I was never very good with electronics. And it took a tremendous amount of trial and error, to get our Plinko board working, back when we first made it in 2022.
I took a lot of notes, before we put this thing away in storage. And tonight, I set about seeing if this thing would still fire up after being tucked away for three years.
We’ve got some work scheduled for the second floor, involving newer windows, as well as replacing the old/worn door to the second floor porch. In preparation, we need to provide some of the hardware we want used on these newer pieces (we’re having several windows and a door re-made entirely).
We mentioned that we had a decent stash of older Common brick, much of which we accumulated while working on the house (and which Liz had meticulously cleaned). All that work paid off, as the workers were able to pick and choose from what we had available.
Of late, I’ve relocated my office down to the dining room… so this means, I needed to move my desk. And we also needed to cordon off the dining room as much as possible (we’re anticipating a lot of dust/debris over the next week or so).
The nice thing about this blog – I have a handy reference to some random info. Like how much Halloween candy we’ve gone through, in years prior.
Last year, we went through about 551 pieces of candy. This year, in preparation, I went a bit higher, and added a bit of a buffer.
Today was a big errand day for me. Of the many stops, one of the big ones was dropping by our storage unit to pick up our custom Plinko board for Halloween.
Overall, I knew the structure was pretty safe and solid. But the last I remember, all the wires powering the LED lights were still kind of loosely attached. That particularly delicate part… no idea how well it’s held up.
Back home, I get a text from her – and it’s a selfie! With her and our neighbor, Anna!
Turns out, they were both on the same flight (leaving Midway, arriving Georgia)… and only ran into one another afterwards, soon after departing the plane.
“My fav event as harvest season approaches
is the rough seed that escaped the plots.”
“The lightning, strikes cracking the night
It feels like never before
Thunder and spark in the heart of the dark
I hear a rising force”
After work, Liz and I headed to Journeyman Distillery, in Valparaiso. We were meeting up with family to celebrate Julie’s 70th birthday, at a unique local venue.
Got to hang out with family for an afternoon, in Wicker Park. Didn’t end up taking photos, which was a shame… but we mostly just walked around Damen/Milwaukee/North, had some cocktails over lunch, and then some ice cream.
We found ourselves with an open Saturday. And Liz felt ok enough to work outside, so we tackled one of the remaining steps for the fence: applying the upper and lower trim.
The day we were visiting, we learned that the lift was waiting for some repairs – so not a lot of work was possible, since none of the slabs could be moved. Lucky for us, one of the owners joined our walkthrough and helped us with some suggestions and answered a lot of our questions.
The end goal is to have this box flush with the first layer of plywood, and to ultimately have a section of the actual floor serve as a kind removable cover. Something like this.
This is me, trying to build a custom box for an electrical outlet that’s going to be submerged into our floor.