Sunday, Oct 14 most of the day was spent doing nothing. John did many outside chores. I stayed inside for mine.
Monday, Oct 15 Not much done today, except on email chores and on a few household recycling chores. I filled two boxes, and have to get John to bring me more empty ones. I still have much to do. The most frustrating thing is he just brought me the postal mail. In case I haven’t mentioned it, health care is a PITA. John and I both had annual physicals, scheduled by our doctor’s office, August 28th. I received a report that mine is not covered; only once a year. That will be $339. I have complained but no one has yet responded (now it is the end of the week, as I write this). I also had a mammogram in July, again, requested by my doctor, and they will pay all but $40 of that. John managed to move some posts, rocks, and dirt with the backhoe today. It is now raining, starting about 5:00 and just has been threatening all day. Still raining, at 7:00 p.m., and dinner (chicken is cooking and smelling great). John’s such a good cook. I’m fortunate. We had carrots and potatoes (from the Columbia basin), chicken and one of our tomatoes. Yum.
Tuesday, Oct 16 We had an amazing amount of heavy winds all night and now this morning, plus hard rainfall. The sun has shined through everything this morning, winds and rain. I imagine somewhere in the valley was a gorgeous rainbow. The house was shaking last night and this morning. The winds are still very high. Blew the last of the walnuts out of the top of the trees, and John has already harvested them before the squirrels and birds could get them. I just checked the airport and found that sustained wind speed at 10:30 was 41 mph, with gusts to 59 mph (written in bright purple on the report). I am sure that is the highest I have ever seen it. I told John this morning that last night I thought we had 65 mph gusts! Glad the fires have been snuffed out by the recent rains.
On my way to The Connections we went and paid for 3 bags of onions – this is a direct from the farmer sort of thing – 13¢ per pound. John drove with me and went to the grocery while I was playing and singing music. There were only 5 of us there tonight.
Wednesday, Oct 17 I said yesterday the fires were snuffed out, but my neighbor went with her hubby in their jeep up Reecer Creek canyon and saw much devastation of the forest and some places they took pictures of isolated trees still burning. Big old trees sometimes have rotten/hollow centers and, so enclosed, can smolder for a long time.
http://www.fs.fed.us/r5/sequoia/news/releases/2009/06/tree-fire.html
Went on a sad visit today to a wonderful friend who is dying from cancer. He is much in pain. I only visited for 15 minutes, but I know he appreciated it. Earlier in the day I played music at the food bank, and ate lunch there. We had a very spicy pasta with sausage, but I only received noodles (no sausage) with cheese and the breadcrumb filling, green mixed salad, and we were to have a peach/apple/grape cobbler homemade there, but there wasn’t enough to go around, so I had zucchini bread with also homemade grape sauce meant for pouring over the cobbler. Went on to the Sr. Center and had a donut and brought one home to John. I feel bad that he worked outside the whole day after I left at 11:20, and he actually started over an hour before I left. He missed lunch today. I went by the grocery store, complaining about the charge on Crustini buns John bought (he thought) on sale last night. They rang them up at $4.38 and he thought he was getting them for $2.50 each package. They refunded a total of $3.60 for two packages. I told them he would never have paid that much for a set of 8 rolls. They need to mark their sale price shelf signs better. Tonight we had the first two and enjoyed them covering a nice cheeseburger, with one of our tomatoes. Also, one of these:
http://i-cdn.apartmenttherapy.com/uimages/kitchen/2008_12_19-dumplingsquash2.jpg
This is called Sweet Dumpling. Ours was stuffed with apple and plum pieces, with butter and brown sugar.
Thursday, Oct 18 Another day and a half with so much to do. In late morning I joined John in the yard to try to figure out the winterizing of the travel trailer. He was able to hook up the drain to the tank but the process only yielded about 3 gallons of water. When we had the AC installed and all the rest checked out they supposedly put in 50 gallons. I think not. Maybe they intended to and someone thought someone else did, but? – it seems to not be there. John got out our (2 years old; never opened) new air compressor
http://s.sears.com/is/image/Sears/spin_prod_567626001
which was still in its box, only to find the supplied oil (in a small plastic bottle) had leaked out, some onto the equipment but most into the cardboard. He needed to go to town to buy special oil. Requiring just 3 oz., he had to buy a quart for about $9. Our local Sears outlet is about 15 feet wide and 30 feet long, so, naturally, they don’t carry such stuff. EBRG’s old time hardware store (Wood’s) does. Wood’s was only about 100 yards away on a wrong direction one-way street. Not thinking ahead of all the one-way streets, he drove six blocks before getting to where he could have walked in less time and at no cost. Life’s tough. Anyway, I came back in the house to make a BLT for our lunch, and it was running late, but we got away in time for him to drop me off at the Dry Creek Assisted living home, and go on to get things he needed. While in town he went to the Goodwill store and bought 2 timers (as in kitchen timer). Somewhat like this:
http://www.preparedpantry.com/classic-kitchen-timer.aspx
We had dropped my mom’s that we had used forever. It broke and could not be repaired. Search the Web and you will find many strange things – use ‘ kitchen timers ’ in Bing images and have a look at about $6 and up.
Goodwill had 2 only, of the simple variety at 99¢ each. Do we need 2? Who knows? But consider: the link above wants $9.49, so buying 1 at Goodwill saved $8.50. By buying 2 we’ve saved $17. Try it – you’ll feel richer! We checked them against the timer on the microwave oven and for a one hour setting they were right-on! (Nancy’s comment about John’s story on the timers; we were always traveling from the kitchen to the back room with a timer, so the two will be well used without traveling.)
Friday, Oct 19 I’m happy to report while it rained off and on all day, we still managed to get much stuff done. I did not go to town, so that helped. That trip wastes almost an hour, plus the time spent in town. I spent time on several different chores and so did John, and then I joined him outside to work on the travel trailer, setting up the generator; he had already set up the 2 amp trickle-charger on the battery in the travel trailer, but we got stymied on the last thing with the generator. May work on that tomorrow. I remember we ran it from near the open door (for ventilation) of the RV building and subsequently loaded the gizmo into the PU truck bed. We tested the AC with the generator (we think) but for a time the power cord was also in a wall outlet on the inside of the building. Did we actually test having power to the trailer from the two different sources? We can’t remember. Perhaps not, ‘cause the end on the power supply to get to the inside of the trailer, does not have the correct receptacle to hook into for the generator output. And the manual wants the thing grounded. Does anyone do that? Look at this page.
http://www.imsasafety.org/journal/ma03/ma5.htm
Talk about a steep learning curve. Where is an electrical engineer when you need one? John did get the air compressor ready to go, but we have to first pump out the rest of the water from the system before blowing the small remainder. Meanwhile, I have been working on inside chores after drying out and warming up. John pulled a large tree trunk (windfall) with the old truck to another part of the property where he makes little pieces out of the big pieces using chainsaw and splitting maul.
http://www.plumbersurplus.com/images/prod/6/Ames-1190100-rw-150177-252274.jpg
Saturday, Oct 20 We stayed up late so slept in until 9:00 a.m. John went over to feed the neighbors two stallions, and then we went back tonight. He will do it in the morning too, but the owner will be back by noon on Sunday from Oregon. I went today at 1:00 p.m. to visit my friend with cancer and his wife and one of his 4 sons (another John). I had met another son a couple times this week. Then I went to play music at Briarwood, where they feed us. For the music, we had 2 guitars, a mandolin, 2 violins, and two singers (one with an occasional tambourine). For food treats, they provided two types of soup, good for a cold day: Zucchini and Potato. I put some of each in my bowl, and the combo was quite good. They had rolls and butter, and veggies with dip, and various kinds of cookies and cakes. I did not eat as much as usual today to ruin my dinner. John and I had leftovers, made into Sloppy Joes (sort of) on those new fancy Crustini rolls, and some of our own little yellow pear tomatoes. John did not go along today because he had to stay home and work on yard and pasture chores, moving fence posts, etc., to free up some panels he wants to put around the metal building to protect it and the hay from the horses. [Nancy had deer, also, in the previous line. But our deer are the Muley type and they don’t bother grass hay.] Right now, the horses are fenced out of the area with the metal pole building. We had also hoped that a fellow with a bulldozer would drop by to see what work leveling and pushing around dirt and rocks we need done, which John cannot do with his “smaller” tractor. He didn’t make it today and if not tomorrow, he did promise ‘next week’. It is rather inconvenient to try to plan stuff when you don’t know the “when” of it but many of the locals are quite busy with all the fire damage. Those not directly involved in that have extra work directed their way for normal activities. John had to jockey all day with the deer but a late run had the male Britt, at full speed, almost bounce off a doe standing in one of his favorite pathways. She took offense and chased him out of the trees and back toward the house. We had visual confirmation of all 3 feral cats in the hayloft for dinner tonight. Daily the food gets eaten, even if they are not seen. Not much else happened today, so we waited for this addition before posting tonight. The Summit at Snoqualmie claims it is snowing
http://www.summitatsnoqualmie.com/Weather
But the WA-DOT camera for the summit is off-line. Nearest is Franklin Falls just to the west and it shows white along the road edges. Sunday, when the view is better, may show something (click on little circles):
http://www.wsdot.com/traffic/passes/snoqualmie/default.aspx
Hope your week was a good one.
Nancy and John
Still on the Naneum Fan