Sunday, May 26
John went back out while I was proofing his additions to the blog, to set up hoses from the irrigation ditch up along the driveway. Fruit trees, evergreens, and veggies will all need water this week.
I finished and returned to putting dishes in the dishwasher. Now, I’m back checking on a few more computer chores before I tackle accumulating paperwork.
John’s back and putting the text and pictures into WordPress.
We may get this published a lot earlier this Sunday than in recent months. Just published it at 5:38 p.m., but I need to go back on YouTube and tidy up all the ones I listed this week.
Monday, May 27 Memorial Day
On the Naneum Fan, several of us and neighbors display the Nation’s flag on certain days. Ours is out. On the right is the family cemetery of the Nason Band of the Yakama Nation, on Allen Aronica’s land. Ida Nason was his mother. The burial plots are just 1 mile north of us.
I just took a video from here. Cottonwood trees are background for the flag. We have one taller tree on our property, probably over 100 years old, and during the movie, you will see much cottonwood fluff, swirling in the background. It piles up in places all over the area.
Movie from the end of our driveway:
Memorial Day – Naneum Fan 5-27-19
John and I went for a walk up the driveway and Companion Czar (cat), and Annie (dog) walked along.
I’m back to filing receipts.
Tuesday, May 28
Award for our Brittany (Daisy) and her mom (Ginny) in California
I reached TurboTax and found I need an extra home & business app ($10) to include a 1099-PATR form. I have the Premier edition and I should not have to add that to report income from a Co-op (Midstate), where we buy fence equipment, bird feed, and occasionally salt blocks. So, I changed the way I reported it, using a 1099-DIV. It will be included in my form because it has been reported to the IRS, and we will be covered as reporting the income. Actually the check we received with the report was only $13, and the reported dividend was $40 (70% is deferred; that means – we think – we have an additional $40 worth of stock in the Co-op. We need an explanation of this).
Medical: I changed to a 10:45 a.m. check-in to see Chelsea on Friday. She is our “doctor” of the certified physician’s assistant type.
Today I had my gold tooth crown put on. It took over an hour, but ½ hour was waiting for another patient’s dental work to be completed. My noon appointment didn’t start until 12:35, and Sheryl (receptionist, also a previous dental assistant), removed my temporary cap. John went to Bi-Mart (for weed spray) and Super 1 for oranges and got back about the time I should have been finished. From there we went to the KVH hospital lab for my standing order to have my blood drawn. From there on to one more stop and home.
We had quite a thunderstorm this afternoon in the hills. People in Ellensburg experienced hail. Fortunately, we had none or much of the gardens would have been hurt badly.
I spent the afternoon trying to work out problems I was having with TurboTax.
Late call from my PCP, Chelsea regarding my needing update of a standing order. Potassium will go on quarterly standing order, and not with the INR (monthly). Lacey never called, so I don’t know the potassium reading today. INR was 2.0; I’ll be checked again in 2 weeks to see if the antibiotic affected it, and we changed my dosage a little on Saturdays.
I fixed my iceberg lettuce tonight remove the bad leaves and cut out the center with a plastic knife. Then put it in a bowl that John kindly helped me cover. It will be all ready and crisp in the morning to make my salad to take to the FISH food bank to eat after we provide music.
John always helps me by cubing the smoked turkey, apple, and I might have him cut up some yellow, orange, or red peppers. I add the rest to take with me.
Dinner tonight was a nice large bowl of soup: base was Progresso’s Chicken & vegetables with Wild Rice, and John added more carrots, smoked turkey cubes, and colored bell pepper pieces. I added Cheezits to mine. He had a couple of slices of Rosemary Olive bread toasted and some home fries.
I have continued filing and sorting receipts, and he has napped.
He was quite busy in the yard most of the day, plus late afternoon, he loaded rocks in his backpack and walked up and down our driveway several times, getting ready for his weekend of trail work on the new trail at Manastash Ridge. He plans to add carrying tools in each hand in preparation for the steep climb in on Saturday. They will then work on Sunday and carry out the tools. The predicted temperatures are not promising in the high 80s. Sunday I will be going on a Nick Zentner field trip to Wenatchee, driving myself and my friend Roberta Buum. We will have very hot temperatures too.
Tonight we had a scammer call from someone claiming to be our relative. He started by saying, Hi Grandma, this is your oldest grandson.” I said, you have the wrong number, I don’t have any grandchildren. He said, “Oh, I was just joking, I’m your oldest nephew – and asked how I was doing.” I said I was fine and how was he? He said he was not well, and needed to talk to us about something serious. I asked who it was and then mentioned the name Rod. He said yes, and he asked me to get John on the phone. (I had not said John’s name.) Once John got on, he said we had to promise not to tell anyone – that it was just our secret between us. John got on, and he proceeded with the story, but neither one of it thought it sounded like Rod and his story was quite strange. We started asking him questions, such as where are you calling from? From Seattle was the answer. I said what are you doing there? Our Rod lives back east.) John asked where he flew in from and when?
After realizing that we were not believing him, he hung up. Too bad we didn’t talk long enough to see how much money he was going to ask us to send him. The story was he was with a friend in a car, stopped by a policeman, who gave the driver a ticket for talking on his cell phone, held up to his ear; but then the policeman asked the driver to step out and open the trunk. Found it was full of drugs. All were taken to the police station. The call said Private Caller (no number) on our Caller ID. The only Private Caller calls I have ever had are from my PCP’s office.
I did a search on “private caller scam taxi trunk drugs I’m in police station” and this link was first to come up:
Try this Link
Check that out – it’s very familiar to what we just heard. I’m going to tell my doctor’s office to start talking and leave a message, because if I’m home, I will no longer answer a “Private Caller” call, until I hear it is someone with whom I want to talk.
My dentist office sometimes comes through that way as well. So I have to remember to tell them.
See Saturday below for a Letter to the Editor John wrote to our local paper, the Daily Record.
Wednesday, May 29
I’ll be making some phone calls in the morning before going to set up and play music at the food bank lunch.
Must get all my stuff together better than last week, when I forgot to pack significant stuff. I did, and John helped as usual with cubing parts for me – smoked turkey, cheese, and apples. I added all the rest and packed it along. We played music and checked in for all the things, and I set up the chairs and music stands. Then we ate. I had a little spaghetti & meatballs, a large container of applesauce with pieces of apple in it, and brought home a piece of apple cake. Ate ¾ of my salad, so will have it, adding some pistachios, tonight with supper.
From there I went to the Adult Activity Center for an exercise class (SAIL). While there, I picked up a lemon jelly roll that was being given away. After class, I went to Super 1 for dry cat food, but I had been quoted the wrong price for the 16 lbs. I needed it, so I left there and went to Bi-Mart, where I paid $11.99. The cats all eat it, and it saves us the mess and expense of canned food.
Thursday, May 30
I took care of things in the back of the house. Am loading dishwasher. Finished the music to take today – turned out to have problems, once there and we started to play it. The chorus was missing on The Three Bells, and the Ring of Fire needs to be rewritten. Neither were in our software, where we can add lyrics, notes, and change keys.
Cle Elum music and gas trip: We were scheduled to meet at 1:00 p.m. I checked with Storey’s about cost of gasoline with credit card and how to do it (at the pump). I can use Discover. Yes, it will be 10 cents more, $3.27 (still below anything in Ellensburg by 10 cents). Using my Discover gets me 5% off. 12 gals at $3.27 is $39.24 – 5% ($1.96) = $37.28 / 12 = $3.11/gal. Convincing evidence.
Packed cameras for use tonight at Science Hall geology talk.
Going to a jam session today in Cle Elum. We were inside (good thing). The temperature in Cle Elum was 86. We had 9 folks of our normal Thursday group there, plus a guest, a musician friend of two of our members. What a surprise; it turns out he knew me from our days of field trialing. He had German Shorthair Pointers, not Brittanys as we; he was a judge at many Brittany trials.
I picked up some fast food in Cle Elum on my way home, because we needed to be at the university for a lecture at the local chapter of the Ice Age Floods Institute meeting, where I normally film the evening lecture (unfortunately the only one filming). Tonight we will hear about Washington before the Cascade Mountains formed.
Jeff Tepper presented, “The Eocene Transformation of Washington Geology: From the Accretion of the Olympics to the Birth of the Cascades.” Eocene was 56 to 33.9 million years ago. Jeff is a geology prof at Tacoma’s University of Puget Sound.
Sad story with my filming tonight. (1) I lost the first 45 minutes (camera malfunction while recording—leaving a file behind with 0 bytes) ending at 7:45; (2) part is 16 minutes of the rest of the lecture, and then (3) is the Questions & Answers, for 22 minutes.
Next video only of the last part of the hour’s lecture.
(2) Jeff Tepper: The Eocene Transformation of Washington Geology
The next video is of Jeff Tepper, answering questions from the audience.
(3) Jeff Tepper: Q & A 5-30-19 Eocene Transformation of WA Geology
Our late sunset view – – – almost home
I started working on the cameras and was sincerely disappointed in the results and failure to capture the fascinating presentation.
Evening dessert: Vanilla ice cream over pecan pie and lemon jelly roll piece with coconut on top. We were taking care of left-overs.
Late night for Nancy working on images/videos.
Friday, May 31
We made it to our friend Kristin’s house to pick her up to go to Cle Elum for lunch, but first stop was my PCP’s office, to visit Chelsea.
Leave at 9:40 for Kristin. We got there a bit earlier than planned and had plenty of time to be at the Cle Elum Clinic in time for my check in. First, I spoke with the medical assistant, which is common for a visit. I didn’t see the doc until ~ 11:00 and spent ½ hr with her. It was a useful visit. We caught up on some of my medical history not in the records (because of the switch of record provider), and she wanted to know more about my heart issues, as she is having to control the refills for heart related issues. She also asked questions about my shoulder arthritis problem with range of motion.
I need to request my consultation report from Dr. Matsen be sent over to Chelsea Newman; I thought it was requested at the time, but it was not in their records.
From there the three of us went to lunch at the Cottage Cafe. John and Kristin had $10 coupons for their birthdays. We probably spent 1-1/2 hrs in there because so many people (more than we have ever seen) were having lunch. We had a chance to have a nice visit while waiting for our food.
Saturday, Jun 1
At 7:40 a.m., John left for a WTA work party at Manastash Ridge. Today and tomorrow will conclude WTA’s 4 days of work on this reroute of an old trail. I stayed home to work on things getting ready for going tomorrow and this afternoon.
John’s Letter to the Editor in Daily Record was published in today’s weekend edition (You were already introduced to this above in this blog on Tuesday, when the phone call arrived):
Old, well-known scam still being tried
To the Editor:
Early last evening (Tuesday) we answered a phone, and the caller told my wife he was our oldest grandson. Having no children, we don’t have grandsons either. He then said he was just kidding and was a nephew, that he was in trouble because of being in a car, stopped by Seattle Police, that had drugs in the trunk. Oddly, his voice was not the voice of anyone in our family.
We have no relatives in the state of Washington, and none within 1,000 miles, so the next question was where did he fly from to get to Seattle. With that, he hung up. Too bad. We never learned how much money he needed to solve whatever his problem was.
This sort of scam is old and well known. Apparently it works often enough that it continues. We live in rural Kittitas County.
John F. Hultquist, Ellensburg
~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ 
This afternoon at 3:00 p.m., I’m going to a lecture, by Jack Nisbet, pictured above (from his website).
The long title of the talk is: “I Can Hardly Sit Down to Write”: Imagining the Geography of the Columbia Plateau.
In the wake of Lewis and Clark’s brief visit to the Columbia River drainage, it took a wide range of approaches to flesh out a portrait of the region’s geography. This slide presentation will focus on how fur agent David Thompson, horticultural collector David Douglas, and prospector John Leiberg tapped into long-held local knowledge to make their own touchstone contributions.
I am taking both cameras and my tripod, in hopes the old camera continues working after the problem it suffered Thursday night this week.
John Bowen comments before introducing our speaker
Jack Nisbet Geography of the Columbia Plateau
Jack Nisbet: Q & A, 6-1-19_Columbia Plateau Geography
Sunday, June 2
John will leave at 7:30 and return about 3:30 from the WTA trail work. I leave an hour later for the field trip about Wenatchee area, Columbia River, and Ice Age Floods – with Nick Zentner.
I stopped by S. Maple for Roberta, my sidekick for the trip, early and it gave us time to use her hose and a large squeegee pad on a pole to wash off an amazing amount of bugs. She also had fluid for the tank of wind shield washer. The yellow blinking warning light the fluid was low would have bothered us the whole trip, 223 miles. That was about 9:35 and we had lots of time to get up to the CWU parking lot.
We were on the road promptly from Hebeler behind the lead van at 10:01. We had people to meet at the first stop who were coming in from other locations.
I only have one video transcribed, but this will have you coming back for the rest next week, I hope. We had 4 stops on an all-day (very hot, temperatures 89°). It was very informative and worth taking.
John and others with WTA finished the new section of trail, about 2,000 feet total. On Saturday, Anna Roth (an orange hat, like John) came over from Seattle, both to work and to take photos. There is a “National Trails Day” and WTA will have about 20 crews working. Each crew had a photographer and Anna took bunches of photos. We’ll post a link later. The idea, though, is to have a good photo from each location to be printed in the next WTA Newsletter.
In 2018, the many events across the USA involved almost 4,000 miles of trails.
Hope your week was fine.
Nancy and John
Still on the Naneum Fan