of the mold, but there was a problem. Because we had dry placed sand in the bottom of the mold before we poured the concrete, it had shifted once we set the inner mold with the sandbag on top, so we were left with a lopsided base for our new pot.
That we could fix in the “post production” phase, but first we still had to remove the inner mold. Still having no luck using the boiling water, by now Glenn had decided it was the drainage holes in the inner mold creating the problem. Despite having taped them up before making the casting, water had intruded into the inner mold and the tape had been pushed inward slightly, forming notches just large enough to create resistance when it came to removing the mold.
So we used an old metal pica pole that once served as a measuring device in the days of manual newspaper production to slide between the mold and the concrete in an attempt to loosen things up. Then we inserted a pry bar into the drainage holes on the inner mold until we were able to force the sections apart, and at last the bucket slid out to reveal the smooth concrete interior of our casting, the drain hole already in place.
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HILE IT WAS exciting to see our casting freed from its mold, we still had the matter of its lopsidedness to address. This thing was a candidate for the Island of Misfit Toys, given its list to port — or perhaps starboard, depending on which side we viewed it from.
Glenn’s solution was to turn the pot on its rim and slap on a new layer of concrete to level the base, just as he’d seen the YouTubers do. Again, they make it look easy because they know what they are doing, and so we did the best we could with our limited tools and skills. We moistened the pot so that the new concrete would stick to it, then troweled on a somewhat less sloppy 2:1 mixture of sand to cement just like the original, working it up the sides so that it was mostly level
Although the pot now sits a bit flatter than before, the repair leaves a lot to be desired. We lost some of the detail in the sides when the wet patch concrete dripped, and despite trying to reduce the moisture content it still slumped a bit, leading to some lumpiness along the base. Not a total fail, but far from the 100 percent success we’d sought.
We have yet to add the feet and paint up our new casting, so it may yet be salvageable. At worst, we’ll call it Ugly Pot and display it near our new garden box with its best side facing forward, which is how we should all want to face the world each day.
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OT TO BE outdone, Roni has been up to her own crafting in the garden as she seeks to transform our neglected yard into something more appealing to people and less attractive to weeds. The redwood planter was just the first step in her master plan.
We added the finishing touches to the planter box late last month when Glenn screwed down the redwood caps and completed the bench area. Roni ran with that and installed 12x12” pavers around the planter to provide better access for watering the plants and to limit opportunities for future weed growth. We went to Brentwood Decorative Rock one weekend and picked up four bags of small landscaping stones that she used to fill in the gaps around the pavers.
Meanwhile, she created several new craft items to add some color and whimsy to the garden. She made a birdbath out of some terra cotta pots that she lined with glass beads and painted with a picture of a happy bird on the side — just in case the real birds needed a clue what it was intended to be used as. She then manufactured a trio of colorful flower balls from wooden spheres mounted on twisty metal stakes and implanted with nails and screws to resemble the blossoms.
This was the first time she’d ever used the cordless drill, so she needed a bit of guidance in selecting bit sizes to drill her first holes for the flower project. But with a little practice she was happily drilling away and hammering home the nails — which had the added advantage of using up some of the giant collection of nails and screws in Glenn’s tool chest.
Roni has been on a tear with her paint supplies lately, also tackling the refinishing of several of our favorite pieces of yard art. She redecorated the angels surrounding the olive tree planter on our patio, gave a large metal pig a fresh coat of pink paint, and painted up a concrete cat with orange and white fur to resemble our very own Phyre.
Our plywood shadow cowfolk, Annie and Oakley, also got fresh outfits. Roni cleaned them up and laid them out on a work table where she blasted both sides with black spray paint. They haven’t looked this sharp since they were new on Christmas morning nearly 11 years ago. And they’ve held up remarkably well against the elements for all these years sitting out on the patio beneath the BAP pergola. Roni would like to refinish Frasier the coyote next, but we were very low on the Rustoleum nutmeg paint originally used for the project and hadn’t been able to find it in stores around these parts until just this weekend when we located it in spray paint form at ACE Hardware. Now we just need to get it applied.
It all looks very attractive now. But our yard has been neglected for so long that there are many more decorating projects in store, as well as home improvement chores to tackle one day.
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E'VE FELT A lot like a broken record when it comes to recounting tales of our investments this year, as every month has brought new horror stories of crashing markets and depleted brokerage accounts. July brought some relief from the storm, although the future looks far from certain as companies report quarterly earnings amid continued concerns about inflation, interest rate hikes and talk of recession.
We closed out a hideous first half of the year in fitting fashion by being assigned 300 shares of Rocket Lab (RKLB) in our taxable account from put options that hadn’t been set to expire until next January. That swallowed up $4,500 in cash we had been counting on to secure other trades, so we’ve been extremely cash-poor at a time when “cash is king” in a bear market.
That has meant being very cautious around other positions out of concern we could be assigned shares we can’t afford without financing them, and who wants to pay interest for stocks that are worth less than what you had to pay for them? Answer: no one.
But we have selectively added some other positions recently, including 17 shares of Barrick Gold Corporation (GOLD) and 300 shares of Spire Global (SPIR), the latter of which we purchased to lower the average cost of the 100 shares we already owned. In Glenn’s IRA we optioned 200 shares of Carnival Cruise Lines (CCL) and 300 shares of ChargePoint (CHPT) in the event that the share prices fall drastically lower — which, although that hasn’t happened as the month draws to a close, always seems like a realistic possibility in the current market.
Despite the ongoing uncertainties and litany of bad news roiling markets, we have reached a point where we just aren’t as fearful of things continuing to move lower. Our economy could be in this cycle for months or years to come, but now is the time to invest in companies we believe will benefit in the next growth cycle. The problem is that there are too many good things on sale and not enough cash to buy them all.
Did we mention that cash is king?
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LENN CELEBRATED HIS 57th birthday this month, selecting as his dining option of choice the Papa Chen Restaurant on Lone Tree Way in Brentwood. It was our third visit to the hole-in-the-wall since March — Ben’s first time there — and we have yet to have a disappointing meal. Ben ordered the egg foo young, which we all got to try as we shared our individual entrees. It was an item we normally wouldn’t have ordered as it sounds too pedestrian for a restaurant meal, but it was really good. And of course Roni had her hot and sour soup, and Glenn enjoyed his Vietnamese coffee. This just might be our new go-to spot for future trips to Home Depot, where we seem to end up a lot.
Back at home, we celebrated Glenn’s latest rung on the ladder to old age with an ice cream cake from Cold Stone Creamery and a few gifts that included books on concrete crafting, a countertop ice maker, a new Keurig coffee machine, and an iPod Touch (easily the worst-kept secret as Glenn was on hand when Roni ordered it online.)
Getting the iPod was sort of a full-circle present. Glenn received his first iPod Nano for his birthday in 2008, and it continued to serve him well to this day. But when we heard the news a few weeks ago that Apple would no longer be making its beloved music player, Glenn decided he’d better upgrade now while supplies remained in stock. Now that everything has switched to streaming audio and video subscription services, folks who still want to own their own music collection and play it without commercial interruption are mostly out of luck. The latest generation iPod still allows that, though it too has strayed from its roots to now resemble a mini version of an iPhone, sans the cellular service.
And because the iPod is basically a less robust version of the iPhone, it features an identical glass screen that would undoubtedly fare poorly if dropped. So Glenn crafted his own case out of foam board and felt — a temporary protective solution while he continues to keep his eyes open on Amazon for the perfect case.
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E CONTINUE TO turn to YouTube for our video entertainment these days, and when we aren’t watching news clips from around the country or studying techniques of the great concrete crafting masters, we often end up back at any of the hundreds of streaming video camera feeds that are out there.
One such site we especially enjoy is Live World Cams, which rotates among roughly 80-120 feeds located throughout the world. It runs 24/7 and includes a soothing soundtrack that features no commentary, just smooth jazz and ambient chill. When there is nothing else on, we’ll often just let the channel play in the background while we read or catch up with our mobile devices.
About the only live streaming we do ourselves these days is via our Ring Doorbell cam when we are notified of motion on our front porch. Since we seldom receive visitors, most of the activity is either our own comings and goings or those of strangers usually trying to leave packages or solicit us. And then there are those like the random guy who appeared on our porch one morning, clipboard in hand, who merely gazed at the stuff we had sitting around and then scurried away, never bothering to knock on the door or venture farther onto the porch.
It was this particular incident that got us thinking about home security and prompted us to purchase our third Ring device, a Stick Up Cam for the driveway. We aren’t generally that paranoid when it comes to the town we live in, but in the past couple of years we have seen more sketchy activity in our neighborhood as well as reports from neighbors about strange happenings on their own properties, so we decided the time was right to expand our surveillance network.
The Stick Up Cam was on sale as part of Amazon Prime Days. We actually already had a second device that Roni had gifted Glenn for Christmas, but he had yet to install it because it requires a wired electrical connection and our garage is too cluttered to reach the junction box. The smaller Stick Up gets around that problem by running off battery and connecting wirelessly to our internet network.
It took just a few minutes to get it up and running and connected to our home internet network. We have so far been impressed by the image quality and have yet to witness any nefarious activity. But if it happens, we’ll be ready for the next random character on our property.
