Category: Random issues

This past weekend was light and even more so into Monday, without telephone lines and computers working.  Our home computer was fine, but not this morning, when John was out with the farrier, and I was trying to call about medical bills and get on the web to read and send emails.  Nothing was working.  Our phone lines were down until late afternoon.  So I used the time to finish my tax form and print it out.  I finally got fed up and quit and went to the other room to rest up for going to my exercise class and to pick up my “fixed” computer because they got in the power cord.  I expected at least to pay for their time in diagnosing and in ordering the part, but not.  He told me to close my checkbook, as it was all covered by Apple.  That’s still hard to believe, but he said so.. that I had an Apple Care contract on my machine, and that extended the warranty two years.  Well that is still not enough time in my book, but who’s to argue.  I thanked Jason and Chuck and told them how much their support meant to us, and for hosting our blog since Dec 4th 2009. He was surprised that it was still going and people were still reading it.  They are just a portal for us, WordPress is the actual service, but Jason did set it up (for John – on the phone).  The blog URL begins with ‘ccsoe’ — for Complete Computer Services of Ellensburg.  It’s so nice to have my computer working and back in my lap.

[An aside on WordPress (WP): Some folks try to disrupt web sites just to see if they can, or maybe they are angry about something.  Attempts to disrupt any WP blog affects them all, and as there are so many, this is a daily issue.  Mostly attempts at disruption do not work and users (us creating and posting, and you reading) never notice.  Last month the defenses failed for a short time and anyone attempting to work with WP encountered a problem.  Links below are to two posts written as the gurus at WP worked to re-establish the system:

http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2011/03/08/some-turbulence/

http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/03/wordpress-com-suffers-major-ddos-attack/

. . .[if such things are of interest – follow some of the links in those stories. jfh]

And this afternoon after exercise, John picked me up and we went to the bank and also to get my fixed computer.  Tonight we are going to go to a talk on Moons in our Solar System.   Dr. Bonnie Buratti of the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) in Pasadena, CA, will give a public lecture titled, “Moons: The Weirdest Planets in the Solar System.”  She is   a planetary geoscientist who specializes in understanding how planets and their moons form and evolve.  Dr. Buratti’s visit was sponsored by the JPL Outer Planets Colloquium program.       ( http://outerplanets.jpl.nasa.gov/ )

Here is the abstract of what we heard:  Our solar system has at least 170 moons orbiting the main planets.  Before these moons were visited by spacecraft, astronomers expected them to be boring, dead objects devoid of any geologic features.  We now know they are fantastic worlds – with features unlike anything seen on Earth:  giant sulfur-spewing volcanoes, globally cracked ice-covered surfaces, liquid lakes of hydrocarbons, and colossal watery plumes.  Yet many of these worlds are also earthlike and familiar.  Titan, the giant moon of Saturn, has often been called an Earth in deep freeze, with cloud systems, lakes, shorelines, drainage fields and even perhaps rain.  Scientists believe that the most likely places for life to evolve outside the Earth may be in the water-interiors of the moons Europa, Enceladus, and possibly Titan.

Here it is Tuesday all day, supposed to be a light day, and it was not.  We started at 7:30 am with John leaving for the vineyard.  I began my day early too, on the computer I now have access to again.  After a lot of work I ate breakfast and got ready to leave for a much-needed haircut from my neighbor.  I had also started reading — we are reviewing research proposals for the SILVERHILL INSTITUTE OF ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH AND CONSERVATION, in Ontario, Canada (Our connection is its founder, a friend from our Cincinnati days).  Then later in the afternoon, while John was gone for a lunch after pruning, I worked more on taxes and emails.  I’m pretty tired tonight and we have to get up very early tomorrow morning because I have been invited to the lunch tomorrow after the wine grape pruning.  I’m looking forward to that.

Oh, also today I was in touch with a friend’s husband –the friend had hip surgery early this morning.  She came through it well.

Wednesday, oops, awoke to snow.  So John went to the vineyard alone and I’m going over separately for lunch, driving the 66 miles one way in my own car.  We couldn’t put the dogs out in < 35 degree weather and snow.  The sun is up and the temp is rising.  By the time I left at 11:00 a.m. it was sunny and the temp was 43 (higher on the porch). I gave the 3 of them some water, and left Meghan in the house with the cat.  She made it through the several hours fine.  We both returned by way of Quincy, buying gasoline for both cars, and getting choc milk for me.  Gasoline is a bit cheaper there than in Ellensburg.  Quincy is a small town in the midst of an irrigated agricultural area and very “laid back” until recently, when Microsoft, Yahoo! and Intuit came to add “server farms” to the mix. See the several links embedded in this:

http://www-scf.usc.edu/~jmapes/quincy.htm

If you use Quincy, WA in the “Fly to” box of Google Earth you can see the town – it is about 2.5 miles wide.  Zoom out and put the town at the top – have it show roads — and have “281” and the I-90 symbol near the bottom edge.  Where “281” leaves I-90 to head north is the town of George, Washington.  Isn’t that clever?  The green areas are fields of alfalfa, corn, onions and such things, and fruit orchards and baby trees for sale. Here is one of the major suppliers:

http://columbiabasinnursery.com/index.html

From the home page, click on ‘cherries’ and ‘apples’ for photos of the fruit.  Study this site’s pages and you could become an orchardist!  For instance, scroll to the “apple rootstock” section at the bottom of the apples page. On John’s route going to and returning from pruning, he has passed a plot where a new orchard is being planted.  They had a crew of about 40 workers, thousands of baby trees, miles of wire, many hundreds of posts and a large machine to push them into the ground.  The machine looks like the one in this photo (a different application):

http://edenprairieweblogs.org/scottneal/wp-content/uploads/Installing_Helical_Anchors_2_-_Dec_2009_Medium.jpg

. . . and a few years from now the result will look like this:

http://www.kingorchards.com/september/pages/DSCF2326.htm

. . . except all the vertical posts are treated wood like the one in the foreground.  The green circles between Quincy and George (WA) are fields with circular pivot water supplies.

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

The brown section (west of the road between the two towns) is called the Ancient Lakes area and is composed of canyons and lakes resulting from “ice age floods” about 15,000 years ago.

http://www.wta.org/go-hiking/hikes-of-the-week/ancient-lakes

The story of the floods is in the link below (with a slide show):

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/pacificnw09302007/2003905120_pacificpice30.html

Back to lunch: It was spectacular and lasted 3 hours.  There were 3 types of meat or sausage, and one was like a prime rib sliced; it was fantastic.  Also a chicken liverwurst, I really liked, and several types of cheese, including Brie (yum) and 3 different kinds of crackers, a big salad and for dessert a fruit (raisins made locally by one of the crew) dark bread.  White Heron wines and several others. That’s the most wine I have drunk in 3 years.  There were 11 people around the table… yes, big table.  I also took some pictures of the table, the room, and from the house out over the vineyards and down into the Columbia River “gorge” there at the bend of the river at West Bar, and Crescent Bar.

It snowed on us coming back across the hill into the valley (up by the wind towers; all running today).  We got home just after 4:00 p.m.

I just woke up, and it is still evening.  I guess I wore myself out today.  I did some emailing stuff, called  to see how the hip surgery went, loaded a few dishes in the dishwasher, and then laid down at 6:00 because I was tired.  I guess.  I slept for 2.5 hrs through John cooking and eating dinner.

Thursday–awoke to beautiful sunny morning, and John took off for more pruning.  I stayed home for an expected telephone call, and I will be going to play music this afternoon and visiting my friend who had the hip replacement.  Will be nice to go back to KVCH for a visit and not as a patient.  The day ran together and I forgot we had to go to a talk on the ice age floods.  It was very interesting, and covered the Scablands part of WA (from Lake Missoula, across WA).  It lasted till 8:15 or so.

I did make it by to see the lady with the new hip but she was sleeping, soundly.  Her husband and son were there so we whispered a few things.  Her husband had told me that her red blood count was low, and they were giving her a transfusion.  They realized it when this morning she couldn’t put any weight on the new leg with the hip and yesterday after the surgery, she had.  I guess she has been in pain too.  So I only stayed a few minutes and told them to tell her hello when she awoke, but I surely didn’t want to wake her.  I’m sure she had a rough night last night and didn’t have a good night’s sleep.  I remember wishing to take an afternoon nap when in the nursing home (rehab center).

Friday.. lots of things to keep me busy, from shoulder massage, to playing and singing music and eating at the Soup Kitchen, followed by exercise and a visit to my friend with the hip surgery who was moved to a nursing home.

Here it is Saturday already.  Wow, time flies.  John spent last night and this morning working on his Trail Rider Club Newsletter, and got it folded and stamped and mailed out from our mailbox at the end of the driveway, this morning.  We got back to working on the review of the research proposals.  We still have over an hour’s work to put in to writing up the evaluations.  We’d be rich if this weren’t volunteered efforts on our part.  I took off this afternoon for town and to play and eat at Briarwood, a retirement community we go to every second Saturday of the month.  Afterwards I made a stop at the grocery and filled John’s car with gasoline.

One last note that may upset a few of you out there.  If you have ever lived in a rural setting in a house that was not well constructed, there is a problem of mice entering, from where we do not know.  Our cats of the past have been good mousers, even with some set traps in places near the garage where some might be coming in behind the kitchen stove.  Well, you all have been hearing about the kitty cat we rescued back in early December, at approximately 8 weeks of age.  She has continued to grow and is now about 6 months old (has had her shots and been spayed). This week she has caught two mice (both in the middle of the night), so we figure she is paying for her room and board.  We took them from her after she killed them, before she could eat them.

Okay.. I think I should stop and send to John to put on the blog.  He may not get to it until Sunday morning, because of a late dinner and still needing to work over the proposals.  I know he will embellish it with educational links referring to my statements.

Here’s hoping you all have another good week and we send our best regards to all our faithful readers and link followers.  We may succeed in introducing you to our region’s landscape and geography without your having to come in person.

Enjoy, from Nancy and John in Ellensburg, WA

This his week started off slowly and was light with activity, or lack thereof.  Saturday and Sunday we stayed home, except for Nancy going to Taize’ Sunday night, and going ahead of time to Safeway to pick up some strawberries for our neighbor.  Two friends were there, one a former student who left in 2006 and has returned to finish her Resource Management (REM) thesis and degree.  She is a Native American from Montana, and it was great to see her.  She came along to the Taize’ evening and had dinner with us.  The next day was light too, pretty much.  John took off in the middle of the day for Yakima to have his Subaru serviced.  I went to exercise class and to the grocery.

Today, Tuesday, is another light day for me.  John left to prune wine grapes and I slept in.  Continued working to make a list of REM grads and their job titles and connections  to be used to invite folks to an Earth Day fundraiser for scholarships.  I’m getting tired of spending so much time as it is taking and keeping me away from the chores around the house I should be doing.

Wednesday awoke to a sick day, with some intestinal bug.  I could have gone a long time without this.  Better now, however, than away from home.  Heard from a good friend her mom is in Virginia Mason with a suspected stroke.  We surely have her and the family in our thoughts and prayers.  John went to prune again today and it rained here and the wind blew all morning and still is howling.  I will skip my exercise class today and try to get better.  John got home and we ate a couple of cookies and he is napping.  I might do that too and then will hit the taxes again later.  Maybe I should do them while he is napping and not on the computer.  Yeah.  I did and completed an extension form to send in for 2010.  Now I have to do more data entry.

Thursday began early sending John off to prune again.  I managed to unload the dishwasher and clean up all the sinks and counters.  Never had lunch till after I got home from playing music with my “group” at Mt. View.   Worked all morning with my laptop, trying to get it to recharge the battery.  It has been acting odd for two weeks and is now mostly not charging.  I will take it to the computer doctor tomorrow.

I spent the rest of the time on filing and organizing.  It seems like an endless task.   I’m on John’s computer now, having sent some important files here, to deal with.  John just finished writing a series of “Google Earth” steps to show his sister how he configures the maps and user-placed photos to learn about places when news reports are incomplete.  Now it’s late, so I will have some ice cream and hit the hay, I think.

Friday, all day, and April Fool’s Day at that.  I didn’t get anything pulled on me, however.  It was a GOOD day and full.  Nice to hear that for a change from me, eh? I’m still very behind, and am writing this from “John’s computer,” our house one, in the back “bedroom” that has been a computer room forever.  I call it “John’s computer” because a few years ago we bought a name brand desktop one via their web site, dealt with their poor documentation, poor tech support, their cheap components, and bloated installed “crap-ware.”  A week after it arrived, we shipped it all back.  John next ordered quality parts from 4 or 5 different vendors and cobbled them together to make a computer.  Two minor components have had to be replaced during four years of considerable use, so out they came, in went new ones, and “John’s computer” whirls on.    The computer room acquired bunk beds for daughters of our friend’s visiting from New Zealand, about a year before the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics came undone – about 20 years ago.  The beds are covered with 3 feet or more of dusty stuff.  John blows the dust out of the computer tower but has refused to touch the (his words) 3 feet of dust on the stuff on the beds.  I’ll get to it some day.. ha ha, but there are many other flat surfaces to hit first.  Good I’m retired.  Perhaps I will have time to finish this in my lifetime.

So, here’s the good news.  I took my computer into the guys on my way to exercise class, and guru-Chuck called me it was the power cord that had burned itself out.  He ordered a part before 2:00 pm and figures they get one day service and will have it in on Monday, and I will get it back then.  That is SUCH good news, but not as great as what he said next.  “It was still under warranty.”  Wow, I would never have thought that and would have just ordered a new power cord (John found one on line for $79.95, plus shipping), but we decided to get a professional opinion from people we have dealt with for YEARS.  This is the computer I helped pay for in 2007 with service award funds I had access to and when I retired, it became my “gold watch.”  But it is like a watch without hands as I long ago wore the printed symbols off of about 20% of the keys.  I’m its custodian until it crashes, then they can toss it on their great slag heap of other dead tech equipment.  It was good to have the laptop in ICU and the Rehab center.  I couldn’t have it the first ICU when I was so sick, but the subsequent two times, I could.  (John says: Note she calls this good news.  Consider – when it totally fails we’ll buy a new spiffy one.  That would be good news!)

Next good news was having a great April Fool’s Day potluck.  They provided ham and scalloped potatoes, and people brought veggies and salads, bread, and desserts.  Very yummy.  Then I played and sang with Karen (accordionist)–springtime songs from the 1930s.  I must admit there were a few that I had never heard, but I just listened and picked ’em up.  Then there were some I knew well, such as Springtime in the Rockies, and I played the harmony, and yodeled at appropriate places.  Had fun.

Then it was exercise class.  Have I worn you out yet ?  Then off to school to pick up a few bottles of  our wine leftover from our (my) retirement party.  There were still almost two cases left.  Much has disappeared since we donated it, but I needed some Merlot to repay the gal who did some map work for me with images rectifying them to the ground surface and a coordinate system known to the other layer that I needed to overlay.  It’s for the NCGE meeting I’m going to in Portland, in August, and presenting a workshop on the Urban Heat Island there with my friend from NY who we’ve known since 1965.  Paul and I have presented stuff together over the past 20 years, at professional meetings.  Pretty interesting.

Then called John but he hadn’t gotten to the Conservation District to pick up his “trees” (5 Rocky Mountain Maples and 5 Blue Spruce), for which I had written a check for $15.14 this morning.  I called from exercise class and left a message with the District to leave a note on his order to pick up donuts before coming home. A lady had called me this morning from the bakery saying the Apple Fritters were especially nice today, and they could fix me a full dozen.  He didn’t get the message, but was home when I called later, and so I went down to pick them up on my way home, also getting some ground beef for us to have nachos tonight.

I went to the art gallery (we have several)–but I went to Gallery One (its name); it has been here since 1960!  There was a write up of a couple from Seattle in night before last’s paper, front page, about their cat, Cooper, an orange tabby, who is a photographer.  They were putting on his show at Gallery One, so I went and viewed it.  It is fantastic.  They bought a special small camera to put around his collar, and it takes pictures every two minutes.  They wondered what he did during the day on his outings, and now they know.  Some of them are really quite good.  I will tell you the sites to check out, but seeing the large framed pictures in person was awesome and better.  I have some favorites, but you can look at the sites below and see what yours are.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GzpwrJjtHU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDGrXmA6ewY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CQwh_v1hDg

I guess if I’m tired, it’s understandable.

Okay– I must leave this computer.  Annie just came and asked to go out.  Sunshine just jumped on the stool in front of me, and will be getting up in the window soon. She just gently stepped across my knees and got on the books (flat space) on the partially pulled out filing drawer and is looking out the window at John working in the yard.  It’s Friday night.

John is back in from doing yard chores on Saturday.  I will stop this and give my chair to John to put this report on the blog.

We hope you all have another good week and we send our best regards to all our faithful readers.  We are surprised every so often to hear that people are still followers.

Nancy and John in Ellensburg, WA

Saturday this week is empty for a change, giving me time to finally cut John’s long locks.  When he started doing trail work he had thick hair but his hard hat kept coming off so I trimmed his graying hair very short.  That is still the plan.  I’m done now and he is set for awhile.

It’s Sunday and we are making a trip to Costco in Yakima and hope to combine it with an eggs and waffles lunch with friends from west of town.  We were going to meet them for a Polish sausage and strawberry sundae at Costco, but they invited us instead to their house.  We’re taking home grown raspberries and U-pick blueberries.  We hoped for good weather so we could leave the dogs out for the several hours we are gone.  That’s a long time to be cooped up in the house without being able to potty.  At least the cat has a litter box she can use.  The weather did not cooperate so we just returned from 5 hours away, leaving everyone in the house.  They managed to make it through just fine.  We had a nice visit (snowed the whole time) with the friends in West Yakima (70 miles from our home) and lots of good food.  Yum.  There were scrambled eggs with cheese and onions, cut oranges, bacon, waffles, and our fancy berries.  We didn’t have any room left for fresh cinnamon rolls, so some snuck home with us.
On the way back, we went by Costco, and it was a mess.  I have never seen so many people in one store in my life.  I’ll never do that again.  We don’t know if it was because it was raining, or perhaps it was the first Sunday since a paycheck.  It was nuts.  We were rained on there, and almost all the way home, till we got to Manastash Ridge, and were in the snow again.
North and a bit west of Yakima is a long high ridge called Cleman Mountain (5,076 feet; see on Google Earth at: 46.82, -120.848).  It had snow all over.  One of the small blue picture markers for the location just given is for Mt. Rainier about 42 miles west of Cleman and another 22 miles from Interstate 82, our route north.  Mt. Rainier is so prominent from the Seattle region that folks just say things, such as, “the mountain is out today,” which means the fog and clouds are gone and Mt. Rainier, in all its majesty, can be seen.  From the Yakima area we can also see Mt. Adams, and there are fewer intervening ridges and being a bit closer, it seems larger.

Mt. Rainier is a 14,411 ft. slumbering stratovolcano and from our back patio we can see about the top 1,000 feet.  It is close to population centers of Puget Sound and an eruption might be very damaging. It is easily visited.  Mt. Adams, in contrast, is very isolated and most folks will only see it from a distance of 50 miles or so.  A good site to see Washington’s mountains is here:

http://www.photoseek.com/index.html

There is a link saying “Mt. Rainier” at the bottom left of the first screen, but he has lots more stuff on this site.

Taize’ has been canceled for the night because this begins spring break and the students all leave and go home.  They are the ones who actually lead the service, so we need them to be there.

Monday.  John expected to go prune wine grape vines again today, but it was cancelled because of the winemaker going to Seattle.  The weather looks good for his trip.  I went in for SAIL exercise and played two games of pool afterward.  We each won one game.  On to the grocery store and home.   Put in some time on tax entry this morning and need to collaborate with John on the stock stuff.  Looks as if we don’t have enough deductions to “itemize” but just to take the standard deduction instead.  Now the rules have changed and we cannot even deduct the purchase of Turbo Tax, or if we had a person do our returns.  I was making good progress getting stuff into Turbo Tax, only to hit a stalemate on Schedule D and not being able to enter information for capital “loss”.  Still looking for how to solve that.  There is no person to call, just searching on line for forums or support FAQs, which are not helping.  So I’m frustrated.  (Actually I figured it out, by going back to the beginning of the program, where it asks a lot of questions and I saw the box I should have checked.)

Tuesday.  Need to apologize to the readers for the blather that seems to be more like a diary coming from us.  It has turned out to be a good record for checking back to see what happened when, however.  Hope you readers are not bored to tears from reading.  We do appreciate your feedback and continued support.  Today is a lighter day, but we will be celebrating our neighbor’s 88^th birthday with him and his family tonight at dinner.  It’s a gorgeous sunny day for a change.  Maybe spring has finally sprung.  Plans are for sweet and sour pork cooked by the son, mashed potatoes by mom, and steamed rice with red peppers and onions cooked by us, and a dessert Pizza Hut pizza, requested by the birthday “boy,” also from us.

Wednesday.

Morning has broken, like the first morning

Blackbird has spoken, like the first bird . . .

Do you remember that great song?

Many will remember the Cat Stevens’ version but the song is older and worth a look:

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

Actually, in my summer Fiddle workshop a couple of years ago, we did the religious version, same tune, and a couple of us sang the words of Cat Stevens version.

As morning broke, John left for the vineyard.  He’s now back and I didn’t go to exercise class today.  Stayed to receive a package from FedEx. The package is from a friend from Canada via grad school in Cincy.  His company now awards scholarships to masters students to help fund their research.  It is competitive, and we are on the review team.  We continue to work on things.  I got my exercise today walking to the mailbox and back with 3 of the dogs.  Then when John got home he took them again for a short stroll.  They were very happy because they missed their run this morning when he was in a hurry to feed horses and leave.

We called his cousin this morning in PA.  She is celebrating her 93^rd birthday today.  Good for her and her health and mind is grand.  Pretty much the rest of the day was spent on filing and entering tax information.  Oh, did some work on the Portland Urban Heat Island, for helping at a conference in August in Portland with a geographer friend from Cincy grad school days.  He is also retired, but still active in the profession, and we have presented workshops together for many years, till I got sick.

Well, it’s Thursday, and John took off at 7:15 am for the Columbia for more vine pruning.  I slept in, and have done some clean up chores on the computer, the paperwork, and the kitchen.  Now I’m back resting and working with emails, before I leave for music.  I will likely pass John on the road.  Kitty has been sleeping most of the morning, with a few bats at the toy hanging in the den, in front of my recliner.  Dogs have been in and out a few times, but are also resting up for when John gets back to take them for their exercise.  The temp is above 50 now and no longer overcast.  I hope that means John had some good weather for pruning too.

Friday came and went and planned things changed.  I went for my free shoulder massage and while there learned that my exercise class was pushed up to 11:30.  Good that we had canceled the music play date at the Soup Kitchen.  After class I dropped by school to turn in two keys, and to carry more no-longer-needed educational stuff to the department members.  Then on home to have lunch with John, who had returned.  His route takes him between two of our three valley wind energy projects.  There are several hundred towers locally and Friday noon not one was moving.  Pictures here:

http://www.pse.com/multimedia/documents/wildhorsephotos.htm

Company project profile here:

http://www.pse.com/ENERGYENVIRONMENT/ENERGYSUPPLY/Pages/EnergySupply_ElectricityWind.aspx

Saturday we awoke very early to more snow.  Before it stopped we had an inch but it changed to rain and took away the snow.  The highways through the mountain passes are in good shape and everywhere else around us seems just fine, but we are a nasty little wintry weather spot, in spring.  John’s sister’s weather in Parma, OH is not so nice either, as they are suffering from very cold temperatures in the teens this whole next week.  Weird.

We hope you all have another good week and send our best regards to all our faithful readers.

Nancy and John

It has been a week since the earthquake in the Pacific and the tsunami that devastated communities of coastal Japan.  It is difficult to imagine the near complete destruction of so many small towns and villages.  Main-stream-media seems focused on the nuclear plants with much exaggeration and irresponsible reporting.  We have been fortunate to hear from a few former students that their families are safe on high ground.

Elsewhere, and here, we carry on.

Last week I ended my writing early Saturday morning.  Then I was off to Briarwood to a full house of senior folks where we played and sang and joked with the crowd for over an hour and then joined them to visit and share fantastic food.  That play date is the highlight of our month because of all the involvement by the audience in singing along and requesting songs, which we usually provide.  Occasionally they will request a song we don’t know or cannot pick out on the fly.

I also forgot to say that we reached the end of last week with successful passage through young-Britt Annie’s heat cycle, and she is no longer attractive.  It was a horrid last 3 weeks of worry and concern, because we did not want puppies again this year, even though last year’s litter was special and ended up in special homes where they are loved as family members.  That’s the best thing a breeder can hope for.

Sunday. Weather has turned to rainy and probably will be like this for the rest of the week.  Off to Taize’ tonight.  Back home, with a full tummy.  Only two of us musicians were there tonight.  It was a nice service, and we had a great dinner of Chicken & Rice with veggies casserole (Costco’s finest), sliced huge tasty oranges, a dark bread, and two kinds of lemonade.  Everyone had two helpings, and there was still some left for a couple to take leftovers home.

Tonight at 8:00 p.m. is the showing on the National Geographic channel of MegaQuake, expected for the Cascades in our life time.  We have a friend recording it on a VCR tape for us because our antenna is not working.  We haven’t been able to watch TV in several years.  We are able to receive news on the Internet, and have a broadband connection.  I can sit at one end of the house with my laptop and John can watch at the other end of the house on our family computer.  We have a wireless system that allows me to communicate with my laptop with his computer and modem connected to allow us both on the Internet at the same time.  And the landline phone continues to work too – modern technology is magical.

Monday.  Today is “Dead” day at school the first day of Finals week, with no finals held.  Funny, even though I’m retired, I still keep track of things.  I’ll be alone today, at least till afternoon.  After feeding the horses, John took off at 7:45 a.m. for White Heron Cellars, over on the bend in the Columbia River, to help prune grape vines.

If you use the coordinates in the next line in the Google Earth “Fly to” box

47.233909, -120.000374

. . . you can find where the vineyard and winery are.

Zoom out and you can see the Columbia River and the big gravel bar across to the south from the Winery: http://www.whiteheronwine.com/

Isn’t that cool? He will work about 3 hours and return home.  It is supposed to be a nice day.

I have exercise class (maybe) at the Adult Activities Center (AAC).   Our teacher had his last day last Wed., and we have to get a new one, or someone at the AAC has to take over.  I could probably lead it, but I won’t volunteer.  I’m making good headway with the tax receipt entering, so will probably just continue.  John got home in good shape and is going back Wednesday morning to continue pruning (Syrah vines) and see if they can do more than 3 rows, now that he knows what is wanted.  We both rested this afternoon after being awakened at 12:45 a.m. by a hang-up caller.  Not nice.

Tuesday.  No big things happening today till night when I have to play music in town, but John will take a trip earlier to fill his tank with expensive gas.  While there he will pick up my meds and some groceries.  I am spending all my time on tax entry again today.  It’s an overcast day, and John is back from feeding the horses and exercising the dogs.  They had to tiptoe around a herd of deer again today.

It rained on me tonight going and coming from town.  We had a nice play time and singing, and the other fiddler and I twin-fiddled 3 Irish songs at the end after everyone else quit.  Pretty cool.

Wednesday.   John got up, feed the horses, and left for the vineyard.  I slept in !!.  Guess I needed it. I was awake at least twice with nightmares.  I just cannot let school go and get on with my life (so John muses).  The dream was about a large GIS class the first day of the quarter and I didn’t have enough room, plus students without the prerequisites were signed in, in record numbers.  Then somehow dog kennels were being brought in by a former student to set up as carrels, but I didn’t have computers there.  The other thing in the dream was that a student who was going to drop had brought Bundt type cakes (4 of them) and was carrying them around offering them to everyone.  I had a piece of sweet sugar-covered raspberry cake.  I was also frantically calling the registrar’s office and running around to two different buildings looking for available classroom space.  I even remember thinking that I had to be careful getting so much exercise with my heart condition.  Holy mackerel, I was glad to awaken.  Still it was hard to get back to sleep.  How do you stop thinking about such stuff after you wake?

Now I have eaten.  John bought a couple of bananas and told me to eat one and then look up “banana equivalent dose” on the web.  Maybe later; I’m getting ready to start on emails, and then worry about going to the hospital for a blood draw and on to exercise class.  I hope to visit my friend in the hospital (surgery) while there, but the past two days she has not felt up to visitors.  How WELL I understand that.  Turns out I got there for my blood draw and walked around to Med-Surg to see if she could visit, and she had already been released.  So, I went to exercise after putting a few gallons of expensive gas ($3.72/gal.) in my “mid-grade or premium gas only” car.  Stayed after today for 2 games of pool.  I won both.

Thursday.  John plans to go again to prune.  Nice thing is that he will get a bottle of wine for each work hour.  If it stays wet and cold here at home we’ll reconstitute our wine cellar (he’d like to spend some time here with the horses).  That will more than pay for the gasoline.  He’s off and it is a beautiful day.  I have only to do tax entry today and go play music this afternoon at Dry Creek.  We both got home safely, and I think he will prune again  tomorrow.

Friday.   Woke up to SNOW and it is still coming down at 10:00 a.m., but slowing.  John went to the vineyard.  The location is 1,000 feet lower than here and there is very little threat of rain there this morning.  I will go to a scholarship luncheon and to the Adult Activity Center. I enjoyed my lunch of baked potato with all sorts of stuffings to bury it in.  Then I left there for my exercise class that was mostly a “late” St. Patrick’s Day party.  We had Irish bread, mint cookies, and punch with lime sherbet.  I didn’t have much of the food because I had just eaten, but I tasted the bread and the cookie because our leader had cooked them herself.  Then we visited and played games.  I played two games of Nintendo Wii bowling – new to me.  Really pretty neat (and that comes from a previous bowler).  You can actually turn the remote controller and put a “hook” on your virtual bowling ball.  I walked toward the screen as if I was on a lane (an alley).  Prizes were awarded to the high scorer, but I did not win.  My partner did, however, and she shared her goodies.  I brought home a microwavable bucket of popcorn and some chocolate covered raisins.  John was home when I got here and had taken the dogs for a run.  He then slept while I worked.

Nothing is planned for Saturday.  John won’t go back to prune till Monday morning.  Hopefully it won’t be raining all day tomorrow and he can get out to work with the horses.  I need to walk to the barn to see about learning how to feed again.  I have not helped since before I had the heart attack in Nov. 2009.  Guess it is about time I learned the procedure now with the 6 horses.  John said they were really wild tonight running up and down the pasture, jumping the ditch, and playing tag.  He was happy he had not taken the dogs – when it has been raining they come back carrying dirt and worse from the pasture into the house.

Hope you all have another good week.   We send our best regards to all our faithful readers.

P.S., did you Google, banana equivalent dose ?  You should.  It’s interesting and relevant to the nuclear news from Japan.

Sunday had only Taize’ in the evening; Monday SAIL exercise; Tuesday, started the morning by attending the final project presentations for Intermediate GIS, a class I used to teach.  Will do the same for the rest of the week.  This is the last week of classes for Winter Quarter, with finals next week and then Spring Break.  It snowed some this morning, but was all clear by the time I got out of class, so I came home and got John and we went back to town for lunch and to Yakima to pick up a package sent from Arkansas to the Wal*Mart store there.  It is a neat inverter to provide an electrical outlet  (AC) from the cigarette lighter (DC) in the car.  It was about half the price anywhere else.  While there we put a few gallons of gas in the Subaru, and took a run through Costco.  There is always something there new and interesting.  That’s part of Costco’s business plan – they want you to go often so you don’t miss special things and they hope you will buy other stuff while there.  They may only have an item once and when sold out it is never seen again.  John found a small bag of “fingerling” potatoes from Colorado. There are several colors and they are about the size of medium dog-do.

http://www.mvproduce.com/

I have been frustratingly busy the rest of the afternoon dealing with billings from medical providers, Medicare, and the insurance company.  This is a constant struggle.  It raised my blood pressure this afternoon trying to figure why the same service is charged at different rates ( John and me) at the eye doctor and at the Heart Center (me on two occasions for an identical service).  Makes NO sense.  The deductibles are a challenge too.  One time last month I was told the Group Health deductibles started Oct 1 instead of Jan 1.  Today that was reversed by a different agent.  Medicare pays some things and Group Health picks up some, sometimes, and not others.  Go figure.    I’m still confused, frustrated, and ticked off.  I will check tomorrow with the actual doctor’s office accountant and then call back Medicare and Group Health for interpretations.  For us, the medical care providers (doctors, nurses, and technicians) have been fantastic.  The government is involved so the billing, paying, and paper work is unbelievably cumbersome.  It reminds one of the saying “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”  This was one of Ronald Reagan’s favorite sayings.

http://politicalhumor.about.com/cs/quotethis/a/reaganquotes.htm

Tonight was playing & singing music with The Connections (a religious group) at Hearthstone.  Now I’m coming home at 8:00 p.m. to eat and to head to bed sooner than normal because of another early morning at CWU.

Wednesday.  Today is our neighbor’s 85^th birthday so tonight we are going to a party. First, there is the class at school, and then SAIL exercise at 1:30, too bad I don’t have something at noon.  Actually I came home and worked on talking to the insurance company about conflicting things with my medical bills.  Most of it revolved around required deductibles needing met ($250 for each of us).  Yesterday I had actually found an error with one of the bills and will be refunded $17.39.  After my exercise class I stayed with two other gals and played 4 games of pool.  I haven’t played pool in over 40 years.  It was fun and we will be doing that again, I’m sure.  Came on home and spent the time on the phone again before going to the party about another bill for me for my care in 2010.  One thing I found and still cannot explain is an $80 charge that I owe nothing on but for which Medicare paid $142.  That sounds fishy and strange and no one could explain it.  I haven’t received an accounting from Medicare yet for that, so will wait to see.  Then I questioned a June 2010 time at the hospital for my ICD implant.  The total paid was over $10,000 for everything from the surgery to using the surgery room, the recovery room, pharmacy, and supplies.  All were paid except for two pharmacy charges.  The response was that those are drugs (self-administered) that Medicare won’t cover.  Well, nothing can be self-administered in a hospital, and so I cannot imagine what it might be.  It is over $130 that I owe, and it is not covered by my supplemental insurance either.  Gee whiz; WHY?  So I noticed that Medicare had paid the bill and Group Health had paid nothing.  I called to ask and was told to pay the bill from the hospital and then get on line and download a form to fill in and submit for their review of the meds that were not covered, and that “possibly” Group Health would reconsider and pay.  Okay– I’ll play the game, but WHY?  What’s the sense of having supplementary insurance if they don’t pick up a small part that Medicare doesn’t.  $130 is a pittance when you consider the $10,000 Medicare paid.  This whole system is crazy, but I will continue to question.  It pays off often enough to make it worthwhile.

Another thing I found out this morning was that my eye doctor billed Medicare for $142.00 for the same thing John had done for $30, on the same day with the same doctor.  Also, they charged a separate $44.00 for “refraction” which neither Medicare nor Group Health would pay.  Turns out that means a charge for providing a prescription for glasses, neither of us needed.  I don’t because I have intraocular lens giving me 20/20 vision, and John’s current glasses were fine.  The “refraction” part was tacked on without discussion – apparently it always has been, and been paid for when Group Health was the primary payer.  Now they are “secondary” and Medicare is “primary” and nobody pays.  Go figure!  So it seems to us this is a “stealth” charge in the eye exam.  John’s was accidentally left off, but mine was there.  Attention to detail?  Something is not right with this picture!  We have decided NOT to have a refraction done next time we have an eye exam if it will be charged above the exam fee (already $154), and I have also decided I’m not going in for an eye exam until I have some concern with my eyesight.

Friday.  John got up early and checked for news via the Internet and learned of the earthquake in Japan — awful news.  We don’t have a working antenna for the TV so we watched live “feeds” on the BBC on the Internet.  I left early for two hours of final presentations for Intermediate GIS.  There were 23 reports starting Tuesday this week, and I enjoyed being a part of it–more so this year than last when I was still very weak, using a walker and John had to drive me.  Both other events for the day were cancelled, so I have the afternoon free to catch up on bill paying and organizing.  Thus far half the afternoon is gone and I have been emailing the entire time.   John got a nap, so that’s good.   I never did.  He fixed us a great dinner, and I did complete some of the things on my list of to-dos.  Now I’m tired, and ready for bed, but it’s only 8:00 p.m.  Thank goodness tomorrow is not an early start day.

Saturday.  Today is only playing music at Briarwood Retirement Community, but, they will feed us something at the end at 3:00 p.m. — strange time and one that matters at home for both lunch and supper, but that’s the schedule.  We play from a little before 2:00 till 3:00.

Saturday.  We have spent about an hour so far this morning following the events in Japan from the earthquakes and tsunami. Most folks are unaware that a similar event is possible along our Washington State coast although the WA coast is less populated.  There was a 9.1 quake (the Japan one is said to be 8.9) on January 26, 1700 at about 9 p.m. that shows up here in the physical landscape and was documented by written reports of a tsunami (then of unknown origin) in Japan. A summary is here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1700_Cascadia_earthquake

Longer materials are here:

http://pubs.usgs.gov/pp/pp1707/

This is called “the Orphan Tsunami” and the materials are very large files so don’t click on any of the downloads unless you have a broadband connection.  The link above shows the cover illustration and lists all the parts of the book.  Part 3, near the bottom of the listed items is most relevant to the evidence from WA’s coast.

The National Geographic folks have produced a television episode about this to be shown this Sunday:

http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/episode/mega-quake-5563/Overview

Maybe we can find someone to visit where we can watch.

Suppose I will stop this now and give to John to put on the blog.

Hope you all have a good week.

Best regards from Nancy & John and all the critters.

Sunday—early.  I am calming down from a rude animal awakening.  Sunny, the cat, sailed across the room and onto the table beside my recliner, knocking everything off.

John claims Sunny was playing zoom-zoom.  She had just run into the back room where he was at the computer, used him to launch herself up to the window sill,  growled, turned and again using his lap, charged back down the hall for her visit with me.

I was napping after an early morning potty stop and letting the dogs out.  I hadn’t even gotten on my computer yet, nor eaten breakfast.  Luckily I didn’t have a cup of coffee on the table.  So, while I was picking up the stuff, John came into the den and let Dan (male Brit) out into the backyard.  I didn’t know that and when Annie and Shay came running into the room, I opened the back door to let them out–only to realize Dan was out there.  I screamed and stepped outside with my down booties (leather bottoms) on the snow on the patio–not a good idea, but I didn’t fall.  I yelled and yelled at Annie to come in, while Dan was interested in her.  She isn’t far enough into her cycle for a breeding or we would have had one.  Scary, exciting, and I’m sure raised my blood pressure.

I have rested for a couple hours now and put on a CD of Greg Brown with Iowa Waltz and a number of other great songs, that I picked up for a quarter at a yard sale.  He has blues and western stuff on it.  Very good.  I have two other albums that I listened to during the afternoon.  This one doesn’t have a date, but the next one is 1992,  published by Red House Records in Minnesota, his own recording company he, oddly enough named after a Red House he lived in, in Iowa City, IA.  We were in Iowa City from the late 1960s till we left in 1974 for Idaho.  I looked him up on the web, and found he is still performing and doing gigs.  He was born in 1949 and writes all his own songs.  What a talented person.  He began performing when 18.   I’m now listening to a song called, “The train that carried Jimmie Rodgers home”, with yodeling in Jimmie Rodgers style.  Pretty cool.  At the same yard sale, I picked up a copy of Jimmie Rodgers singing 24 of his songs.  I already wrote about that in an earlier blog.

John cleaned off all the new 4 inches or so of snow that fell.  Now it is sun shining, with blue sky.  Only got to 25 last night and now is up to 37.  A veritable heat wave… ha ha.

Back to last night’s concert.  We went with two friends who enjoy guitar music.  It was fabulous, and we had pretty good seats near the front.  I wish I had taken my camera to get a few video shots of this guy with his incredible talent.  He really is a one—man band, and is able to record himself on different tracks with “drum” sounds on his guitar, and picking, and building on his own work right in front of your eyes.  He also did a cute “reverse” trick with the electronic tracker.  He displayed it first by saying Ellensburg, Washington correctly, and then showing what it sounded like when “reversed”.  Then he listened to the reverse sounds 4 times and repeated them into the mike, and recorded that.  Then reversed to hear the town name come out again in reverse, from the reversed sounds.  Amazing.  Then he asked if it was anyone’s birthday in the audience.  He played a birthday song that no one recognized (which turned out to be Happy Birthday, backwards).  Then he played that reverse track, and it was amazing.  This guy is GOOD and very talented.  We will go back to another concert of his when he is in the region.   We recommend him to you if you ever see him coming to a place near you.  Last week’s blog mentioned his name, Trace Bundy, and website.

Monday.   My goodness; more snow.  John says we will be having a few inches at a time off and on all week.  Started at 6:00 a.m. with nothing, let the dogs out and in and about 6:30 it was snowing hard with big flakes.  Then it slowed, and now is back at it again.  We must have had 4 inches in the past 3 hours.  Good it’s a slow day…well, I thought so, but just heard I have a lecture to attend at 4:00, and there is my SAIL exercise at 1:30.  I decided to let it snow and canceled my trip to town today.  I’m not involved in the decision of my replacement anyhow.  Our mail today brought a cool freebie from my signing John and me onto myclassichits.com , the local Classic Hits from the sixties and seventies radio station.  It is a CD of the Doobie Brothers called World Gone Crazy.  I’m playing it now and it has a great beat on all the songs.  Looked it up on the web and found a critique that says it is the best of their past several records.

Tuesday:  I was “snowed under” with snow, trips to town over unplowed roads, to the store, through email and web applications for my colleagues, cleaning and looking for materials from my old Intermediate GIS course, and cleaning again for a couple of hours.  I’m making progress, very slowly.

My early trip to town was to have my feet “done”. First time in my life I have ever had a pedicure.  Truly.  First they soaked them in very hot water, and then determined my dry skin was a fungus so recommended I get an anti-fungal cream and apply it.  Then she (a nurse) cleaned the nails, cuticles, etc., and even used a Dremel tool for sanding off my nails on my right foot.  That made the edges bleed (not good for a Coumadin patient whose blood is slow to clot), and then trimmed the toenails.  Switched to the left foot and that one didn’t require the Dremel tool.  Then she rubbed my legs and feet down with some sort of body cream.  Boy, did I get the treatment.  This is a service (for a $10 donation) of the Senior Center in town.  Guess I will do it monthly from here on out.  I still am flexible enough to reach my feet but it is nice to have it done by a professional with all the right tools and creams.

Wednesday:   just SAIL exercise today and a stop by the hospital lab for my monthly INR blood draw (turned out to be on the high side ~ 3.2; last month 2.9; and should be ~ 2.5), and on home by way of the house being lifted from the flood plain.  It was a gorgeous sunny day with blue skies and the house has now had the lower concrete base put down with the wooden frames up for the walls.  (John claims what I saw are called “footers”, and says look here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_akSziGAH4

There are additional parts, so look for them.)

Spent the rest of the afternoon working on cleaning off the counter between the kitchen and den.  It still needs more work.  This is a several year accumulation.   I did find a copy of a picture of our dog Cedaridge Vintage Cork winning a BOW (Best of Winners) in a show in April 2009.  We had lost this and just now turned it up!  It had not even been opened, and the bill was not paid till later when I was in the hospital and they sent an overdue notice.   John had paid it but we didn’t know it had actually been delivered.  John scanned the photo and brightened the colors so the digital version is much nicer.  He also brightened up my copies of the pictures I took of the house lifting.

Thursday:   Worked this morning on adding music, “Beautiful, Beautiful, Brown Eyes” for piano and transposed to a B flat clarinet.  Turned out it was all wrong, so I have to go back to the “drawing table” – times change; I’m using a keyboard and a mouse.  I don’t know what I did and haven’t had time to figure it out yet.  We realized when we started playing that it didn’t fit together correctly.

I was gone all afternoon, playing violin two places, first at a nursing home, and then we drove a little over a mile to a couple’s house to entertain a “shut in”, and then I left early to go to a lecture on “Armchair travel to the Two Berlins.”   It was very interesting and presented to the CWU Retirement Association.  There was food and wine afterward but we went grocery shopping instead and to pick up my meds.  Tried to get home for John to feed animals before dark, but failed.  We also had to get gas in his car, and the regular price is up to $3.429/gal for regular, the cheapest in town (surprise at the 76 station with a car wash where we never go).  My Subaru takes only the higher test and it is 20 cents/gallon higher.  John had driven my car to town and I was able to park on campus in front of the place, arrived slightly late (couple of minutes), but then I dropped him off at “my” car on the way home in the parking lot of the old Albertson’s store, which just closed in our town.  It was rather strange how we pulled that off.  We cannot park on campus (but with one car), and the streets around the campus all are No Parking.  For dinner, it was late,  but is a pork loin roast we got at the store on sale.  It was so good, we picked up two more on Saturday’s trip.

Friday:  Today another busy one — but TGIF.  Even not working I can still feel the relief it is the end of the week.  Tomorrow we actually don’t have anything scheduled.  I drove by the “being lifted” house on the way home and the wood was off the concrete, so the walls are standing.  Placing the forms and getting ready for concrete is a part I missed, so here’s a look:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlBZA80gLw8

I did not have my camera today.  Darn.   I guess they are just going to lower it down to the new wall.  This is rather fun watching it evolve and not knowing what the plans are.

The busy day started with going to the Senior Center potluck (was supposed to be ham and rolls, but was spaghetti and meat sauce instead).  There were several salads and garlic bread and cookies & chocolate pie for dessert.  An insurance agency called Sterling Health was there with free ice cream sundaes with all sorts of trimmings, but I didn’t have one.  I took their bag of goodies, however.  Clip for potato chips or cereal bags, strong magnetic clip for hanging something on the stove or refrigerator, pens, and note pads.  Why not?  I already have medical insurance and don’t need any supplements.  Then a little after Noon, my friend (on the accordion) and I (on the fiddle) started singing and playing with and for the 31 people there for lunch.  She brings Xeroxed copies of the words to the songs, and so the audience can sing. For this month it was all Irish songs.  I dressed in green for the occasion.  Sat down and visited with several who were at the lunch who also are in my exercise class, and then we had class for an hour.

After that I went grocery shopping and came back home, stopped at the end of the driveway, got out of the car to get the mail, and when I opened the mailbox and reached in, and closed it, it had a sort of squeaky sound.  Suddenly I heard another loud squeaking sound like an old metal wheel.  I looked to see what might have been on the road, but when I heard it again, I realized it was from above my head, from a bald eagle up in the top of a cottonwood tree.  I “talked” to it (don’t know if a he or she), and it quit making the noise.  My friend in Idaho said I just don’t know how to speak very good eagle.  I got back in my car and called John on my cell phone and told him to bring his camera up to the mailbox to take a picture.  Luckily, he got there and took two pictures before the bird left.  John never heard the sound.  It was quite weird and something I have never heard in my life.  That is the closest to an eagle I have ever been, too.  Pretty neat.

I haven’t found the exact sound I heard, but this comes very close:

http://pelotes.jea.com/AnimalFact/Birds/eagle.au

Saturday:  Woke to an inch of new snow – all is white, again.  Nothing planned today, but the unplanned happened.  John had to finish publishing, stamping and folding the KVTR newsletter that needed to be in today’s mail.  We didn’t make it in time for pickup at the end of the driveway, so needed to go to town to the post office.  That was okay, because we also went shopping and to take more pictures of the house lifting from the floodplain.  Nice sunny day.  I stayed in the car at the store and talked to my friend (since grammar school) who lives in West Virginia.  She’s retired now and has found some pictures of us when we were in the 3^rd or 4^th grade.  She scanned them and sent to me.  It was cool.  The most recent one she sent was of our Brownie Troop #327 Band, in which I was playing a ukulele.

Okay, I will end this now and get it to John to put on the blog.  We are at the end of the week, and Annie is very attractive to Dan, but we will not let them breed.  No puppies this year.

Hope you all have a good week.   Best regards from Nancy & John and all the critters.

Sunday, again, after a busy half week.   Today is more clean up and sorting day with no Taize’ tonight because the students are gone on the long weekend with Presidents’ Day tomorrow.  A friend reports (and I am amazed) that the schools in Alabama do not recognize the Federal holiday.  We will be going to town today by way of the house lifting to try out John’s “fix” to the color and background of the pictures my digital Canon camera takes.  Before I realized I wouldn’t be going to town tonight, I had put in a special order for fritters and donuts.  So, we were supposed to come home and work on cleaning up, but I spent all my time getting articles off the web for my colleagues, and working on other resource material building.  Now it’s time for bed.  Tomorrow has its challenges, that’s for sure.

Monday.  Slept in and then started on clearing the table.  Have made pretty good progress in 3 hours but need to rest and eat lunch.  We are both resting while the shrimp cooks.  Have sorted out a bunch of old tests to toss, and am just loading receipts into a box for further sorting when there is more time. Found a number of books we can recycle to people at school on the geography faculty.

All of the stuff setting around has accumulated dust from 4 dogs coming in and out of the back door to the patio and backyard.   Stuff has to be vacuumed before it’s touched. Growing up in Atlanta, I always worried whether the cereal was closed tightly against the humidity, we worried about mold, and whether the Lysol was running low.  Not here.  It is dry most of the time and cereal, bread, potato chips or whatever is as apt to get crisper than less so.  The flip side of this is the dust.  It is a fine sharp-edged sort of stuff that, when dry, floats in the wind as easily as sprites and fairies. Apparently this environment is deadly to flees and hostile to ticks.  Our dogs have been flea-less since arriving here in 1989.  The brush down by the creek will yield a tick now and again, but not many.

When we sat down to rest and read our email and news John found there had been a horrible earthquake in Christchurch, NZ.  We have friends there and haven’t heard yet if they are all right.  We ate dinner and responded to more emails, and are too tired to do any more tonight.  Perhaps early morning we will be back up to snuff with some energy.

Well, surprise.  We got an inch of snow tonight while we rested after supper.

Tuesday:   This morning we awoke to heavy snow that accumulated to 4 or 5 inches, and now it is sun shining.  John went out and cleaned the back patio and some of the yard so the Sears Delivery person can drive to the back door.  Then he went out and cleared the drive out front (in front of the out building, where we park and turn around).  I have continued to clean up and the delivery person will be here at 1:00. They arrived just before 2:00 and the new one is installed J at 2:35.  I have to go to town to a talk of another job candidate at 4:00.  Rushed in to school for the lecture and drove home to more snow that accumulated to 2 inches.  The temps are to go down tonight, and we will have a cold several days.

We had pizza tonight cooked in our new stove.  Yum.

Thank goodness we heard this morning from our friends in Christchurch, NZ that they had survived the earthquake with not too much damage to their house (but more than the Sept 2010 quake).  And, our mutual friends who had been there Monday night, left Christchurch 3 hours before the quake occurred!  With that luck they need to buy a lottery ticket.

Wednesday:  Slept in after a really early morning phone call at 7:15 a.m.    Then spent time on various email chores, and left for town at 1:00, John driving, with kitty in a crate.  He dropped me off at the SAIL exercise class, and went to the bank, grocery store/pharmacy and to have the stitches removed from the kitty’s spay operation.  After picking me up, we saw a friend walking back to his house from getting his paper, and so stopped to say hello.  He invited us in for tea or coffee, but we just visited instead.  Tonight I’m going to CWU for a slide lecture by a former student:  CWU Outdoor Speaker Series: Kurt McCanles’ Two-Wheeled Adventure.  After graduating last spring, Kurt took his bike and headed south, biking from Cancun, Mexico, through Central and South America, to Guayaquil, Ecuador, a trek that took 110 days and took him through 10 countries.  He showed video snippets and many slides of the cultures and physical areas he traveled through.  It was very well done and fascinating.

Thursday morning I woke at 4:30 a.m., looked out on rapidly accumulating snow.  5 inches in just a couple of hours! John cleared it in appropriate places.  We left for town at 1:30.  I played music at Hearthstone and John sat and read.  We left 10 minutes early to make it to Dean Hall for a presentation by one of our former students (at the time 6 years ago he was an exchange student for a year from Australia).  He was a great guy and at the head of all the classes he had from me and Elaine Glenn, his mentor.  We have kept in touch and now he is a graduate student in Oregon.  His Master’s thesis was on Tibet, and today he gave a presentation about it with fantastic pictures and cultural information.  I’m so glad we went.  It was well worth it.  He was happy and surprised to see me there and gave me a big hug.  He knew about my illness.  His Ph.D. work (Geography at Oregon) will be on water resources in China.  Okay.  Dinner was part leftovers, chicken and rice and part new (fresh asparagus).

Friday:   Busy day today.  Starts with shoulder massage at Sr. Center; scholarship luncheon at noon (great pizza and salad); SAIL exercise class was cancelled because of a Pine Basket weaving workshop that went for 3 hours.  So, I went from lunch in the Psychology building to Dean Hall with my box of books to share (unload may be the better word) with my Geog colleagues.  Tired so am getting ready for an afternoon nap.  John is already napping.  He did a nice job cleaning up dishes today while I was away.  It’s down to 9 degrees as we head to bed, and is supposed to hit minus 5 tonight.  Yikes.

Saturday:  Woke up to blinding sunshine on snow. The -5 forecast  missed. It stopped dropping at +4.  We are having a heat wave – it is going to make it to about 31.  Lazy day till tonight when we go to the Trace Bundy guitar concert (finger-picking with both hands):

http://www.tracebundy.com/

The web has other videos – just search using his name.

Hope you all have a good week.   Best regards from Nancy & John and all the critters.

Again, I am starting the previous Sunday.  Following my first night out in a year, I returned this home this morning in sunshine but with spray from wet roads.  My night in Leavenworth, WA was interesting and ended this morning with an enlightening breakfast before hitting the road for home, over Blewett Pass.  The valued advice on enhanced vision opportunities that I have been looking for to help my friend’s father, came at breakfast.  The gal’s mom has been legally blind for the last 30 years and has to use a CCTV and magnifier to get through life.  Being a Library Science professional, she needs more than most not to lose her ability to “see” and read.  She shared all her resources from Pierce County and WA State and gave me business cards of key people to contact for help.

I returned home ready for a nap.  I was awakened from a deep sleep by a couple of phone calls.  The interesting one was from Sears about rescheduling an appointment for the oven range.  It was a recorded message I must call back about on Monday.

Sunday night Taize’ only had a piano and 2 violins for music accompaniment.  We did fine.  Dinner after was great:  pizza, salad, and two choices of cream pie (Cocoanut & Chocolate).

Monday:  Slept in.  Took care of small things off and on all day.  Worked on answers to the questions I was going to be asked in the Hospital District interview.  I wrote out answers and then read through them a few times to prompt my memory.  It was Valentine’s Day, and I spent a lot of time responding to people on email to whom I had sent an animated card.

Tuesday:  Continued prepping for the interview, while it snowed big flakes outside.  We got over an inch of accumulation and then it changed to rain and took it all away.  I went back to making some shorthand notes with bullets on items I wanted to cover.  I took the small piece of paper with me, but I didn’t refer to it during the interview.   I think it went well.  There was a younger woman who followed me in.  I was in with them for 25 minutes, as planned.  They will let me know within a week their decision.

Left the hospital and went to the grocery for my apple fritters order and old fashioned chocolate covered donuts with nuts.  While there, they had another dozen donuts of various types, including two apple fritters, for $2.00 off the dozen price ($5.98).  These are all large and nice, with some turnovers and filled ones, and maple bars.  What a deal.  We can freeze them.  Went from there to friends’ house and visited till the gentleman and I had to leave for the nursing home to play music. There were just two violins tonight, his and mine, and a piano player.  We entertained with church hymns for an hour and then I came home to a warm bowl of chili.

On my way to town I went by the house being lifted, and was totally surprised to see how much they have lifted it!  It seems to be more than 6’.  I didn’t have time to talk to the workers to ask how high it was, but I took more pictures for my “story.”

Wednesday:   Started out the morning reading emails and looking on the CWU site.  There I found that the President’s Office was offering complimentary tickets to the Spirit of the West Saturday afternoon (1:00 p.m.) concert at the CWU Music Hall with 4 recognized western music performers:  Don Edwards, Juni Fisher, Doris Daley, and Adrian.  I mentioned it to John who was “willing”  to attend with me.  Also, finally took the pictures off my camera of the house lifting (above the flood plain), and sent off to John to enhance the colors on.  My camera takes with overtones of blue.  Also, yesterday was a shady day and it was late in the day when I took them.  Today is sunny so I hope to get some better pictures.

[—–   John notes: The pictures Nancy has been taking over the past two weeks (the house raising) have had a bluish tint or “cast” as it is called by photo folks.  We need to change the setting in the camera’s software under the heading of “white balance” to fix this.  We found the original box within which resides a Spanish version of the manual for the care and feeding of her camera.  Great!  We either have to learn Spanish or find the English language version – buried on a counter.  While we search, I’ve been using a software package to eliminate the blue cast, resize, and crop the images.  Oh well, it is seasonally cold outside and getting colder.  By late next week we will be about 20 degrees below normal; that’s going to take us really close to zero by next Friday morning.  Not, then, doing much outside, I have been reading on the web about things, including digital cameras.  Here are links.

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/whitebalance.htm

Ken Rockwell has a huge site with much good information and an attitude.

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/white-balance.htm —–end]

I went to SAIL exercise today, then by the CWU Prez office to pick up the tickets for Saturday, and then off to a lecture that is part of the interview for the first candidate to be brought to campus to fill my slot there.  It snowed very hard this afternoon, right after I filled our ‘09 Subaru with gasoline and drove to Dean Hall.  I sat and watched the snow for 15 minutes before I got out in it and walked to the building.  Tonight, time was spent proofing a handout for a colleague and grabbing an article from the Wall St. Journal for another colleague (see I’m retired but still working), and I spent time sending out job announcement to “my” jobs list.  It’s called Northwest Geography Jobs and has about 500 people subscribed to the list serve.

Thursday:  Started slowly by sleeping in. [ I think that’s called not starting!  J ] Mostly been doing emails when I should have been cleaning off the table to make way for the oven/range delivery. It’s easy to put off such “work.”  Nothing much today other than delivering a purchase from Costco to my neighbor, and going to play music at Dry Creek.

Friday:  Goodness.  What started out slowly, ended full of stuff.  We both slept in longer than usual, with no early morning 7:30 or 8:00 phone calls; however, we did have a wrong number looking for “Laura” at MIDNIGHT when we were sleeping soundly.  Not nice.  There were probably two other times during the night that one or more of the dogs wanted out, or John or I had to visit the bathroom.  None of us can make it through the night.  At least the kitty can go in her litter box, but we have to let out the four dogs into the backyard.  We do not have their “doggie” door operable now in the cold weather, and also cannot operate it with the kitty until she knows how to come and go from the house to the yard and back to the house.  We’ll wait for that learning experience till spring and nicer weather.

So, at Noon, I started the day with playing music and eating at the town’s “soup kitchen.”  It’s always a nice full meal – no soup or bread yet. Today’s chow was a cheeseburger, with tomatoes and lettuce, and other stuff I didn’t put on mine (onions, pickle relish).  I had mayonnaise and ketchup.  They had fried cubed potatoes spiced with parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme (sounds like an old song).  And for dessert, pound cake with strawberries and whipped cream.   Three of us (guitar, banjo, and fiddle) played and sang for 45 minutes and then we left there and went to the Fairgrounds for the “open mike” part at the Spirit of the West, Cowboy Gathering.  It was scheduled from 1:00 to 3:00.  There we listened to others on the program before us, but we played as a subset of the Kittitas Fiddlers & Friends group at 2:15 for 7 minutes.  We squeezed in 3 songs:  T for Texas, Waltz across Texas, and Snow Deer.  The makeup was comprised of 3 fiddlers (one occasionally playing his mandolin), a clarinet, a banjo and a guitar.  It was a subset of our group, but we had fun and did a good job.  We stayed around and toward the end there were a few minutes before the ending at 3:00 and the organizer asked us to come up and play some more.  We did, without our banjo player, who’d left.  We played Blue Skirt Waltz and Never on Sunday.  It was fun.

Saturday.  Morning cleaning and sorting papers in the den, followed by a brief lunch and trip to the Spirit of the West 1:00 p.m. concert.  It was SO good and lasted longer than we planned.  We didn’t get out till after 4:00 and then went grocery shopping.  Home to email and more cleaning but have had 3 phone calls and not gotten the email even looked at yet.  My feet are cold, so I think with down boots and heavy socks already on, I need to wrap them in a blanket.

The concert (names mentioned above) had a 19 yr old from N. California ranch, young girl, guitar player, songwriter and singer with a big booming voice.  Second was an older woman from Tennessee, also a very fine singer and guitarist.  Next was a Canadian woman who mostly told us stories in poetic form.  She was great.  I didn’t expect to enjoy her but we both did.  Then the last person was a guitarist, songwriter, singer in his 70s.  What a wonderful performer with a fantastic voice and great picking skills.  He sang two encores—really cool, and his time was more than any of the others.  I believe he was on stage for 50 minutes.  Notes, pictures, and links here:

http://www.ellensburgcowboygathering.com/artists.php

We came home to some interesting mail.  I was not chosen for the position I interviewed for this week, as a Board Commissioner for the Hospital District.  Just as well, because after prepping for the interview and learning all about the expectations of the job, I wasn’t sure I wanted it, but I gave it my all anyway and feel good about the interview.  I do wonder who was chosen and about their background.  There was a younger woman following me into her interview.  Could be that age (and my health) was a factor; I’ll never know.  I guess I will know soon enough who was chosen.  No, I do not intend to attend the public meeting the end of Feb. to see who is appointed.  Hopefully, I can read about it in the paper. Besides, March has 5 Thursdays and music play dates and I really do enjoy those.

The other piece of interesting mail was from our eye doctor, a check refunding part of John’s $96.01 bill (we had paid $30 at the time, for the Optimap scanning).  I had paid that recent bill and then questioned when the paperwork came through from insurance and Medicare.  It made no sense to me and I thought we had been overcharged, so first I called the doctor’s accountant, who told me I had to pay it because John’s deductible had not been reached.  Then I called the insurance company and asked for an explanation.  The person helping me was also confused by the numbers and said he would submit it for reworking.  I guess I was right, and today in the mail we have a check for $74.01 as a refund, but NO explanation.  I need to check my records again to see what the $22 went toward on the bill.  Medical charges and paperwork is the most confusing mess of accounting there is, in my opinion.  A person has to be on top of everything, and I should have learned my lesson not to pay bills right away until all the paperwork is in, even after speaking to the office.  However, in this case, it apparently was their error.  What if I had not been paying attention?  How do people who are not as savvy as we manage?  I guess the answer is a lot of needless bills are paid without question.  This is one of many we have found in error over the past 2 years.  I wonder how many we missed.   One charge last year was at my family physician’s office for an office call for me from a different doctor I have never seen and for a date when I was not in the office at all.  It’s in a town 30 miles away, so we know when we have had appointments and have them on the calendar.  At first they tried to say it was for lab work (hence the doctor on call’s name was on it, but I insisted I was not in the clinic that day and they needed to reimburse my insurance company and Medicare for the false report).

Now I’m sitting here with slightly warmer feet , with the blanket wrapped around them.   I will end this now and send to John to put on the blog this week.  Thanks for hanging in there with us.  He will get to it after dinner.  He just came back to the kitchen to work on the dinner, baked chicken – with mashed potatoes and beans.

Hope you all have a good week.  We have to work hard tomorrow and President’s Day to get the path ready to bring in a new stove/oven and take out the old.

Best regards from Nancy & John and all the critters.

We are starting with the report on Sunday.  Again, the rain turned to snow last night, but now this morning returned to rain. John and the dogs had a wet trip out to exercise and feed the horses.  I spent time with frozen vegetables on my sore shoulder, and putting together my meds for the week.  I realized I need to order Prilosec and the question came up, after hearing my neighbor was put on it for acid reflux and heartburn, why I was taking it.  We found some information on line, and I read the patient instructions with my refill, so I have the right questions to ask my doctors’ nurses.  Tonight I go to the Taize’ service.

Last night I had a long phone conversation with a friend I have know since she was 17.  We sold her a Brittany for her graduation present.  She was a hunter.  She now lives in South Lake Tahoe and has a 17 year old daughter.  We were amazed at thinking of the past and our friendship over the years.  She is 15 years younger than I am, but we were real buddies while I was in Idaho.  We went to dog field trials and shows together for years– till I left Idaho.  And, our friendship has endured.  Those are the best kind.  I also visited her in her new home several years ago when I was down for a conference, and one day she took me on a trip around the Lake there at Tahoe.  It was a very interesting day together.  We visited lots of tourist sites, had lunch, went through museums and wildlife parks, and had a wonderful day.

Sunday night’s Taize’ went well, but we only had a piano, 2 violins, and a clarinet.  Dinner after was great:  Spaghetti, salad, garlic bread, and a birthday cake for the husband of our clarinet player, made by his wife.  Chocolate cake with white creamy frosting, made from scratch with Crisco.

Monday:  I joined two geographers for lunch at The Dakota Café to discuss scholarship funding for geography students at CWU. There is a gap between the State’s current and future dollar intake and outgo.  The recent national economic meltdown brought this issue to the here-&-now but it looks to get much worse as the boomers crash – that is, age, and thus burden the entitlement system they have been promised.  After we solved the government’s funding woes, I went to SAIL exercise class at the Adult Activity Center.  John met early in the morning with the farrier to trim some of the horses feet.  It was nasty weather with winds up to 50 mph.  Wind makes horses nervous, they being prey and everything else in their environment is a predator.  Wind causes things to move and make noise and if they decide to flee one does not want to be in their escape path.  Never a dull moment.  All the day’s activities ended well.

Tuesday:  Started out snowing, then sunshine, then cloudy, then clear, then snowing again, and ended clear.  Sad story.  A friend from Yakima died of an apparent heart attack.  He was only in his fifties.  This was a person I worked with at CWU in Career Services, with many of my students.  He was a dear soul and really cared about helping students formulate their resumes, job application letters, and do a good interview for their career.   He was a gentle wonderful man who will be missed by all his friends.  This generated an extra load of e-mails throughout the day.  Busy work for today included receipts, bill paying, and sorting things in the den, but nothing  looks accomplished.  I washed a load of dishes.  Then I went to town for playing music and John fixed a good dinner, but we didn’t eat till I returned, after 8:00 p.m.

Wednesday:  Long day of capturing pictures from the WSJ for my colleagues, and working on tax receipts and undoing problems with medical insurance claims submitted incorrectly.  That in itself is a full time job.  Medicare’s reporting year begins on January 1 while Group Health begins their new round of paperwork in October.  Both have deductibles.  Thus, when a bill is submitted each entity decides what part of the cost they might pay but won’t because the deductible part hasn’t yet been met. For us now, Medicare is billed first.  Often before the doctor/clinic/hospital hears from Medicare and/or Group Health the computer software triggers a delinquent notice.  As all the numbers, dates, codes, forms, and so on are indecipherable to anyone the only safe thing to do is to call and question everything.  About half the time someone can figure it all out and explain it.  Often, though, they will work on your question a little and come back to say a mistake has been made and they will re-code and re-bill.  If you have sent a check to the doctor/clinic/hospital, they then will have to return a portion to you.  Their check might arrive with another coded form that makes no sense and the time interval may be sufficiently long that you can’t remember why you have just gotten a refund – or a new bill for a service performed 6 months ago.  We wonder if the credit scoring agencies pay any attention to any of the medical billings?  Hope not.

Thursday:  Up early and out to get Sunny in for neuter or spay by 8:30 a.m. at the vet.  Turns out Sunny is a female, so she had a spay and will be at the vet overnight, for pickup tomorrow a.m..   She was not real happy being put in the crate for the car trip. The vet’s assistant called to let us know the spay went well with no problems.  John has taken to calling her “Sunshine or sweetie.”  We left to drive to Costco in Yakima because we were almost out of dog food.  While there we got other good stuff, and some for friends and neighbors, to save them a trip.  Filled up John’s Subaru with gas for $3.05/gallon and thus saving $2.60 compared to a local purchase. That doesn’t pay for the trip so the rest has to come from savings on monstrous packages and quantities at Costco.   Got a good lunch at Quiznos, and not cheap, even with a special coupon.  I guess we saved $5.49 on the purchase, however.  On home and back soon for me to play music and John to get our phone outage (hence Internet access too) reported in person.  If the phone doesn’t work it’s hard to call.  Well, we do have cell phones but didn’t have a number to call, and, on the way to town we found we had left those at home anyway.  Then we attended a lecture about the changing society in Bali (lots of great photos) at CWU in the late afternoon.  Home.  Supper.  John went in again after dinner for a meeting of the trail riders’ club, for which he writes the monthly newsletter.  I stayed home.

Friday:  John just went to pick up Sunny – Sunshine.  The bill was $124, actually only 70 for spay, and she had shots and rabies for 50.  This morning I go for a massage and to play music at the soup kitchen at the food bank, then back to exercise… and tonight is another play with food gig.  Lunch today at the soup kitchen after we played was quite good.  Barbequed chicken wings, tater tots, green salad, and chocolate cream pie; and, I ate tonight too after playing music.  I will need to go on a diet.

Sunny came home this morning, but I didn’t see her till I got home this afternoon.  John said she was thrilled to be back to her litter box.  She ate a little and went under the bunk bed.  He hadn’t seen much of her, but when I came home, she came out to greet me and jumped up on the table but then left to go back to the back of the house.

I did get a slight power nap before driving back to town to the LDS church for playing music and a dinner in payment.  Boy, was it good.  We had turkey (there was ham too, but too salty for me), rolls & corn muffins, baked potato, salads, and several great desserts (best was cheese cake with strawberries on top).  We enjoyed playing for a small group of appreciative folks.  We had a pretty good turnout of musicians: guitar, banjo, and 3-4 violins (one alternates on a mandolin).

Saturday will be a full day and night. I’m going to drive to Leavenworth (1.5 hours) over the pass north of us for a birthday party for my former student, and will spend the night so I don’t have to drive home alone in the dark over Blewett Pass.  This will be the first day I have spent away from home since returning from the hospital last year, well, from the Rehab center.  Guess I was back in the hospital 3 times since then, in March, in June, and in August.

Leavenworth is a small town along a river as that emerges from the east slope of the Cascade Mountains. One time it was a busy little place with lumbering and a railroad – one of three going over the mountains into Puget Sound.  The town nearly expired until locals generated a rebirth as a tourist destination – a Bavarian village in central Washington.  Here is a link.  Check out the links on the left side, including the webcam near the bottom.

http://www.leavenworth.org/modules/pages/index.php?pageid=1

Might be some rain and a little snow on the pass I have to go over this afternoon, and return on Sunday morning.  I don’t leave till 3:30 Saturday afternoon, but I will give this to John to put on the blog, and I’ll put my report about the rest of the weekend on next week’s blog.

Hope you all have a good week.

Best regards from Nancy & John and all the critters

Here it is Sunday again.  Snowed last night and much of the morning, and we got about 2 inches.  John moved some of it off the drive, walkways, car, and back patio.  I spent time on house chores, music transposition, emails, and summarizing answers to questions in job interviews last week.  Tonight I participated in the Taize’ service playing my violin.  We had a nice meal afterward made by the Episcopal Priest.  It was a good bean dish with meat, homemade cornbread, salad and a super good cake, with a layer of filling such as found in good Éclairs, and topped with Chocolate.   Now I’m ready for a good night’s rest.  Neither one of us got enough sleep last night, and we took no naps today.   I have not been napping in many weeks.  There was a time where I had to, so I must be improving.

Monday – need to take care of following up on bills that insurance should have paid, and I will be going to town for my SAIL class.  We need to make some more progress on cleaning up the kitchen for a Sears repairman to come work on the stove/oven and the dishwasher.   We cancelled tomorrow’s horse shoe trimming because it is supposed to be 15 degrees early morning.  We will wait a week and hope for the polar air to go back north and quit descending into our valley.  Brrrrrr!

Sunny Kitty is growing and climbing more and more.  He still has his favorite toy and will play for many minutes during the day with it (simply a long shoe lace tied up and closed into the bottle cap of a medicine plastic container).  It moves a lot and he loves it.  He also is a “companion” kitty.  He follows John like a shadow.  When John goes outside to feed the horses, or clean snow off the car, or driveway, Sunny watches from a bedroom window, either the guest bedroom, or the computer bedroom.  We wonder as he grows bigger, if he will fit on the rather narrow window sill.  Time will tell.  He also either lies next to you on the table/desk or on the floor beneath the computer, or lies behind you in the computer chair as we use the computer.  He also follows me and John to the bathroom.  He has a very weak meow sound, but he uses it a lot and carries on long conversations.  He loves balls especially ones made from crushed paper that come apart as he bats them about, and his other favorite toy is the cardboard from the inside of a toilet paper roll.  He’s eating well, canned and dry food and drinking his water.  He has gotten use to running around the house, sleeping various places (usually on the bed during the night), and pottying in his litter box in the back “computer” bedroom.  We have to close the door using a thin box as a spacer and then hook it so he can get in and out and the dogs can’t.  Otherwise they search and scrounge for the “almond roca” treats kitty leaves behind, but covers nicely.  John keeps it cleaned regularly through the day, but during the night we have to “lock” them out.

Monday it is, and I slept in late, after not having a good night’s sleep.  Too many interruptions.  Have been making some progress on the computer.  Ready to eat lunch and spring for town.  It is getting much colder here today, and will be for the next several days.  Now the rest of the night, after dinner, we need to make a path to the kitchen and clean up around the oven/range so a Sears repairman can come in the morning to fix the door on our oven, which needs helped by a bungee cord to stay shut.

Well, we didn’t get any clean-up completed tonight because we were both feeling out of sorts.  We decided to wait till 7:00 in the morning.  Guess I had best go to sleep now.

Tuesday.  John started cleaning this a.m. at 7:15 and the guy from Sears called about 8:30.  We thought he was 20 minutes away, but really was over a 1/2 hour.  We cleaned up some more, but certainly it would not pass inspection in the real world.

First he fixed the dishwasher and found a mouse nest underneath in the insulation.   Then he found a constriction in the outflow pipe – that water has to pass through the under-sink disposal.  Now cleaned out we haven’t noticed any of the left-behind water in the bottom of the dishwasher.  Then he worked on the dryer (clothes) cleaning the lint and dust out.  It was the one that quit heating last week by throwing a breaker switch.  He looked at door hinges on the oven/range.  He didn’t have the hinges and pieces and Sears began researching it.  It will probably require a whole new frame to sit the door in with the hinges.  If they don’t have the parts, then they will replace the whole unit.  Wouldn’t that be nice !  It is a standard 40” range (but with double ovens and self-cleaning of the larger one).  If replaced, we get to have the same features.  The only one I can find on line is a gas model and we don’t have gas, only electricity.   The larger of the ovens is convective, and supposedly that feature gives less inside room in the oven.

The repairman didn’t leave till 10:25, and neither of us had eaten breakfast.  So, we ate just a little and then had a late lunch, and there was no reason to go to town today.  How very nice.

I then filled out a survey evaluation form on line for the serviceman and the service provided.  It was no cost because we have a service contract we pay which allows maintenance and repair for kitchen appliances.  This is a questionable purchase but we are over an hour (one way) from their service so for anything not still under warrantee there is a monster cost of a service call. The total charge for today for the 3 appliances would have been billed at $442.44 (that includes a service fee of $350 applied to the oven (not fixed) which was the provocation).  And we have a return visit for 2 weeks (depending on whether they have the parts, or whether we get a new oven/range).   If they replace the oven/range, the only comparable one costs $1,937, and we will not have to pay for installation or taxes.

Other things I had to worry with today in my “retirement” time, was checking with Group Health on two bills they supposedly did not pay.  Jeez, this is a full time job.

I forgot another thing that happened today.  We had a call from Critter Care (that’s what our vet calls her business).  Love it.  They were calling to schedule Sunny in for his neuter or her spay, whichever the case may be.  And, to get the next set of shots, probably to include rabies.  We take him in on Thursday morning, and if it is a neuter, we pick him up in the afternoon.  If it is a spay, we pick her up after an overnight stay.

My nightmares last night were connected with the house cleaning for the repairman to enter.  And, we still only had a path through the boxes, piles of papers, and clothes. My dreams were that two guys were sleeping over in our house in a messy room, and that I hadn’t even given them clean towels.  Also, a woman came to the door early in the morning to get a ride with me to the airport.  I had not packed and didn’t have an airline ticket, so I was happy when dog Annie awoke me to tell me she needed to go outside to potty.  I jumped up and ended the nightmare.

The other news tonight was very sad.  It was about the death of a dear friend from lung cancer.  The call came from his friend of 25 years.   I guess it is getting to be that time of life, but he was younger than me, was a Viet Nam vet, and a superb geographer.  I will miss his friendship.   He knew he was not long for this world and called in December to visit and wish us well.

Wednesday.  Today was supposed to be a light day but it turned into a crazy one.  I made the mistake of sleeping in and we were supposed to meet someone at the Kittitas Exit on I-90, after 10:00 a.m. to get from him a Farrier’s Kit he wanted to sell.  He was to call us from Vantage that would give us 30 minutes to get there.  Well, I was not dressed yet and the phone rang at 9:20 a.m.  He was coming across the bridge over the Columbia River calling me.  Phew.  We got ready and rushed out there, and yes, we got there in time.  He apologized for being early.  We visited awhile in the cold, and then came home.  There was another trip to town for me at 1:00 for SAIL exercise class, and afterward I dropped by the hospital for a blood draw to evaluate my INR (for adjusting my Coumadin dosage).  My physician’s nurse later reported that it was 2.9 (a little higher than usual), but okay, and not to change my dosage, but to have it checked again in a month.  Then we both worked on projects on our respective computers till it was time for dinner and another trip to town for a lecture on ice cores and their ability to measure climate change by the atmospheric chemicals deposited on high mountain glaciers.  We were late getting home to a crazy cat demanding his litter box be cleaned out and 4 dogs ready to go out to potty.  Then we had a great dessert.  John made a carrot/walnut cake with white cream frosting last night, and we had a piece with butter pecan ice cream on it.  Very good.  Now we are finishing emails and stuff and will be going to bed shortly.

Thursday was much quieter – but a music play day.  We swung by a flood-prone intersection to photograph the raising of a house that sits at an intersection where the culverts are not sufficient for the extra flow during heavy rain or for rain-on-snow. This place (once owned by friends) was flooded a few years ago and again in January. The current owners just stayed with friends last time while they cleaned and dried it out, but this time they are going to disconnect it from the ground, raise it up, and grace it with a new and higher foundation.  John’s family’s house was raised and moved (so a nearby soft drink bottler could expand) when he was young so he is familiar with the operation.  I talked to the contractor and asked if I could take some pictures of the process over the next several days.  He expects to have it finished in a week.

John took the dogs for their morning run to feed the horses, and they tip-toed through a herd of deer.  The oldest, Shay, returned carrying essence of Fifi La Fume or Pepé Le Pew.  We could have gone a long time without that.  It’s not a full-fledged smell requiring a bath, but it is definitely noticeable.  John thinks she might have brushed against a place / bush or something that had been sprayed.

Nothing much new for the rest of the day. Then off to play music at Royal Vista Nursing facility, and John went to the landfill to recycle glass (free), and then to shop at the grocery.  John says (being always politically correct) that he went to a “transfer station” and not a “land fill.”  When we got home, I’d received a letter from the Hospital saying they received my application for the Board of Commissioners vacant position, and they would be interviewing finalists on Feb 15 and 17.

Friday morning began with the kitty waking us to clean his litter box. Then I made a trip to the kitchen to load soaked dirty dishes into the dishwasher and filled with more.  At 9:00 a.m. had a call from the CEO’s secretary at the hospital to tell me I would be interviewed Tuesday Feb 15 at 4:45 for the Board of Commissioner’s position.  It will be about 25 minutes and they will send me a list of the questions in advance.  That’s really nicer than walking in cold, not knowing what they want to know.  I’m used to interviews in academia where the person isn’t given that courtesy.

Another nice surprise came in a phone call this afternoon.  I was off eating and playing music at the Adult Activity Center.  At the end, I went to the grocery and called John from the parking lot.  I told him I forgot to take the cooler and did he want me to get the ice cream and frozen Lasagna anyway to bring home, as I had only two stops – the post office and our utility district to pay our monthly electric bill.  He said I might rather wish to drive by the Sears store to pick out our new oven.  They were unable to find the parts to repair the 1982 model.  They will install the new one and remove the old one too.  It took me only a few minutes to give them my authorization code John had given me and we were approved for up to $1200 for a replacement.  There was only one electric model with the double oven feature, so I had only to choose the color.  I picked white, to match the refrigerator.  Come Feb 22^nd we will have a new kitchen stove.  Cool.  Except for the in and out part.  There are two options, and both have problems.  Coming in from the front door means moving a lot of furniture and boxes to get through the front door entrance, into and around a corner into the den, or coming in the back sliding glass doors to the den and into the kitchen.  The problem with that route is that the access through the pasture and back yard might be muddy.  Guess we will have to figure out as time proceeds but meanwhile we will start working on the “den”  — the biggest obstacle at the moment.  It needs doing anyway.

Saturday is a light no-activity day except for John’s getting out the trail rider club’s newsletter before our mail pickup at the road.  Last night it rained and blew, up to 48 mph gusts and 39 mph sustained winds (at the airport 5 miles south of us).  It has slowed today to “only” 30 mph gusts and 22 mph sustained winds.

We wish you a good and healthy week, and we’ll be back late Sunday next week to report to you on the latest in our currently not very eventful lives.  I’m driving to Leavenworth for a birthday party (evening dinner), and will likely spend the Saturday night so I can drive back the 1.5 hours in the daylight.  It’s too far and too much time away from all the animals for us both to go.

Nancy & John and all the critters