2018 Life Logs, Day 278—Ollie Overnight
Date: Friday, October 5, 2018
Weather: Partly Sunny, Very Windy; High 62, Low 45 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
The north winds did indeed blow in cooler weather for today and for tonight, but it looks like it will again start warming just a bit tomorrow. But when I say cooler, it was not really chilly. I didn’t really need a jacket, so no real weather complaints. I tried a new class at the gym this morning that was a bit challenging, but I made it through. There was a lot of work with weights, lots of push-ups, pull-ups, and other strengthening exercises. It is a special class only available for the month of October, so I will probably return each Friday and tough it out. After class, I checked in with Heather and Jed. They were trying to get Sam and Jonah all packed for their weekend camping trip and Heather was getting ready to leave for her trip to the Outer Cape. There was nothing I could do to help, so I headed home and assembled a new wooden storage unit I bought yesterday. I know assembling these things should be easy, but I always struggle. It took me way too long, but I got it done. Then I worked on getting the aquarium filled with water and ready for fish that Ollie and I will buy tomorrow. Ollie arrived at 5:30 pm, ready to spend the night. Jed and Jonah brought him over and Ollie and Jonah immediately headed to the dock. It has been ages since they have been here and they decided they needed to collect all of the seaweed floating on the water and pile it on the dock. They called it their seaweed farm and they really enjoy just messing about on the dock. Jed took a look at my aquarium set-up and pointed out that 10 gallons of water on the top of a short bookcase with chipboard shelves is going to cause that shelf to bow drastically. I should have known better, but I just didn’t think about it. Jed and I came up with a plan to add another board that sits on top of the bookshelf uprights and that will hopefully help distribute the weight. While the seaweed farmers were busy down on the dock, Jed helped me cut the additional shelf, but had to leave it to Ollie and to get it in place. Jonah has to leave for camp at 5:30 am, so he needed to head home with Jonah to have dinner and get to bed. Ollie and I emptied most of the water from the aquarium into buckets and together managed to lift the aquarium and get the additional shelf in place. Hopefully this will work. Ollie and I had a delightful evening together and are looking forward to more seaweed farming, soccer, fish acquisition, and who knows what else tomorrow. One activity that I am going to focus on is this seaweed farming idea. I am going to check with the local feed and seed tomorrow morning to see if they have straw. If so, I am going to actually compost the seaweed. Evidently if you do multiple layers of 4 inches of straw topped with 2 inches of seaweed, you end up with great compost. I have an empty compost bin and hope to give this a try.
