Entries this day: skate_rain

skate rain

11:30pm Saturday 26 May 2001

Wende and I hung out pretty much all day today. Went to Mission Burritos, where our next door neighbors Bob and Jennifer met us for breakfast. Quite yummy. Then Wende and I went to look at bicycles at a Scwhinn shop in the village. Said HI to Jennifer at Paint This! and then went to KTRU where I turned in a swill CD and checked out two new ones for review.

Then we went to Sun City Skate Park, where Wende bought a new skating helmet, and I bought new Pro Design wrist guards. They are excellent; I will have them for a long ass time. Then to Montrose Skate Shop to buy new wheels for my skates. I have worn my current wheels down pretty evenly, but have a big chunk taken out of one of the wheels. It's like a C now basically. I didn't put the new wheels on; just rotated the old ones so the C is in the middle instead of on the ends. I should get pretty much a lot more mileage out of them.

Oh! Also from the Montrose Skate Shop, I got two awesome excellent great customer service things: 1) John fixed a broken rivet on my skates (at no charge)! and 2) he gave me a sheet of waterproof foam stuff to replace the water-(stinky sweat)-logged foam in my helmet. The main padding is still there; I just used his small padding to replace the crappy padding; it was just foam rubber. This new stuff is a lot better. And he just gave it to me! The Montrose Skate Shop is great!

Then it RAINED huge huge huge rain and some hail and a lot of lightning and thunder. It's not the -*! H U G E S T !*- rain I've ever seen since we've lived here, but it was pretty thorough. We lost power for a bit (I *love* my APC UPS!), and took several power spikes.

!Oh! That reminds me... (how to describe this?) As water was pouring out our waterspout from our roof, I decided to collect it so we could water plants with rain water instead of chlorine water. I got a big tray thing (actually an old (cleaned) cat litter box) and put it next to the spout. I cupped my hands at the bottom of the spout, so the water wouldn't come out unless it poured over my hands. I could *almost* get it into the box, but not quite.

Then, lightning nearby, and I could *feel* a very slight shock from the water spout! Yikes!!!!! I kinda freaked at that, but not so much that I quit my project.

I found a little plexiglass thing that I set up as a ramp from the bottom of the spout to over the edge of the box, so when the rain really poured, the water gushed out quickly enough that it ran up the ramp and quickly filled the box!

Success!!

I collected about 7 gallons of water this way!

I've also been writing perl code to interface with livejournal.com servers; I think I will be able to 'merge' my journal here with my journal there.