Nature and community

Monday, Dec 7

Slept in until 7:30 a.m. after going to bed at 10:00 last night.
Need to get the photos thank you sent to people who gave me permission to use their photo in our weekly blog. That’s done.
Cut John’s hair. Took 35 mins, with set up /cleanup taking more. Our freezing fog is getting worse outside, so happy we do not have to be on the road with ½ mile visibility and treacherous roads.

Get in touch with Cle Elum Clinic to let them know about leaving a pkg. for a family in Ellensburg with the for us to pick up when we go for our Medicare Medical Wellness test this Thurs afternoon Nov 10 – go through Stephanie Walker (office manager there (via email to save the cost of a long distance call). We have no cell phone reception in our house; only our landline.

A little bit of dishwasher unloaded, and none yet reloaded.
Need to finish putting in my night pills for the week.
Supper: Sliced Beef roast, mashed potatoes and gravy with onions, a sliced half of a red apple, fried cauliflower, and diced beets. PowerAde.
The total number of robocaller connections for Dec 7=3.

Tuesday, Dec 8

Get up early to take pill, and drink ½ hr. later, drink coffee and milkshake. We need to be at our first two stops before noon.
Set up my external back-up for its noon backup. It completed the backup while we were gone.

This is our day for important errands, and we had many; review here. We’re using this symbol to indicate stops: ∞∫∞ First, was to Take the F-350 Ford to Seth Motors’ to be worked on at 11:00 a.m., to have its battery tender evaluated and the manual emergency brake ∞∫∞ John wants to take our insulated shopping bag by Winegar’s for quarts of their Ice Cream we like. We did, but he sat in the car while I went inside for it. ∞∫∞ Bi-Mart to check numbers ∞∫∞ No luck. ∞∫∞ Picked up 2 boxes (empty) from where we often drop things off. ∞∫∞ We stopped at Super 1 Grocery store for John to buy only a few things needed for supper, but he got carried away and bought lots more. The temp while spending time in town was 28° – so said the car.

Mid-afternoon snack: John had piece of peach pie and some small candy bars; I had 2 Reese’s peanut butter cups. Girl cats in new room had beef.
Late afternoon check in call from Gerald; he’s fine. Today his daughter took him to the skin specialist (dermatologist) to burn off spots on his back from walking in the sun without a shirt. They topped the Manastash Ridge and left the sunshine and clear blue skies.

Put all the dirty dishes in and ran them before supper.
Supper: John’s planning Beef Stroganoff, with peach pie and ice cream for dessert.
Started raining last night after supper, and sometime overnight switched to a little snow.
The total number of robocaller connections: Dec 8=3.

Wednesday, Dec 9

Up late to start the day. John’s now taken care of cat cleanup feeding, and visiting in the new room, and fed the horses. I’ve been catching up on emails, and Facebook activity. Finally, at 11:11 we left for town, stopped off to pick up a donation of Christmas Cards from my rural neighbor for me to deliver while I’m in town to a person who cannot drive. Then I took John to Seth Motors to pick up the pick up, and run more errands before he came home. Main thing were bags of pine pellets to use in the cats’ litter box. Clay sticks to their feet and ends on the floor. Also, John thinks the wood does a better job of handling the urine.

Supper: John had leftovers from last night; I had a special salad later, after my shower, and a serving of blueberry cheesecake ice cream.
The total number of robocaller connections for Dec 9=3.

Thursday, Dec 10
Mt. Rainier Sunrise from Puyallup by Cheryl Keisel White

I found research papers after looking up Siletzia on duck-duck-go. I loaded those up to a new Dropbox and made a link to send to study group for Friday’s Nick Zentner’s afternoon lecture.
Printed my medications to put it in my paperwork for my annual physical exam. –
Ate a piece of fruitcake and fixed a salad for my lunch to eat before the Game Play began. I need to play my Zoom Game Day at the AAC with 5 others; it is Yahtzee. I enjoy that game.

Get dressed to leave for Cle Elum at 1:00 p.m.
9:33 a.m. call from Gerald; foggy over there, otherwise all is well in Thorp, WA.
John’s outside at 10:00 at 21 deg. We got his meds in a bag to carry. We’re driving up leaving at 1:40; didn’t get home until 6:04 p.m. With the first doctor we had there, we were seen together. Since then there seems to be something new to the routine each visit. It seems way long, but the blood draws got done up there, saving a visit to the EBRG facility.
The total number of robocaller connections for Dec 10=1.

Friday, Dec 11

We had had a scattering of snow overnight. Overcast and cool today. Snow is sticking on the higher slopes north of us, above 4,000 feet. Over the next week we are expected to get just a little bit more. High temperatures are still expected above freezing.

We both slept in late, but I’m tired from a restless night with interruptions. I don’t have time to consider a nap until later, but maybe should because contractor Walter is due at our house at 6:00 p.m. tonight to discuss projects yet to be completed, so we are all on the same page. I’m falling asleep now. Maybe I should rush a short nap currently, before the lecture starts.

While I’m involved in managing the Nick Zentner lecture live comments, John leaves at 11:15 for town for the Community food distribution (plus local Cattleman’s beef). They are promising a variety of things – much from the big conglomerate, Conagra Brands. The local paper says beef, fresh fruits, vegetables, other perishables, and canned and packaged things. John arrived at 11:45 near staging by the Armory Bldg on 7thAvenue, near the north entrance to the Fairgrounds. They offered a lot more than they announced in the city Daily Record newspaper invitation. There is a 3-pound Beef roast, two bags of apples, one Pink Lady and one of Fuji apples; a small bag of baking potatoes; cans of pinto beans, two packages each of dried beans and dried fruit & nuts; a small carton of small curd cottage cheese; a large container of yogurt & a gallon of milk. There is a bag of yellow onions, and a bag of small oranges. There are “tater tots’ and flat potatoes of the same sort. Most of this stuff was in dreaded plastic bags, but there was one sealed cardboard box. We’ll dump about 2/3 of this stuff with the usual family next week, but she doesn’t want onions (and we have plenty). The gallon of milk needs a home too.

I began collecting comments at noon (with my computer), and ate my own lunch. I needed to set up the WordPress format to put the various descriptors in to fill it at the end of the lecture in the afternoon. This was supposedly all ready to go but somehow my document totally lost the links I submitted. I did not realize it Sunday night when processing the final copy that it was missing until after it was published at 12:30 a.m. Monday morning, and it was too late to fix it then.

I’m setting it up now at 9:30 am. Monday, Dec 14, 2020, as I previously.

#100 – Exotic Y: Siletzia

I e-mailed Carl Hurlburt’s research papers on Yellowstone Hot spot information to the study group along with some other links from him that are pertinent for Sunday’s last lecture by Nick.

Late afternoon photo at 4:22 p.m. taken from a drive around town by photographer, Lori Waters, and displayed on the Facebook page, Kittitas County Visual Delights.

I finished loading and running our dishwasher so we had clean dishes, bowls, and utensils for us and the animals.
The total number of robocaller connections for Dec 11=1.

Saturday, Dec 12

Had to be early morning to still have ice on the needles around this colorful Ponderosa pine cone:Christopher Cyrus Peterson took this early morning and published it on the Kittitas County Visual Delights site.

Not sure why my Friday nights are always becoming restless nights, that screw up my ability to get to sleep and make it imperative I always set up all the proper parts of my recording devices for my ICD measurements every time I’m out of bed and back in again. Guess I’ll also have to insert an afternoon nap into today’s schedule.

This morning was a mess and unfortunate situation with Woody in the new room.
John didn’t see Walter coming down the driveway and he got to the front porch window and knocked. John jumped up and went outside the front door and not back through the house, and so he’d not replaced to block to keep Woody from coming into the walk-in pantry/utility room. After he returned inside, he came in and we heard her meowing it the washroom, behind the gate, which she jumped over, and ran down the hallway hot on the tail of a cat she likes, Czar. I ran and closed the outside window on the doggy door so she couldn’t escape outside. I first found her in the back guest bedroom. After an hours relaxation time, we searched for her. John found her in the middle bedroom under the far corner of the bed. He had gotten a probing stick and flashlight. I stationed to watch where she went, and had blocked off some rooms of the parts of the house farther away from the kitchen access to the now opened gate.
Unfortunately, she came into the den, an okay thing, but ran over to the kitchen and not out through the washroom, and instead got up on a kitchen cabinet behind some dirty dishes. She stalled there and had to be encouraged off. She next ran under my recliner and then under the woodstove! He pulled the fencing from the stove and closed another spot in the den, and then he managed to get her out from under the stove, back through the washroom, and into the pantry. We got that door shut. Next, the swinging door to the new room – their room – could be propped open (Sue being still there) and with more encouragement she headed “home.” She hid in the back of her house bed (box), so we left her out there for quite a while. Finally, she came out and seems to have no hard feelings about her failed attempt to escape.

Walter is expected to come and work near the entrance in the morning, so John went out after lunch and took down the wire fencing he had used to capture her last week.
I have to get the dishwasher loaded and run before John wants to cook tonight’s supper. I completed that about 4:00 p.m.

We have to clean near the patio door in the den so the workers can come in and rebuild the edging and the frame around the wall. WE need a before photo. Will need to move the buffet out probably on the right hand side and a small wooden table that holds my ICD (Implanted Cardioverter Defibrillator) recorder (via a landline connnector–cell phones do now work with the unit, and it is read at 2:00 a.m., daily. Boxes, and other containers and other things piled on the floor under the table need to be moved out. I hope not my electric recliner. Now we’ve postponed that from Monday morning.

I wonder if I should send the late research papers that came in yesterday for Sunday morning lecture. I forgot this morning with all that happened. I decided to send them.
Brunch: John fixed bacon, eggs, fried Tater tots with purple onions he grew, and I had leftover instant coffee and PowerAde.

Supper: John started making Salmon Croquettes by a recipe I did not remember from my childhood. They had them at their family dinners too, but we have never had it since being together as a couple. He failed. It was strange. We had it with steamed rice and served with a bowl of canned peaches and lo-fat cottage cheese, small curd sort. That made the “quiche” more palatable. I don’t care to eat any of the leftovers. It started as canned Pink Salmon and ended more as a baked something, like quiche – no patties.

The total number of robocaller connections for Dec 12=0.

Sunday, Dec 13

I got up at 7:35, enjoyed a hot cup of coffee to warm up, plus a chocolate Ensure with French vanilla yogurt. Then on to readying my software and computer to collect information. I was ready to support and watch Nick Zentner’s 9:00 a.m. (this morning started at 8:40) for thank-yous.
Nick’s lecture at 9:00 a.m. (part two) ~ 10:00 when the first quit working. This still had the most viewers (ever I think), which were 1082 worldwide.
I began collecting comments at noon (with my computer), and ate my own lunch. I needed to set up the WordPress format to put the various descriptors in to fill it at the end of the lecture in the afternoon. This was supposedly all ready to go but somehow my document totally lost the links I submitted. I did not realize it Sunday night when processing the final copy that it was missing until after it was published at 12:30 a.m. Monday morning, and it was too late to fix it then.

#101 – Exotic Z: Putting It All Together!

#101 part 2 – Exotic Z: Putting It All Together!

Supper: Small pieces of chicken breast meat, fried, with crusty onion rings, large potato patties (nice & brown), almost like potato pancakes, & strawberries with cottage cheese in a little bowl. For dessert we’ll have Dutch Apple Pie.

The total number of robocaller connections for Dec 13=0.

Hope your week was fine.
Nancy and John
Still on the Naneum Fan