Ant Water / Log Splitting / New Puppy

One thing I forgot to mention in my last diary update is the Ant Water we've been drinking.  Ant water, you say?  Yea so the water in the house had been funny for a few days, then Sarah mentioned to me "Oh hey there's black stuff coming out of the taps".  I tested it when I got home and sure enough she was right.  I figured it was silt or something, but when I got out there on the weekend to have a look in the water tank I saw what it was - ants in the water.  Farking hundreds and thousands of them, all clumped together like little ant rafts.  I have no farking idea why ants were forming ant rants.  They were coming up the overflow pipe though, which over time had stopped being an inch off the ground as the lawnmower people piled up grass around it.  When I cleaned it out, it was buried an inch in the ground and I guess ants figured oh hey let's make a nest in here.  It was full of ants.  So yea, I cleaned it as best I could, but it didn't stop the hot water smelling of ants and all the pipes/taps in the house gumming up with the little bastards.  Had to get the Tank Cleaner guy over to suck it clean and remove all the ants, joy of joys.  So now I keep a close eye on it to make sure there's no more ants - there's still a few getting in - I think they coming in through the little gap on top which is designed to let air in/out as required.  Still there's not millions of them anymore, just the odd couple which are easy enough to scoop out before they become a problem.  Farking ants, I tell you.  Annoying little bastards.

With all the massive trees down around the properly to make way for the pool, there was a the need to hire a log splitter which is what we did last weekend.  I went and collected it on Friday night and Saturday morning Peter Chats come over and took me and Theo to Theo's soccer, then bought us back here and we got THE BEAST fired up.  Boy oh Boy was it a beast too, it split almost anything.  The only stuff it really couldn't handle was the MASSIVE Walnut rounds that were super knotted.  We got through some of them but it took a very long time.  I spent the whole weekend out there pretty much, splitting logs and chainsawing the longer cuts into sizes that the log splitter (and our fireplace) could manage.  Saturday afternoon I was getting annoyed with how slow the chainsaw seemed to be, so I swapped the chain out for a new one I knew to be sharp.  Oh lord did it make a difference, the chainsaw went from taking 2 minutes to get through a log to taking 20 seconds.  I should have done that way, way earlier in the piece.  Still live and learn, I'm not chainsaw expert.  That was pretty much all I did last weekend, with the exception of Saturday afternoon when we went down to the beach for an icecream.  It was very, very windy though and on the way out the door I forgot to grab the bag of clothes for the kids who were in their togs, so it was a bit of a miserable experience.  I mean not terrible but they were a bit cold so we had to cut it a bit short.

So now we have ~3 massive piles of wet wood to put away.  Well half and a half of wet and a half of dry, because that old Walnut tree was well on its way, some of the pieces of wood from it as so dry they'd probably go in the fire right now and burn up in a jiffy.  The poor old thing really was on its last legs.

We're fostering a Puppy, Reggie.  He's a Huntaway Cross, he's so full of energy, he keeps Biscuit on his toes.  The kids seem happy to accept that he's not our dog, we're just looking after him, though Beth did write an amazing little poem for Reggie that would melt your heart, using the same words/style as the "I love You" song we always used to sing her when she was a little girl.  Reggie's good though, but you have to put him in his cage and night and let him fall asleep with you in the room, otherwise he yowls and yowls.  But once he's asleep you can creep out of the room and he's happy until ~5:30-6am the next morning.  So it's a bit like having kids all over again except you do get to sleep through the night.  He's good at keeping Biscuit company too, they're out there running around having a great time playing with each other.  I do wish he woudn't pee/poop on the floor as much as he does though, you forget what having a puppy is like.

Beth and Theo both seem to be doing well at School.  Beth as always doesn't talk about it much, Theo likes to tell us what he's learning/working on though, not usually directly but he'll come home and start asking a lot of questions about cubes, or maths, or how do you spell tree, book etc.  His reading really is coming along in leaps and bounds, they've done a great job teaching him how to read at school.  He's gone from having to look at the pictures to figure out the words, to being able to read the words quite well and mostly just using the pictures to confirm what he's pretty sure the word is anyway.  And Beth of course is just reading anything she can get her hands on, so that's good.  Theo loves just asking random maths questions (and answers) when he can though, walking back from Soccer the other day he said "I had good game today Daddy huh and 5 plus 7 is 12 isn't it?" all on the one breath. 

I had to take up him to school last night to go and find a (plastic) snail that he'd taken to school and had, somehow, gotten thrown over the fence.  We went and knocked on the house owners door and they very kindly took Theo out the back and he found his plastic snail.  No more toys at school will be the new rule, nothing good can come of it!

Pool still coming along slowly, we have to get agreement/consent from 3 different local Iwi tribes as our land is in an area of cultural significance.  We already have approval from one group, just need two more now.  Hopefully will be a not too difficult process.  Sarah is doing a great job sorting a lot of it - we've got another design we're considering for how the pool might go too.  It's hard to know if you're making the right decision or not.

Had to send my Fenix 6 back to Garmin yesterday, the main start/stop button was farked.  Sometimes it wouldn't press or it'd register 2-3 button presses.  Very annoying.  I have to sent the old one back before they'll send me a new one, at least I have my old VA3M (that I did my Marathon with!) to keep using while the F6 is getting replaced.

Swapped out the old Chinese QOTOM box a month ago for a $50 bargain I got from the Port of Napier.  Finally now we should be able to have reliable Internet without the stupid Chinese box powering off.  I already had setup VRRP with one of the Intel NUCs I got for a bargain price as well, so it meant that the Internet would actually keep going, but it was still annoying to have it power off as it'd take down my Linux server (That runs tjharman.com at the moment) with it.  But no longer.  Plus the new replacement is ~8 times as powerful, which is good.  Let me run Jellyfin media server, which I've also hooked into Sam's giant media collection (via Wireguard and BGP, how nerdy) so we've got a massive range of movies and TV shows to watch now.

With all the time we don't have, given the massive piles of wood, pavers etc that need to be put away.

My first brew with the Tilt went amazing - it fermented so quickly because of the yeast/temperature I used.  I also managed to score a proper brew-in-a-bag kit for $100 off TradeMe, though I had to sling another $35 for shipping seeing as how big it was.  Still to buy that stuff new (it came with a heat exchanger thing made of copper) would have cost $500+ so I'm pretty damn happy with my score.

And now it's 6:30am so I'm sure Beth will be up any minute now.  I can hear little feet running around actually, so better call this diary entry done!

Tim