We were away for close to a week. The cat sitter was great about sending pics and interacting with the cats. But still when we got home Cato especially was clearly very happy to see us. He's not normally much of a lap cat (yet- he's young) but he spent a good part of yesterday on my lap.

Cato is working on his life list.

The near by fire I posted about the other day has continued growing. Until last night we were lucky and the wind was blowing the smoke away from us. Some other folks were not so lucky and got the smoke. Now it's our turn. The nearest AQI sensor is reporting in the 400s. I turned off the HRV last night. The "carbon" HVAC filter I installed is not good enough to keep the stink out even if it filters the PM. It's got maybe an ounce of carbon in it. I kind of thought that would happen. I'll have to look into adapting one of those large carbon filters sold for filtering the stink from marijuana greenhouse exhaust. The kind with many pounds of carbon.

First fire season at the new house, and the first big fire. I'm sitting here with WatchDuty, a browser window open on a fire cam, and a scanner feed. While also watching the Tour de France of course. The fire's well away from us but we're keeping an eye on it.

When we built the new house we put solar panels on it. So far it looks like they'll make about 19,000 kwh a year. The solar part (we also got batteries) cost about $45k. The panels have a 25 year lifetime. I got curious what it would cost to provide the same power for 25 years using a diesel generator. My rough estimate at current fuel prices is about $400k. Just for fuel. That's not counting replacing generators when they wear out.

Of course you wouldn't do that if you were on the grid as we are. I was just comparing the cost of different ways to generate power.

Moving firewood at the farm: