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With help from my mom and dad (probably more important for the brains than the brawn), the greensand filter is installed and working. It took most of the day and a few extra trips to Menards, but I’m glad it’s finished.

The tall filter on the left is the greensand filter. The one on the right is the water softener. I was surprised to see how big the  greensand filter was. It makes me wonder if my water softener is sized right for the house….but it does the job.

All the valves are there so I can bypass each of the filters separately, or run the water through neither or both of them. There are 7 valves and  55 solder joints – and NO LEAKS!!! It’s amazing that there were no leaks, considering my usual quality of plumbing. Best of all, the rotten egg smell is gone.

Now I need to figure out the optimal recycle/backwash schedule for the filter and softener. I’m starting out every 4 days on the filter. I may have to bump that up to every 3 days, but trial and error is the best way to figure that out. The softener is a little more difficult to figure out. It was set to recharge every 3rd day. It only has a 6 day timer on it, which makes it harder to adjust, unless I”m just not getting the idea behind it. It should not have to work as hard now, with the greensand filter installed. If I set it to recharge on day 1 and day 4 (to get 3 days in between, instead of 2), it will just recharge a day earlier on the back side. So, I think I’ll leave it at every 3rd day for now.

I also installed a reverse osmosis filter at the kitchen sink. That took a little longer than I thought it would, but it’s also in with no leaks. After going through the setup procedure, we should be able to use it tonight. According to the directions, it has to sit 3 times, for 8 hours with no use to properly get the membrane ready to filter.

I’m going to look at a Subaru Forester today – maybe a few of them. Looking at cars is not something I like to do anymore. When I was a teenager, I loved going to the car dealers and looking at them for hours. I’d sit in them, read the window stickers, check out the features and talk to the salesman. Back then I wasn’t buying, just dreaming. Now I actually have to spend the money and wonder if I’m going to get a car with problems, one that was driven or maintained poorly, or if I’ll pick a good one. I’d like to get it done and over with.

The weather is steadily getting warmer. We’re supposed to be in the low 40’s all week. I know that we’ll likely get more snow since it is the  2nd snowiest month of the season, but the warm weather is lifting my spirits up a bit.

We’re looking for a new car since the van was in an accident a while ago. The insurance company decided not to pay to get it fixed, but give us a check instead. It turns out we’re also going to get the van back. I’ll use it as a truck since 4×8 sheets of material will fit in it and also to pull the boat. The van is drivable, but not worth fixing. I test-drove a couple cars yesterday and will do some more looking today. I’ve been looking at the Subaru Forester. It’s a small SUV/wagon type vehicle with AWD. It should get around the mid 20s for gas mileage, yet still have enough room for snowboards, hockey sticks and other kid-type stuff. I found one with just over 90k miles that’s a good price. We’ll need to return the rental car and pick up the van today. The insurance check should come today, too. There’s nothing quite like the queasy feeling you can get when buying a used vehicle – wondering if you picked one that will need expensive repairs or one that will turn out to be a good deal.

I’ve been wondering about the best way to start designing the BBQ grill temperature controller. That’s going to be a tough thing for me to build. Choosing the microprocessor, learning how to create the circuit and write the program is not a strong area of knowledge for me (actually, I know almost nothing about that). I did check out terracotta pots at Wal-Mart yesterday. They have a 14″ pot that seems pretty durable, but not too heavy. I think a bigger one will be better, maybe up to 20″ in diameter. Maybe Menards or a nursery/landscape store will have the larger pots. Making a fake Big Green Egg with the pots will be the easy part, and usable by itself, though with a temperature controller will be even better.

With all the snow we’ve been getting, the snowblower has been getting a good workout. A spring that engages the drive wheels came off a week ago and I had to fix that, but overall it’s been working really good. I helped a couple neighbors clear the snow in their driveways yesterday. It was the first time I’ve meet those two neighbors.

Boy, that sure was boring to read.

Driving to work, I saw the new Twins stadium lights on. They also had the big TV screen showing some football program. From the little bit I could see from the highway, it looks like it will be really nice. I think it will be worth getting some tickets for a game, just to check out the stadium. That will probably a common occurrence once the baseball season starts. Sorry, no pictures. I didn’t have the camera with me.

Speaking of baseball and thinking about warm weather just around the corner – well, maybe in another 4 months – I was thinking about grilling this year. Have you ever seen the Big Green Egg grill/smoker? It looks like a great grill, but out of my budget at $700+ for the large size. I watched a video online of a guy smoking a ‘Boston Butt’ – a pork roast-type thing, not from the butt, but from the shoulder of a pig. We call it a picnic ham or picnic shoulder around here.

Being a DIY kind of guy, I was wondering how I could get the equivalent of the Big Green Egg, but at a decent DIY price. Obviously, there are others who have wondered the same thing and a search on the Interwebs finds THIS and THIS and THIS. Building the actual clay pot smoker/grill will be the easy part. I’d like to go a step further and make it a programmable, computer controlled cooking machine. That video I watched about the Big Green Egg had a device that would control the heat in the smoker by monitoring the meat temperature via a probe, it would monitor the temperature inside the smoker via a probe and the controller would adjust the smoker temp by turning on a fan that blows air into the firebox of the smoker/grill. The guy said with just a single load of fuel, it would burn for 24 hours. The long, slow cooking is what made the meat turn out perfect. Why is it that usually guys do the grilling? Is it the fire? The mess?

What about that State of the Union tirade that PeeBo (President Barak Obama) gave. Boy, does he think he’s something. I listened to some of it on the way to work, but I don’t think he heard me yelling at him and what he was saying through the radio.

At the risk of giving you armchair psychologists out there a reason to give a negative analysis of me, I’m going to write about Jessica and Erika today. It is, after all, the one year anniversary of them being stolen from our family. Don’t worry, I won’t go on and on about it for days to come.

One year ago today was one of the top 5 worst days in my life. If you read my blog entries on December 20th of last year, you’ll remember it was one of the top 5 best days in my life. How could those two days happen so close together? Why did they have to be the one of the top 5 for the same reason? I’ll say right now that there is no legitimate reason that Jessica and Erika were taken away. It did not have to happen.

Well, they were taken from me, but given up by others would be more accurate. I would never have wanted my God-given daughters to be taken away – for ANY reason. During the events of last year everything was a blur. It wasn’t just a little blur, it was a complete white-out. As time passes, things become much more clear. I can focus on what really happened and I hear things from other people that were familiar with or were in the events that led up to Jessica and Erika being taken. It all helps sort out what really happened. If only we could turn back the clock and change things….but, what’s done is done.

At the risk of sounding vindictive or blaming, I have to stop writing about it now. All I will say is that I would still to this day and will always, give anything to get Jessica and Erika back where God put them, into our family. That doesn’t mean that they are more important than Brenda, Holly or Mitch. It just means what it means…our family should be complete with all 6 of us together.

Here are my favorite pictures of Jessica and Erika. Below is a picture of all of us together.