Mortaine’s Blog

Please go here to look at the pictures, then come back and vote in my extremely short poll.

Thanks!

Well, as some may remember, John and I have been without a microwave for 2 weeks while ours is in the shop getting warranty repairs.

Sears called today about the repairs. The tech couldn’t reproduce the problem, so he called for more information. I called back at 5:30, hoping to catch them before they closed, and spoke to a very nice woman, who was about to leave a note with my own information about the problems (which we were able to reproduce several times at home). As she switched over to the Notes page, she found a note from the manager authorizing a replacement for the whole microwave.

Yes. New microwave.

This is the one we’re authorized to pick up at Sears

I know a number of folks who are looking for jobs right now.

This job posting on UserFriendly is looking for a Cisco guru to work as a Tech Support Lead for an ISP.

Must be willing to relocate to Bermuda for 3 years.

I washed the lower decks today on the apartment. I had to do it twice, so I was pretty tired by 4:00 when I stopped. I haven’t done the second-story deck yet, and will need to do that later this week. I also need to do the sealing, but that requires certain weather conditions (no rain for 2 days after).

My problem with the decks is the algae. There’s green algae everywhere, and it weakens the deck, traps moisture (which rots the deck), and worst of all: makes the deck slippery and hazardous. I don’t want my tenants to have an unsafe home, so I typically do something about the decks when a new tenant moves in.

I started out a few days ago with bleach. I took a bleach-and-water solution and mopped the decks with it. This did Not Work. I hope the bleach eventually kills the algae, but in the meantime it just made everything stinky and leaked bleach on my favorite towel in the car.

Next, I bought this stuff called “Deck Wash.” It’s kind of a gel-like concentrate that you put into a sprayer and spray on the decks. It can’t be mixed with bleach or it’ll produce toxic gasses, so I had to wait for the bleach to dry first. I waited a week, actually, and got back to it today. I used a very dilute concentration of deck wash first, sprayed on the deck near the door, then scrubbed with a scrubber brush on the end of a broomhandle.

That did Not Work.

It worked better than the bleach, for sure. But it was all slippery still, and didn’t really effectively get rid of the algae. Also, it was becoming apparent that I would need some sort of sealant when this is done– I need to keep the decks from rotting further, for sure.

I went to the hardware store to see if there was any sort of special de-greening stuff. Something toxic to algae, but not so toxic to plants. There’s a big butterfly bush that is crowding the walkway between the two decks, and I just don’t want to completely destroy it, though I have taken to beating it down a little bit so I can actually reach the decks to clean them.

While there, I bought sealant and a can of Comet, because a helpful shopper recommended Comet for the algae on the concrete driveway, at least, even if it won’t work on the deck.

Comet has bleach in it, so I have to wait for the deck wash to be gone before I can try it, by the way.

John convinced me to use a stronger concentration of the Deck Wash, like a lot closer to the recommended 1 gal/3 gals. So I did. Actually, I went more like 1/1, which was a bit extreme. It was very goopy, very slippery, and instantly ate away at the tannins in the wood. Big black patches of goop everywhere. Even on the new wood that John put in– ah, well.

I covered all the lower decks and stairs with it, though I did not hit the fences and railings. It took about 1/2 of the solution to do all the lower decks.

I scrubbed with the brush-on-broomhandle, then let it sit for 20 minutes. I then came back and sprayed all the goop off with the hose. The hose gives a lot of pressure, so I used it to do a kind of weak “pressure wash” to the deck (the next recommended solution to algae is a pressure washer, which is costly to rent). A wash of dirty brown and black goo slid off the deck and into the garden and yard. And no, I am not going to think about the eco-consequences, thanks. The deck wash claims to be fairly safe to plants.

I haven’t been back to the apartment since then. I was so tired, I just put everything away and went home. The decks felt a little slippery, but not super-slick like they were before. There’s still some green, but it’s mostly gone from what I could tell. I have hope for the upstairs deck as well.

I have to post my superbowl prediction before the game starts, or it doesn’t count.

Raiders over the Buccaneers, by 30 points.