Big Catfish Dinner

Fredericksburg, Texas

Thank heavens for slippery roads today. We finally got a small amount of rain. All day it spitted and sputtered and curtailed outdoor activity. The view from the Castle’s window tells the story.

Already you can see the grasses trying to recover. The weather forecast is more tomorrow. And even the next day is possible. The land can use it.

The shrubbery that gets watered is breaking out like it is spring. The rest of the vegetation is sucking it in like drought. This mountain laurel at the library was permeating the area with a wonderful fragrance for all to enjoy. It caused me to pause and sniff a few times on my way into the library.

It was a wonderful couple of hours spent in the library catching up on magazine reading. My chair was right next to a front upstairs window. This gave me a wonderful view of the folks in the Marketplatz and along Main Street going about their business.

Back at the Castle, it was time to plan the revamp of the solar panel. Two things have to be done. One is lengthen the electrical wire from the roof connection to allow more tilt of the panel. Research has shown that the best average angle for it is sixty degrees up from horizontal. Right now it is only about ten degrees.

The second thing to do was design the tilt bracket. The factory models are nice, cost $28 plus shipping and not excessively strong to resist winds. Dimensions of pertinent parts of the panel were taken and recorded. Then a little trigonometry was done to calculate the correct length of angle to purchase.

Once that was done, it was off to the supply store to purchase the angle. My choice was 1” x 1” x 1/16” aluminum angle. Tomorrow will be fabrication time and if it is not raining maybe installation time. Climbing around on the roof in the rain is only acceptable in an emergency.

Tonight was treat myself to a BIG fried catfish dinner. It was wonderful but set me back almost eighteen dollars total. The budget cannot handle that sort of cost very often. Home cooking is a lot cheaper.

What with fragrant flowers, catfish dinner and rain for the land, it was a great day for trying to have tooooo much fun. TheOFM.