Nadir past, Sun ascending

Saturday, Dec 22 There’s a little more text for today after the posting for last week’s blog this evening. We broke for a late dinner of a great grilled cheese (Jarlsberg and cut-up leftover beef roast) sandwich with a bowl each of the leftover chowder. We had no idea that much was left. I found it late last night when I was tasked with cleaning the Crockpot outside and the removable ceramic bowl. We had filled it too much and some had shaken out, into the box, and down the sides, plus had spilled into the bottom of the box and the bottom of the outside heat unit. It sat there from 5:30 until 10:00 pm plugged in and heated all night. Therefore, the crusted cooked spilled part was a mess. I imagine I spent an hour on the clean up of all parts, but that was a fair share after John spent so much time on the preparation.

Tonight while I was proofing his changes and additions to my original, he made the dinner described above. The sky cleared today, and the temperatures are dropping.

Sunday, Dec 23 No snow. No acetaminophen (Tylenol), so we need to go to Bi-Mart for that and to exchange our oil heater that quit working. We left for town with some ideas about other stuff needed. We decided to get the ingredients for the special Crockpot candy to try. First stop was Bi-Mart, where we got the replacement for the deceased oil heater. They had one up front for us and we just traded, no questions asked, or receipts required. Boy was that nice. John carried it back to the car and I went on in for the meds. John found me there, and helped me decide which bottle was the best deal (we got 1000). I just calculated that is two cents each pill. Now I will have to compare with the Costco price, where we usually buy them. Then we walked on back to check for some other items for the candy. Found some almond bark we needed but it was the chocolate kind. Considering we were not making white candy, we went ahead and bought it. Off to Super 1, bought pineapple for the ham we’re fixing for Christmas dinner with our neighbors and checked the price of dry roasted peanuts. They were twice as high per pound as they’d been at Bi-Mart, so we went back to Bi-Mart for them, and off to Safeway for a ham and colas on sale. The 99 ¢/lb. ones were all gone, but we got a $1.29/lb. one instead. Still a nice deal for the better part of the ham. It’s much less expensive than a rib roast, and will be quite tasty. Came on home, with John driving the ’04 Subaru, and I talked on the phone, while I had good reception, which we do not get at home. Had a nice talk with a friend on her birthday. On down the road north of our house and saw five Merriam turkeys eating by the side of the road, behind a fence. [A large file, text starts under the first photo – so look there in the green.]

http://www.nwtf.org/conservation/bulletins/bulletin_4_9-9-09.pdf

We drove on by, and said I want a picture of them. I didn’t recall that I was carrying my camera in case I saw the buck deer with the nice rack. Therefore, when I found it, John drove me back up and let me out, because they were spread out in the field. He said they wouldn’t fly, but they surprised me and did. Another car was coming down the road toward me, and I don’t know if they or I spooked them but they flew into the trees. I wish I had had my zoom on my camera to catch their pretty tail spread, but once they landed in a tree, I was able to get the silhouettes of two in the top of the tree. That will work to put in my wildlife part of the newsletter. We had not seen any for a couple of years and wonder if the fires to the north destroyed their food sources and caused them to come down to our lower elevation.

Monday, Dec 24 Christmas Eve, and nothing planned. Wonder if the snow will really stop as predicted and sunny weather will be here. The answer is YES! And the temperature has gotten up to 40. Supposed to snow for Christmas, however. We made a couple of long distance calls this morning that were fun. We were both on the phone line. On a related item, I found I could get a “free” 2013 pocket calendar from CWU Credit Union, so I ordered two through campus mail. I’ll pick them up later this week. We keep a small balance at the Credit Union just to maintain contact there but like most such places the interest rate is very low – the “free” calendars are compensation! I looked yesterday at Bi-Mart and they wanted $3.98 each for some that started 3 months at the end of 2012 and went only through Dec 2013. That’s no good. I spent time getting some photos and videos out on SkyDrive where people could view them and download if they wish. They were of my geographer friend’s retirement party several months ago, and I gave them the gift of documenting the entire thing.

Lunch was great–grilled sandwiches with Guggisberg’s Baby Swiss

http://www.babyswiss.com/facilities.htm

cheese and roast beef. Back to working on newsletter. Made some progress and John fixed a nice dinner with ham, butternut squash, rice, sweet & sour sauce with little pieces of chicken and carrots.

Tuesday, Dec 25 MERRY CHRISTMAS! We made it over (was still snowing), to our neighbors with the ham John cooked. It was scrumptious. I helped make white/cheese sauce for the cauliflower she had cooked, and gravy for the mashed potatoes she’d fixed. She also made an onion type casserole, and her son brought large Croissant rolls. She’d also made a Jello, Dream Whip fruit with bananas salad. We had a nice dinner, with sparkling cider, and also she’d fixed a nice apple strudel type dessert. We finally stopped our visit, took our gifts, and left. We left them all some of the ham, and still brought some home for us. All at the meal had big helpings as well. Their gifts are the same each Christmas, and we love them. I received two large jars of homemade Apricot jam, and she always fixes John a couple pounds of her excellent fudge with nuts. We’ve been home for a couple hours, and I’ve been working on the annual newsletter. I’m making slow progress. I ate so much this afternoon that I didn’t want much dinner.

Wednesday, Dec 26 It’s still snowing lightly, but the sun is showing a little. John has cleaned off snow from the cars and front walks and back walks. I decided not to go to town today. Too bad because we are out of bread (even in the freezer). Too many grilled cheese and meat sandwiches and toast recently. I just heard some noise and looked out to see our wonderful neighbor with a big tractor and blade on the back, plowing out our driveway. He and a cousin do about a dozen driveways on our stretch of road – we are sort of in the middle. Most folks have 4x4s so it is only when the axle housings begin to leave a gouge in the snow that anyone thinks to clear it out – ‘cause any more snow and you have to push it with the bumper to reach the highway. Now we really do need to make bread, cookies and candy and take him a thank you gift. I’m busy after a lunch of a Croissant . . .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croissant

with ham and Swiss cheese, and going back to the annual newsletter construction. Today I mostly worked on the story about the house my grandfather built in Seattle. I’m coordinating with my cousin Susan on the details, because she and her husband John visited there this summer, got a tour of the inside and took photos. The house was built in 1910 and still is there in SW Seattle.

Thursday, Dec 27 Last night I didn’t sleep well at all, so was rather lethargic, but I did accomplish some things before lunch with my cousin (in Florida) Susan’s help. She sent me two better copies of our grandparents pictures from 1908 and 1910, for me to put in the annual greetings, in progress. John helped me crop them and I put them on the web page for the Wilkins clan. I managed to type into my SongWriter software the song, Auld Lang Syne,

[lang syne means – ‘long since’ but here is the full story:

http://caledonianmercury.com/2012/08/30/useful-scots-word-auld/0035077

. . . in the key of G, and put words, and chords on it, plus transposed a copy for our clarinet player. Printed out some and gave to the folks there. Only had 6 today: 2 guitars, banjo, tambourine, violin, and clarinet, but we had an appreciative audience who participated by singing and ringing bells and keeping time with shakers to the last of the Christmas songs this year.

John drove me in, and let me off, while he went shopping for yeast (so we can bake some bread, and to buy a loaf of bread we can have until we make some. He also picked up two of my prescription meds. And some milk and eggs for the bread and cookies we plan to make (have been planning for a while). Now to find the time to do that!

Came home to find very little mail, and two deer bedded down under our Ponderosa pine trees by the blueberry patch, right next to the drive. They didn’t bother to move when we got out of the car and walked by them into the house. Today, we were invited to our friends for a New Year’s Eve potluck and jam session afterwards. Guess we’ll thaw a piece of ham recently frozen — people really seemed to like it a lot last time. Forgot to say this morning when John was exercising the dogs, Annie, the youngest, brought him an antler, about 10″ with 2 points, from a young buck. According to the following site our little buck shed a bit early but what triggers the process it doesn’t say.

http://www.kingsoutdoorworld.com/stories/antlers_story.htm

Possibly the antler came from the deer who has been hanging around and whose picture we took a couple days ago. Eventually the picture will be in our annual newsletter, I’m still working on. John is expecting one of the dogs to find a second antler. The found one is a perfect match to the left antler of the little buck in the picture, outside our computer room window.

Friday, Dec 28 No snow, but cold, down to 19 degrees. Went for a haircut at noon today, and then went off to town for exercise class. There were only 6 of us there, but our teacher had health problems and her eye was bothering her with a drooped lid, so she went home and I led the class. I told her she should go to the eye doctor, but she wouldn’t take my advice. She’s leaving next Friday for Germany! Came on home and decided against driving back in tonight for the gospel music hour because the roads were lousy (ice under compacted snow), and people were not honoring staying on their side of the middle of the road (which was not visible with the snow cover). Truck drivers were the worst, with one-ton ones and even pickups pulling horse trailers! When I left, John put all the ingredients into a Slow Cooker to make chocolate candy with peanuts. We think there are too many peanuts, but it did come out well. Now we have to figure how to pack it away. They are in little paper muffin cups. Came back and worked a little more on our annual end of year (I hope) newsletter, but still have a way to go. Now I’ll go back to that work.

We have a full moon tonight. Check this out:

http://www.latintimes.com/articles/1722/20121228/full-moon-december-2012-longest-final-celestial.htm

Saturday, Dec 29 Nothing planned. Will post this on Friday and then if Saturday is exciting we can worry about what to do about that.

Hope your Christmas week was a good one.

Note: 3 x 11 x 61 = Happy New Year

http://www.wallpaper4u.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Cold_Winter_Scene_Wallpaper__yvt2.jpg

Walls for the wind,

And a roof for the rain,

And drinks beside the fire –

Laughter to cheer you

And those you love near you,

And all that your heart may desire!