Sunday, Dec 9 On a day when it’s forecast for 20% of slight snow, the white stuff has been coming down since early. John’s taken the dogs for their morning exercise, but started early just after out of bed by dressing to go make the dogs come in the doggie door without its being propped open. We’re rather sure the cat figured it out, came, and went last night. Then John took care of moving the charger around and bringing to the garage a battery from the travel trailer he’d charged after the truck a couple days ago. Now he has the tractor battery set up charging in the old barn.
I managed to cut his hair this afternoon, and just in time. My clippers stopped working at the end. I thought they’d overheated, but they are dead. It’s okay. I have at least 2 others I can use. These that stopped came from a yard sale for $1.00. John’s dad showed me how to cut John’s hair with hand manual clippers. That was before we were married, when we were in Clarion, PA for a visit from Cincinnati grad school, so this has been going on for over 46 years, at least. I think the cost of haircuts back then were a lot less than now :- ). John claims they were told in school that one’s hair ought to be trimmed every two weeks. Had we done that, and banked the going price of a haircut all these years, we would have a nice piece of change. The cat and dogs are using the new doors. John made brownies for dessert, with walnuts and chocolate chips in the batter. For the last batch, we used our last store bought plastic tub of icing several months past its ‘best-before’ date. A sale price of about 89¢ enticed us to buy several, all now gone. Current price in the local grocery is close to $2 each. So, with the chips in the batter and a short trip through the microwave oven, the finished brownies are fantastic. The chips come in a large bag from Costco. The walnuts come from trees along the east side of our house.
Monday, Dec 10 Wow, last night was surely a weather event. We were subjected to Chinook winds that raised the temperatures to the high forties and remained all night after I last saw 29 degrees before retiring. The winds were shaking the house and noisily blowing against the windows, for several hours at 33 mph sustained with gusts to 47 mph. (That was 5 miles south of us at the airport). A friend to the north a half mile said it was truly blowing there. She is not protected by trees as much as we are. Then on Facebook, I saw this morning that another friend in the Teanaway said the Chinooks melted all the snow there. Washington has a town called Chinook but it is on the Pacific coast.
http://funbeach.com/villages/chinook/
This fits with the idea of a moist warm wind blowing from the sea but is at odds with the more common notion of the downslope wind:
http://www.answers.com/topic/chinook
John went with me to town today and dropped me off at SAIL exercise, and went on to two stores for things needed. We seldom go to Safeway, but he did today to pick up a whole ham at 99 ¢/lb. for us to cook for the music group potluck this week. While there he found 2-liter colas for a good price (68¢), so he loaded up on a few. He returned to pick me up and we went on to Super 1 for my meds refills, and we took advantage of several great sale items. The funniest was a Marie Callender Pecan Pie. We had just talked with John’s sister recently about her getting a Peach one and not liking it. They were on sale today for $3.40 off, making the price $4.98. John will be making his mom’s famous pecan pies for a scholarship luncheon this Friday, but I wanted to compare Marie’s to his. I know it won’t be nearly as good, but it will satisfy my curiosity.
Tuesday, Dec 11 Day full of computer problems and washing dishes. Never made it to the clothes, or sorting. Did print some music and copy a CD my friend loaned me with instrumental Christmas music. It is very nice. I don’t know the group, but there is a piano, harp, and something else, some sort of percussion. We went to The Connections religious music group tonight, and what usually takes 45 minutes, went for over an hour. Sadly, John had decided to go to town with me and was done shopping and back but had to wait over a half hour for me to finish. Oh, well, we had a nice time singing Christmas songs with the residents of Hearthstone Cottages (assisted living). John bought us some Razzleberry pies from the Marie Callender sale – there were none there yesterday. They are a combo of raspberries and loganberries. We have not tried any yet.
http://www.gardenology.org/wiki/Loganberry
And note the date at the upper right on this one:
The first paragraph explains why this berry is more important in Oregon than in other parts of the USA.
Wednesday, Dec 12 Our day started out way too early, with two phone calls before 9:00 a.m. (my mom’s rule for telephone calls was never before 9:00 a.m. or after 9:00 p.m.). The first was at 7:45 that our truck was ready. John decided to go to town with me to let him off to pick up the truck. It cost us $213 to get the drain on the battery fixed, and because it is driven so rarely, we had a battery tender added. We will have to plug in a unit to the truck when it’s not in use. The battery draw was diagnosed as 24.2 ma, charging at 14.2 amps. The second call came about 8:20 and was our neighbor about the work on the ditch above us, to keep it from flooding. John had to go up and explain what he was doing and why and how it should not be changed at the diversion Y.
Today is the birthday of four of my friends. I told them this is a special day in the history of the world. On this day, at 12:12 it will be 12:12 on 12-12-12 ! I was playing and singing Christmas songs while people ate at the Food Bank, and at 12:12, I got up after we had done Frosty the Snow Man, and I told them about the special date and time. Today’s meal was relatively good. The pasta was little green round things called Insalatonde. (I tried to find on the web what makes them green and cannot — was a little worried that broccoli or spinach had been added, but it seems that usually it is green coloring). The original idea is to use a green leafy vegetable, such as spinach, but folks will throw in just about anything green from the home garden. John thinks that for commercial production a dye is used:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_Green_FCF
He plans on checking a package in a store if there is green pasta sold there. Anyway, it was baked with a nice spicy sauce and large slices of chicken breast meat. With it was a vegetable mixture I could not eat any of (the dark green veggies with high Vit K). They had some good garlic bread and I got two nice Christmas sugar cookies. On from there to the Adult Activity Center. I put on the CD of the music I burned yesterday and returned the original to the owner. Then I walked around getting 16 signatures on a card for a lady in our SAIL exercise class who will be 87 tomorrow, and is in very good shape (except for having macular degeneration). We completed the exercises and I drove home. I will have to start carrying my camera. On my way in the driveway, I saw a bunch of deer; counted 10. The next to the last two were bucks, and one buck had two small spikes. The other we have not seen around here this year. He had 4 points on each side – called a 4×4 here in the West.
http://www.myhuntingbuddies.com/east-vs-west-method-of-antler-point-counting-54572.html
In the eastern US this would likely be called an 8-point. Either way, he was well appointed. He stood and looked at me, and I wanted so much to have my camera. I didn’t get my camera and go back up because I doubted I could walk there without spooking him. Perhaps I should have gotten in the car and gone back with a camera. They are used to our driving by them and do not spook. To retrieve the truck, John had to ride in with me and, with supper in mind, right before we left for town he put a chunk of boneless beef in the crock-pot with onions, later adding winter squash. Then tonight he made biscuits to go with it. It was very good. Just before 10:30 we ate a piece of chocolate Bundt cake I’d brought home from the Adult Activity Center.
Thursday, Dec 13 Well, it was a very, very long day. I don’t know how much time I have to remember the day before falling asleep. Phone visited with a down-ditch neighbor early in the am. I tried to clean the kitchen to make way for John to bring in the huge ham and meat saw to cut it. That got done and it took him awhile to clean it up and get it ready for the oven, where it baked most of the day. While he was outside again, I ran off more copies of Frosty the Snow Man in G for the rest of the group. After a bite of lunch, I left for playing music at the Rehab center where I stayed for 7 weeks in 2010. I always have interesting memories, and see great people I knew while there. Then the fog started moving in. After playing, I went by the grocery for some pineapple and mustard to add to the ham for the last 2 hours. Came on in, and we fixed the rest of the “topping” for the ham. Finally, we left in the fog (heavy and thick) in the dark, to drive the 7 miles down the road to our friends’ home for the potluck. The fog was so bad I turned one driveway too soon and had to back out. One of our members did not find it in the fog and didn’t know the address. I didn’t have my cell phone with me in the house, but she also did not call until after she went home (lives 30 miles away in S. Cle Elum). I could have told her the number of the house. She and her salad didn’t make it, and another member and her husband didn’t make it because she is recovering from a hip surgery and had overdone herself earlier in the day. Still, we had 10 people show for dinner. Food to go with our ham included scalloped potatoes, yams, calico beans, and warm cinnamon rolls for dessert. We all had double helpings of everything. Then we played music until after 9:15. Came home to ice over everything especially the walkway out front from the car to the house. Sometimes with the snow broomed off the concrete will dry off – not so today, so as the temperature dropped the wet surface turned to ice.
Friday, Dec 14 Started the day early with John getting up and starting on fixing two pecan pies from his mom’s recipe. It was for us to take to a scholarship luncheon at CWU. I have been a member of this group since 1988, and John made two pies that first year (he was still in Idaho, and I was over here teaching, going home each weekend). It has been a tradition that he always bakes two Pecan Pies for the group. They claim to look forward to it all year. He always joins our group for the Christmas Potluck. Today we had Hawaiian pizza, fried chicken, enchiladas, egg rolls, chicken-celery-cranberry-peanut salad, pasta salad, a bean salad with peppers & onions, hot apple cider, soft drinks, and our pie. We actually brought some leftovers home with us, including some pecan pie. There were a smaller number of our group there today, only 10 (counting John).
Five of our members missed the good time had by all. No students are on campus, so finding a parking space at the Student Union Recreation Center (SURC) was not a problem. On the way back, with John driving, I called my good friend (colleague, who had to retire because of health reasons). Today was his birthday. I managed to reach his cell phone and got him in person, not on a message recorder. He was in Flagstaff, AZ ready to go in a day or so on a Colorado River raft trip with about 12 river guides who invited him along to describe and explain the landscape. He sounded SO good to me; it was the best birthday present for me on this, his birthday. Actually, it’s perhaps the best Christmas present I will get. They had had almost a foot of snow, and the roads were not yet plowed, so he had walked to the grocery store to pick up lunch items for the guides he is with. I was tickled he answered the phone – not knowing whether or not he was in WA or AZ. On the way home we detoured by some places to see what was happening with new construction projects (seems strange to start construction this time of the year). In addition, we drove in and out our neighbors’ driveway to make it look as if someone is home. We’ve been rather lazy this afternoon because of not much sleep last night, and awakening to 2 inches of snow with ice beneath. I have a feeling we will sleep well tonight.
We heated a brownie John made–the last of that–and had with ice cream atop for dessert. We had a nice supper of leftovers: chicken, ham, biscuits, with sliced apples and pears. That is the last of the pears. We have many apples left, however.
I took the pictures off my camera before hitting the hay, of us holding our pies yesterday. John made it more colorful by adding a frame. It will be appropriate to add to our Christmas greetings letter, if we ever get it started. We’d better hurry, or people won’t receive it until Valentine’s Day.
Saturday, Dec 15 This day I go to Briarwood at 2:00 with more to eat after we sing Christmas songs with the residents. Now I’m stopping to give this to John to fix up and post. We just got 2 inches of snow so I’ll have to leave earlier than usual.
Hope your week was a good one.
Nancy and John
Still on the Naneum Fan