County Fair with school to follow . . .

03_Hurray
. . . neither of concern to us.

Sunday, Aug 24

You know by now the blog did not get out Saturday night when it was written and ready, because when John went to put it into Word Press, the access site was down. I reached the owner of the business to tell him, (via email), but he said he had updated the server the day before (or maybe it was yesterday), and that he wouldn’t be able to check it until he was in the shop Monday morning.
Well, today started with thunder in the hills and has continued most of the day. We have been trying to do all sorts of things. I’ve been working on stacks of to-do things and still am at it. John went out to move the boxes of stuff from the horse trailer so he could try to get our youngest horse into the trailer to take in to the vet soon. His eye-stye flared up again, so it cannot be done with a pasture visit. This may turn out to be a problem with the rodeo and county fair starting this week. Some of the vets have to be there to inspect incoming animals so vet availability for local visits is more or an issue than at other times of the year.
I managed to figure today how to put The Old Rugged Cross into my software. It will be a challenge to get it into a key our clarinet can play. I managed to have the original score in the key of Bb, but that would be difficult for the strings to play, so I needed to transpose it to a minor D key (with one flat = ﻁ) and then work with that, changing the chords to the key of F for the guitar players. Then I had to create a version for those guitar players who cannot play chords in the key of F, to D, so they can use their CAPO on the 3rd fret. I know this it more explanation than necessary, but it lets readers know the effort that goes into putting certain songs into my software. The reason you have already heard is to be able to transpose to a key matching our Bﻁ clarinet player’s music to our key (different by hers being 2 #s higher, or one flat fewer). Back to Old Rugged. After I got it into F, I could not transpose from there to a key the clarinet player could play. I had to raise her notes a full step and change the key signature to one sharp (F) to merge it properly. I wasn’t able to figure out how to do that using the computer system until a day passed, and then had to use white-out and hand-enter the # on all the staffs.

Monday, Aug 25

I stayed home again today to make headway on the stack of boxes. I filled at least two boxes — one with magazines not worth sharing at the Senior Center (AAC), and another with office paper. Those will be taken to the recycle center (donated) where we don’t have to pay a fee as we do for normal trash; worth it because of the weight of the papers & magazines. In between time I took care of more receipt keeping and bill paying. I just got a message from our friend Suzy West, mentioning her impending retirement and she used the term in the phrase, “Supposed to be updating the financials. Better go.” I smiled and recognized my need to change my description of my such work here. In addition, I entered all John’s volunteer hours (trail work) for the month, and all my volunteered music time to the community, as well. Those have to be submitted at the first of the month. These reported hours help the local volunteer organization in their fund-raising efforts but don’t do much for us, except for receiving a nice free meal once a year at the fairgrounds, provided for all county volunteers.
Good BLTs for lunch with our own tomato. John picked many plums today, small tomatoes, and squash (all yellow). We delivered to 3 neighbors all of the above, plus two got some of the white onions mentioned in last week’s blog. Tonight John fixed the first harvested Acorn squash. It was not as ripe as it should be so we have to learn how to tell when they are. [When the spot on the ground becomes orange; meaning they have to be turned over to tell.] He fixed it anyhow and it was fine, just light yellow instead of orange. It went fine with the leftover roast, an English muffin, and we will have “doctored” plums with ice cream for dessert.
Managed to figure out the music problem from yesterday, mentioned above. I can print the score, but it will have the one flat of our key on the beginning of every staff of measures. I did fix with white out and added one # (F) by hand. Then I copied from that master. It surely beats transcribing all notes by hand. I would never have time, patience, or energy to do that manually. It’s difficult enough on the computer.

Tuesday, Aug 26

Began with an early morning wake-up call, not the best way to start the day. We just got through eating a late brunch, and plums were included with the meal. They are so very tasty. We have both been busy on chores. John did not have to travel to Snoqualmie Pass to move rocks today – we have our own. He manually moved 50 to 100 # today from a spot he has been tossing them 1 or 2 at a time over the past 3 years to an out-of-the-way bigger pile. He did this while the dogs were checking out the morning’s new smells. More usefully, he picked 2 pounds of beautiful blackberries from the thornless bushes. As most of the other fruit trees and bushes, this year, they are loaded. Alternating between cleaning dishes, working on music, mail, email, “updating financials,” killing flies (bugging the heck out of both of us; now fruit flies in addition), vacuuming dust of years off some items before sorting, sorting, recycling, waiting on hold forever trying to get cancelled on a postal mailing list coming from Utah. That last never happened. I seem to spend half my life unsubscribing from unsolicited email or postal mail promotions, or getting rid of other such printed copies, such as academic publications no longer needed. Companies seem to sell mailing lists and we get solicitations from places of zero interest or need to us. Some are age related – hearing tests, prepaid burial – and some auto promotions – “We want your 2009 Subaru ‘cause we need used cars.” – yeah, right!

Wednesday, Aug 27

Stayed home because my banjo buddy who plays at the food bank soup kitchen with me was out of town. I spent the day cleaning and working on music for the next two months, for our Thursday group’s playing. John watered and worked on various yard projects, picked some blueberries, and I took many of the picked things and put them in a chef salad tonight, including things not customarily found therein, such as blueberries and blackberries. Also we had a few teardrop shaped plums colored red/purple on the inside with a cling-type seed, unlike the clingless round ones. Sliced and into the salad they went. Both our plum trees produce very sweet and tasty plums. The first picture below shows two of the last of the dahlias John planted in the newer garden, to differentiate it from the older Tiger Lily garden. Here they are displayed on the only zucchini in our garden. We normally do not consider growing zucchini at all, but this plant came from a bought package of seeds marked straight–necked yellow summer squash. We have harvested a lot of squash this year as well, and have given away a bunch all over town, but the plants are showing stress and likely will be ending their production very soon. Many of the over-grown squash have ended up in our neighbor’s hog farm, or in another neighbor’s zucchini pickle relish.
01_Plums 2 colors plus more

02_plums only

The round plums are all off the same productive tree with a few left in the refrigerator. There are about 4 pounds of the red ones on a different tree, just now ripening.

Thursday, Aug 28

This morning we tried to get ready for carrying produce to town. We took two separate autos because I had to stop at the hospital for a blood draw, go on to music, and John had to go to the grocery and to Les Schwab to check out buying new tires for his 2009 Subaru. Last time in, the service dept claimed we needed new tires. They gave us a “quote” and said they didn’t make any money on the Cooper Tires. John went to Les Schwab today (a western chain we have bought from since arriving in Idaho in 1974), to check out a sale in progress. The current tires had been purchased there as a 70,000 mile tire and with just 43,000 mi. on them. John wanted their take on the issue, which was: You don’t need new tires. These have at least 10,000 miles left on them. Because of the all-wheel-drive, some miles on Forest Service roads, and high speeds on rough I-82 & I-90**, the tires are worn more than anticipated. Even so, if they don’t make it to 70,000, Les Schwab will give us an adjustment when we buy new ones. How’s that for a great reason to stick with them? They could easily have sold us 4 tires today. John bought a frozen turtle pie to celebrate. And, in addition, a new hickory ax handle.
Turtle-PIe
04_ax handle

[**Concrete sections were put over unstable ground so after a decade or two of moving around, the WA-DOT had many hundreds of rectangular holes cut in the road way, inserted steel connectors, and refilled the holes. These are rough little parts and go for miles. They were very selectively placed in the road so that normal positioning of a car in its lane directs the tires to hit thousands of these – like a small pothole every second. Great planning. Our government at its finest!]

John picked fruit and veggies this morning, and I packaged them up for people in our “band.” I sorted some yellow pear tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, squash, blackberries, and plums (two types) to fill special requests. While we had both plums still (because the larger are no more), we took a photo (displayed above in Wednesday’s discussion).
We played music at Hearthstone Cottages today at 2:00 to 3:00 and they always provide cookies and tea/coffee/water for us at the end. I took along one a new song in two keys to see which works better for us. It went all right after all. They had chocolate-chip cookies at the end, and I brought two home (one for each of us). Several musicians were not there because of being out of town, but three of them because of participating in events at the Fair and Rodeo that goes through Labor Day. We try to stay away from town this weekend. On the way home I went by our Grocery Outlet store to buy lettuce and canned cat food for a much cheaper price. I had a special coupon for $5 off a $25 purchase for this weekend only, so I used it and saved! It was stuff I have to buy anyway. No frills or useless spending, and their prices are significantly competitive.

Friday, Aug 29

At 4:30 am we were awakened by a dog barking – not ours – across the creek on the west side of our property. For an hour. Crazy. John had to leave at 7:00 a.m. for Snow Lake Trail, so about 5:30 we both got up for the day.
I’m glad the fires are out. The winds have been very high for hours. Last hour were up to 30 mph with 39 mph gusts, and before the day was over, they were 40 mph.
Got a note from a friend she couldn’t access our blog, getting an Internal Server error. I checked and got the same thing. Thank goodness I knew in time to call the office and they said they would leave a message on the boss’s cell phone. Jason, the owner, fixed it and called me back. He was still sending upgrades to various parts of his system, and neglected to put in some security code on our account to let others onto my site to read our blog. I’m glad my friend looked while he was still available. However, now I have his cell phone # if this happens again, outside working hours.
I worked more on music today, putting in “Don’t Fence Me In” (which turned out to be more time-consuming than intended), and I worked to finalize “Waltz Across Texas,” which also had some unexpected difficult spots. I have only to enter the chords now on both.
I never took a nap, because neither did John. We had a nice dinner. Leftover fries from yesterday’s lunch wtih new white onions John grew and fried with mushrooms he bought yesterday. Then he made small ground beef patties. It was a nice meal. The only thing we might have added would have been tomatoes. I didn’t think about it at the time, and the plate was full. John had taken some for his lunch, anyway, and I had had many myself too. I put catsup or ketchup (Who knew?) on my hamburger. It was all very tasty.
Trying to go to bed early, considering how early we were up this morning, and a long day of work, (John worked harder than I did). He was on the Snow Lake Trail, moving roots and rocks out of the path. They had a small group but 2 new personalized green hats (for 5 days of volunteering) were awarded. Those two were the least experienced of the crew, and with a knowledgeable bunch they got a lot of work done.

Saturday, Aug 30
05_3centstamp
When we were born 1st class letters cost 3¢.
When we were married (1969) the cost was 6¢.
This morning the cost is 49¢.

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