Marc Franke from Iowa Renewable Energy Association has been quietly putting together a fantastic web site about biofuels and renewable energy sustainability. Before you run out and scream that ethanol is a scam, read his debunking of all the anti-ethanol propaganda we’ve been assaulted with. Apparently petroleum buys a lot of propaganda per gallon…
I just had a cool conversation with Jennifer Radtke from Biofuel Oasis about pricing, and their involvement, or lack thereof, in the petroleum market. There had been a raging debate on one semi-local biodiesel forum about pricing of diesel, and we were all speculating that Oasis will soon raise their price, as they’re currently selling B99 lower than the price of diesel.
At the moment, they’re getting their fuel from Bentley Biofuels in Minden NV (200 miles away) and Yokayo Biofuels in Ukiah (100 miles away), and like everyone else in town, they’re hoping, praying, and crossing their fingers that Oakland-based Blue Sky Biodiesel starts producing fuel for sale soon. Yokayo and Bentley both make recycled-restaurant-oil fuel, which makes sense for Yokayo since there’s no oilseed farming to speak of in California (OK, maybe cottonseed oil, but it’s not a major player). Both of those producers fuel all their vehicles with biodiesel, and pick up restaurant oil using biodiesel-fueled collections trucks. Bentley uses solar hot water in part of their process, further insulating them from the global energy market.
Jennifer said that the producers indicated they’re not raising prices (at the moment anyway) and that this means that Biofuel Oasis has ‘arrived’ at the success story of being independent of the diesel supply pricing. They’re currently selling B99 below the price of petrodiesel. Obviously two things can go wrong:
1) a distributor can get ’sucked dry’ by customers who are only interested in biodiesel temporarily, while the price is low. Business like this is terrible for planning- you can’t build a distributorship or a production plant with large capacity for these temporary ‘rush’ customers, who will vaporize as soon as market forces raise the price again. Running out of fuel is even more terrible for your loyal regular customers. Most biodiesel vendors have dealt with this before at times of diesel price surge, and this means that biodiesel prices are almost always kept higher than diesel to prevent the ‘rush’ on the biodiesel. Piedmont Biofuels is struggling with this terribly right now.
2) the other concern is of course that customers who shop only for price, ie those who don’t regularly use biodiesel, will fill up without getting properly educated about the special needs of biodiesel, such as filter clogging or cold weather use. Here in the Bay Area there’s no real concern about cold weather at this time, but drive 200 miles to Nevada and you’re in serious trouble this time of year. Of course the whole point of distributorships like Biofuel Oasis is that they do the new customer education and hand-holding that you can’t possibly get by just selling biodiesel via a regular petroleum company convenience store, where the minimum-wage kids working behind the counter can’t possibly provide that service, and you’re stuck hoping that the customer reads the brochure or warning signs that you put up. In 2005 there was a serious problem with cold weather-related issues catching new biofuel drivers unaware due to the fact that gas prices spiked in the fall.
While we don’t know that problem #1 won’t surface once word gets out that Oasis has cheaper fuel, and force Oasis/the producers to raise prices, for the moment, we’re certainly dealing with one really nice thing here. By working with local/distributed sources of biodiesel feedstock and because the producers and distributors have tried hard to be independent of the petroleum supply markets, we’re temporarily seeing them be insulated from the recent price spikes. The money being spent on this biodiesel stays almost entirely local.
My Wilmington ‘biodiesel crash course’ next weekend is nearly full. If it fills up before you get in, please consider coming to one of the many Pittsboro classes I’m teaching this summer:
No experience required:
Biodiesel Essentials- May 3-4
just added- another session of Biodiesel Essentials repeats June 7-8
Biodiesel Equipment Intensive June 14-15
The following two classes are for students with prior experience, or for those who have attended a Biodiesel Essentials class or something similar taught by others:
Biodiesel System Tricks June 28-29
Biodiesel Production Advanced Topics July 26-27
To register for these classes, please see www.girlmark.com/tour
All proceeds from the Pittsboro classes are a benefit for the Piedmont Biofuels summer internship program, and will pay for things like intern stipends, supplies to build an outdoor shower and tent platforms for interns and future visitors, improvements to an on-site classroom, supplies for biodiesel equipment the interns will build, and more. The internship runs from June through August and will involve intensive instruction in biodiesel chemistry and production practices, lab work, experiments, and some work for the co-op and it’s associated farm site. It will be taught by myself and many of the local biodiesel and sustainable homesteading skills experts involved in the Piedmont Biofuels community. For more information about the Piedmont Biofuels summer internship please see www.biofuels.coop
I finally have my computer act more or less together, to the point where the machine is a tool and not an adversary. The brain is also still working normally a month after my chelation therapy (which I repeated a couple of weeks ago). It’s been an uphill battle to get the digital life organized. I’m still installing new software but I feel like I have my tools mostly organized. I blew out my arm injury again last week, but I’m in a position to stop typing if I need to.
More little things, going well.
I drove past a diesel pump in San Francisco this morning- $4.69 a gallon.
I’ll be in Oakland again in May, and we scheduled another System Tricks class at my ‘home’ system:
Thursday, May 22 Introduction to Biodiesel Homebrewing
Friday or Saturday May 23 and 24, two sessions of Biodiesel System Tricks class:
www.girlmark.com/tour has the details…
I haven’t been on the biodiesel forums in so long, I forgot my Infopop login… not to mention the other gazillion forums I frequented less frequently.
sheesh.
in other news, I’m soooo excited about being reunited with my Tankenstein system in Oakland, it’s unbelievable how much an ugly hunk of metal makes me happy.
Biodiesel Production Classes with Maria ‘girl Mark’ Alovert
Spring-summer 2008
www.girlmark.com/tour
Detailed class descriptions at bottom of this post:
Wilmington, NC:
Biodiesel Production Crash Course
April 4: Introduction To Biodiesel Homebrewing
April 5-6 Biodiesel Production System Tricks (must have prior experience or attend Friday class first)
These are two separate classes, you may take both or just one depending on your level of experience and interest.
Sponsored by Cape Fear Biofuels
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Brooksville, FL
April 26-27
Advanced Topics biodiesel class
(must have prior experience or have attended an introductory class- some of my recent students are offering a class in Tampa on March 30, see www.groups.yahoo.com/group/FloridaBiodiesel):
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Marietta, OH
May 17-18
Biodiesel Essentials class
no experience required
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Oklahoma City, OK area
June 21-22
Biodiesel Essentials class
no experience required
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Grayslake, IL
May 30-June 1:
Introduction To Biodiesel Homebrewing:
May 30
Outgrowing The Appleseed: Larger Batch System Considerations (must have prior experience or attend introductory class)
May 31-June 1
The May 31-June 1 class is similar to Advanced Topics, but with a special focus on larger batches and farm/fleet/co-op production falling below true commercial scale.
Sponsored by The Biodiesel Co-op at Prairie Crossing
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Biodiesel Production Series
Pittsboro, NC:
various dates. You may attend one of all of the classes depending on your experience and interest.
May 3-4 Biodiesel Essentials (no experience required)
June 14-15 Equipment Building Intensive (no experience required)
June 28-29 Biodiesel Production System Tricks (must have prior experience or Essentials/Introduction class)
July 26-27 Advanced Topics (must have prior experience or Essentials/Introduction class)
All proceeds from Pittsboro classes benefit Piedmont Biofuels biodiesel internship program
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Central New Mexico
August 9-10
Biodiesel Essentials
no experience required
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Class Descriptions:
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These classes are half of a four-part series:
-Biodiesel Essentials (2 days including ‘Appleseed’ reactor build and more lab time) or Introduction to Homebrewing (one day, more rushed)
-System Tricks- hands-on reactor operations and tricks class for those with some experience or those who’ve taken any prior class
-Equipment Building Intensive (two days, includes building GL1 EcoSystem equipment, methanol recovery, advanced wash tanks, Turk Burners, pumps, and more). No experience necessary.
-Advanced Topics (two days, discussion-based advanced topics class for those with experience or those who’ve taken a prior class)
this spring I’m also offering a special class similar to Advanced Topics:
Outgrowing The Appleseed (similar to Advanced Topics, this is a class on larger processors such as farm-scale systems that do not necessarily use standard commercial technology. Must have prior experience with making small batches of biodiesel)
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Descriptions of classes:
One-day Introduction To Biodiesel Homebrewing
April 4, 9-5, Wilmington, NC
or
May 30, 9-5 Grayslake, IL
No Experience necessary
$75
Introduction class:
This is a one-day, sped-up version of my usual weekend Biodiesel Essentials class.
Biodiesel Essentials:
Pittsboro, NC May 3-4
Marietta, OH, May 17-18
Oklahoma City, OK area June 21-22
Central New Mexico (I’m still working out which town) August 9-10
$120, class is 10-4 each day Sat and Sunday
Two-day class for either beginners or those who want a refresher on quality control.
This is similar to Introduction To Homebrewing, but includes much more time to cover more information, more hands-on time, and a three-hour equipment building sesssion or ‘lab’ session to explore topics you’re interested in in more depth.
Some topics covered:
biodiesel/SVO/solvent thinning options and history, biodiesel chemistry, testing oil (titration and water testing), (hands-on), making test batches (hands-on), an overview of equipment, a tour of the full Appleseed-type for the Wilmington, Grayslake, and Pittsboro classes, long discussion of quality control factors, quality testing (hands-on), mistwashing and other water washing options, breaking emulsion (hands-on), two-stage base biodiesel, waste water and glycerine disposal, water reuse and uses for glycerine, common pitfalls, hands-on experience recovering from failed batches and emulsion, safety
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Two-day Reactor Mechanics and System Tricks Class
10-4 each day
Wilmington, NC, April 5-6
or
Pittsboro, NC, June 28-29
Must have prior exprience or attend the Introduction class on Friday April 4 or any Biodiesel Essentials class I offer
$120, 9-5
This class is geared to people who already know how to make biodiesel, either in a lab-scale or one-liter setting, or to who already homebrew but would like to compare notes with me on how I manage my system. You may also take this class if you are new to biodiesel but have attended a regular homebrewing class taught by someone else. We dont go into a lot of detail on titration and chemistry here so that’s the info you should have ‘down’ already on your own prior to taking this ’system tricks’ class. If you feel like you’ve researched biodiesel production heavily but have little practical experience this is probably the best of my classes for you if you can already titrate oil and make test batches, and understand the basic steps involved.
In the System Tricks class we make a full-size batches of biodiesel in the Appleseed processor, wash the batch in a heavily modified drum-based wash tank, discuss Graham Laming EcoSystem vapor recovery piping for safety, and discuss methanol recovery (and POSSIBLY run the still in the Wilmington class, depending on our site’s electrical availability, which currently has me limited to insufficient power to run all the equipment at once). We will cover a lot of the finer details that make the process efficient, safer, produce higher quality fuel, cheaper, and produce fewer messes. We will run a multifuel Turk Burner and discuss ways to safely heat using waste oil burners and glycerine-burning methods.
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Biodiesel Equipment Building Intensive:
Pittsboro, NC June 14-15
This class builds equipment and includes a heavy emphasis on system design and equipment theory.
This two-day class will build a reactor, including a possible Apple Turnover system, a methanol recovery condensor, inexpensive homebuilt pumps, wash tanks, other washing equipment, methanol/lye mixing equipment, and a Graham Laming-style EcoSystem vapor recovery system. Contact me if you’d like to purchase parts to build any of this for yourself. In addition, the Pittsboro class will include a tour of the Piedmont Biodiesel Co-op and we will discuss their equipment and it’s advantages and shortcomings. We will discuss experimental continuous process equipment as well.
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Advanced Topics Class
9-5 each day
April 26-27
Brooksville, FL
July 26-27
Pittsboro, NC
Must have prior experience or attend a beginners’ class. Florida folks, see www.groups.yahoo.com/group/FloridaBiodiesel for info on a March 30 class taught by three of my recent students. Pittsboro attendees without experience should attend any of my other Introduction or Essentials classes in the area first.
Topics covered:
Strong focus on quality control, analysis of real-world problems with offspec biodiesel, acid-base biodiesel process, advanced topics in dewatering, testing for soap, methanol recovery and equipment design, testing recovered methanol for purity, waterless washing with Amberlite, Magnesol, and Graham Laming’s process, larger-scale equipment design, ethanol-based and E-85-based biodiesel, treating wash water and glycerine for disposal, testing wash water and glycerine, real-world test results related to biodegradability, in-depth disposal/sidestreams discussion
burning glycerine safely for energy, hydronic applications for biodiesel and wash water heating, more advanced discussion of safety and disaster prevention scenarios for larger-scale processor systems, discussion of regulatory topics for non-commercial producers larger than homebrew, solar heating options, very through discussion/demonstration of several different options in washing, including drawbacks and advantages, greywater systems for wash water recycling.
Pittsboro Advanced Topics Class will include a tour of the Piedmont Biofuels Co-op site, a discussion of a continuous process used by the co-op, and a tour of the biodiesel analytical laboratory at Central Carolina Community College. The Brooksville Fl Advanced Topics Class will include attendees with a lot of experience with the BioPro processor and the GL1 (Eco-System) methanol recovery/waterless washing process.
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Outgrowing The Appleseed:
currently only offered in Grayslake, IL May 31-June 1 (with an optional Introduction class on May 30)
This class falls somewhere between System Tricks and Advanced Topics (with some information from both as well as new information), and focuses on what is often called ‘farm-scale’ and ‘fleet-scale’. This class covers production considerations for systems in the 250-gallon to 600-gallon range, with some information on continuous process alternatives to the batch system.
The concern with this scale of processing is about applying homebrew or hobby-scale techniques to larger production, which often brings about greater safety concerns and more complicated quality control considerations.
While homebrewing is a great way to become familiar with biodiesel production and a great way to go through ‘the learning curve’ with unparalleled support from the online homebrew community, the process becomes more complicated on a larger scale.
Some homebrew-scale techniques and equipment scale up to larger batch sizes, while many do not. For those making biodiesel for fleet/business/farm use, serious concern has to be paid to efficiency and safety to make this scale of production make financial sense. Scaling up from hobby-scale to this size of production sometimes brings on regulatory issues that homebrew scale producers do not deal with, yet production on this scale is still typically a do-it-yourself effort where producers don’t tend to seek out engineering assistance and sometimes risk bigger messes and accidents than either homebrewers or commercial producers tend to experience. This class will cover some of the issues that have come up for fleets, co-ops, and farm production, from an equipment, safety, and quality control perspective.
This class is for people with past biodiesel experience, or those who attend the one-day Introduction class on Friday May 30, or a similar introductory hands-on biodiesel production class.
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Registration info and other classes info is at www.girlmark.com/tour
One of the first things I have to mess with while here is to figure out how my Crap is making it to the East Coast. I didn’t want to drive my van out here and do a round-trip, and moving vans are really expensive. My thought was that I could probably find a cheap diesel here in the Bay Area that I could duct-tape together well enough to make the 3000 mile trip to North Carolina and then sell after the trip, and increase the available onboard space by buying a cheap trailer. In theory I’d do a drive somewhere in mid-May, giving myself almost two weeks to get to the East Coast before I have a workshop in Chicago. Tom decided to loan me some cash for the process. We’ve been lending each other the same few hundred bucks for various largish purchases, passing it back and forth for the past few years, and had thought we were over that already, but here it is again.
An additional headache is figuring out what to do with my VW Rabbit, which I really want on the East Coast- I can’t seem to find a cheap small car there either- but is a pretty uncomfortable car to drive across country. I could trailer the poor thing but that takes up valueable space on the theoretical trailer and drastically constricts what kind of a trailer I can get away with.
I’m definitely starting to feel the ’small diesel vehicle shortage’ crunch, and desperately need to drive something that’s not my van when I go back and forth between Pittsboro and the ‘big city’ of Chapel Hill/Raleigh/Durham. I’m starting to think about something other than biodiesel- either an EV, or an ethanol gasser. The other day in Oakland I was behind an old Honda Civic that smelled sweet and had a ‘this car is on a low-carbon diet’ sticker on the back- presumably ethanol. I’m reading Dave Blume’s gigantic book on ethanol production, and have access to a still at the college I can do small-scale experiments with when I get back. I’ve started toying with the idea of getting a Civic or something and making my own ethanol. Ugh, permitting. I’ve heard mixed reports of how much of a pain in the butt the BATF permit is to get. Between what I know about solar thermal and waste oil burners and vacuum, I feel like I’m enough of a master of cheap BTU’s to make ethanol quite economically, and it’s of interest to me anyway for biodiesel production after my trip to Fiji. We’ll see how far that idea gets.
EV-wise, I don’t know, it’s a project I’ve been thinking about for a few years since I’ve shared shop space with the amazing Phil, an EV nut, but I’d be on my own getting into it in North Carolina. There’s the ‘around Pittsboro’ range of driving that I should be able to hit on a bicycle, though I’ve been too sick most of the winter to try it, and that’s probably where an EV makes a lot of sense. Most of the Piedmonters don’t bike around there (it’s about 9 miles between the co-op and the industrial plant, and shorter but slower on the woods trail), due to the high-speed-trucks-on-a-narrow-country-road mentality. I feel like quite a loser for not biking even though I had pretty good reasons. My other commute is the 20 mile one to Carrboro/Chapel Hill for kung fu, and that’s within EV range. Oh, country living. I haven’t started hitchiking around there yet, that ought to work as a one-way to Carrboro for days when I have a ride back at night. I’m also considering starting an online rideboard for others with the same problem. Surely this has been addressed in rural communities like ours in the past?
Last week I caught the sails of a 1980’s Ford truck that briefly appeared on Craigslist before being pulled down, and went to take a look. It’s pretty- the owner is a Japanese car mechanic with the most immaculate shop I’d ever seen, and the truck looks like he spent weekends polishing the engine or something. It’s got gremlins- some fuel cutting-out problem that looks like either a (best case scenario) air leak, or worst case scenario, injection pump. I’ve had the same sort of gremlins in past Fords for various reasons. The price was low enough, and the vehicle is nice enough, that I should be able to re-sell it even if I can’t get it fixed. If it’s what I think it is, I just scored a fairly nice moving truck. Friday I’m heading out to try to drive it to Oakland, with Andrew Morris running cover behind me in a car in case it breaks down, and some tow service phone numbers in my pocket. Wish me luck.
Oh, and did I ever mention that when I was a toddler, some of my favorite toys were toy trains, buses, ships, trucks and so forth? It’s like I was born to like transportation.
Tomorrow I start working in biodiesel again, or at least making motions towards getting this 300-gallon ‘plant’ built and advertising my 9 upcoming workshops, but for the past 7 days I’ve been having something like a martial arts vacation here in California. I’m amazed at how well my mercury detox process worked, and how much that seemed to have fixed everything. I can’t wait to do it again (not while couchsurfing here though) and see how much further it improves my world, but for the moment, I can pretty much say I’m symptom-free. That came just in time for this trip, of course, or at least just in time for this visit to involve a fever pitch of physical activity that I couldn’t have done last month.
I’m staying at my friends’ jujitsu/aikido school in Oakland. A bunch of the staff live in a large rambling communal appartment upstairs, and though I don’t really intend to pursue those arts, I feel somewhat obligated to attend some of their jujitsu classes because I’ve started to in the past and the schedule meshes well with the other school I’m attending. I’m here for a month training in the same style I’m doing in North Carolina- a Kajukenbo kung fu school- and the net effect is that for the past week I’ve been working out every single day at the highest peak level I could muster without tearing anything or holding anything back. Luckily there’s a 48 hour break on the weekend- at the end of 6 straight days of this I was the sorest I’ve been in 10 years.
It’s been an awesome immersion experience. I can roll out of bed on Saturday, drink water, and go downstairs to train- after having a 20-mile commute from Pittsboro to my school in Chapel Hill, it’s a total dream. 10 years ago when I started training in Kajukenbo I lived at my school- having a live-in student is sort of a tradition in some of the Japanese arts (which ours is not), I think, and it’s been GREAT for me to have that experience. It feels like a monastic experience to focus on this so much, and I feel like this month here is going to do a lot to help me recover from my 8-year break in training due to the Lyme tragedy.
The drawback is that I’m starting to feel like I have nothing intelligent to say (though I’m taking in a vast amount of information, it’s just happening faster than the speed of blog). As many of my friends know, I’m one of those people who’s prone to intensive, obsessive, immersion experiences with any new task/activity/hobby I’m involved with. I’ve been waiting all winter for the energy to do this with biodiesel, and feeling awful that I had so many opportunities where I live to do so and had no energy to take advantage of them. Now that I can act on my obsessive tendencies and work my ass off again, I can’t wait for this summer (Or tomorrow, for that matter) to kick biodiesel ass.
I’m having a pretty hedonistic Bay Area vacation in general, too- sort of realizing I’m single for the first time in years, going out to eat a lot, going on dates, messing around in girly clothes, and getting beautified. And all I can think about is my last workout. The effect is very much like I’m stuck halfway between being a dumb blonde and being a dumb jock. I fucking love it.
I did an intensive wrestling session in the jujitsu class on Thursday. Just by some fluke, only I and one other student showed up that day (usually they have about 15 in every class, the room’s bursting at the seams) , and I requested a grappling lesson, something I’m trying to learn a lot more about. The other student was a guy not too much bigger than me, so it was a good match, and we got to work on just one particular hold for over an hour, playing with the different ways to get out of it or counter any attempts to get out of it, then playing with trying the same thing on our teacher who outweighed us by about 90 pounds. Grappling is an amazing upper body workout. The next day we both found ourselves with sore muscles, including ones we never knew were involved in grappling (or even knew existed for that matter). The following day it got worse- I keep forgetting that everything is at it’s peak of soreness two days from the original workout. That night I was going out to dinner, and wore high heels (on top of my taped ankle). I haven’t worn high heels in about 5 years. It was shocking to feel the same wrestling-related upper body muscles get worked. Somehow the same ones that help you get out of a headlock also work to make it possible to walk in femmy high heels…
I just spent a few days in Pittsboro detoxing from my mercury toxicity load. Anyone who knows me well has probably heard me talk about how terrified I’d been to try chelation therapy again (I was talking about this on the blog about a year ago, with disasterour results). There are very things I’m afraid of, but chelation has caused me such major health crashes that I’ve been terrified to try it again. My doctor thinks that mercury toxicity is probably at the heart of my recurring Lyme issues or whatever it is I’ve experienced all winter (antibiotics didn’t seem to help, so I don’t even know for sure that it’s a Lyme relapse as opposed to something else related to mercury, antibiotic side effects, etc).
Chelation consists of taking EDTA and a whole lot of binders (I take Metachel, chlorella, sodium alginate, and other products that purport to bind to the EDTA-mercury complex to ensure it’s eliminated rather than re-attaching in the body or brain somewhere). I seem to have some problems getting rid of toxins- I haven’t had genetic testing done, but one prevalent theory is that people who dont’ do well with chelation have a genetic susceptibility to various liver functions being disrupted, probably by Lyme in my case, and my doctor suggested a variety of ways to help overcome that, which I’d been doing over the past year.
Last week after I had a week of weird flu symptoms and a really bad memory day on Sunday, I decided to take the plunge into chelation somewhat on a whim before heading out on my california trip- I was tired of the memory/concentration problems- even though everything else- energy, sleep, etc was doing OK, I still had this frustrating inability to learn physical combinations in my martial arts class, was having word recall issues, etc. I decided that even if I crashed again, it really couldn’t get much worse than what I’ve been dealing with all winter, and my California trip involved few responsibilities, and I figured I could go be sick at a friend’s house, or delay the trip entirely, if things really went south.
The big news is that it worked much better than any time in the past. I’m overjoyed that I’m finally getting somewhere with this. In the past when I’ve disturbed my mercury load I’ve instantly crashed into the worst Lyme hell, had all my symptoms come back, gotten instant short-term memory and concentration issues, etc. This time around I went around relatively functional during the three days of chelation, other than needing to take some supplement or another every single hour, drink gallons of water, and have weird surges of unnatural energy followed by weird surges of dizziness and other strange stuff I normally associate with chelation.
The energy part was funny - I was wired and tired at the same time, a bit like when you have too much sleep deprivation and coffee to compensate, and act like a moron as a result. I ran around the homestead’s three households re-organizing and matching everyone’s Tupperware (several people I live with always bitch and moan about how their Tupperware gets ’stolen’ by the other housemates). I made a couple of cheesecakes and a half gallon of granola and a half gallon of yogurt for the housemates and did a big spread of low-carb baked goods for myself. I went jogging on my sprained ankle. I went down to the Chicken People’s place and cleaned out their chicken coop so as to use the manure for my future garden. I dumpstered a garbage bag of produce culls and built a big compost pile with the manure and other material. I prodded and nagged Bob and Camille about getting our collective garden project started. I went down to another farm and talked with the farmer about ordering medicinal herbs for my garden and his greenhouse. I ran around all over Pittsboro trying to find a source of bamboo to cut for garden deer fence (our garden’s not going to last very many years- Bob and Camille and I are all fans of container gardening, so that’s not going to be a waste of effort as we can just forklift the container to the next location when the land goes away). I went to the CSA and asked Doug to plant me an extra dozen cabbage for my sauerkraut making, which is starting to be really popular with the roommates and the Friday Local Lunch crowd. I was starting to feel like Little Miss Susie Homesteader in a big way. To counterbalance this lifestylism, I did a bunch of biodiesel experiments revolving around oil de-watering at the local college, and ran dozens of moisture tests on the Karl Fischer machine (newsflash- if the machine is calibrated right, which I"d still like to double-check, I got moisture down to 200 PPM, an unheard of low number for nasty waste oil, not that it needs to be that low for making biodiesel). My experimental record shows clearly that the experimenter is on drugs- the first five experiments last Tuesday all show ‘BOTCHED’ because I was having the ‘dizzy/disoriented’ sort of spell rather than the ‘dumb brute energy’ kind, and couldn’t seem to bring myself to push the buttons, and inject the sample and tare the syringe weight in the right order.
I eventually got myself on the plane to California with sanity semi-intact and everything I needed to enjoy myself for a month, including dresses to go swing dancing/tango dancing in, and other party clothes, all mixed up in my suitcase with tools and martial arts gear. My grinder, various measuring tools and squares, a bag full of hole saws, safety gear, welding jacket and gloves and a whole bunch of pumps and valves, were all mixed up for padding/packing reasons in the suitcases with my underwear and lacy tops and other girly stuff. Tee hee.
I feel like I really skated through with some good luck on the chelation this time around. I disobeyed a few of the rules (mostly diet ones) and still came out of it OK, should be more careful next time. Next time should be in a few weeks. I’m ecstatic that as the side effects (weird energy spells and dizziness/disorientation spells) faded in my first couple of days here in California, I started to feel 100% normal again for the first time all winter. Just in time.
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