Installing steel storm panels

Here in Florida, the hurricane season runs from June 1 through
November 30 each year. Yup, 1/2 of the year is the hurricane season.
There have been reports that we've begun the nasty portion of a 30-year
cycle of mild vs heavy storm seasons. Regardless, the question is not
really IF a hurricane will come, but rather WHEN. And so, we have been
spending time preparing our house to weather the inevitable storm. We
recently spent about US $1700 to purchase galvanized steel storm panels
and tracks and hardware to allow us to quickly mount protection over
our window and door openings when a storm is coming. Eastern Metal
here in Florida manufactures the 24-guage steel panels that we bought
at Lowe's. While we did find their installation instructions OK, we
would have like to have had more pictures and a little more clarity to
help us with the installation. So after we figured things out, we took
a number of pictures and have used good old Flickr to post pics of the storm panel installation. Hopefully this will help someone else.

After taking pics to document the installation, we removed the wingnuts and panels (leaving the tracks mounted), and have stored the panels in the garage, ready to rock and roll when needed.

Of course, there are no guarantees with the pics and instructions I've posted, as it is entirely possible that I have totally goofed it up :-)

Does the filibuster 'compromise' mean anything?

Republicans and Democrats have reached a compromise regarding the potential showdown related to judicial nominees, threatened filibuster from Democrats, and Republicans threatening to do away with the filibuster. As I see it, this "compromise" does nothing except let 3 of Bush's nominees get approved. Come on, the bottom line is that Republicans are willing and able to vote out the filibuster whenever they think it might be used. Democrats, therefore, are powerless. Republicans somehow are failing to think of the future when Democrats will have the majority (it goes back and forth just like any cycle) - and Democrats will have little motivation to suddenly play nice with the GOP. My gosh, it is such a ridiculous game with such incredibly serious consequences.

Yuck.

Please sign emergency petition to save our courts

I just signed MoveOn PAC's emergency petition to stop the "nuclear option" - the far right wing's plan to seize absolute power to stack our courts -– and I hope you will sign too.

Starting today the petition is being delivered straight to Congress every three hours until the final vote, and many of our comments will be read aloud on the Senate floor.

Please sign right now at: http://www.moveonpac.org/nuclear

Why is this an emergency? Tomorrow (Tue, 24 May 2005) the Senate will vote on Republican Leader Bill Frist's "nuclear option" to break the rules of the Senate and give the Republican Party absolute control over appointing federal judges.

For 200 years the minority's right to filibuster has kept our courts fair, by making sure that federal judges needed to get at least some support from both sides of the aisle before they were given life time appointments.

If Frist eliminates the filibuster, his next step will be to force far right partisan judges onto the powerful U.S. Courts of Appeals. The real targets, however, are the four seats on the Supreme Court likely to become vacant in the next four years.

With that much power on the Supreme Court, the far right could strike down decades of progress on labor rights, environmental protections, reproductive rights, and privacy.

The "nuclear option" will live or die by a final vote, probably on Tuesday, and the vote is still way too close to call. There are at least 6 moderate Republicans still on the fence and only 3 more votes needed to win. If we can get enough of our voices into congress and into the streets in the next  hours, we can still save our courts.

Please take a minute to join me and sign the emergency petition today.

Hurricane season preparations

Hurricane
season here in Florida runs for 6 months of the year - June through
November. It was reported last year that we have probably begun the bad
part of a 30-year cycle of mild seasons vs intense seasons. Well last
year was pretty nasty, with several strong hurricanes hitting Florida.
Many areas that had not seen a hurricane in decades were hammered last
year. The recent prediction from the Florida Division of Emergency Management supports the theory that we in for some heavy storms.

The good news is that the local media have been blasting folks with
reports emphasizing how critical it is to be prepared, and it appears
that many are paying heed to the warnings. We are among them.

So today we went to Lowe's and spent about US$1700 on steel storm panels and mounting hardware. This pic (not our house; the pic is from the manufacturer's site)
shows what a home looks like before and after storm panel installation.
We had toyed with the idea of buying plywood and making storm shutters
using free plans posted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
But we decided to follow one of our favorite mottos and "Buy the best
and cry once". The steel panels are much lighter and easier to handle
compared to plywood, we won't have to paint them, it will be very fast
to install the panels when needed (they install with wing nuts and we
have a power driver), and the panels stack in a very small space!

We've purchased panels, tracks (upper and lower mounting tracks),
and mounting hardware to cover the front door and all windows
(including sliding glass doors). The exception is a door leading out of
our "pool bath" (bathroom that leads to the lanai). We plan to coat the
glass of that door with 3M film
(and also plan to use that film on a small semi-circular window above
the front door). That will protect the house from flying objects in a
storm, and still allow us to use the pool bath door and garage doors as
emergency exits.

Our bank account is wounded from this outlay, but we consider it a very sensible one-time expense.

Bamboo planting...DONE!

Ben digging,
originally uploaded by Joe Litton.

Whew!
I'm glad we're only doing this once! Last Sunday was a nasty bit of
work digging and planting the first half of our 60-foot trench of
bamboo. Fortunately for us,
Ben's shift at Tia's yesterday didn't start until 6pm, so he was able to help us out for a few hours while we completed the other 30 feet of bamboo trench. I've posted several pics with commentary up on my Flickr page.
It struck me while working that I must be getting used to Florida
weather. It was about 90F (32C) and aside from sweating like a
waterfall (which I do any time I exercise ...or eat spicy food :-)
...it actually felt about that same as what 80F (27C) used to feel like
when we lived in Washington state.

Well, we now have a 60 foot trench planted with bamboo. It's a
"runner", which means it spreads by sending out underground shoots that
then pop up elsewhere and fill in the space. That is why we lined the
trench with galvanized metal roof flashing. When the runners hit the
metal, they'll take the path of least resistance and go up. With proper
care and feeding, this should give us a very attractive privacy screen
in a couple of years. It's already quite a pleasure to look out from
the lanai and pool cage and see the greenery.