Category: Random issues

Sunday, Nov 11  Happy Veteran’s Day to all our friends who fought for our freedom around the world, in different wars.  We have friends still living who fought in WW II, Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

This morning we awoke to a chilly morning, but the temperatures were only in the high 20s and not the high teens predicted.  That gives John another day to fix up the cathouse with heat and light.  The cats will have to start coming into the little building for water and food, and sleeping in a warmer environment.  In case you missed last year’s building (cathouse) construction, check:  www.ellensburg.com/nancyh/2011cathouse.html

As my computer was starting up this morning (slowly), keeping me from visiting the web, I opened my SongWriter software and continued putting in notes for A Jolly Holly Christmas.  I still need to enter chords, words, and critical markings.  This is the only one I have to do because we have a bunch from last year that are all ready to go, with lyrics for the audiences.

This one was never transposed and I need to fix it for our Clarinet player.  I think last year she just did it by ear, when we told her the key and the beginning note.

I knew John planned to walk me around the projects, for a photographic record and update on what happened to change the landscape, so I dressed up for the cold.  I had my head covered well and my body, but I should have put on wool socks.  I wore gloves, but cannot take photos with them, so my right hand got cold.  John showed me first the size of the tractor used, by standing in front of the front-end loader.  It is amazingly larger than ours or even than the one our pole builder used.  We walked around the other side and took a photo of the first project at the end of the driveway to the pole building, where they are going to put in culverts covered by rocky “soil” to a new level height, getting rid of the sharp dip.  The rear of the travel trailer scrapes now – actually 2 v-shaped metal pieces installed for protection of the trailer itself – They gouge the soil and lift the trailer.  A new level drive will prevent this.  From there we walked over to the round pen area, where the land is being dug and moved to allow the round pen panels to be properly seated.  New panels have thick wood along the base, like this (almost) . . .

http://www.wwmanufacturing.com/images/steelsiderp.jpg

. . . with a slope in, starting halfway down.  That means there is a kink or “dog-leg-bend” in them.  The pen has to be on level ground for the connectors to lock in place.  This style is much safer than this one:

http://images1.americanlisted.com/nlarge/corral_round_pen_panels_gates_67_available_free_delivery_29809199.jpg

Note the openings at the bottom that an excited/running/kicking horse can put a hoof through.  One of our old ones is bent badly from a hoof hitting the intersection of the J-shaped piece where it is welded to the bottom rung.  I chose this photo of the green panel because it seems to be standing up without support.  Ours won’t do that!

 

Our ground has layers of rock right next to fine dirt/soil.  The ancient stream coming out of the canyon to our north left many rock-filled channels and areas in between with sand and other finer deposited material.  The rocky parts are the high spots and ribbons that run across our property. There is an outcrop of small rocks right where the round pen needs to go.  The landscaper is using the big machine, now the backhoe part, to dig out the area, and separate the mostly-rocks into one pile and the mostly-dirt into another.  I took pictures of the soil horizon and the activity in progress.  He will use his front-end loader to move the rocks to the driveway leveling project and cover the culverts.  The plans are for him to move the dirt down into a depression where John will make a large additional garden for sun-loving plants.  John has had to move some fence posts (old telephone poles), three baby trees, and disentangle an old barbed wire fence, to prepare for this.  He got some help with removal of the two posts yesterday.  The link below transfers you to the start of our landscape change story.  It will be a continuing saga, so stay tuned:

www.ellensburg.com/nancyh/LandscapeChangeNaneumFan.html

On back to clean-up, sort-out chores.  Stopping for pizza, after a break to finish A Holly Jolly Christmas.  Now it’s finished, transposed, and mailed to the computer (the one with a printer) in the back room.  We finished a nice pizza John doctored up with adding our tomatoes, some red peppers, cheddar cheese, & BBQ sauce.  It supposedly started with some cheese, sauce, and 4 meats.  It was actually very good.  Afterwards, I went back outside to see what John had been working on the past several hours.  He put together some metal roofing (an angular piece from the top of our old barn reroofed in 2010), like this:

http://ts1.mm.bing.net/th?id=I.4899162578224008&pid=1.7

and tied it (with baling twine) on top of the somewhat banged up concrete culverts (we got from our roofer this year as they were in his way and no longer needed).  The reason for that is the culverts have some end damage and don’t fit together as designed.  These breaks would allow dirt and small rocks to get inside.  The metal sheeting (overlapping) is now tied in-place to be covered on the entrance driveway described above.  John also put some little homemade Skunk and other critter deflectors on the ends of the pipes.  He made those from plastic containers we used to use as “spit buckets” in our wine tasting for our class:  Wine, A Geographical Appreciation, we taught every summer from 1998 to 2008.  He made flower pots of these last year by drilling holes in the bottom.  Now, with additional holes, they are culvert skunk repellers.  They are white but otherwise look like this and are just the right size for the bottom (small) end to fit into the pipe and the top, being flared, stops it from going fully in.

http://www.plastic-flower-pots.com/productpic/pb_o8m31288765788.jpg

John worked until dark on some tree stuff and now is feeding the outside cats.  I just took a break from loading dishes and took the pictures off my camera from yesterday and today.  I have some cool ones, from the day before that, of Rascal climbing up the Nanking Cherry trees to get to the roof.  I have seen him do that a couple of times, but I’ve never seen him come down (still haven’t).  We assume he sees birds on the roof.  Also got a couple of pictures of Annie with one of her apples.  We have to get them out of reach or she steals them from a box in the kitchen or pantry.  She is used to picking them up in our orchard and toting them around and sometimes back into the house, where she eats them–down to the core and leaves it on the floor.  John just brought me a dish of cut up pieces of Bosc pears and Honeycrisp apples, along with some Cheetos for a treat; he said this is our hors d’oeuvres for tonight’s meal of leftovers, coming later.  Dinner will be orange sauce on chicken, John’s fine fried cauliflower (beer & Bisquick), and cornbread.  It is snowing again, just in time for Mr. Bulldozer man to arrive in the morning.  Jeez, why?  I know, Murphy’s Law at work.  I just finished cropping the pictures I took today and need to go back to the Nov 4 before shots to crop them and then combine a few into a story.  Now, however, I’m ready for tomorrow’s photographing session and hoping for no snow.

Monday, Nov 12  the official holiday, so I thought I didn’t have to go to exercise class today, but found out they are not taking a holiday and will take off the day after Thanksgiving instead.  I guess that’s better for the people who depend on their $3.00 lunch from the AAC, because they already have it on Mondays, but have to go elsewhere on Fridays.  This morning our landscaper, the Bulldozer man, returns to finish the job.  That means I will be around to record the details of change.

Awoke from overnight snow to 5 inches.  Haven’t seen Mr. Bulldozer Man.  John has been taking snow off  the ladders to cat haymow, from cars, trucks, front concrete in front of garage, used for storage (not cars), and the back patio.  John came in and warmed 3 pieces of pizza for us for lunch, and he has returned out to cut down a poplar tree to be used for next year’s firewood, and to get it out of the way of where dirt and rocks will be stockpiled.  The man came at 1:30 and is moving stuff around.  I saw him talking to John, but I cannot tell what is going on.  This is frustrating; I finally put my coat and hat on and went out to see at 3:40.  Took my camera and a couple of pictures but the visibility is awful.  It is quite foggy.  He has managed to build up the entrance into the pole building, but it is all a muddy rocky base.  Sometime later, after some touch up work, we will have to have a load of gravel spread on it.  Probably after winter is over.  He is currently leveling the round pen and pushing off dirt into the depression.  He only has a half hour of time left, so I expect this job won’t be finished now.  At first, he told John a couple days ago, that he made another appointment elsewhere, for tomorrow morning.  However, late tonight he said he would be back in the morning.  Who knows what time?  This afternoon, John has been out covering asparagus, blackberries, strawberries, blueberries, and raspberry bushes with straw. Some folks use leaves . . .

http://www.gardengrapevine.com/WinterShrubInsulationRxBC-K3559.jpg

. . . but our trees shed on rough and brushy ground and collecting them is not possible.  Our neighbor gave us a dozen straw bales from an uncle’s farm – John gives his parents firewood.  Not actually barter – ‘cause the exchange is so uneven in a value sense.

I wasn’t out for long and I’m very cold.  Guess I didn’t need to stay home today after all, but I accomplished a fair amount.  Sadly, so much more to do.

Tuesday, Nov 13  Our farrier comes today to work on 3 of the horses, and the Mr. Bulldozer Man is expected back, with his bulldozer this time.  Well, the best-laid plans…our farrier came an hour early and John was not ready with the horses where he wanted them corralled near the workspace.  Now that’s done and John was back in for a late lunch, when at 2:15 Mr. Bulldozer Man and son came down the driveway with the machine, but stopped short of getting in.  Seemed to be having a problem with something.  Now they’ve got it moved into the yard and John is out so can’t bring back news.  I know nothing at this point.  I do know John just fast came into the house, closed off the doggie/cat door to the backyard, and opened the back gate for the bulldozer to create a new driveway into our back yard, building it up, so it will be raised and flattened, no longer leaning downhill.  I will have to go out in the sun tomorrow to take a picture from that vantage where I have the before shot.

The guys stayed bulldozing and back hoeing until after dark and they could see no more–only going by feel.  That’s not my idea of good procedure with a bulldozer.  John went forth and back between the two machines confabbing with the operators so they got things right.  They will be back in the morning.  There was a tremendous amount of dirt and rocks moved today, and I’m anxious to see it in the morning.  Even if I had gone out to look this afternoon, I wouldn’t have seen much because of the heavy fog.

John came in late and went with me to town to shop while I played music.  It was nice to have him along.  On the way home, we stopped by Jack in the Box, and bought two Sour Dough Cheese-steak Melts, for the price of one.  They were quite good–added to the finely sliced steak, red & green peppers and onions, with cheese, but probably not for $4.49 each (regular price).  We shared one of them (leaving one for another day), and added a half a pear each and a half an apple each.  It was fine.  We enjoy using coupons to check out stuff.  They don’t make much money on such sales and it is only such times we buy.  I suppose the plan is for the coupon holder to buy fries and a drink (way over priced), but we don’t.

Wednesday, Nov 14  An interesting day.  Started with John exercising the dogs in the fog, and about 9:30 the earth moving duo arrived.  [The son ran the dozer and his dad the backhoe – both very accomplished with these big machines.]  They finished just before 11:00 and loaded the dozer on its trailer for the trip home.  The father drove the other unit as it is a wheeled vehicle.  They had to return for a truck and to present the bill.  I was not yet dressed nor was John ready to go, and John wanted me to watch for him to return and get my checkbook ready.  I waited with my coat on, at the front door until 11:15, and decided I must get ready because we had to pull out at 11:30.  Finally, the man came with 4 minutes to spare.  I wrote him a check for almost $2000 including tax and just under our agreed on deal.  Then we left and John let me off at the Food Bank, and went on himself for foot care at the AAC, and I set up to play.  I decided to move the front table back to allow for our music stands to fit.  We had two singers and two instruments (with singers) today.  I moved a table (with 3 chairs on each side), laid my violin on the table, and after it was moved, I picked up my violin, stepped back, but the chair to my left fell backwards onto my violin, breaking an E string and a bow hair, and dropping my shoulder rest to the floor, knocking off one of the “feet”, or bending it somehow that it no longer fits.  I reeled backwards, not onto the floor, but was left sitting on the table behind.  Luckily, the patrons were not yet seated.  It was frightening and I still do not know what happened.  The chair (metal folding) fell to the floor with a loud bang.  I was a little shaky after that, but went ahead and played low notes using only 3 strings.  I came home and was able to put a replacement string on.  We still have to fix the shoulder rest.

http://i3.squidoocdn.com/resize/squidoo_images/-1/lens19576678_1340478172a–.JPG

John returned to have lunch with us.  It was Parmesan Chicken with noodles, mixed veggies, garlic bread, and a quite spicy salad of beans, onions, peppers.  Dessert was homemade apple cobbler.  Then we left to go to the AAC again, this time for me to go to the SAIL exercise class.  He found a comfy chair and a Zane Grey book to read.  We came home from sunshine requiring sunglasses in town, to patchy fog at our place and a gray overcast environment.  So, another day went by without my taking any “after” pictures.  Maybe in the morning.  Once home, John worked outside until dark, because he was using the truck to move the heavy feeders back up closer to the barn.  Now the horses can again have the run of the pasture and get into the old barn for cover if they want.  It’s so nice to have the pole building for storing our hay, and not have to fit it into the little old barn, which was not truly built for that purpose.

Thursday, Nov 15  Early morning phone call from one of the people in our music group that he had to take his wife in at 11 PM last night and didn’t get home from ER till 5:00 AM.  They suspect gall stones.  He was calling to say the two of them would miss today.  She is doing better.

Then, John took me for a walk around all the bulldozing and backhoe accomplishments.  Wow, there was even more than I realized had been completed.  Almost 98% of what John hoped for was done.  There are a few finishing touches that he will do using our tractor, the old pickup, and trusty hand tools.  I took a ton of pictures, and now have to work them into my continuing photo essay of before and after landscape change.

John stayed home today to finish up several yard projects while it wasn’t raining or snowing.  From the newly landscaped places he sifted and moved a lot of dirt adjacent to our baby yellow raspberry plants.  He mixed dirt that hadn’t seen the sun for thousands of years with the compost to create a soil next to the 3 new plants.  Now it is their job to grow roots – increase and multiply — into this space.  As well, he trimmed a bunch of trees (wildlife viewing improvement) behind our house and this also gives us a better view of the “hole in the ground” (Jay’s Folly) back there, and he trimmed a bunch of trees out on the front main driveway too.

I went in alone and played in the afternoon at Dry Creek.  That’s always a fun place because the people will participate very well singing, and at least one will get up and dance.  (She was a Geography Dept. secretary for 27 years.)  Wow, it went well today, with 10 people there  (2 banjos, 3 guitars, a mandolin, 2 violins, a clarinet, and a vocalist.  We were late starting because somehow we were left off the schedule.  No clue why, as we have been going there for years, at the same time, but we had a great audience turnout anyway.  We had to wait for an exercise class to finish so we could use the armless chairs and not interrupt the class.  Then I had to run back to my car because I brought in the wrong set of music lyrics.  I was worn out by the time we ended, and I also had a card for us all to sign for the lady who had the ER experience.  I had taken pears, apples, and onions to share with the musicians, but they didn’t take all of the apples and pears.  I took the box of apples back inside and gave some to many of the residents.  One of my favorite admirers, in a wheel chair and on oxygen, commented, “Not only do you come fiddle around with us for an hour, but you also bring us apples!”  (Nice to be appreciated).  From there off to the P.O. to mail the card, and on to the University to deliver some library books to my co-author of the hay project, give another to our political geographer (on international boundary disputes), and to take the rest of the apples and pears to our secretary.  On to the vet for Shay’s thyroid pills, but not before visiting with a couple of colleagues.  Their quarter ends a week earlier than when I was teaching (Finals week is the first week in December).  Boy, am I happy to be retired.  I guess it was another busy day.

Friday, Nov 9  I thought I had a scholarship luncheon today, but I had written it wrongly on the calendar.  I have no reason to go to town, just for one thing.  So, I have been working on various projects.  Late last night I finally uploaded photos from Jim Huckabay’s Retirement Party that I took with the intention of putting on a CD as a gift to him and his wife.  However, while the 90 pictures would fit on one CD, the videos I took would not all fit on one CD, perhaps on a DVD, but not everyone’s computer has a CD/DVD reader.  I initiated a SkyDrive account (using my hotmail account), because one needs a live.com access to use it.  I uploaded my pictures, and am slowly uploading the videos.  I’m able to share everything with edit capabilities, so that the Huckabays (or any viewer for that matter) can add to the captions people’s names I do not know, and they can also share with anyone they wish (who has a computer Internet access).  I need to work on some songwriting software to make ready to go to the Bluegrass Jam Sunday afternoon at the Grange, and take along some copies of music for people to join in singing.  It’s John’s pet peeve that more people don’t do that, and involve everyone more.  No one in the group and audience can hear most of the words anyway, because microphones are not used.  I think the first one I’ll finish is one I started 2 weeks ago, Blowin’ in the Wind.  I will add Beautiful, Beautiful Brown Eyes, and possibly some others.  I’ll Fly Away is always a popular one, and perhaps I will take another spiritual.  We had an early dinner (for us), and John is making Brownies with our walnuts.  (I frosted them after they cooled).

We had a wonderful conversation this afternoon with Joel Andress, who was a cartographer here at CWU when I arrived.  He was around for another year, before retirement.  When he retired, he and his wife moved back to the area where he grew up in upstate Vermont.  This summer he was diagnosed with a brain tumor like the one that killed Senator Kennedy.  Thankfully, we just heard today that the summer and early fall of radiation has miraculously set back (cured) the tumor.  That is the best news I have heard in a couple of years.

Saturday, Nov 17  I went to bed early last night but awoke at 3:30 AM and couldn’t get back to sleep, but finally did, and then slept in late (so that rested me !!).  John fed the horses and exercised the dogs (and moved a few rocks around) while a light rain fell.  The rain seemed to increase and so we decided to go visit our friend in the hospital and go get some compact oil heaters from Bi-Mart (on sale for 2/3-rds price).  We ate a hot sandwich of cut up bratwurst, cheese, and egg, and drove to Yakima.  We spent a ton of money ($345) there and filled our car with gas as well, at the best price we have seen in years, $3.239/gal.  Part of the grocery bill actually was $39 of stuff for our neighbor who has MS.  I got my exercise walking around Costco because they didn’t have any electric (riding) carts available.  I did fine.  We bought so much stuff so we do not have to go back again until after Christmas.  The place was a zoo today, but it will be much worse in the next 5.5 weeks.  Came on back in the rain (and low hanging clouds), and went by the hospital to visit our friend with the gall stone(s).  We thought she would be there until Monday, when they would decide whether or not to operate, but as we went in the room, she was sitting in the chair and they were working through the paperwork to send her home.  We visited her and her husband for a while, and then they were ready to dress her and release her.  I think if we’d been a half hour later, we’d have missed the whole thing and been quite surprised.

We got home just before dark, after a stop at the neighbors and a short visit with mutual friends visiting her, picked up our mail, and loaded a lot of food into the house from the car.  John went to feed the horses and then returned to take the dogs for their afternoon exercise.  All of that we managed to do before it started raining.  Now it’s coming down pretty good.  We had a wonderful dinner.  Last night John slow-cooked petite sirloin steaks with onions, tomato sauce, and barbeque sauce.  It cooked for 12 hours, so it was nice and tender.  Just the way I like it.  We no longer eat steak because I cannot easily chew it.  Tonight, he cut up one large carrot – like the largest one in this image

http://ts1.mm.bing.net/th?id=I.4627630465286548&pid=1.7

and baked it, along with some potatoes, and then heated the beef mixture, which we poured over the potato.  Boy, was that a dinner fit for royalty!

Now I must stop and get this to John to post, and I will try to make more progress on the before and after landscaping story for which I gave you the link above.  Please check back, because there’s no way I can finish it in one day.

Hope your week was a good one.

Nancy and John

Still on the Naneum Fan

Saturday, Nov 3  Different day.  Put out the blog earlier than usual, but didn’t finish all of today’s doings.  Finally, Mr. Bulldozer Man arrived to check again on the amount of earth and rocks to be moved.  That took awhile, but I stayed inside all day waiting for the phone call.  First was at 9:10, but he didn’t return the call until after 3:00, and then came up for the estimate.  He spent quite a bit of time.  When the weather is better tomorrow, John will take me around with my camera and show me the plans, and the work he has been doing on fencing over the past week+.  Several other phone calls today:  one from Peggy, John’s sister about going without a phone and Internet for a couple of days after the storm, Sandy.  Luckily, she had her cell phone, and then luckier, when she thought she was running out of minutes, she went to the phone to Check Usage, and found out they had added 50 minutes to our plan (we have the same one; 300 mins for $20, now it’s 350 minutes.).  I told our other friends with the same company, Consumer Cellular, and they were very happy to hear.  They are the ones who originally put us onto the company.  It’s less pricey than AT&T where we had ours from 2005.

Then yesterday I got a better deal from our Internet DSL provider and telephone land line provider for the next two years.  We are too rural for the cable company to reach us.  Just before John went out to meet the bulldozer man, he put in a pork roast with apples, onions, and water to cook slowly.  Boy was it good, and the baked apples were especially good, better than either of us expected.  Setting the time back and going to bed.  Part of our new “free for 2 years'” service is Caller ID.  I surely wish I had had that during the pre-election political phone calls.  There is also call waiting, which I used late Friday afternoon this week to switch back and forth between a call to the WA Healthcare benefits system and my family physician’s nurse regarding my blood draw results.

Sunday, Nov 4  John walked me around a sunny pasture to view all the projects he’s been working on and planning.  I took many pictures of the before, plus the background has some pretty fall colors, backed by a lovely blue sky.  It will be neat to see the after (next week, not this), as the guy is coming with a truck, bulldozer, and backhoe/front-end loader (bigger than ours), to move a bunch of rocks (from our alluvial fan), dirt, and rebuild and re-contour some things around the property.  It’s not your normal landscaping job but it will serve our needs quite well.  This will also make a 2/3 loop around the house and shed that, when covered with gravel, will provide a nice firebreak.  We may finish the loop next fall.  While out, I took pictures of our Tamarack (Larch) trees golden with blue sky behind.

They have cute little cones

http://www.edwardbach.org/images/plantpages/Larch.jpg

but are poor seed producers.  They are also a needle leaf deciduous tree and in the fall have a nice golden color (locally found on the north facing slopes of the eastern Cascades).  Like this:

http://treespictures.net/Larch.jpg

The next link shows a tree above the heading “Big Tree Bob” … on the road to Haney Meadows – 15 miles north of us.

http://www.conifers.org/pi/Larix_occidentalis.php

One of my pictures looks north to the orchard with a pretty red-leafed cherry tree in amongst the yellow others (apple, cherry, plum) with cottonwoods to the rear.  Also, cottonwoods and aspens are in other places in the pictures.  Our largest 100 yr old cottonwood has already lost almost all its leaves.

John  took a bag of dry cat food over for our neighbor and while he was there he unloaded his truck full of split firewood for them into their wood shed.  He’s been doing all sorts of other chores about our place today, and it was nice because the temps were around 60 with no rain.  A weather change is on the way, however.

We fixed BLTs for supper.  I went to the unheated garage and found a proper tomato ripe enough, and John trimmed the worst of the fat from the bacon and started it cooking.  I washed some lettuce that is drying and sliced the tomato.  Now after the bacon cooks, we can assemble the rest of the award-winning sandwich.  Meanwhile, we are eating a fresh pear, a Bosc.

http://cynthiadavid.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/immature-bosc-pears1.jpg

Supposedly it only grows in CA, WA and OR (as well as in Australia and Europe); how ’bout that!  It is crunchy and tasty and better than a Bartlett.  Its flesh is denser, crisper and smoother than that of the D’Anjou pear (a web observation).  We also have some D’Anjous.  However the D’Anjou pear skin is a pretty purple color.  I’m not sure I ever had one while living in the south.  We had a huge tree in our backyard where I grew up.  It had yellow pears (I assume they were Bartlett).

Monday, Nov 5  Awoke to a bunch of deer in the front yard (3 resting in the orchard, doe & 2 fawns) and a doe and 2 fawns up by the house eating mountain ash berries.  Then John went to reheat his coffee, saw the horses up where they shouldn’t have been, but still in the pasture.  He went out and found he had left a between-pastures gate open when he fed last night.  They all followed him back when he loaded the wheelbarrow and put hay in their feeders.  We then filled out our voting ballots after a discussion of the issues presented in the WA Voter Pamphlet.  We are so happy this election is almost over and the political calls and mail will cease.  At least we are not in Ohio or Florida or one of the states where so much effort is being made.  And, we don’t watch TV so we are not inundated there.  The entire State votes by mail – our County switched in 2008 – one of the last to do so.  The weather is sunny again today, and John is helping a  chainsaw and splitting maul turn our trash wood into firewood for the neighbors.  Then we went to town to deposit the voting paperwork in a big special mailbox like thing at the Courthouse.  On to eat a fast food lunch, and back to the grocery store where we loaded up on ice cream at a $3.19/each carton savings.  Got 3 different flavors:  cherry with nuts & cherries, Ozark Black Walnut, and Butter Pecan, more canned cat food for Rascal and another bunch of cheaper food for the ferals; filled John’s Subaru with gas, and came on home.  John exercised the dogs after pushing the deer out of the route and went to cut and split more firewood.  Tomorrow it will get delivered (a second load) to the neighbors.

Tuesday, Nov 6  Nothing new here.  Nice and sunny, and we’re staying home today on election day.  Heard last night there was a storm coming up the east coast and will affect S Georgia.  I just read that the storm caused some deaths south of Atlanta, and actually in Tennessee, and many in Atlanta are without power.  “Early Tuesday, 132,000 Georgia Power Co. customers were without power, including 48,000 in metro Atlanta.”

Things are shaping up around our place, but they will change a lot next week.  A recent photo-making trip around the landscape will act as the “before” pictures, and we’ll have a contrast with pictures taken after all the earth & rock moving occurs next week.  What’s worrying me is that by the time the bulldozer man gets here to scrape off and move stuff, it will have snowed again.  Today and the past couple of days would have been ideal for the work.  Now we may not get photos of finished product until spring.

John’s taken off for the neighbors with another truck load of wood for their woodshed.  He’s got room for one more load there.

Okay.. off here, with the hopes of setting up my computer to back up itself on an external hard drive, while I clean up clutter, file, recycle, and otherwise keep busy.  Later, reporting:  I managed to get my Documents all backed up.  That makes me feel a little more secure.  This is from my computer that was new in January.  Also, while cleaning up stacks, I found some papers to recycle, but first got some stories from them to send to geographer friends still teaching.  After John returned from delivering the wood, he moved an old telephone pole used as a barrier and the metal roofing taken from the small barn a couple of years ago.  Both things were in the way of some scraping and leveling planned for ‘soon’.  For dinner, John threw together a bunch of leftovers.  I’ve been watching the map of electoral college votes, throughout the night.  But also, I have been taking care of other chores, mostly on email, plus I washed a load of dishes.  I think we will have some dessert and fall asleep sooner than normal, even though we were in bed early last night and then awoke earlier than usual.  The wind is blowing hard tonight.

Wednesday, Nov 7  John spent his day filling the neighbors woodshed–no room for any more–and then, back home, removing old fences and setting up some new temporary ones.  This day I had the usual, playing at the Soup Kitchen of the Food Bank and going to exercise at the Adult Activity Center.  Well, it was the usual but with added flavors.  I left the house at 11:30 and returned at 4:30 with a virtual lapel decoration of at least 5 gold stars for my good deeds of the day.  The Soup Kitchen was fine, and we played and sang for over 1/2 hour until the servers started leaving their positions to eat.  Today had the normal pasta donated by the Ellensburg Pasta Co. (tomato/ground beef with penne pasta and sauce), green salad, and a wonderful fruit salad, the only thing I had to remove was the grapefruit (not allowed by one of my meds).  Sad because I love grapefruit.  It was full of cut grapes, apples, pears, mandarins, carrots, garbanzo beans, and probably more.  After a nice visit with folks at our table, I went on to the Adult Activity Center.  I walked in with my fiddle (to keep it out of the cold car), and across the room was the lady in charge, calling my name.  I took off my coat, grabbed a chair, and went to see what she wanted.  She said our teacher called in sick that she was dizzy, so would I please teach the class.  I did, and we had 15 there.  Afterwards, I was walking out with a woman who is the mom of one of my former students (back in the 1990s).  She lives by herself at Briarwood, and walks everywhere.  She doesn’t have a car.  She had her grocery cart (pull type with big wheels) with her, and I asked where she was going.  She said, “to Super One”–well I know that’s a block away from where we were in SAIL class, and then her home is several quite long blocks down the street from there.  Did I say, she also walks with a cane with 4 footers with tennis balls on them?

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Ne5Lb2SiFHg/SYiiVPqU2jI/AAAAAAAAbKM/_GoVwZgI6Do/s400/up+old+guy.jpg

I told her I would take her and then give her a ride home.  At first, I sat outside the store, charging my phone while talking with a bunch of friends I needed to call.  Then I realized it had been awhile longer than I had expected, and I started worrying about her.  I went inside the store, found her, and I accused her of buying out the store (:-))).  She shopped for an hour, buying heavy things such as a gallon of vinegar, pounds of sugar, and other stuff.  She was buying ingredients to make baked goodies for the “Christmas Bazaar” coming up at their community center.  When we finished putting stuff on the counter and tallying up everything, it totaled $94.29.  The no-salt butter, chocolate chips, nuts, and all the other ingredients are pricey.  I hope she gets a return on her investment.  All the stuff was rung up and the cashier awaited her payment.  She was fumbling around, and I realized she did not have any checks in her checkbook.  I had left mine in the car, so I went back out and got it and wrote a check.  She was embarrassed, and wanted me to take her back home to get the check register of new ones.  I said, “No, it’s all rung up, I will pay for it, and you can pay me back.”  Finally, we got all the stuff out the door, and I went back in the store for brown paper bags to load the flimsy plastic bags into, not wanting those to fall apart on me.  I thought I got at least 3, but only had 2.  I could have used 4.  We got to her apartment that is on the second floor up two flights of steep stairs.  I took the first brown bags full to the top where she was with her checkbook ready to write the check.  We went back down and I loaded up more of the plastic bags, just carrying them, and carried the heavy vinegar container separately.  She wrote the check and told me to leave her stuff there.  Oh, I also retrieved her carrier from the back trunk to leave beneath the stairs.  I carried the rest of the groceries up one flight of stairs.  She insisted she could get it the rest of the way, so I hugged her and left.  I was feeling the pull in my legs, but I took it slowly and didn’t push myself.  I told her I could not live where she does and manage those stairs every day.  Then I drove home, not arriving until 4:30.  Phew.  I truly believe I earned 5 gold stars today for my efforts.  I’m grateful to have my health back to be able to help others.

Thursday, Nov 8  Awoke to big fluffy snowflakes, which only lasted 10-15 minutes.  It was bright sunshine before noon.  When the snow stopped the ground was white.  John went out and I left.  I was gone for over an hour.  Delivered a few pears to the folks who played today.  We had a good turnout.  Four guitars, two banjos, tambourine, two violins, clarinet, and a vocalist.  When we arrived the nursing home/rehabilitation center was on a lock down, but they let us in to perform music for the residents, asking us not to tell them why the blinds were pulled.  It was a happy day, and the residents enjoyed it as much as we did.  The reason for the lock-down was a shooting of a teenager in Kittitas, a little town 6 miles east of Ellensburg.  Turns out the kid shot himself in the shoulder; he first blamed it on someone else, with a unique description, so at first the police officers and sheriff’s deputies were looking for a person who was not a threat to the community and was not on the loose.  The shooting took place outside of school grounds.  The kid went back to the school to the room of his coach.  He had gone to his grandfather’s house, took the gun, shot himself, returned the gun to the cabinet and went back to school (still many unknowns).  My friend’s young teenager was in the room across the hall to where the guy returned.  The guy collapsed (probably loss of blood), and they carted him off to the hospital on the west side (Harborview).  It was not a life-threatening wound.  My guess is when he came to later, he told the real story.  (Actually, the detectives figured it out from his conflicting facts.)

After a fast dinner, John left for a trail riders club meeting.  I stayed home.  Oh, I forgot.  One of the emails I came home to was from a cousin announcing the death of my 91-year-old aunt in south GA.  It made me realize how old my own mother would have been if still alive (98).  Wow.  Time moves on too fast.  I missed seeing my aunt when at the reunion this year because she was too ill.  Dessert tonight:  John’s homegrown blackberries, with blueberry muffin and cherry/nut ice cream.

Friday, Nov 9  Today it is sunny, but cool.  Supposed to go to 22 tonight, so I must get back and print out the instructions for the Travel Trailer.  We need to drain the hot water tank.  Turns out John already did, and just told me tonight.  Today was a full day.  Started chilly and got chillier as the day progressed.  I grabbed a small lunch and left to get my Subaru filled with gas.  I stopped where I heard the gas was cheapest, but I realized the cheaper price was only for cash and I already had put my card in and pumped $1.20 worth.  I was running late, so I left and went down the street to another station with the same price but no extra charge for using a card.  Too many cars in lines to stop then.  The first place was elevating the price 10 cents per gallon.  How outrageous!  I went on to my exercise class, and realized my teacher was ill and I would have to teach class again.  Gave a bag of pears to my friend with macular degeneration.  Class began and went well.  I left for the grocery to get John some things he needed and then went by the hospital lab for a blood draw to check my INR.  While there, I took a little bag of pears in for my favorite phlebotomists.  From there off to deliver another bag to a member of the music group who missed yesterday.  On to the gas station to fill up and there were no lines!  There went $50+.  On to the bank to deposit the check for the groceries I’d paid for.  While there, I took another bag of pears to our favorite banker.  He was thrilled.  Drove home and noticed some real ferocious clouds on the hills and in front of them between where I was, near the airport, and our home.  It looked like a snowstorm.  Well, it was!  I left Ellensburg in bright sunshine, but came into a blizzard (at least where there had been one)–John said between 1 and 2:00 p.m.  As I got to within 1.5 miles of home, I saw fields of white and much slush on the road.  As I came by our mailbox, the door and handle was covered with snow.  It stopped snowing giving John time to exercise the dogs, feed the horses and the outside cats.  He wasn’t in the house very long until it started snowing again.  I imagine we got at least 2 inches this evening.  He was very happy that he made so much progress around the yard the past few days, and had taken care of the firewood.  When we get a nice day, he will thin a few of the standing trees and let them dry for next year.  Dinner included a large skillet of corn (ours) filled cornbread, made by John.  Oh, yum.  It was a perfect complement to the apples and orange chicken.  Then dessert wasn’t bad either, our strawberries on cherry/nut ice cream with a hot chocolate sauce John made from chocolate chips.  Off to bed, now, rather late.

Saturday, Nov 10  We seem to be under a snow cloud, an isolated spot, this morning.  Nothing around us south or west (nothing in the Cascades) or east has snow.  Blewett Pass to our north does.  It’s quite weird.  We awoke to a winter wonderland with falling snow.  It is still “spitting.”  Then a surprise arrival at 7:30 of two trucks:  a small white one with Diesel gas cans in the back was parked at the entrance off our driveway into the pasture.  John saw a larger black truck backing out the driveway.  He checked and walked to the road, but didn’t see anything.  We figure that the fellow to do the bulldozing decided maybe to start today.  He lives about 4 miles south, and perhaps there was no snow there.  We haven’t heard back.  We sort of expected he might return with the bulldozer, but nothing has happened, and it is after 10:00 a.m.  John ate a little breakfast and when out to remove snow from two vehicles and to move the other truck out of the entrance to the place that accesses where the bulldozer will have to be taken.  Now he is moving a small Ponderosa pine tree, a baby, he’d planted in what is now the wrong place.  He moved 2 small firs last week and now has 3 pines in containers.  Two of these went into containers in the spring and never were planted.  He also put RV antifreeze liquid in the drains and in the shower hose, removed the battery, and got the instructions on the portable generator – and they say to run the thing until the gas is all gone.  What?  It holds 1.8 gallons.  That’s as crazy as the directions for taking care of a broken curly-tailed light bulb.  Mr. Bulldozer man didn’t come back, but called after noon saying he would come after 3:00.  I don’t believe he arrived until almost 4:00 and now they are out back hoeing in the almost dark.  I still hear the rumble of rocks being moved.  Poor John, he’s out in <35° weather, supervising.  I’m sure the operator of the backhoe is no warmer.  They just moved from the first place I saw them over to in front of the pole building on the driveway entrance, which needs to be changed and have some culverts moved into place.  Now it has too much of a slant and our travel trailer scrapes on the way in or out.  Now he is still here and it is really dark.  I doubt John had fed the horses, so will have to don his headlamp and go down.  Then come back and feed the ferals.  I have turned on the outside backyard light.  The cats will be wondering where dinner is.  Actually, they have probably been watching the whole sequence from high in their haymow.  The first part was over near them in the area of the large round pen.  I’ve been doing inside chores all day.  Filing receipts, and trying to organize and sort.  I turned off my computer for a couple of hours, but then had to check some figures and got back on to take care of some issues.   Good thing we changed our mind yesterday on going tonight to George, WA for a bluegrass concert by the group, Pickled Okra!  Great name, eh?

Hope your week was a good one.

John came in and said they were learning about the structure of the Naneum Fan – on which we still are. [Search images using ‘alluvial fan’.]

Nancy and John

Sunday, Oct 28  A truly needed day of rest for both of us.  I slept in until almost 9:30 and didn’t eat some toast until almost lunchtime.  Managed to get last week’s blog out late this morning to John to post.  It’s been a quiet day.  The weather was scheduled to be rainy, but it is lovely with a shiny sun.  I spent much of the morning recreating the events of the past day for our widowed friend.  There were so many messages I needed to share from yesterday and the days before, which I had forgotten to pass along, so I wrote them all down and sent to her.  John worked on the blog and then I went to the back computer room to review it.  He added many interesting links, as he usually does.  For lunch, he heated up the leftovers from the roast beef stroganoff he’d fixed for himself yesterday.  I had a little bowl and it was quite good.  We had red grapes along with it.  [John says: The stroganoff was imitation stuff.  Last year, at Costco, I bought a 3-pack of canned beef.  The reasoning was that it would keep well and be available in emergencies.  The first use was not satisfactory.  Last week, I thought I’d better use up the other 2 cans as it is a bit expensive.  So I used a box of “helper” and a few added vegetables and, eureka!, it was better than using their suggestion of thinly sliced steak.]  Back to Nancy —

In the afternoon, I delivered onions, apples, and pears to my neighbor, the one who cuts my hair and who lives around the rural block.  In return, we will get some of their deer sausage.  When I returned home, I went out to admire John’s manual earth/rock/dirt moving around the new pole building.  Dirt-splash marks 18 inches high — caused by recent rain — were on the new metal of a light beige color.  He is digging out the soil along the side and filling in the shallow trench with rocks.  We should have used a dirt-brown color.  {Although, this is Nancy commenting, the dirt was not brown, but black.}

In addition, I needed to have John move a large container of clean clothes from the top of the clothes washer, because we are almost out of underclothes!  First, I cooked bacon and fixed all the other parts of a BLT with one of the huge tomatoes from our friend where we got the apples & pears.  It was yummy.  The dishes never got finished nor the clothes washed.  Oh, well, another day.  Instead, I got John’s help with a scanned image of some music, and I punched (:-)) it into my Songwriter software.  It is Marianne, the 1955 song most everyone knows.  It is easy to sing and play, so we will add it to our repertoire, for the group on Thursday.

Monday, Oct 29  Hmmm today the only thing on the calendar is SAIL, but depending on the weather, we may combine it with going to town for some other things we need.  Nope, I stayed home and am washing (drying) the first load of clothes; I already did a load of dishes.  This morning while John was making a path to the clothes washer for me, he decided, with my help, to take a new bag of 25 pounds of white sugar and repackage it in plastic bags we put into over-sized plastic containers and an old coffee can that we normally use from the counter.  It is a nice sunshiny (but windy) day, so John needs to work outside.  It was supposed to be raining all day, but it rained all night, and that provides for some nice welcomed weather during daylight.  I made nice BLTs for lunch again today and have been working on several musical chores.  I’m finishing putting in Beautiful, Beautiful Brown Eyes with 3 verses; all on one page of music with the chorus separately, only once, at the bottom.  It’s taking me a lot longer than usual for some reason.  Perhaps it’s because I do not have a complete musical score and have to figure the chords on the missing parts.  Also, the two pieces of music I have are by different arrangers, one with a chorus only (with verse words), and the other, only the notes, no words, for the verses.  It’s weird.  One is in F and the other in G, to make matters worse.  On line I can get the lyrics and chords in yet another key.  Bummer.  After a lot of work over the next day, I succeeded, only to put the verses in the wrong order for what our normal lead singer uses.  I may just leave it, because it’s a lot more trouble to switch, and we can just tell people with the music and singing, to use the order 2, 1, 3.  Ha ha.

Well, it’s been awhile since I made dinner for us, other than something simple, but tonight John was extremely tired from his day of outside work, and I “made” spaghetti sauce, adding onions, ground meat, and tomatoes, to some store-bought sauce.  He grated the cheddar cheese for the topping and cut a pear, which we had with it.  It was very good.  Now I’m back working on music for this week.  I may have finished Ashokan Farewell in D, and then for all the music mentioned above, I will transpose it for our Bb Clarinet player (using the software).  I only have to get it in for a violin, once, and then can change it to the proper key for her with about 3 commands.

Tuesday, Oct 30  Back from town.  We took Meghan (12-year-old Brittany) to our vet for checking out what we suspected was a fatty tissue lump.  However, it seemed important to have it checked out.  Turns out there were more than one, but they all are in the right places so our vet was happy it wasn’t in concerned places near lymph nodes or mammary glands.  It was a $38 well spent, and happy we don’t have to go through an operation at her age.  She is in good condition, heart is good, and her weight is fine (31.3#).  Also, called to check on our widowed friend and then delivered some apples to her.

On to the new grocery outlet to buy cat food canned for only 39¢/can.  We went to our normal grocery for some more things which were on sale and to get our flu shots from our pharmacist (also a fiddler).  The cost of flu shots is covered by Medicare, but a couple of weeks ago John got the shot for Shingles and that one we had to pay for ($137) – Ouch!  That and a couple more chores got done.  It was misting when we left, but when we returned the rain had stopped, so John went out to do some fence building chores.  Then he took the dogs for their exercise run.  I’ve been working mostly on email and putting in another song into my music software program.  This one is Peter, Paul, and Mary’s “Blowin’ in the Wind.”  It is in a book John’s sister Peggy sent us with the Melodica.  I’m just getting around to transcribing a few of the songs.  This is my first.  I’m really quite happy to have the musical scores completed with guitar chords, so our musical group can use the stuff I put in.  The only problem is I have to rearrange it, because there are some flowery notes that the original group probably played, but I only remember the sung melody of the words, without embellishments.

I forgot to say we had a nice phone call on our way home from town with John’s sister (near Cleveland, OH).  They had some rather high winds recorded at the airport, and she said her house was creaking, plus noisy from the raindrops slamming against the windows.  She weathered the storm all right, by changing bedrooms from the Lake Erie (~8 miles away) facing window to a bedroom on the quieter side of the house.  When we got home, after John did the above-mentioned chores, we called his brother in San Jose, CA and had a nice visit with him.  He is sounding better from his ailments.  He is 11 years older than John, who is the youngest of four.

Wednesday, Oct 31  Happy Halloween.  Hmmm-long day in town.  This morning was busy getting ready to leave.  Was at the Food Bank Soup Kitchen for music.  Food today was interesting (strange), but palatable.  From there I went to the SAIL exercise class at the Adult Activity Center.  My friend and I left 10 minutes early to get to a nursing home to perform at a talent show, Halloween Party.  I played and sang with two groups a total of 4 songs.  Home to work on a bunch more music for our group tomorrow and to re-order my music.  We are going to be short a number of people tomorrow, so it will be interesting.  I carried in my trunk 50 pounds of onions plus a box with 10 more but didn’t have a person to help move the large bag.  I hope that we can get it transferred tomorrow.  The two of us gals cannot manage it.  There are no handles on the bag for leverage.  Tonight we had a nice salmon dinner with a cooked winter squash (inside had walnuts, pears & apples cut up, and brown sugar).  Table grapes made it all healthy.

Thursday, Nov 1.  Up to sunshine!  John had to go herd deer out of the yard and pasture to be able to run the dogs.  This is a morning and evening occurrence each day.  I don’t have to get to town until before 2:00 and it is the shortest distance I have to go to play music.  Turns out John took me in the truck and while I played music, he went to the Co-Op to buy fence posts.  He moved the onions to the truck and deposited them in the front of the nursing home (in a raised flowerbed), not wanting them in the way of the posts he was going for.  He came back for me and to help get the onions into her trunk.  While in town, he also dropped off some onions for another friend (who just had hip surgery).  We came home and turned around after dinner to go back to town, — we will pick up a friend to go to a free Celtic instrumental and dance group (3 sisters– the Gothard Sisters)  at CWU Thursday night.

http://gothardsisters.weebly.com/about.html

First large image cycles through many photos.  Also, you can sign up for their newsletter and receive notices of when they will be in your area, as well as receiving two free downloads of their music.

John’s going to wear his Irish sweater with shamrocks and Claddagh design:

http://www.ancient-symbols.com/images/irish-symbols/original/irish_claddagh.jpg

His sweater is much nicer, with blacks, purple, gold and green colors, and less “loud” as the graphic above.

The performers are sisters with the one playing guitar and occasionally in blue being the oldest and the one in yellow the young one.  All very accomplished.  They were great.  They also all play fiddles in some tunes, and sometimes a drummer is added.  Also, the middle one plays mandolin.  They change costumes during the performance and have all the same color (white) for later in the program.  It was really worth attending, and we will try to make another event when we can.

Friday, Nov 2  What another day this was.  We both slept in late and John worked hard all day.  I left about 11:15 for town, taking along tomatoes cut up from our garden that have been ripening slowly in the garage.  I picked red and yellow ones, and cut into a bunch of wedges to fill the casserole bowl.  It was the normal first Friday of the month potluck at the Adult Activity Center, but today, they fixed a pot roast (very tender), with potatoes, carrots, and celery.  We SHOULD have taken by some onions yesterday, but what they fixed was quite good.  They served it on a biscuit (if you wanted), or you could eat it separately.  I had mine on the large biscuit.  Then all the folks eating brought a potluck item as I had done with our tomatoes.  There was a corn casserole, sugared carrots, baked squash, green beans & bacon, and a host of salads, including slaw, and deviled eggs.  Many desserts to pick from made with apples, cherries, plus cupcakes, brownies, and ice cream.  Actually more stuff than I’ve listed.  Then there was a speaker, a new orthopedic surgeon in town, who left Ohio for the PNW.  He is over 65 and was excellent in explaining arthritis and hip and knee joint replacements, passing some examples around the room, (of metal on metal, which they have decided against using) and now use metal with a plastic inside layer in the ball joint replacement.  He talked about how things have changed and what used to have to be replaced in 15 years will go longer.  It was a fascinating talk, and he was open and willing to answer questions.  After that, I went to the car to put my leftovers there and to grab some acetaminophen to get me through the rest of the afternoon at our exercise class.  While there, I met one of my former non-traditional students, who now works with community recycling.  We had a nice hug and talk.  When I went back in, the staff had taken the leftovers from the beef stew and combined all the cooked vegetables into a soup, in containers on the counter for any of us to take home.  I took one with two cups in it, to share with John for part of our dinner.  It will be a side with bratwurst and a leftover piece of salmon from last night, which ended up getting in the stew.  It was a pretty good variation on surf and turf soup.

Saturday, Nov 3  We have nothing planned away from home today or tomorrow, so I am leaving this blog for John to tackle in the morning, to add his touch and links.

Hope your week was a good one.

Nancy and John

Still on the Naneum Fan

Sunday, Oct 14  most of the day was spent doing nothing.  John did many outside chores.  I stayed inside for mine.

Monday, Oct 15  Not much done today, except on email chores and on a few household recycling chores.  I filled two boxes, and have to get John to bring me more empty ones.  I still have much to do.  The most frustrating thing is he just brought me the postal mail.  In case I haven’t mentioned it, health care is a PITA.  John and I both had annual physicals, scheduled by our doctor’s office, August 28th.  I received a report that mine is not covered; only once a year.  That will be $339.  I have complained but no one has yet responded (now it is the end of the week, as I write this).  I also had a mammogram in July, again, requested by my doctor, and they will pay all but $40 of that.  John managed to move some posts, rocks, and dirt with the backhoe today.  It is now raining, starting about 5:00 and just has been threatening all day.  Still raining, at 7:00 p.m., and dinner (chicken is cooking and smelling great).  John’s such a good cook.  I’m fortunate.  We had carrots and potatoes (from the Columbia basin), chicken and one of our tomatoes.  Yum.

Tuesday, Oct 16  We had an amazing amount of heavy winds all night and now this morning, plus hard rainfall.  The sun has shined through everything this morning, winds and rain.  I imagine somewhere in the valley was a gorgeous rainbow.  The house was shaking last night and this morning.  The winds are still very high.  Blew the last of the walnuts out of the top of the trees, and John has already harvested them before the squirrels and birds could get them.  I just checked the airport and found that sustained wind speed at 10:30 was 41 mph, with gusts to 59 mph (written in bright purple on the report).  I am sure that is the highest I have ever seen it.  I told John this morning that last night I thought we had 65 mph gusts!  Glad the fires have been snuffed out by the recent rains.

On my way to The Connections we went and paid for 3 bags of onions – this is a direct from the farmer sort of thing – 13¢ per pound.  John drove with me and went to the grocery while I was playing and singing music.  There were only 5 of us there tonight.

Wednesday, Oct 17  I said yesterday the fires were snuffed out, but my neighbor went with her hubby in their jeep up Reecer Creek canyon and saw much devastation of the forest and some places they took pictures of isolated trees still burning.  Big old trees sometimes have rotten/hollow centers and, so enclosed, can smolder for a long time.

http://www.fs.fed.us/r5/sequoia/news/releases/2009/06/tree-fire.html

Went on a sad visit today to a wonderful friend who is dying from cancer.  He is much in pain.  I only visited for 15 minutes, but I know he appreciated it.  Earlier in the day I played music at the food bank, and ate lunch there.  We had a very spicy pasta with sausage, but I only received noodles (no sausage) with cheese and the breadcrumb filling, green mixed salad, and we were to have a peach/apple/grape cobbler homemade there, but there wasn’t enough to go around, so I had zucchini bread with also homemade grape sauce meant for pouring over the cobbler.  Went on to the Sr. Center and had a donut and brought one home to John.  I feel bad that he worked outside the whole day after I left at 11:20, and he actually started over an hour before I left.  He missed lunch today.  I went by the grocery store, complaining about the charge on Crustini buns John bought (he thought) on sale last night.  They rang them up at $4.38 and he thought he was getting them for $2.50 each package.  They refunded a total of $3.60 for two packages.  I told them he would never have paid that much for a set of 8 rolls.  They need to mark their sale price shelf signs better.  Tonight we had the first two and enjoyed them covering a nice cheeseburger, with one of our tomatoes. Also, one of these:

http://i-cdn.apartmenttherapy.com/uimages/kitchen/2008_12_19-dumplingsquash2.jpg

This is called Sweet Dumpling.  Ours was stuffed with apple and plum pieces, with butter and brown sugar.

Thursday, Oct 18  Another day and a half with so much to do.  In late morning I joined John in the yard to try to figure out the winterizing of the travel trailer.  He was able to hook up the drain to the tank but the process only yielded about 3 gallons of water.  When we had the AC installed and all the rest checked out they supposedly put in 50 gallons.  I think not.  Maybe they intended to and someone thought someone else did, but? – it seems to not be there.  John got out our (2 years old; never opened) new air compressor

http://s.sears.com/is/image/Sears/spin_prod_567626001

which was still in its box, only to find the supplied oil (in a small plastic bottle) had leaked out, some onto the equipment but most into the cardboard.  He needed to go to town to buy special oil.  Requiring just 3 oz., he had to buy a quart for about $9.  Our local Sears outlet is about 15 feet wide and 30 feet long, so, naturally, they don’t carry such stuff.  EBRG’s old time hardware store (Wood’s) does.  Wood’s was only about 100 yards away on a wrong direction one-way street.  Not thinking ahead of all the one-way streets, he drove six blocks before getting to where he could have walked in less time and at no cost.  Life’s tough.  Anyway, I came back in the house to make a BLT for our lunch, and it was running late, but we got away in time for him to drop me off at the Dry Creek Assisted living home, and go on to get things he needed.  While in town he went to the Goodwill store and bought 2 timers (as in kitchen timer). Somewhat like this:

http://www.preparedpantry.com/classic-kitchen-timer.aspx

We had dropped my mom’s that we had used forever.  It broke and could not be repaired.  Search the Web and you will find many strange things – use ‘ kitchen timers ’ in Bing images and have a look at about $6 and up.

Goodwill had 2 only, of the simple variety at 99¢ each.  Do we need 2?  Who knows?  But consider:  the link above wants $9.49, so buying 1 at Goodwill saved $8.50.  By buying 2 we’ve saved $17.  Try it – you’ll feel richer!  We checked them against the timer on the microwave oven and for a one hour setting they were right-on!  (Nancy’s comment about John’s story on the timers; we were always traveling from the kitchen to the back room with a timer, so the two will be well used without traveling.)

Friday, Oct 19  I’m happy to report while it rained off and on all day, we still managed to get much stuff done.  I did not go to town, so that helped.  That trip wastes almost an hour, plus the time spent in town.  I spent time on several different chores and so did John, and then I joined him outside to work on the travel trailer, setting up the generator; he had already set up the 2 amp trickle-charger on the battery in the travel trailer, but we got stymied on the last thing with the generator.  May work on that tomorrow.  I remember we ran it from near the open door (for ventilation) of the RV building and subsequently loaded the gizmo into the PU truck bed.  We tested the AC with the generator (we think) but for a time the power cord was also in a wall outlet on the inside of the building.  Did we actually test having power to the trailer from the two different sources?  We can’t remember.  Perhaps not, ‘cause the end on the power supply to get to the inside of the trailer, does not have the correct receptacle to hook into for the generator output.  And the manual wants the thing grounded.  Does anyone do that?  Look at this page.

http://www.imsasafety.org/journal/ma03/ma5.htm

Talk about a steep learning curve.  Where is an electrical engineer when you need one?  John did get the air compressor ready to go, but we have to first pump out the rest of the water from the system before blowing the small remainder.  Meanwhile, I have been working on inside chores after drying out and warming up.  John pulled a large tree trunk (windfall) with the old truck to another part of the property where he makes little pieces out of the big pieces using chainsaw and splitting maul.

http://www.plumbersurplus.com/images/prod/6/Ames-1190100-rw-150177-252274.jpg

Saturday, Oct 20  We stayed up late so slept in until 9:00 a.m.  John went over to feed the neighbors two stallions, and then we went back tonight.  He will do it in the morning too, but the owner will be back by noon on Sunday from Oregon.  I went today at 1:00 p.m. to visit my friend with cancer and his wife and one of his 4 sons (another John).  I had met another son a couple times this week.  Then I went to play music at Briarwood, where they feed us.  For the music, we had 2 guitars, a mandolin, 2 violins, and two singers (one with an occasional tambourine).  For food treats, they provided two types of soup, good for a cold day:  Zucchini and Potato.  I put some of each in my bowl, and the combo was quite good.  They had rolls and butter, and veggies with dip, and various kinds of cookies and cakes.  I did not eat as much as usual today to ruin my dinner.  John and I had leftovers, made into Sloppy Joes (sort of) on those new fancy Crustini rolls, and some of our own little yellow pear tomatoes.  John did not go along today because he had to stay home and work on yard and pasture chores, moving fence posts, etc., to free up some panels he wants to put around the metal building to protect it and the hay from the horses.  [Nancy had deer, also, in the previous line.  But our deer are the Muley type and they don’t bother grass hay.]  Right now, the horses are fenced out of the area with the metal pole building.  We had also hoped that a fellow with a bulldozer would drop by to see what work leveling and pushing around dirt and rocks we need done, which John cannot do with his “smaller” tractor.  He didn’t make it today and if not tomorrow, he did promise ‘next week’.   It is rather inconvenient to try to plan stuff when you don’t know the “when” of it but many of the locals are quite busy with all the fire damage.  Those not directly involved in that have extra work directed their way for normal activities.  John had to jockey all day with the deer but a late run had the male Britt, at full speed, almost bounce off a doe standing in one of his favorite pathways.  She took offense and chased him out of the trees and back toward the house.  We had visual confirmation of all 3 feral cats in the hayloft for dinner tonight. Daily the food gets eaten, even if they are not seen.  Not much else happened today, so we waited for this addition before posting tonight.  The Summit at Snoqualmie claims it is snowing

http://www.summitatsnoqualmie.com/Weather

But the WA-DOT camera for the summit is off-line.  Nearest is Franklin Falls just to the west and it shows white along the road edges.  Sunday, when the view is better, may show something (click on little circles):

http://www.wsdot.com/traffic/passes/snoqualmie/default.aspx

Hope your week was a good one.

Nancy and John

Still on the Naneum Fan

Sunday, Sept 30   I took some more lovely pictures from our pasture tonight of the smoke and colored sunset and two contrails of jets headed somewhere.  One was to Seattle.  Don’t know the other’s destination, but it was in the opposite direction.  The smoke was so bad today that I had to wear my mask while going to town, and once there to get into the building from down the block.  I am still going through my hay project work.  I went in today and met for 2.5 hrs with my co-author in his office.  We worked through the text and PowerPoint together, eliminating many words, to make the presentation about 18 minutes.  He is working on the paper part and I’m working on the visuals.  It’s going to be fine.  We leave Wednesday afternoon about 3:30, for Olympia, WA.  We have to get through the pass before they close down I-90 for an hour or more, for blasting near Keechelus Lake.  There is also the opening plenary session on Sustainability of the South Sound at 7:00 we hope to make.

Monday, Oct 1  John and I left at 9:30 and went by way of one of the hay processor’s barns and took a photo of the large Japanese writing on the I-90 side of one of the storage facilities (we needed it to add to our PowerPoint presentation).  It was not easily obtainable except from I-90, just east of the Kittitas ramps.  The next exit is Vantage, 30 miles away.  John and I were on our way to Moses Lake, WA about 1.5 hours away, to meet for lunch and a visit with our friends, the Joyals, from graduate school days (early 1970s). [Back in 1974, they helped us relocate using a large moving van pulling a car, and our loaded station wagon with dog (and their Black Lab) and cats, from Iowa to our new home in Troy, ID.]   They now live in Marquette – upstate Michigan, but come back every year to visit relatives in Spokane, WA and Moscow, ID.  We always meet half way at Michael’s on the Lake, a neat place with good food and views.  Today, the Joyals had a pulled pork sandwich, John had a Texan burger with pulled pork, and all three of them had a pear/walnut/cranberry/cherry tomato and greens salad.  I had a Cobb Salad with Romaine lettuce, which it turns out has more Vit K than I should have.  Still, I enjoyed it and the in-kitchen-made rolls that went along with it.  The four of us shared one piece of cheese cake with whipped cream and strawberries.  The meal was filling and delicious, and cost us $22.25/ person.  Still the 2+ hours together was super.  We only get to see them once a year.  I treated us with my award from the raffle associated with my donation to the American Brittany Club 2013 Specialty Show.  The debit gift card I won is worth $250.

~~~~ On our way home, we drove through the alfalfa fields (pivot irrigation) in the Columbia Basin irrigated region.  Tree crops are being expanded to the west of our path.

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

Airplane view here:

http://www.prlog.org/10646509-aerial-view-of-quincy-wa-data-centers-including-the-planned-sabey-data-center.jpg

This is from the NE looking SW over the town of Quincy.  The town and irrigated areas show in the upper-left part.  The big labeled buildings in the foreground are data centers – here because of cheap Columbia River electricity and favorable local tax incentives. Sabey is a developer and operator of multi-tenant data centers.

http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2011/05/04/sabey-breaks-ground-on-huge-quincy-project/

~~~~~ The winds picked up in the Kittitas valley, right before we arrived home.  As we topped the ridge and looked westward, we saw large smoke plumes north of our house over the Table Mountain area.  As we drove toward home, I had John stop for me to take a picture of a huge updraft cloud that appeared as we watched.  He stopped for me to take 3 pictures outside the car, under the wires, but not being able to see my screen well for composure, only one came out, yet quite well.  I will eventually put it on my slowly evolving web page.  Meanwhile, here is a link from early on:

http://www.kimatv.com/news/local/169912656.html

Tuesday, Oct 2  now this morning, after the wind blew all night, around us the air is much cleaner.  Still a little hanging in the low spots.  The fire activity is “way down” to nothing new in the past 12 hours, and everything most recent back to from 12 to 24 hrs. It must be burning itself out in the enclosed perimeter they have been trying so hard to create and contain.  Now today I have my work cut out to get ready for the trip’s leaving tomorrow. I did fill my car with gas ( only took 10 gallons).  But, it cost me $4.07/gallon for middle grade.  And I took it by Les Schwab for them to check the tires pressures.  I realized how dirty the windows inside and outside were so, unfortunately I hadn’t driven it through a car wash, so, at home, with a spray bottle, paper towels, and my energy – I cleaned.  Also needed to discard a build-up of stuff in the back seat and trunk.  Good thing because I found a couple of missing items I needed to deal with!  Went by the bank for some cash, and to get my meds refill and sodas for John.  I still need to read through the paper and presentation comparison once again.  John is out moving gravel and I have two photos for him to change the contrast on and make smaller.  These are from John B whose camera needs adjustment on color balance, as does one of mine.

Wednesday, Oct 3  We did get a delivery of hay this morning for the year, plus extra – too much is way better than too little.  John moved out the “loose” unstable bales from the new metal building so all the new hay could be stacked there.  It is on one side alongside our travel trailer.

I left this afternoon to pick up John Bowen (my co-author) for our trip to Olympia.  We made the trip in just under 3 hours, in time to get him checked into his motel and for us to proceed to the convention motel where the opening session was and where I was staying.  Sadly the parking lot was full, so we found a place on the street (parking metered).  We went to the opening reception expecting there to be food (as there normally is), but it went long — with no food.  John and I were starved, so he walked out around the block and found some cranberry/orange muffins ($$) and chips which he shared with me.  I was grateful.

However, I do want to review positively the several speakers and give this link to one of them, who is a columnist for The Olympian news.  Here is is wonderfully geographic description of his talk and his connections to Geography.  I sent a nice comment to the online version to commend him on his advertisement of our discipline.  He is a great spokesman.  Here is the link for your pleasure:

http://www.theolympian.com/2012/10/05/2275759/soundings-look-near-home-or-in.html#storylink=cpy

Thursday, Oct 4   On our drive over the afternoon before, John B. had read the text and we altered and eliminated a few words and one slide, to shorten the time of the presentation.  We were trying not to exceed 18 minutes with 2 minutes for questions.  As it turned out we were right on, and John did a fine job of presenting it in 18:45 minutes.  We had time for 2 questions, and had nice feedback from the audience throughout the conference, but I’m ahead of the story for the Friday presentation.

Actually, last night my first roommate came in after I was in bed, and our other roommate was not to arrive until the next evening.  She is a UC Davis student, non-traditional student, working on her Ph.D.  She has a large family (6 children).  She was arriving to receive a travel grant from the APCG at a luncheon on Saturday where she was to give a 3-minute description of her research (on suburban neighborhoods).  We visited last evening and then went to breakfast (huge continental one provided free by the motel (Phoenix Inn Suites).  They had cereal, fruit, cottage cheese, eggs, sausage, potatoes, waffles, and oatmeal from which to choose.  Drinks were available (4 juices, including orange), coffee or hot chocolate.  That was a real treat to start a long day, especially without a decent dinner the night before.  From the motel entrance, we got into a van with 8 people, plus our driver, the conference chair, Martha Henderson.  I sat in the front seat with her, so I had an ideal spot to hear the commentary, see, and take pictures.  John B. was along on the trip, but got a back seat, too much road noise, and a woman sitting next to him talking on her cell phone.  We went through some small towns depressed from the changed economy from timber and railroads.  Some of the old factory housing was still evident, along with old boarding houses.  We took back roads through the towns of Elma, Satsop, rural & agricultural areas (including flower bulb growing) around the Wynooche valley bottoms, through the towns of Montesano, Aberdeen, on our way through Hoquiam to Grays Harbor, to the Port there.

http://www.portofgraysharbor.com/

Opening page includes a slide show.

We got a fantastic tour of the port.  We started in the commissioner’s boardroom, with an excellent PowerPoint introduction to the facility by the public relations person, Kayla Dunlap, and by Leonard Barnes, Deputy Executive Director of the Port.  He was quite knowledgeable on the history of the port’s recent development for international trade, and willing to share many inside stories of the recent changes and growth.  The port specifically decided against being a container shipment port (with Tacoma and Seattle so close by), plus the large investment required in overhead cranes for moving containers around.  They were a timber port from the past, and now still export logs and bulk chips

http://www.portofgraysharbor.com/about/history/index.php

. . . but have added 6 rail lines into the port that bring automobiles from the East and soybeans from the Midwest, barley is delivered to the port as well as a few other grains.  These come into the port on unit trains (up to 110 cars).

http://www.trainweb.org/ttos-pnw/pictures/grain2.jpg

There are fewer units on the car delivery trains.  Huge grain elevators are present for the storage of grains.  Also at the port are large tanks for liquid bulk.  It is a thriving port in recent years.  We were taken on a tour in our van, with Kayla sitting behind me in the front of the van.  We were allowed to take photos throughout the port.  Another of their exports is large fancy cars such as Jeeps that look like hummers, and they are a major Chrysler exporter.  In addition, they export large mechanical equipment (called OHOW=Over High Over Wide) including things such as construction earthmovers, Caterpillars, Hyster trucks, and so on.  They have rail loops to and through their terminals and storage facilities.  They are in charge of the Bowerman Airport, (a service), not a moneymaking entity, but a 5000′ runway to accommodate jets, as well as having a number of other properties.

Inside the headquarters are fascinating historical photographs.  In 2011, they celebrated their century of existence and service.  Anyone with an interest in transportation would benefit from a tour of the port properties and facility. From Port Headquarters we drove west to the Gray’s Harbor Wildlife Refuge at the end of a long peninsula.  A long hike was required to get to the boardwalk for great views.  I gave my camera to John Bowen, and he took pictures for me.  Elaine Lycan and I were not up to the 2 mile walk and we went across the street instead to Lana’s Hangar Cafe for a milk shake (50s style).  It was a great atmosphere and there was some nice food being served.  They are known for their hamburgers and fries.  We had already had our box lunch at the Port, so we only had the dessert.  Thankfully, we chose a small one.  If you are in the area, looking for a unique place to eat, check it out.  From there we returned to the Port and visited a craft spirits distillery, that specializes in mead (honey wine) distilled to honey vodka.  They also made a whiskey.  It is called the Wishkah River Distillery and the owner provided a tour of the process, a tasting, sale of their products and associated items, such as 3 sizes of tiny aging barrels; again, it is worth a stop if you like that kind of thing.  It was quite interesting.  Another geographer from my past was on that trip, Gundars Rudzitis, from the University of Idaho.  He will be retiring this December, at 70.  He actually bought some of their products, as did another couple of folks from Oregon.

http://wishkahriver.com/ContactWishkah.html

From that trip, we returned to the Phoenix Inn a little after 5:00 p.m. and there was a dinner (no host) at the Mercato, an Italian “Ristorante” up the street 3.5 blocks.  I decided to drive my car.  I knew I would have trouble parking when I returned, but I didn’t have to worry because the hotel pays for parking on the meter adjacent to the hotel block.  Problem with the parking from last night was I had to move the car at noon, and I would have been on the road.  I was fortunate to find a spot when I left the evening session slightly early.  Sadly, however, I missed seeing a fellow whom John and I had known from the Univ. of Cincinnati graduate program in the mid-1960s).  Okay, back to Thursday night’s dinner.  It was held at http://www.mercatoristorante.com/mercato-ristorante.html across from the Farmer’s Market.  I drove myself there.  On my way into the restaurant (pictured on their web page), I passed by the cooks.  I stopped and asked one for his recommendation.  He suggested Wild Mushroom Risotto, which I actually ordered.  I found a large group of geographers in a back room, and it was extremely noisy, so much so you could only hear the person to your left and right, and if you leaned forward and shouted, you could talk to the person across the table.  I was at a high powered (geographers) table, sitting with Alex Murphy from Eugene, past President of the AAG (Association of American Geographers) to my left, to my right was Eric Sheppard, current AAG President, across from me was Doug Richardson, the Executive Director of the AAG, and Martha Henderson, President of the APCG (Association of Pacific Coast Geographers) and head of this regional conference meeting.  She also led the field trip described above.

Back to my recommended and chosen meal.  It was Risotto (rice cooked in broth to a creamy consistency), with wild mushrooms, lettuce, and a hard cheese like Gouda, only another name, five letters long, starting with G.  Possibly, it had onion grated and cooked with the mixture.  It was scrumptious.  Cost me $15, considerably less than other meals around me, some of which were ordered with salads, at an additional price.  I had water to drink and several people ordered a glass of wine, followed by Doug ordering a bottle ($42) of Cabernet Sauvignon (2008) from Sovereign Cellars (Olympia) made from grapes grown in the central part of the state (closer to us); their grapes are sourced from vineyards in the Red Mountain, Columbia Valley (AVA) and Horse Heaven Hills.  Sovereign brings the fruit over and processes it in its winery near Steamboat Island in Olympia.  I had a small taste of it.  On my way out, I was followed by an older couple, the man of which (Myron Paine) is in his late 70s and a retired but still active geographer.  They asked me if I was walking back to the hotel and wanted to walk with them.  I thanked them and said I had my car and would be happy to give them a ride.  They took me up on it, and gave me his cards.  He is working on a project, and has a web page in the Frozen Trail for Merica.  He lives in Martinez, CA and writes on Lenape Epic topics.  He gives presentations from 10 minutes to 2 hour seminars on topics including The Lenape Epic, Frozen Trail to Merica, Maalan Aarum Saga, and How Christianity Came to America.  Here is his fascinating and informative research web site:

http://www.frozentrail.org/

I visited with them again at the evening reception Friday night.  Take a peek at the website above.  It is quite educational with research and historical thoughts of migrations into North America from the Norse.  His hypothesis:  During the Little Ice Age ancestors of the Lenape-speaking people walked, en masse, on the ice from Norse Greenland to Merica.  Check it out.

When I got back to my room, I saw Susan Digby for the first time this trip, as she was one of our other roommates.  She is currently the president of the Association of Washington Geographers, of which I have been a member for many years, and was Treasurer for a dozen years at least.  I have been a member since arriving to WA in 1988.

Friday, Oct 5   Started off early with getting ready to leave for a parking spot at the LOTT center (part of the water treatment facility for Olympia), within a half block of the Children’s Museum, where our talk was scheduled for the first thing and session of the day, starting at 10:00.  I was there by 9:30 to be sure I could find my way in and get a good seat on the front row, to support John B’s presentation of our investigation.  When I arrived I could not find an entrance in, and there were no signs.  I saw a security guard so I yelled at him asking how to get into the building.  He said, “Oh, you can’t; it’s under construction and no one is allowed.”  I was fretting when the chair of my session and his student arrived.  I explained and we went around the construction fence toward the back of the building.  We found an entrance and suggested to the people inside that they post a sign out where we had been stymied.  Then they showed us to the elevator and to the room.  There was not a laptop there (and there was supposed to be).  John and I both had ours along but it seemed appropriate to have them locate one.  We visited while waiting for the laptop.  Turns out these folks were from Alabama (the Univ. of Northern Alabama).  I had been a student (undergrad) of an instructor of Climatology there, Frank Himmler in 1964, who had transferred to Alabama after I left Georgia State University.  I found out he died of cancer about 7 years ago.  Within minutes, the laptop arrived and we began setting up.  The session was to start at 10:00 and our paper was not until 11:00.  Three presentations were ahead of ours.  We had a good turnout of folks for our session, filling the small room, so a way in had been found.  From there we went to lunch.  I introduced Susan Digby to John Bowen, we went to my car, and I drove us to the port of Olympia, where Susan had seen an ocean-going vessel earlier in the morning unloading some sort of white-wrapped bulk product.  By the time we arrived, the longshoremen (dock workers) had broken for lunch.  We climbed a viewing tower for a better view of the port.  I told Susan and John I could make it slowly, but I managed to make it up not very far behind them, and I think it was 12 short squared circular stairs.  I counted them because I knew John H. would not believe I ascended them.  I should have taken a picture of it, and I did not.  We realized we were not going to see anything, so we walked over to the farmer’s market and had lunch at a Mexican restaurant.  I had a burrito, but found out from a friend later I should have walked farther, had fish and chips, or a clam chowder.  Oh, well what I had was good and we found a place in the shade to sit and eat.  On the way back to my car I saw the unloading of the ship but it was too far away to get a good picture.  I surely wonder what those things were.  The two geographers decided to walk back (yes, I offered to take them), but I decided to stop by the hotel and get rid of my laptop and heavy bag.  I lucked out to find two parking spaces only, in the Phoenix lot, but as I found out later, I had parked in a disastrous position to be able to access the driver’s side of my car, to return to the paper sessions that started at 1:00.  Jen Lipton, my colleague from CWU was the session chair, and she had a paper at the end of her session.  I planned so that I would get there in time to hear her presentation.  Sadly, one of her presenters did not make it and did not notify anyone of his absence.  Normally, when that occurs, a session chair normally leaves the space open, and waits to keep it on schedule.  The audience convinced her to go ahead and present her talk and not to wait.  That meant I arrived for the last 5 minutes of her presentation.  Actually, I was later than intended because of not having access to my car.  Remember the comment above about the two parking spaces?  A VERY large truck had pulled into the second (and last spot) next to me.  I was evenly within my parking spot.  His truck was only five inches from my driver’s door.  I tried opening the door to squeeze in, but there was absolutely no way.  I went around to the passenger side, but it was a chore for me to figure how to get my body in putting my left leg across the large console between the two front bucket seats.  I hit my head on the mirror and had to push it out of the way, but still there was little room to get leverage and my strength and muscles still are not 100%.  I managed, but it took awhile.  I still got there in time for Jen’s paper, had the session been on schedule.  I was very disappointed to miss her paper, but at least I got to say hi.  She had just driven over in the morning with her family and was returning after that session.  From there I went to a 3 o’clock session of papers, after having a visit outside the building with Gundars (mentioned above).  We had not had an opportunity to visit during the field trip.  This session was quite interesting because I got to see more geographers from earlier days.  The first paper in the session was by a former undergraduate from Idaho (after I left there), who now is working on her Ph.D. in a German University.  I had met her at last night’s dinner.  I was sitting next to Carl Johannesson, who is now 84 and going strong.  Jim Allen was the session chair.  After that we went to the Boardroom of the Lott building for an afternoon Presidential Plenary session with Eric Sheppard talking on a Globalization and Urbanization topic.  He had some interesting thoughts and very nice photographs.  The screen in this room was clearly the best of any of the four rooms used for APCG presentations.  Following that was a reception (WITH FOOD) and a poster session (where I was able to visit with a student, Markus Chisholm, who was my undergraduate student at CWU in several classes about 2006 or so.  He has since entered the graduate program at CWU (Resource Management) and was presenting a poster on his research in Alaska, with a very interesting situation near the permafrost adjacent to an island whose subsistence depends on fishing (whaling) and hunting Caribou.  I also had nice visits with other geographers in my past:  William Bowen and his wife Marilyn, Gina Bloodworth (now in Maryland, but here early in the 2000s at CWU) and Naomi Peterson (still at CWU), the Paine couple I met the night before after the Italian dinner, and John Menary who I had had several instances to visit with during the conference.  John was hired by John Hultquist in 1980 when we were at Idaho and John was acting chair for a year and a half.  John M. lived in our living room for his first 4 months in Idaho.  It was great seeing him again after all these years.  We have kept in touch via email and only occasionally seen each other through the years at geography conferences.  He has lived most of the time after leaving Idaho in California, teaching geography.

Saturday, Oct 6  Interesting last several nights of interrupted sleep, so awoke very tired.  However, I got packed and loaded much of my stuff into my car, ate breakfast — this time I made my own waffle with a fancy machine a young man had to show me how to use (How times have changed!), and I made it down to the session starting at 10:00 that John Bowen was a panelist for and Susan Digby had organized.  After that we went back to the Phoenix Inn for a special luncheon (with another boxed lunch, a rather full one:  large wheat bread sandwich with turkey, cheese, red onions, tomatoes, lettuce; an apple, a pasta salad, and two little pieces of a brownie and of an apple cake).  It was accompanying a meeting of several folks from the AWG (Association of WA Geographers) and served as our “smaller” fall meeting for the organization.  The spring larger one will be held at CWU in May, 2013, and John Bowen is the local chief in charge.  When I was at CWU, I hosted the meetings twice.  Members there, many of them as panelists for the afternoon session at the APCG, included Rich Tebbetts, Dave Jeschke, I, Susan Digby, and her panelists:  George Walker, Craig ZumBrunnen, Stacy Warren, John Bowen, Martha Henderson, and Patrick Buckley.  It was a fruitful meeting.  John and I headed back to Ellensburg, after picking up his luggage from his motel.  As we came back into the Kittitas Valley, we saw a bunch of smoke still rising from the Table Mountain area.  John Hultquist was off just west of the Stevens Pass area again volunteering trail work for the WTA.  I will let him explain a little about the area near the old railroad west of Stevens Pass where two trestles crossed Martin Creek, and where they have been trying to revive history with a dedicated trail through the area.  I hope he will add something here:

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sure: A new trail is being built in the once-shadow of the Great Northern Pacific’s first route across the Cascades.  The train is referred to as the Iron Goat.  First, this word will come up:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wye_(rail)

Then go here:

http://www.scn.org/sbtp/swbks-gn.html

Helps to see the view; here’s the location of Scenic

(lowest white dot on the map or diagram 2 at the above link.

47.711342, -121.161073

Martin Creek Trailhead is here:

47.729569, -121.207043

We cleared forest trees and litter near the tunnel portals on the left side of this map.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

He was gone from our house for 12 hours, and we arrived home within minutes of one another.  The animals were quite ecstatic to see us.  The smoke was bad through the night and into the day.  The visibility reached its worst just before 10:00 a.m. when it was down to 3 miles.  Finally about 2:00 it cleared up a little (to 10 miles).

Guess I should halt this treatise and have John post it late on our Sunday.  It is much later in the East U.S. where several of our regular readers are.  The temperatures have finally started to decrease, so we need to drain the water from the travel trailer and winterize it.  John bought anti-freeze type stuff while I was out of town, but was waiting for my assistance with the project.  I imagine now it won’t happen until tomorrow some time.

Hope your week was a good one.  Ours was certainly a busy one.

Nancy and John

Still on the Naneum Fan

Nancy worked Mon & Tues getting ready, Wed going, and the rest of the week in Olympia, returning about 6 P. M. Sat.  When she catches up with the rest of the world, we’ll get her view of things.

Cheers,

John

Smoke still gets in our eyes

Sunday, Sept 16  We already covered never on Sunday, in last week’s blog.  Therefore, we will move along to Monday.

Monday, Sept 17  Bad smoke-filled valley this morning producing low visibility.  Early up to get to the hospital lab for a blood draw (fasting) for both of us.  I also had my regular monthly INR.  We went afterwards for a biscuit with Canadian bacon slice, regular bacon pieces, cheese, and an egg from Carl’s Jr. and then to the grocery and pharmacy with the idea of our both getting a Shingles shot as recommended in our last annual physical by our family physician.  Today, John’s shot cost us $87.50 and insurance will pay the other half.  Rather expensive, I thought.  So, I decided to wait and talk to my Cardiologist this week before I get one.  There are all sorts of warnings on the allergies and medications and supplements a person takes, they have you read before taking the shot.  (I did ask him, and he deferred my question to my family physician.)

Do not have to show up for jury duty for this week; have to call again next Monday.  I’m relieved because I had several appointments I did not want to miss.

Tonight, besides taking a break to make large BLTs with our tomatoes primarily, I was busy going through a 90-minute class on line so we can pass the human subject review required of us by the university for protecting the privacy, confidentiality, showing no coercion, etc., of interviewees in our proposed study.  I passed all the modules, answered all the 4 questions correctly at the end of each, and got a certificate in return, saying:

Responsible Conduct of Research Training

COMPLETION CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that

Nancy Hultquist

has completed the Human Subject Review Committee tutorial, Protecting Participants in Social and Behavioral Science Research, on 09/17/2012.

This course included the following topics:

•       Historical events influencing the ethics of human research

•       Current ethical standards

•       Risks and harms

•       Benefits

•       Informed consent process

•       Privacy and confidentiality protections

•       Research with protected populations

•       The review process at Central Washington University

•       Researcher’s responsibilities

Tuesday, Sept 18   I picked up John B at Dean Hall at 12:45.  Went to Andersons for a tour of the compressing of hay, and loading for transportation by containers to world ports (most in Asia), and afterwards we headed to Wesco International to interview the owner.

[John says: Container shipping was the idea of Malcolm Mc Lean in 1956 —

The Truck Driver Who Reinvented Shipping

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5026.html

or this —

http://www.isbu-info.org/all_about_shipping_containers.html

Photo here:

http://www.carexshipping.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/container_shipping.jpg

You see them on the highway looking like regular trucks but they come apart and go to sea.

http://jiyolive.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/2.jpg    ]

I am off again after a long afternoon to play music in town, and John is going along to fill up his car so I have gas to drive myself to Yakima tomorrow to see my cardiologist.  He’s got too much to do to go along with me, and I have to rush back to play music at the Food Bank Soup Kitchen and then go to my exercise class.

I got enough exercise today more than for a whole normal week.  We walked all over Anderson’s (an exporter’s) container yard from barn to barn and looked at various hay compressing units required to produce the product for export.  Then drove 14 miles to past Kittitas to another exporter (Wesco) and had a long conversation with the manager/owner.  Both were very interesting and educational.

Tonight John and I will pick up some tomatoes from a friend to whom I delivered squash today, and then we will go get a charbroiled chicken sandwich with some fancy Mexican name, TORTA.  I don’t know what it is.  Perhaps I should look it up on the Internet.  I just looked at the coupon.  It has beans, cheese, guacamole, and charbroiled chicken, tomato, and lettuce and salsa… supposedly . [John says:  It is a linguistic advertizing trick to get you to buy their flat-bread sandwich.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torta   ]

Wednesday, Sept 19  Early start this morning, leaving at 7:45 for Yakima for two Heart Center appointments, the first with my cardiologist (last visit was May 1), and I also needed a 3-month check (digital read out) from my ICD.  On my way to the freeway, I passed a field of corn being harvested, so I took some pictures to share with my colleague, John B..  Then on down and up the hill on I-82, to the view point.  Took a couple of photos of the smoke-filled valley and the ridges behind with all the smoke from the fires.  On to Yakima, and got there 20 minutes before my scheduled appointment.  Even though it was my doctor’s first appointment of the day, he was over at the hospital and was about 20 minutes late.  But they took me in early and did an EKG and a chest X-ray, (normally done once a year).  My report was good.  He doesn’t want to see me back for 8 months.  Wow–cool.  After his care was completed, I walked around to the ICD check place and was a little early for my appointment.  That went well, and while I was there, I asked if I could have my BP checked because it was a little high when I started (138/74), which I attributed to my driving myself down and seeing and worrying about the fire.  However, I had been relatively relaxed for the rest of the hour while there, so she called in a nurse to retake it.  It was 120/70, not bad, even though it is still a little higher than when I take it at home.

Off to Ellensburg to play music and be treated to lunch at the Food Bank Soup Kitchen.  On my way down the hill, I pulled to the other viewpoint and took a movie panning around the valley, of the smoke on the far ridge, and also took a couple of still pictures.  I came via the same road I had taken pictures of earlier of the corn harvest, and the whole crew with 3 large corn harvesters had moved farther down the road to another large field.  I stopped and took a movie of the machinery working close up (cutting and stripping to just the corn cobs).  Pretty cool.  On to the Food Bank.

Once there I visited with a couple of the volunteer cookers and servers, and set up padded folding chairs for 4 people.  We had our usual banjo and fiddle, plus two singers today.  At the beginning and end, we were joined by an 82 year old man who carries his harmonica and plays with us when he can.  Today he played, You Are My Sunshine.  After we had a nice meal — chicken Alfredo with nice large slices of tender chicken, nice green salad, and homemade sweet biscuits (similar to shortcake, but cooked just like a hamburger-sized biscuit), with a fruit compote poured over it.  Boy, was that scrumptious.  From there to SAIL exercise class.  I didn’t have to lead the class today because another of our group did.  After that, I drove home, but saw big billowing smoke clouds and stopped to photo them, and then realized there were new fires in the canyon drainage west of us (Wilson Creek).  Those continued to grow and burn on the ridge.  My friend took his binoculars and looked across the valley and saw flames and also several fires and flare-ups in Wilson Creek.  I decided not to go out after dark to look for the flames, because I figured it would give me nightmares.  I did walk up the driveway twice tonight to get a better view of the smoke, and took some more pictures.  I will  post them on our continuing “web page.” http://www.ellensburg.com/nancyh/August2012Rock’NPonderosa.html

There is a report here (with photos):

http://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/Table-Mountain-fire-in-Wash-triples-in-size-3880802.php

On from there we continued with chores.  John picked a box of pears from our tree we inspected on a first walk together up the driveway to get the paper.  So I just took several photos of the clouds of smoke.  He bought some peaches on his way back from the trail work last Saturday, and we fixed them tonight to freeze into little packages and kept some to have with ice cream and blueberry muffin for dessert.  After we put the peaches up, we drove to the end of the driveway to check on the fire.  We saw nothing alarming.  Here is a note John wrote to a friend in WTA (WA Trails Association):

I’ll be coming Friday to Issaquah to work on trail to get out of the smoke. Our first big fire was west of here and came to about 6 miles away. There isn’t much to burn between here and there, so it stopped.   Now, the forest north of us** is burning. The fire is up at 5,000 feet or so; we are at 2,200. Trees (P. Ponderosa) come down to about 3,500. Then there is low grass and intermittent brush. A downhill fire is not so fast moving and may not progress too far.  Still it is just about 6 miles from us tonight. We are in the watchful/waiting mode again. Haven’t hooked the truck to the travel trailer yet – as we did last time. **  Some nice trails up there. I cleaned out a couple of downed trees for the Cle Elum district a few years back.  I think the fire burned through there this afternoon or a bit earlier. Later this fall or next spring, I’ll go have a look.  John

Thursday, Sept 20  Began the morning early, logging on to the website,

http://activefiremaps.fs.fed.us  which allows mapping active fires by downloading a .kmz file and using it within Google Earth.  An example of the first one Sept 19 evening and the next Sept 20 will be on the evolving web page (above link) on Wednesday’s entry.  Maybe more, because we have kept up the vigil.  (NOTE update Sept 23 just before posting this blog; a 10:00 a.m. view showed no red dots; meaning no new fires within the past 12 hours.)  Then we spent a lot of time doing various chores and left for me to play music at Dry Creek, while John went shopping.  Came home and at 4:30, I pulled a new image from later this morning, and we are in MUCH better shape.  The only reds are way north of us.  Note, this is the explanation of the data mapped:

CONUS MODIS 1km Fire Detections  This KML displays the MODIS fire detections at a spatial resolution of 1km for the past 6 hours, 6-12 hours, 12-24 hours and the previous 6 day period. Each 1km MODIS fire detection is depicted as a point representing the centroid of the 1km pixel where the fire is detected. The 1km footprint of the MODIS pixel for each detection is also displayed.
Data current as of 20-Sep-2012; 1715 Mountain Time (20-Sep–2315 UTC). 2012; KML file generated by the USDA Forest Service Active Fire Mapping Program.  Please see http://activefiremaps.fs.fed.us for additional fire mapping products and information.

[MODIS image is here: http://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/individual.php?db_date=2012-09-21

Note the right side where 3 resolutions are available to download.  Open one of these; the largest one if your computer can handle it.  Then your pointer should appear as a “+ sign” and clicking on the image should expand or zoom – You will have to find our area – central WA — by using the scroll bars on the side and bottom.  Wind is blowing from South-to-North and the smoke is drifting into the valleys to the north.  This was taken on Sept. 13 but for the past week the wind has brought smoke into the Kittitas Valley – we are at the upper point of the greenish triangle, also know as the Naneum Fan. ]
We had a late dinner; beef roast, squash, lentils & barley, tomato sauce, cooked in the crock pot.  I fixed some corn on the cob in the microwave, and we had some of our own yellow pear tomatoes (thumb size).  I didn’t get the work done on my hay project I had intended.  I took my camera to town, and stopped to take some pictures of a wheel line, shooting out water.  Well, my battery got low, and it only let me take ONE picture.  Will have to try later.

I got a note that the field trip I was signed up for in Olympia didn’t get but 4 people signed up, so they are cancelling it.  I’m so disappointed.  Now I will decide if I need to spend an extra night there–or if I couldn’t just drive over for Thursday and Friday nights–must decide soon.  Actually I moved to another all day field trip to the Port of Gray’s Harbor and Aberdeen, WA redevelopment.

Friday, Sept 21  John left at 6:30 for Issaquah Highlands, east of Seattle, (Google Earth location is  ‘grand ridge drive, Issaquah, WA ’, to work on trail with a Microsoft volunteer “Day of Caring” group.  Go to that image and find the word ‘King’ (in green) and the trail is in the woods between the location marker and King.  There are enough MS-folk (33) that several WTA assistant crew leaders are needed.

The air quality decreased enough last night to cause me to get up in the middle of the night and put on a face mask, and to turn on the fan to clean the air inside the house.  A check of the active fire site shows they have stopped the advancing fire across Hwy 97 at the big curve where John has to travel in the morning.  I have not checked the DOT site yet to see if the road closure has been lifted.  (It was at 7:00 p.m.) [John says:  On the quite steep east side of the road – crews cut many trees and all the low brush and moved most of it off the slope – only large downed logs and large standing trees (trimmed to ~8 feet up) are left.  I think they then started a fire at the top of the slope but that is not visible from the highway.  Lots of non-local, even Canadian, fire crews are up there working.]

Stayed home from getting out when I didn’t absolutely need to.  For much of the day the visibility at the airport (5 miles south of us) was a half mile.  Wow.. never saw it that low here.  And the winds were calm since last night, but just before 2:00 we registered a 3mph wind from the NNW.  It seems to be a little better.

I called my doctor’s office to get a prescription for a good mask to wear in this, because of my heart condition.  I can pick it up from the hospital tomorrow when I’m in town.  Have called around to a few people in need to let them know about that.  I had to do the leg work on this, because the first comment from the Dr’s office in Cle Elum (45 minutes away) was you will have to pick up the prescription here.  I said, I’m sure you can FAX it to the hospital, and I will find the number and call you back while we’re waiting for the Dr. to write the prescription.  Jeez.  I found the number and the location is Respiratory Services at the local hospital.  I called back with the information and then an hour later, the nurse called to tell me the doctor wrote the prescription and it was being faxed.  Rest of the time I’m spending on my part of the hay project.  John made it home about 5:00 p.m.

=====  Happy Fall Equinox! 10:49 am EDT

http://www.usno.navy.mil/USNO/tours-events/sky-this-week/the-sky-this-week-2012-september-18-25

See the 3^rd paragraph.  Therein the phrase “apparent disc” is used.  This alludes to the fact that our Sun is so large that a spot on Earth gets light from an edge of the Sun’s surface and then, more and more of it as the two move in relation to one another.  Such issues are explained here:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/09/110921-autumnal-equinox-northern-hemisphere-first-day-fall-2012-science/

Saturday, Sept 22  The sun is barely shining through the smoke haze. When I left for town, and while there, the visibility was only 5 and 6 miles; now it is better, at the airport, but not up here close to the hills.  The breeze has started again, however, so that might help a little as long as it doesn’t aggravate the fires.  John is still on the road, coming down from the north through the fires.  On my way to town, I stopped off at the post office and put a card in the mail for a special friend in my home town, Atlanta, GA.  And, then on to the hospital, where I picked up 4 heavy duty masks for being out in this smoke.  They know me in there from coming in for my yearly pulmonary test and occasional heart monitor checkouts.  It is the Respiratory and Cardiac Services department at our local Kittitas Valley Community Hospital.  I thanked them for being there to distribute them on the weekend, when all the public offices (health dept, and school health services) are closed.  They thanked me for coming to participate, as it is a health need particularly now in our valley.

I had my camera along and on the way to town, I took some photos of a wheel line with water.  On the return trip, it was cool that I came up Naneum, face to face with a LARGE herd of sheep with their Basque (or Peruvian) shepherds, walking them down Naneum Road from the hills to the north.  I pulled off the road into a driveway type cut off, and took pictures of them all.  I even got a snippet of a movie.  Too bad I’m no longer teaching Economic Geography, but I will share my treasures with John Bowen.  Talk about being at the right place at the right time.  After I pulled away and watched  them proceed down the road, I saw the other shepherd pulling their house trailer turn in front of me to “go around the block”.  They will camp down the road for a couple of days in different pastures on their way south, over the Yakima Training Area south of us to Moxee, a town east of Yakima.  Actually, they must have turned and gone west because John saw them on his way home over southwest of where I had seen them.  Maybe I will go tomorrow and take a picture of them in a field.  They usually stay a couple days, and move on.

We had a good time at Briarwood Commons (Retirement Community) with a very few folks playing and singing, but the audience was good, and they all contributed.  They had made us a feast to thank us for coming to play.  We had little chicken salad (mostly chicken) sandwiches, two pasta salads, wheat rolls with butter, wonderful green pea/ham/carrot soup, a fruit drink, and coffee to go with a table full of desserts.  There were oatmeal/raisin cookies, zucchini bread, red velvet chocolate cupcakes, with homemade boiled white frosting, sweet crackers with peanut butter.  I had one of each of the last two selections.

Guess that about does it.  I need to work on loading the dishwasher I never finished yesterday, and to return to inputting my words and photos into our presentation on the hay industry we have to present in 2 weeks.  It’s coming along well.  That’s the presentation in Olympia, with John Bowen, my CWU colleague.

John made it home a little after 6:00 p.m. tonight.  Today the WTA group included five Boy Scouts plus 7 or 8 others.  They were west of Skykomish about 3 miles and then a little SW up a 6 mile gravel road on a trail that circles Lake Elizabeth [See at:  47.70271, -121.518423 ].

He came home and is fixing his dinner, but I have eaten too much this afternoon to need anything to eat.

John was sitting talking to me about his day, when Rascal brought a live bird into the den.  Luckily John picked the cat up and carried him outside with the bird in his mouth.  He was still alive and when the cat let go of, the tiny thing flew away.  YEA!  Glad John got him outside and we didn’t have a bird flying around our house.  It was a little sparrow (?), maybe.

Hope your week was a good one.

Nancy and John

Still on the Naneum Fan

I hope to find some time to update the page you have been reading for the past couple of weeks, but it will probably just happen in spurts.  I have mentioned some stuff in this week’s blog, but the content is not yet there.  If you log on and see a red notice toward the top about adding something by Sept 9, then nothing has been added yet.  Please visit again soon.  Here is the link.

http://www.ellensburg.com/nancyh/August2012Rock’NPonderosa.html

My emphasis and concentration is now on the presentation upcoming in less than 2 weeks. Thanks for staying tuned.