Nothing Doing

We tried to buy railings this weekend, and came up short. It turned out that the list of parts we downloaded from the railing manufacturer's web site didn't match the list of parts available at Economy Lumber, so we got the name of Economy's railing guy and I will call them as soon as it's a weekday to resolve this. It may just be a set of bad entries in their store database, but better to be safe than end up in a mess.

In the meantime, Noel's parents were in town this weekend, so here are some quickie photos of what we did:

On Friday evening we did the total tourist thing by having an overpriced dinner at Alioto's on Fisherman's Wharf. The expense was partially offset by a lovely view of the sunset.

After dinner we drove around to some tourist sites, including a slightly foggy visit to Twin Peaks to look out over the city. Alameda is in the upper right corner.

On Saturday I took the hives apart for a complete inspection. This was mostly because it was time to do it, but also because my mother-in-law said she was interested in seeing the bees and learning about the hives. She got to see the queen in Hive A, and then when we got to Hive B there was a pile more capped honey. We pulled out and harvested another 16 pounds of honey. That was a little more than they expected to get to see.

Today we got some supplies and worked on refining my solar wax melter. I'm currently using an old styrofoam cooler with a piece of clear plastic over it, and I thought I might improve it by painting it black inside. But it turns out the "for plastics" spray paint is not styrofoam-safe (we tested it on the lid first), so we're back to the drawing board with making it darker inside. But the new strainer we got to hold the chunks of smushed comb is working a treat.

And that's all. I hope the railing issue works itself out, because it would not be fun to try to have a deck-warming party without railings. I've been joking all week about people falling off the deck but it's not terribly funny to have it actually happen.

posted by ayse on 08/19/12