Saturday Oct 19
Already put a bit in about that day, but add now about the pounds of transparencies tossed — from filing cabinet drawers of teaching materials from John and from me. I worked on the song, My Grandfather’s Clock, and it was a chore. I had the music notation in one key (B flat), with no chords, the lyrics with chords in another key (C), which I had to transpose to the Key of D for our group. The key of G is too high for us to sing, and C was too low (off the G string on a violin). Meanwhile, I researched it and found what an OLD song it is (1876) and how it has been captured by the Bluegrass community and also sung by groups such as the Robert Shaw Chorale. Interesting history. I’m trying to get it ready to take tomorrow. (I succeeded, but found it was in the wrong key, except for our viola and bass fiddle player, so I changed it once home.)
Sunday, Oct 20
John is scheduled to leave at 6:00 a.m. for Tiger Mountain for a WTA work crew. I will be working up a web page on that trip, when I get all the photos. Stay tuned. Will give you the location link in next week’s blog.
I was scheduled for a bluegrass jam session at the Swauk-Teanaway Grange and ended up going up with Charlie (guitar) and Helga and only had to drive 7 miles to their house. I didn’t want to go on my own without my cell phone, which John had over on the west side. It was good we went. There were only 4 people there NOT in our music group, and 4 of us arrived, three with spouses.
Monday, Oct 21
After a late morning breakfast of leftover bacon with eggs and a nice pancake, we left to go pick Honeycrisp apples at friends across the valley. Picked 250 pounds, and then delivered some to friends and to the Adult Activity Center downtown, on our way from the hospital to get my INR (blood test). It is still low, so I guess that gives me the okay to drink some wine. We gave away a few apples to our favorite hospital staff members at the front desk and in the Lab.
Next photograph is an apple collage, described below.
In the picture on the right are 9 of the 10 boxes we picked–the front box had a few red delicious. Those are the old fashioned red delicious, so most likely they are. We don’t like the newer taller tasteless ones. We think the rest were primarily Honeycrisp, possibly with a few Jonagolds thrown in. They are very similar in looks, but not so in taste; the Honeycrisps seem to be crisper. Thus far every one tasted has been a Honeycrisp.
On the left of the above collage are pictures John took on the second picking on Thursday. We didn’t have our camera along on Monday, so this was my special request, and he fulfilled it. The top of the left column displays one of a bad apple. These Honeycrisps were not viable for commercial sale, because of moth damage. The middle photo is beautiful with the lovely red apples mixed with the fall colored leaves. Finally, on the bottom left is John’s capture of the moon in a nice blue sky behind some lovely apples. I see a flying bird in that picture, shaped by the apple tree leaves. Do you see it?
Tuesday, Oct 22
Off to Yakima, in two cars. On the way to the foot doctor, we dropped off John’s Subaru for its 60,000 mile maintenance work. We’ll have to retrieve it another day within the next 3. From there we left together and drove to my doctor’s office 5 miles away. I probably should spare you my frustration, but I think I will share it in case a similar thing ever happens to you. Speaking up was necessary today. I was called in right on time for my 10:30 a.m. appointment. The young “assistant” took me into a room and said, please wait here just a few minutes until the room across the hallway opens up. She closed the door on the way out. I impatiently waited almost a half hour, got up, opened the door and walked into the hallway. I saw a man waiting in the main examination chair of the room I was waiting for. There were some staff members standing down a few doors by a counter, and I got their attention by walking out and staring. One person said, can we help you? I said, “I assume I have been forgotten.” Just as they were listening, out walked the gal who was the attendant who left me. I said, “Did you forget me?” She said, “Oh no, I’m just waiting for this room to open up.” I boldly said, well, I should be in that room, not him– his appointment was 10:45, and AFTER mine. I knew my doctor was also his, (I heard him check in next to me, with another desk greeter), so I felt comfortable in saying that. She said she would talk to the Dr. and get back to me. I left the door open and sat down. My doctor came in very soon, and ushered me down the hall to the place where the laser equipment is, and went ahead and took care of the preliminary part that would have occurred where the man was sitting in the chair. I sincerely wonder how long they would have left me there. My “treatment” was over in 15 minutes, and I left.
From there we went for a lunch at Jack in the Box, and then on to Costco. Today, John bought a ladder, strong, that can extend to 15′. It will support 300 pounds. His best ladder is falling apart and when we looked at ladders at Bi*Mart, they were flimsily built only to sustain 200 pounds. Also filled up with dog and cat food, and picked up some yummy Danish pastries for us, some cheese for sandwiches, and some frozen food for the neighbor.
Wednesday, Oct 23
Actually, our morning was busy cleaning the kitchen for the repairman to arrive. About 9:37 a.m. the Culligan man came to service all our units. It’s going to be over $400. Yikes. Most of the parts are new a year or so ago except for the iron removal one. It is 25 years old and they no longer have parts for it. If it quits we will have to get a new one at a cost of about 3 grand. The 4 small filters under the kitchen sink performed nicely during our recent water issue. Crystal clear water was provided for drinking and cooking throughout the days of the problem with the storage tank and the pressure switch. The company wants customers to get into a yearly maintenance agreement “to protect the units”, not to mention their cash flow. We didn’t sign up for that originally but have now. Gives peace of mind and it’s only money. Right? This is a yearly required maintenance, filter changes, and checking the system. We did have two O rings leaking that needed replaced ($10) plus multiple filters and checking that everything worked as designed. We are going to put 15 to 20 gallons of the highly filtered water in gallon (or 2 liter) containers – then use and replace one a day. While moving boxes around last week, we found two 1 gallon containers of water with a 2003 date. We think that will go on a plant, but it still looks good. Today I left for the food bank soup kitchen music and on to SAIL class. Wow, 20 people in exercise SAIL today. John worked in the yard on various projects. Once home, I began searching for details about John’s getting the Ellensburg-Yakima Commuter bus to get himself to Yakima to pick up his Subaru. The fare is $4.00 one-way. Not sure yet when he will go, but wish to coordinate with my schedule on Thursday or Friday. Luckily, the Subaru dealer is willing to send a shuttle to pick him up at the Yakima Transit Center. It is possible, so they say, to get a transfer and then ride a city bus on a route that has a stop just 100 yards from the car place. The on-line city info with multi-colored routes coming and going wasn’t (for John) sufficiently helpful while indicating (maybe) a very circuitous route to get 10 blocks. Who knows? John called the dealer and watched the ‘odd’ Yakima characters at the transit center (that’s PC for bus depot) for a few minutes until his ride (a 2014 Outback) arrived and whisked him over to retrieve the car. The car had developed a cold-start rattle that the service rep recognized from our description. The heat shield around the exhaust wears over time and then during cold weather contracts just enough that 2 metal parts touch. The fix is a few properly positioned and gentle “tack” welds. Silent again.
Thursday, Oct 24
John went by himself and picked more Honeycrisp apples this morning with the help (again)of my former student who lives on the property. I believe they picked again as much as previously on Monday. We have been dishing out apples all over town.
Music today was at Hearthstone, and I dropped John off an hour early to get on the bus for Yakima to pick up his car. While he was waiting for the bus, he ran into our hay broker. All went well, and we expect the problem with the rattle noise (described above) was fixed by the dealer (at some cost to us). I haven’t seen the bill, but know it was over a grand (the timing belt also was replaced). Most of the cost is labor (~70%) so replacing the belt while the transmission is apart seems the way to go, rather than go another 5K or 10K and then incur all the labor cost again. It’s only money, right?
Friday, Oct 25
Noon luncheon at the special conference room in the SURC (Student Union Recreation Center). This is a beautiful board room with huge leather chairs and a humongous mahogany table. There are a dozen leather chairs with the Wildcat paw print on them on both sides of the table. I took some photos and had my own taken with my Halloween (cute pumpkins-in-love sweatshirt). This is the same room where we have our Christmas potluck, and John always attends with his two requested Pecan pies.
Left above is the board room, and the right above is Gabriella Bacon and me at AAC.
I went from the scholarship luncheon to the AAC Halloween party to take some photos especially of my friend & neighbor, who I knew was dressing in her Hershey Kiss costume. Another friend took our picture, and I took a few for the staff at the center because they were busy putting on the party. There were many different games to play (with monopoly money), and winning some in return to be used in an auction at the end to fight for donations local businesses gave. One was to drop pennies into a small pint jar covered with water, inside an aquarium. Another was to throw bean bags into holes on a slanted board. Another was 3 softball throws at a stack of large fruit cans piled into a pyramid. I did best on that, and second best on throwing 3 darts at balloons. It was a lot of fun. From the auction, the only thing I brought home was a plastic fly swatter and a happy face spoon (plastic) with holes in it, to be used as a ladle to drain juice, we guess.
While I was out playing, John worked on putting the new tags on the front bumper of the truck. It was a totally frustrating experience and took him 1.5 hours, but it is now done. I left out the entire story, because I know it pains him to even think about it.
He started moving stuff from in front of an old refrigerator in our shed, we brought here in 1989 from Idaho. We do not heat that shed, and the frig does not do well (especially the freezer unit), when the temperature in the building gets so cold. He will move it from there to our garage, where we have access to heat to keep the water softener and other systems warm during the winter. [John says: most fridges have only one inner control so the freezer doesn’t work properly if the just-cold part is naturally below its threshold for chilling.]
Saturday, Oct 26
Today was clean-up work on moving and sorting things day. John was ahead of me outside. I worked in the house on clothes washing and doing dish washer preparation. I worked through some of the other emails needing attention and planning for the potluck party with some of our music group tomorrow night.
The collage of two photos above, in front of the big shed to the left, out of view, where the junk and stuff needed to be moved out for John to access the old Hotpoint refrigerator. The top photo shows a black chair I sat in to sort boxes of old materials (mostly books) from our past. I had two apple crates to put stuff I wanted to share with colleagues and friends. I had a box for Urban & Economic, Environment & Resources, Quantitative Methods and Statistics in Geography, and another couple of boxes for paper, magazines, plastic, and garbage unrecyclable stuff. I worked straight for 3 hours, with one break to get a drink. John put in a full day. He has since moved the two boxes of stuff to recycle with specific people into the garage, where I can get names from them and share with folks to see if they want a copy of the book. I’m not carrying a box of books in, if the items in it are unwanted. I saved a bunch of magazines, I can take to our City Library, and put on shelves for others (a take and replace thing). It is a service to the community which the Hal Holmes community center provides. I can take paperbacks (fiction) to the Adult Activity Center, as well as magazines. I found some Audubon magazines from 1992, which I will give to our friends active in the local chapter. One of the funniest things we found was a large box of plastic containers for old magnetic tape data storage from 1970s & ’80s mainframe computers. A day ago, John had found a large box full of plastic containers for protecting VCR/VHS tapes better than the paper holders which do not prevent dust from entering. No one uses the technology anymore, and the Media Circulation at the University Library, has suspended its operation. No one shows 16mm movies anymore either. How times change! Guess it was time for me to retire.
The bottom shot in the above clean-up collage consists mostly of sorted and packed boxes which now are in the back of the pickup to take to the paper products recycling place in town. In addition, are two boxes of dried split wood pieces (nothing bigger than a loaf of bread) which John will deliver to our neighbors across the street, next week. Those have been in the shed for about 7 years – dry by now?
John cooked me a dish to take to the potluck tomorrow night. It is beautiful, with about 50 cubes of Golden Health squash, cooked in brown sugar and with pecans, in an extremely large square Corning Ware dish we picked up at a yard sale a few years ago. In between eating dinner and washing a load of dishes, I now passed this to John for him to work on for posting. He gets to leave an hour later Sunday morning for WTA trail work. Two adults and 4 teens from a YMCA are coming and they have a policy of not starting before 9:30 so WTA has gone along. This is a new trail at Park Pointe, a City of Issaquah park on a plot with a long and troubled history. It is 102-acres on the edge of Tiger Mountain, adjacent to Issaquah High School. The City of Issaquah preserved Park Pointe (that final ‘e’ was a Canadian developer’s naming; now bankrupt) as part of a 2010 agreement involving a transfer of development rights to protect open space and views near the city. A trail system is being developed for the area that will provide a loop trail within the property and connections to the High School trail and other access trails on Tiger Mtn. Some of this trail system will be completely new trails and some will follow the trace of old logging roads. When finished, the trails should be a couple of miles in length. Probably because it is a new trail, there will be mostly brushing and grubbing work needed. No structures to be built, yet. On his way home and back to the potluck (6:00 p.m. here in Ellensburg), he plans to go by the Tiger Mtn trail where he worked last Sunday, to take some finished project photos.
Hope your week was fine.
Nancy and John
Still on the Naneum Fan