"The foundation of all mental illness is the unwillingness to experience legitimate suffering." - Carl Jung
Lotta wildfires burning in the area at the moment, all competing for limited firefighting resources. We are under a Level 1 Evacuation notice - "get ready", thanks to the (human caused) Ridge Creek fire.
At this point it's time to bear in mind that humans have a bad habit called "normalcy bias" - the idea that today will be pretty much the same as yesterday - and not be led astray by that bias.
Below: "Everything's fine, just fine..."
We need to be prepared for the times when today isn't like yesterday, and things might suddenly take a terrible turn for the worse. We need only look to Lahaina, Hawai'i to see a recent case of that. One day everything is OK, and the next, an entire city is burnt to the ground and there uncounted numbers of innocent people departed from this plane of existence.
One of our neighbors took a couple of pictures of the nearby mountains - before smoke obscured the view - and posted them to social media. Impressive, and a bit intimidating.
A friend of mine who is a railroad engineer got stuck out on the tracks in Eastern Washington due to the Gray Fire for a while. Nice air we have, right now.
Air quality has improved quite a bit recently. It was in the high 300 range earlier. Still not great.
There is some relief in sight, the rainfall from a broken up hurricane Hilary, currently pummeling California and causing flash flooding in Baja, Mexico.
I don't miss that part of desert living, to be honest. It may not even be raining where you are, when the flash flood from far up in the mountains comes roaring down the canyon.
On to less weighty matters...
For giggles, I finally tested out the blast cabinet, to see how well it would work. It has a couple of minor issues that I need to see about correcting. Every time the door is opened, a bunch of glass beads fall on the floor, making a slippery mess. It also has a minor leak at one of the legs. That said, it works pretty darn good!
I found an old set of Channel Lock pliers that were covered with surface rust.
After a few minutes' work, the surface rust was gone, and the pliers were down to a dull steel surface finish. Very nice!
That got me thinking - what is to prevent surface rust from developing on these pliers all over again? And it came to me that maybe nickel plating would be the ticket! So I'm going to give this a shot, once I get a chance to make some plating solution.
The nickel plating solution is pretty easy to make - white vinegar, a pinch of salt to make the vinegar conduct electricity, a small chunk of pure nickel to dissolve, and a battery. Some guitar strings are made of nickel, as are some welding rods. In the end you end up with a green liquid that you drop the item into and the nickel plates out on it.
Note: This is not Electrolytic Plating - this is Electroless nickel plating. Electroless is tougher but not as pretty, which is probably a better choice for a hand tool anyway. If this works OK, I'll probably test the real electrolytic method out and then move on to the old GE Monitor Top refrigerator hardware, and begin an electrical and cosmetic restoration.
Gotta stay active. The devil makes work for idle hands!
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