I intended to bake an apple pie.
The recipe said I needed five apples cubed.
The grocery store only had 97 apples.
I made bread instead.
Another math problem:
A school teacher was arrested at JFK International airport as she attempted to board a flight while in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a compass, and a device identified as a “slide-rule” as well as a wooden code device she called an abacus.
At a press conference, the Attorney General said he believes the woman is a member of the notorious Al-Gebra movement, and that she has been charged with carrying weapons of math instruction.
“Al-Gebra is a problem for us,” the Attorney General said. “Al-Gebra has terrorized many young people for years. Children are forced to work with codes like X & Y and strange signs like ∑, √, and ∞. They calculate means and extremes and sometimes go off on tangents.
I didn’t realize this until now, but going off on tangents is a rather interesting life style that I have been accused of. The following photo includes a meter stick, just over 39 inches.
Friday, about noon, I heard and felt the snow slide off the Big Brown Shed (BBS). I was in the new room with the side next to the shed. The stone and blue corner is on the house. The BBS is on the right. The slope & overhang of the roof causes the snow to fall against the house wall, then some tumbles back toward the shed. 
The fall and sudden stop causes the snow to compact. The result is a 6 ft. wide and 30 ft. long jumble of tightly packed snow. If this melts rapidly there is no place for the water to go. It can rise to the level where the wall bottom-plate (also called sole or sill plate) is attached to the concrete.
The wood-to-concrete space is not water tight, and so there can be seepage into the building. When this wall was the side of a garage such an event happened, and was a big pain, but not a serious failure. Now, with the conversion to living space, such an event is not acceptable. I’ve started to remove it, and the weather is cooperating. There are no big snows coming, nor fast melt days.
The BBS was built too close to the house. The shed was built 35 years ago, about 5 years after the house, by the second owner. I think the County building department would not approve of this now. The space is too narrow for equipment and the floor of the shed is higher then the house foundation – they built a gravel pad and poured concrete thereon. There is enough space that the shed could have been built 15 or 20 feet away. There is 70 feet from the shed wall to the property line. I think the issue might have been the location of the power lines, and the pole and lines would have had to have been moved. Regardless, the choice made was wrong.
Fixing this is the next project. The metal roof panels are here, and the half-trusses would be, except for the big snow days ago. Those were to be delivered on the 6th, and the contractor has gotten all the fasteners.
I’ve started to think of this as the “cameron conversion” because Vigneron Cameron suggested the final form of the converted structure – a bit like the image below. 
This one has to be in a place where it never snows. My conversion will have trusses, and solid walls (fire resistant) on the back and right sides. The covered space will be good for gatherings, when not being used for parking.
With an all electric house, the winter months have a high heating cost.
I started the wood stove the second week of December. Since then the electric bill was reduced by 60%. Twice I took ash out of the stove without a complete cool down. This week I let it burn out and cool completely. Then I cleaned about 90% of the ashes out; as recommended. Now it is back on line.
The months of November through February are the critical heating months, but in ‘21, November wasn’t very cold, so I didn’t start.
Had I started on Dec. 1st, the savings would have been about $200.
I gave a week’s worth of split wood away and may have to split some to finish through February, if I want to do that.
Keeping track on the Naneum Fan
John