Author: admin

I am one of the people in the USA that have had little impact or inconvenience from the Covid Panic. Still this cartoon provides a good summary of my feelings.
The cartoonist is Stephan Pastis and the comic strip is Pearls Before Swine.
This appears in our local paper in gray-scale form. I went to the web to get the color version.
https://www.arcamax.com/thefunnies/pearlsbeforeswine/s-2625459
On the left is a scroll list of other comics. I always look at Breaking Cat News, by Georgia Dunn. The cats are often involved in a story line that may go on for a week. Also, some other characters come and go. To appreciate the strip, one has to be a regular visitor, and learn the cats and there personalities.

Local stores have “wear a mask” signs but the patrons seem half-hearted about it. Many just don’t bother. I carry a mask and put it on when and if I have to talk to or be near others. Otherwise keeping a physical distance {social distancing} is quite easy in the community. I’ve been told the big cities and more formal settings in Puget Sound towns are more masked-up than the EBRG area.

On a similar vein, I read of a candy shortage with Valentine’s Day approaching. This is not apparent in the EBRG stores. Shelves are over flowing with everything imaginal. About this difference my hypotheses are (a) candy is priced too high for our local folks, and (b) we are higher-order procrastinators than others.
Maybe heart shaped boxes are very costly to produce, but $20 for a 20 ounce indulgence seems excessive. That’s in an inexpensive general merchandise store. Some are much more expensive but most EBRG stores never stalk those. The one shown here is $21.95 for 5.8 ounces. I’ll never know if the pieces taste good. That’s over $60 per pound, before an 8% tax. Wow!

This week I was expecting a call from the CPA office that has been working on taxes. Thus, all week I stayed close to the house telephone – I carry a handset when outside – it works for about 200 feet. The call did not come. On Saturday I went to town for a multi-purpose trip. (Note below for Friday.)
I made 6 stops and got home about 1:00 o’clock. At 3 I got the call from Scott, the CPA. I went back in (gas costs me about $6 per trip), signed my name 3 times and came home again. Next is working on last year’s taxes. The filing date in 2022 is April 18th. The 15th is “Good Friday”, so “Tax Day” is delayed to Monday. I found the following on the web:
“A rampant virus, skeleton staff, ongoing legislative changes, and flailing funding all make for a decidedly bumpy tax season ahead. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is battling backlogs with a grossly understaffed team (20,000 fewer employees than in 2010) and the delays and complexities engendered by stimulus check deliveries and advances in Child Tax Credits.”
I’m not betting on an early response, although I think the back-year submittals may go to a different office than current year stuff – and it is all electronic. Will that help?

Friday:
Phyllis and Cameron scheduled a trip over for Friday – work and lunch.
They brought metal shelving and an outside weather station. I figured we could work outside for an hour with a temperature of near 40° only if we were quite active. Well, last Oct/Nov we sorted and filled boxes with papers, books, and old magazines (+more) and stacked the stuff at the front of the Big Brown Shed. Thursday I shoveled the snow from the area in front of the swinging doors.I backed the truck as close as I could get to there (~10 feet) and I got in under the canopy and Cameron carted boxes. I stacked things to the roof. Leer claims this canopy has 40% more volume than a standard “cab-height” model. I can’t find a number for that, but it holds a lot and we filled it top-to-bottom and side-to-side. I ran out of space before Caameron ran out of boxes. I think one more (smaller) load will mostly clear out the accumulation of 50 years of books & papers & magazines & personal documents.
Saturday I went to the transfer station (aka “dump”) and unloading, without help, took nearly a half hour. OK, 20 minutes. I weighed out at 1,920 pounds lighter than when I went in. The dump fee was $121. With the prior trips either with or without a smaller canopy I was only carrying half that weight and the fee was closer to $50. Without a canopy the load has to be secured. That was a pain and limited the bulk.
The two images above show the under-roof part of a solid waste transfer station. Once things are on the floor the machines place it into a large concrete trench. Then it is compressed and baled and loaded on to trucks to be “transferred” to a far off burial site. Most of the area’s solid waste goes to East Wenatchee, about 80 road miles away.
My spring project will be dismantling the Pace Arrow motor home.

About senior moments and my iPhone:
I got my i-12 via Consumer Cellular and, perhaps this is normal, it had almost no documentation. I got started but easily lost the information about codes, passwords, Apple ID Code, and Verification Code. Later I bought a $12 book “for Seniors” that hasn’t been a lot of help.
Well, my desktop computer doesn’t have a camera and I wanted to get a ZOOM ability. The iPhone seemed doable. I tried but needed the various codes that I didn’t have. I had to request a recovery appointment.
I did that on January 26th. The return message was that in a few days I would get a message telling me when I would be able to do a recovery. That message came 4 days later; it said:
“You will receive a text or a phone call at this number when your account is ready to recover on February 5, 2022 at 9:04:48 PM PST.”
Last night at 9 PM I got ready with an open text document and the phone turned on at 9:04:30 PM PST. Apple-recovery was a few seconds late. I really didn’t know the difference between an Apple ID Code and a Verification Code – – and I was getting responses via the internet and via the phone. What great fun. Apple Support (digital) and I finally got all this straightened out. Monday, I think I’ll call my computer guru and find out what it will take to get a camera & whatever on the desktop to do video, like ZOOM. Also, my friendly Adult Activity Center director, Katelyn, is knowledgeable about iPhones and answers questions for us old farts every Monday at 1 PM. We were stymied last week ‘cause I didn’t know the codes.

From the Naneum Fan
John

The biggest news of the week was going for a haircut. Actually, that was sort of a spontaneous activity. I was due about the time we got the two feet of snow and stayed home. Then on a couple of occasions I drove by the place – The Barber Chop – but didn’t stop. There was lots of snow where folks were trying to park. Next time there were about 5 cars around. Finally, on a return trip from Umpqua Bank, I went in, got right in a chair and a nicely tattooed young lady, also nice, (Baily) had me trimmed in about 15 minutes.

The trip to the bank was initiated by me asking about a loan to finish the remodeling work. The bank’s interest rate is about 3.5% and the retirement funds were earning more than that, so the idea was to use their cheaper money. I decided not to do that, but banker Brandy found that we had an unused Home Equity Loan, initiated in 2003. This had a yearly fee of $50. Thus, the cost has been $900 – and I don’t even remember why we signed up for that.
The details included having the Bank’s name on our deed – even though we never borrowed a dime.
The real kick in the butt is that in order to cancel that the Bank has to send a signed document to the government to have the bank’s named removed. One can’t burp in WA State without paying a fee, in this case $236.11. No mortal knows how these strange fees are calculated, but that 11¢ must be important to someone. It is called Reconveyance Fee. I had to visit the bank to sign the form and authorize the withdrawal. Thus, the total cost over the years is $1,136.11. Plus the cost of the gas to drive to town.
To make the drive more purposeful, I went to a grocery store, I dropped my ballot in the box at the Courthouse, and stopped for a haircut.
The vote was for school levies. Today a flier arrived from the district asking for my support for the two items. I had already voted yes, so they need not have sent the full color large document. Oh well!

My sometimes neighbor came home last night or early this morning. Recall we had two feet of snow 10 days ago, and it is still here. It has sagged some, so maybe there is only a depth of 15 inches covering her 200 feet of driveway. She drives a small Honda with a clearance of about 6 inches.
She decided to try, and made 20 feet before high centering.
Hondas, unlike Subarus and many other vehicles, have nothing in the rear to hook on to. The body is plastic and the back has a gas tank in the center and mufflers on either side.
I shoveled behind the car and got some of the snow out from underneath. Then I called Allen and he came with the front end loader that he used here. I brought gravel over from my spare pile and got a little under the tires. She is not good at the “rock back and forth” technique – this is the 3rd time in 20 years she has used her car as a snowmobile. We got her out and I came home. Allen cleaned her drive, I think into her house, but I’ll have a look tomorrow.

I do get a little exercise moving snow off where I want a path. It will dry rather than get soggy. Also, I split wood rather than just use what is already split and stacked. Oh, and I feed the wild birds. They approve.

From the Naneum Fan
John

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

The Great State of Washington is officially tired of snow. At the end of 2021 there was sufficient snow that the Cascade Mountains were depressing Earth’s crust. I just made that up, but 20 feet of snow does weigh a bit.
The WA DOT was keeping the passes open until this week. Now going from one side of the Cascades to the other other requires an airplane. 17 miles north of me, Blewett Pass is also closed. Thursday’s snow resulted in closures – – with Sunday as expected openings. Friday warmed and the wind started. Continuous speed is above 30 mph, with gusts to 47 mph. The surface warmed and settled enough that we didn’t experience drifting. The high wind last only a few hours.

On the Naneum Fan snowfall began Wednesday afternoon and by dawn on Thursday there was 22 inches (56 cm) or up to my knees. Through December I was easily (with a push broom) keeping a spot out back where Annie could squat and pee. In the morning I had to get a shovel and cleared a spot a few square feet. Because she has only limited sight, she was confused by the inability to wander out of the small space. I’d been taking her up the driveway (about 100 yards) twice a day, but such trips were impossible. I managed, with difficulty, to go to the two bird feeding spots. Annie was house bound, except for her tiny space out back.

The first photo shows a cluttered deck with snow beyond. Workers had worked inside this past week and finished the interior trim. The saws were under cover on the new deck. We didn’t clean up outside, but I will burn some of the left over pieces. Others will have to be sorted and cut.
An upper county police station had a melting snow problem with water running down an interior wall. The guys left here Tuesday afternoon and went there for a look. They worked here Wednesday morning and then went back up there. What ever the issue was, an additional 2 feet of snow wouldn’t help.

The next image is looking at the driveway through the posts of the front ramp. I made a path to the big shed where I store the seeds for the wild birds. That path splits to the left. The other path is just my trek through the snow to the feeding stations. Allen is in the middle of the lane on a yellow front-end loader. A tractor with the rear blade could not manage the snow. Although the snow was light (fluffy), it was too deep. The loader is a much slower method.

Here’s a zoomed-in version:

This machine does not have a cabin, unlike the farm tractors. This is not a 4 wheel drive machine but he can push or pull with the backhoe if necessary. In contrast to the tractor (blade behind), he is working in front and can push or lift and dump.
I cleared the space in front of the truck, out to where I connected with his work.
Being house-bound isn’t an issue for the cats. Czar has a favorite spot in front of the wood stove.

I’ve never ordered a drink at a coffee place, or wherever the cups come with a name. I believe this one was ordered by Bryan.

I note the cold has migrated to the east of the Nation. Eastern Ohio and Western PA expect 10° this coming Monday night. We no longer have nighttime temperature below 15°. Monday low is expected to be 22°.

From the Naneum Fan
John

Tonight at about 6 PM the temperature went to Zero and 20 minutes later it was -0.6°F. The airport, 5 miles south and a bit lower elevation is claiming 4° ~ ~ I’ve been about 3 degrees lower than there for the week. Cameron and Phyllis are bringing a weather station when next they come over. Maybe it will track the airport better than I do now – or not. The National Weather folks in Pendleton, OR expect the low about Midnight. There’s no wind and the region’s blades on the wind towers have ceased turning. Update: at 8 PM clouds moved over and the temperature came back up a little. 50 miles south at Yakima there have been clouds all evening – there it is 20° warmer.
My electricity comes from the big river just to my east. Woody Guthrie was hired by the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), to write songs. Guthrie was 28 years old and unemployed, and the BPA needed to promote the benefits of building dams. Guthrie moved his family from California to Oregon, and was paid $266 a month to write songs. He came up with 26 songs in 30 days, including a tribute to the Columbia River.

“Your power is turning our darkness to dawn
So roll on, Columbia, roll on”

I’ve been watching and listening to Ken Burn’s film about Country Music – also a gift from Phyllis and Cameron. I have 4 more hours to go.

I-90 was closed for a long time because of fog and snow. Shortly after they opened, a truck with hazardous material crashed and there was a second 2 hour closure. Tonight the road is open; WA DOT lists it as “moving.”

Allen came twice this week to plow the snow. We haven’t had enough that the truck and I mind, but Annie has a problem – there are 7 to 10 inches. She does fine where he has plowed. Little birds and quail are eating all the seeds I put out. The turkeys seem to have moved on.
Thursday and Friday the remodeling got a spurt of activity. The guys decided working inside would be smart. A new Knotty Pine wall and much of the finish work got done. Willy’s wife, Amber, called and wanted to know if I had firewood for a bonfire. Jessie’ pickup had some room so we loaded as much as would fit. It is too cold for me, but I hope they have fun.

The photo below shows what I intend to do during the last hours of 2021.

From the cold Naneum Fan
John

On Tuesday afternoon I had the 2nd of two visits to the Cle Elum clinic. The previous week at the first one – I was not in the mood – I only remembered 2 of the 3 words. One was “car”, I think, and I said “cart.” Then I was to draw a clock face for 10 after 11. Here is a re-creation of what I drew.
I drew the long line first and then realized the “long hand” of a clock is for minutes. Rather than starting over I just made a notation to move it over. Then I drew the short hand for the hour and put “11” on the black line to where it pointed. I thought it was a rather good and innovative “fix” to my too-long of a line initially. Neither the nurse or the doctor were impressed.
There are various folks that said something such as “It’s a small mind that can think of only one way to spell a word.”
Same with time: If you can only do it one way, you might be a mentally challenged.
The medical folks offered a few comments but I assured them I was mentally fit. More or less. I have never been good at remembering peoples names, nor at spelling.

Most of the year I feed the small birds and quail early morning and about ½ hour before dusk. With such short daylight I’ve been feeding once, just after Noon. Yesterday, about an hour after scattering seed a couple of deer showed up. I chased them off. An hour later six (of a larger flock) turkeys were there. Later there were 18 behind the house and when I let the dog out the door I startled them and they flew into the pines and Cottonwoods about 100 feet west of the house. They then, a few at a time, disappeared and I assume found better roosting sites. I’ve used a photo from the web because in the low light my photo only showed the silhouette of a black bird against a gray sky.

I was out and about bringing firewood closer to and into the house because of an approaching mass of cold air. The weather forecast is for near Zero temperatures every night this week. The highs are from 12° to 18°. I don’t want to be out getting wood when it is 5°. I’m not expecting much wind or snow. Over in Puget Sound there is both snow, wind, and cold. The Fraser River of British Columbia is like an inverted funnel with cold air flowing into northwest Washington. Snow photos are misleading because of the drifting. Sunday morning there is 5 inches along the BC/WA border and ½ inch in the south Sound area.
Here on the Naneum Fan the low was 9° and at 10:30 it is 19°. Currently there is sunshine. About 97% of WA is cloud covered. I’m on the NW edge of a small cloudless area stretching east and south into Oregon.

Now I need to tend the fire in the woodstove
from the Naneum Fan
John

Here on the Naneum Fan Astronomical Winter officially begins next week:

Tuesday, December 21, 2021 at 7:59 am PST

However, some countries follow the meteorological seasons where winter began December 1st. There is 6 inches of snow here that began to accumulate Thursday Morning. Thus, I declare that winter started on the 16th.
Here is a Washington Dept. of Transportation traffic camera view of the summit at Stevens Pass, elevation 4,061 feet or 1,238 m.
Opening of skiing is somewhat late this year. Only about 20% of the parking area is visible here, so how crowded it is is not possible to say.
{he = the} –>

It has been an unexciting week.
I had the 1st part of the annual “wellness” visit. This is just a discussion that serves no purpose**(see end), and a blood draw that will be considered next week. Because of Christmas, I go back next Tuesday. I think it is split into 2 days so both Medicare and the secondary insurance company each have to pay. Next time these visits should occur in January (2023), and the next in February (2024). Of course I have to live that long. It will (maybe) be snowing this time.

Phyllis and Cameron came on Thursday.The main project was to remove the electric heater from the big shed. It is headed to the winery and will replace the one there that just failed (the fan). The shed is scheduled to be reconfigured as an open roofed affair with two walls, somewhat like this image. Because of anticipated snow load, the new roof will be slopped like the one shown here. It will have half-trusses. Like this.
The sign below is cute; being musically aware helps.
**One is told to draw a clock and also remember 3 words. My brain doesn’t wish to waste the energy, so I often screw-up these chores. The tester thinks I’m losing my mind. I think they are wasting my time. I win.

That’s all
from the Naneum Fan
John

Monday
A combined group of CWU retirees and Wildcat Walkers drove to a trail access east of EBRG and trekked to the newly opened Renslow Trestle.
The trestle was for the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad that came through the County, Kittitas, Ellensburg, and Central Washington University’s early campus. There are photos at the link below, but first a photo by me of friend Kristin making sure we document our own trip. There were about 20 folks that took the short uphill hike, then across over I-90, and back. It was a bit cold and windy, but there was a scheduled potluck for Thursday noon, so we only visited while we walked.
Previously the abandoned right-of-way was christened the John Wayne Trail. Now it is being re-signed as the Palouse to Cascades Trail.
The Renslow Trestle
A bridge over the Columbia River is now being reconditioned to remove the last major barrier to cross-State trail travel.

Tuesday
I cleaned around the wood stove, brought wood in, and started a fire. I set the house thermostat at 68° and brought the house temperature up to 73° with the fire in the Chinook Stove, with catalytic burner. The house air-handler has a setting for the fan to cycle on-off in 15 minute intervals so the entire house gets heated. (Photo from the web)
With the fire stabilized I went out and split more wood, and used the truck to pull previously cut trees to a convenient place for bucking {cutting to necessary length} & splitting for ‘22 wood.

Wednesday morning was interesting. The chart below has early morning (6:53 am) as the bottom row. Four lines up (starred) is mid-morning.
The purple colored numbers are wind gusts in miles per hour. At that time there were large snow flakes in the air. The sky was clear. There was bright sunshine. And there were gusts of wind up to 59 miles per hour. I stayed inside. There is a 50 gallon steel drum heading through the pasture in the direction of Idaho.

Thursday
I went to the pot luck with the CWU retired folks – driving across the valley 20 miles. Many of them knew Nancy; and me only as her spouse. There was lots of food and Christmas cookies & candy. I brought some home, including a few bites of smoked salmon. The host created that, and now I’m interested. It was very good.
I had to pass through EBRG, so used the opportunity to stop at two stores, then came home and fed the wild quail.

Friday
Phyllis and Cameron came and we took more stuff from the big shed.
The enclosed space with shelves had been cleaned out last week and became a temporary space for items to be kept – for now. Nothing exciting was found. There is enough for about 5 trips to the transfer station (dump) with the pickup. A Waste-Management dumpster seems excessive, but maybe the contractor’s one-ton tilt bed truck would fit the need. A large upright piano is still in there. It once looked about like the image here, but we got it in Iowa, moved it to Idaho, and then to here. It is another of my obstacles to peace of mind. I don’t know how or when we got it. We left Iowa in 1974, 48 years ago. It was old then and no one has played a tune on it since the day we acquired it. It is in poor shape with some damaged wood and likely filled with mice nests and related litter. The mice chew on just about anything. I need to look inside. Horrors!

Saturday
I worked at wood gathering – bringing trees closer to the house, and to the space next to the garden. When cut to stove length all the chips can be raked, gathered, and scattered for in-place composting. At 2:40 the wind changed and went from 5 to 15 mph and a strong gust. The airport claims 26 mph. That is strong enough that I don’t want to be near the trees.
The high temperature today was 51° – rather then allowing the fire in the stove to go out, it has been doing a slow burn. Still the hallway temperature went to 77°.

That’s it.
From the Naneum Fan

John

There were rather dull happenings this week.

I cut about 1/3 of my downed trees into firewood length and got some of that under cover. I have dry wood for this coming cold. I’ve been working on next year’s stash. I need to clean out the wood stove and test it. This coming week the area is expecting temperatures at or below 20°F.
The air masses now entering Washington State are cold and carry moisture. Snow in the mountains is anticipated, and even to the Naneum Fan. Not much here. Snoqualmie and Stevens Passes may get a foot to 16 inches by Monday evening.

Wednesday I went for an inspection of teeth and cleaning. My last such was in July 2020. I was on a 6 months and a day schedule. The first delay was caused by the Covid panic; then my favorite tooth-tech moved to Colorado. A timely replacement could not be found. Now they are back up to 2, but when I called this past July I had to be given a December date.
I have one potential problem – either a large filling or a crown – and Margie (my dentist) thinks the crown is the better choice. So – January 10th.

Phyllis and Cameron came Thursday. We had a good day of work, food, and conversation. Walter the contractor called while we were eating. He was ½ hour away with the 38 ft. long blue metal roofing. I did not get a photo of the package on top of his truck, so this will have to do.
The trusses to support the roof are scheduled for delivery on January 6th.

That is Annie in the back, the last Brittany and almost no hearing or eyesight. She still likes to go with me, but If I get busy with a task, she goes home. If I fail to open a gate, she has to come back because she can’t get to the flappy door.
We had a bit of snow, mostly gone by the time I took this photo. Snoqualmie Pass (I-90) got 5 inches by 5:00 o’clock. Expect another 5 inches in the next 48 hours.

Outside today I worked for a total of 2 hours on 4 different chores.
Last week I took the backyard fence down so a backhoe could get in there and dig a trench for a drain pipe. In the fresh dirt, today, I had horse prints. Large.
He or she came, investigated, and left.
So I reattached the fence. I need to inspect the driveway but it is hard rock topped with gravel. I’ll look at a few other spots but unless someone saw the horse, I don’t expect to know more.

There were 7 deer nibbling tops off weeds in the field. There were 3 with antlers, one large and heavy. The other two were young.

From the Naneum Fan
John