Keeping track

Saturday, Nov 2
Got the blog out very late again. We had high wind gusts in our area, but nothing like those ~70mph in Seattle .. that created a lot of damage. We did what we had to today and not much more.

Sunday, Nov 3
Another day to sleep in and then move the clocks back that we missed last night. I went out with John with his new jacket on (not the pants) to take photos.. with hood up and down, and a nice background, for him to attach with a thank you for the award from the WTA. We chose the one with the rock below in the collage describing the award and picturing him in our front yard. We thought it was appropriate with the rock in view considering all the rocks he has moved on trails.

We learned today that we got out of Seattle in time to miss a Saturday morning windstorm that felled trees on cars, power lines, and a guy in his convertible Mustang was injured severely, but the ambulance couldn’t make it to the main hospital, so drove him to more distant Everett. The incident happened in the Magnolia district only 2.5 miles from where we were Friday afternoon/early evening. We left about 8:15 and by mid-day Saturday there were over 200,000 without power but most were back on in a few hours.

Another item on the agenda was finishing some WTA web pages and one promised to our blog readers last week, on the WTA work crew at Park Pointe Park, Issaquah, WA. It’s still not completed. John is going back the end of this week, and there should be more photos I will combine with the Oct 27th trip. Check back next week. We won’t likely see those photos until Monday next week, Veterans Day, (if then).

Monday, Nov 4
Today will include projects in house, yard, and computer. We took time to fill in our ballots for tomorrow’s election, and we will drive to town after dark tonight to deposit it in the outside drive-by Ballot Box (WA no longer has polling places – so last century). We can mail them but we need to go to town and right past the court house. The aim is to get to the grocery store for several things including cat food. The other thing I spent an unappreciated amount of time (1/2 hour) on, was talking again to 4 people in Sears repair scheduling to get the repairman to return to replace a part on the range door handle which had to be ordered and was delivered today. Originally, we thought the handle could just have the end pieces added, but now a few years after we got it in 2011, they have started welding the end pieces on, and now one has to buy the entire handle. Do you suppose so many of these little plastic end-inserts got lost they changed the design? Now, instead of sending a 10¢ plastic do-hickey they send an entire handle and a technician to remove and dismantle the door, remove 3 screws and the handle – replace a fully functioning handle with one having 2 end caps and rebuild and reinstall the door. Have you heard Sears is a declining American retailing icon? Now it seems the buildings and the land the stores are on are the only things of value the company has. The scheduler for the repair has given us a window of time this coming Tuesday, but this time it is afternoon, 1 to 5 because we are tied up with another morning meeting.
I also called the Issaquah department of planning to request a 2012 document which no longer exists on their website. I need it to “research” the background of the Park Pointe Trail Plan approved in July of 2012 to Transfer Development Rights for building north of town in the Issaquah Highlands, in trade for developing land on Tiger Mountain adjacent to Issaquah High School. As mentioned above, I’m creating a web page for the WTA work being done there that John contributed to. Eventually, I’ll post the link in this blog.

Tuesday, Nov 5
Woke up to a little dusting of snow this morning. Got the Excel summary sheet off to RSVP for our community volunteer hours for October. I donated 36 hrs of music and John donated 62.5 hrs of trail work. With retirement I thought these paperwork duties would cease but our retirement is more like a full-time job, but that’s good we have our health to participate. Some groups get funding based on the number of hours contributed by us old folks so they want us to send confirmation of our hours. I can’t refuse. The local lady in-charge is the daughter of my geography colleague Jim Brooks (also he’s an ex-president of CWU).
Contacted 4 different medical facilities today. (1) Nurse at my family physician’s office about my INR due tomorrow, (2) Yakima Heart Center through two people trying to coordinate an appointment with my ICD check (takes only 15 min.) and my cardiologist visit due in December. I wasn’t able to combine the last two. Darn. (3) Next stop; question to the local hospital.
Now, I must work on copies of music for our Friday celebration of Veterans Day early. John fixed a great beef stew he simmered in a covered iron skillet. He covered the meat with stewed tomatoes, our potatoes, our purple onion. After starting it on the stove top he put it in a slow oven for several hours so the pieces of stuff hold together and end up very tender, juicy, and tasty. Otherwise, John was busy today moving walnuts and their leaves, rocks, and horse manure – fall cleaning, I guess.
Just this evening I touched bases with a former student from the late 1990s. She was in both our classes and a dear friend. She is from Japan and a local EBRG business man helped with her acculturation into our society. He recently died – I sent her the news. She has been in Texas for many years.

Wednesday, Nov 6
All set for a Dec 16 appointment with my cardiologist in Yakima; now we hope for no snow. At least it is not across the Cascades pass.
Will be heading out to play music at the food bank, go to SAIL class, and for an INR check at the hospital lab. INR was back up to 3.1. No clue why the unstable fluctuation. I have not changed my diet and I have not had any alcohol (one of the things that raises it).

Thursday, Nov 7
Water problems returned with awful air in the pipes and little flow. John is out with the repairman that recently replaced the storage tank and pressure valve (not the Culligan units technician) now talking through the possibilities. We currently have water, but I don’t know what yet they did. -later- I know they have by-passed the Culligan units (softener and iron removing tank), to see if the air is coming from the well. Right now the well water looks fine and clear. The in-house hot water is still very dirty. But we seem not to have the same air-in-pipes problem. More below.
Today we entertain with our music group, at Royal Vista Nursing Home, and John will go along with a book, so afterward we can go shopping, to the vet for pills, and for gasoline for John’s car for his WTA trip tomorrow, get several baking things on sale on the 12 hr sale (they were out of light brown sugar that we don’t need anyway). We got some thin-sliced ham for our sandwiches tomorrow, on sale for $2/lb. off. We did find some of the brownie mix we like for just a little over half normal price, some cake mixes for only $.88, and 4 pounds of butter at a very good price.

Friday, Nov 8
John plans to go to Issaquah, to Park Pointe trail. The chance of showers is 50% and the temps will top out at a high of 50°. This morning, he awoke very early, 5:00 a.m., to get ready to leave for Issaquah at 6:15. His trip (201 miles) went all right, as well as his day on the trail. They dug out as much as a foot of forest litter (duff) and filled the spaces with rocks and covered with mineral soil. The latter is usually dull orange/yellow and sand-like or large grit and gets moved (sometimes in plastic pails – the case today). During the safety talk someone always points out the warning on the buckets – shown here.

The weather improved throughout the work and ended as a beautiful fall day. John had taken apples and Crew Leader Jen had cookies and drinks so everyone was happy to stay and visit upon the return to the trailhead. There was some rain in the Cascades on the return but not enough to be a problem and even it ended after the descent of the big Easton hill.
Today is an early Veterans Day celebration at the Adult Activity Center and a number of us are performing Patriotic songs to be followed by pie/ice cream. I managed to get ready and leave by 10:30 so I could get chairs set for the musicians. Over 50 people attended, and thirteen veterans, including one woman, were honored and introduced. At the end of the celebration, I found two of my closest older veteran friends and got them in a photo with me. Below is the photo, taken by my fellow musician and friend, Joanie, and now I realize I should have taken her picture with her husband. They are closer to our age. In this picture on the left is Jim Cummings, who is a harmonica player who often joins our group at the Food Bank or at Briarwood. The fellow on the right is Paul Swanson (now 90, with the same birth date as John). He was a former teacher in the Los Angeles area (and went through the 1965 Watts riots). All 3 of us have one thing in common — we are heart surgery survivors. So is our guitar player (also a veteran who played and was honored that day; he and I had the same heart surgeon). The nice patriotic vest came from our viola player, who found it at Value Village (resale of second hand stuff) in Yakima and bought it for me as a gift. She figured I could wear it several times a year. I have already worn it twice this week for two different patriotic music presentations. I will put it up until 2014 for Memorial Day, for Flag Day 6/14/14, for July 4, and then Veterans Day again. She was also kind enough to offer to take our picture on my camera.

On my way home, I stopped by the University Help Desk and from a former student, I received a new Microsoft mouse to replace mine that died on my laptop. Nice to still have support as a retired prof.

Saturday, Nov 9
This morning we both slept in, after a very busy and tiring week. The day will be used to stay home and work on chores, inside and outside. Nice that nothing is planned this weekend. Here is a good resource that came to me this morning from a list serve for FEMA I am on. You may find it useful if you need to replace important papers.

I managed to make a dent in the kitchen clean-up. John did a 2 hour duty on dog poop control removal and disposal before the snow covers it. Now he is out doing a couple of other minor things. The weather is cooling — only a high of 44° today on a very dreary day and is cooling rapidly. Chef John came in and fixed a super brunch of one large pancake (halved) with strawberries (ours from the freezer), and a half a plate each of an omelet with onions, 3-colors of peppers, cheese, and ham. I tried to take a photo, but wasn’t sure it was focused. I deleted it while still on the camera (so it was not retrievable when I realized the other shots still on the camera were also showing up blurred in the preview. Oh well. You’ll have to imagine from my description. Very tasty and colorful for the dull day. Now, I’m off again to run a load of clothes. I believe we said earlier this week that we had air again in our pipes and very dirty water. We bypassed the Culligan units, and have been getting our water directly from our well. Knock on wood, it is going well. The water is almost 100% cured of air in the pipes. I am going to see if the clothes washing will be all right. (It was.) As well, I used water for a load of dishes, and it worked fine. The cold water is now clear and with each use of the water from the heater, it gets better also. Our hypothesis now is that the iron removal unit has failed except for the part that pumps air into the water. The iron in our water is not the orange/rust type. It is what chemists call “reduced” iron and can’t be seen but when left in pipes for awhile it will oxidize and appear as rust in the water. The unit is supposed to do that by forcing air through water in a tank with special material that causes oxidation and retention of the “rust” with the cleaned water passing on to the storage / pressure tank. Then the unit flushes itself or recharges and the cycle goes on. The air isn’t supposed to enter the storage tank. We don’t know much about how this works so John’s been looking for information. This unit is 30-year-old technology and an explanation has, so far, eluded us. Anyway, tomorrow we will cease by-passing the “softener” unit and see how that works. The future path is unknown.

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

Saturday, Oct 26
Managed to get this blog out on time, even if midnight.
John got an entry into the local paper that we left out. Here you go:

Sunday, Oct 27
I made the mistake of staying up until 1:30 a.m., and so it was hard to get up with John, and even harder to go back to sleep with the wind blowing in the 35mph gusty range, with threatening clouds for rain today.
John left at 7:30 a.m. for the WTA work crew at Park Pointe Trail, Issaquah, WA that we introduced in last week’s blog (last night). I do not yet have a web page for that trip, and when I do, it will be brief.

I managed to get back to sleep later than wished, and slept another 1.5 hrs. When I awoke the wind had subsided a little, but it had taken the tarp off the stack of boxes in the front yard, so I needed to go repair it before the rain really does fall. I put heavy rocks on top. Now must get ready to meet a former student to give her my western boots for a new home, and share some apples with her (two brown grocery bags of apples). That happened right before noon, and the rain started heavy shortly after she left.
At least we got the squash fixed last night for the potluck tonight. I just have to remember to pack everything I’m supposed to take there.
I checked my Sear’s parts delivered and found I have the required parts for the dishwasher, one of the two things needed for the range and nothing was received for the refrigerator because is it too old to have parts available. If it had quit running, I could get a replacement, but it is still going strong after 30 years.
I truly hope John makes it by Tiger Mountain to take the finished project pictures from which I can update the web page from last week. That will make it a nice contribution.
Then he comes on home, depending on the time he returns, either directly to the potluck dinner starting at 6:00 pm. or home first. John just called at 4:00 and he is still in Issaquah. I expect he will be late for dinner, but there will be plenty of food left, I’m sure. I just hope he makes the time to go by the site to take the photos from finished products of last week’s trail labor. He did, got the pictures, and still managed to get back before dinner started at 6:00. That was super. Then he left to feed and take care of the animals, and I stayed for a jam session until 9:30. We had a great time.

I updated the October 12th trip. Please click here.

Monday, Oct 28
Clean up to get ready for the Sears appliances repairman. Well, what a mess. I started with a phone call to the Sears place to tell them I did not get all the parts I was supposed to for the service man coming tomorrow morning. I tried to return a call to the woman, Kristina, who left a number with John Friday, when I was gone to town. She wanted me to check the packages to be sure all the parts ordered had come. I tried calling back and the number was incorrect. It rang but with the strangest ring I’ve ever heard (and not a high-pitched FAX machine squeal). Then I called the 1-800-number that the robot left on my phone earlier about the repair visit. It took me to the Call Center in Tucson, AZ to an idiot on the other end of the phone. I spent over a half hour and got nowhere, so I tried another number, and finally got a fellow, (also in Tucson, but he spoke English), and he managed to help me better than the first. I spent another 1/2 hr. with him. I finally gave up after two more calls, directly to Spokane. I know one thing; I am not paying the money for any more service contracts on appliances. It would be cheaper to buy a used one from someone moving. Just in tonight’s paper is a heavy-duty Kenmore washer and dryer for $130, in excellent condition.
I wore myself out today, loading newspapers, magazines, and office paper into boxes that went into the truck we took to town. John loaded all the stuff out into the truck. I left my sweater on the back of the chair at last night’s potluck, so had to drive by this afternoon to pick it up. We were on our way back from taking paper to the recycling center, and then glass bottles to the transfer station. The paper recycled consisted of a dozen boxes of academic books and old copies of handouts we cleaned out of the garage that are too old to give to anyone, or even to a school or city library. John loaded them all in our newer road-worthy pickup, which needed gasoline, and also 2 large boxes of shed-stored very-dry firewood, we delivered to our neighbor. Also, while in town, we dropped off a bag of clothes to a friend. It’s nice to sort out things and make people happy. I delivered a dress and a blouse to another friend last night, and recycled a Bavarian-looking teddy bear (with a special green hat) to a friend from Bavaria (she may keep or give to a grandchild).
Once home I have cleaned out the dishwasher, and started on the stove, cleaning them for their repairs tomorrow. I need to tackle the clothes dryer, so the repairman can open it to service and clean out dust and lint that sneaks by the filter.

Tuesday, Oct 29
Early morning, after 8:00 a.m. until Noon, the Sears man is expected. I started this Tuesday morning after an hour’s work, and John’s extra 45 min. work, cleaning in the kitchen–the appliances and access to them. We now await the repairman, due between 8:00 a.m. and noon. Good we are retired and not having to juggle this with a job (even to be here when the repairman arrives). You cannot leave anyone not 18 in the house to wait for the person. Now, at 9:50 a.m. we received a call from Felipea that he will be here in 20 minutes. He’s from southern Mexico, but has worked out of Yakima for 18 years on Sears repair.
At 10:45, another repairman called. WE HAD BEEN DOUBLE BOOKED. What a horrible organization. We did have a good relationship with Felipea, and he fixed or serviced everything. While he was here, John went out and cut a couple of pieces of the rug we got the roll of a couple of weeks ago, at CWU surplus. He cut two for the kitchen, so we can walk on carpet from the den into the kitchen and over to the sink without stepping on cold linoleum.
One of the cats caught and killed the Douglas PEST squirrel. I’m so happy. No one ate any part of it. Rascal brought it in and deposited it at the bottom of the ramp in the living room, to the outside doggie/cat door. The squirrel has been stealing our walnuts and packing them in our shed’s insulation, chewing them under our car hoods, and causing a mess. Therefore, we are DELIGHTED to see him gone. Bless his little heart. I know several friends will be appalled at our happiness, but they haven’t had to live with two of the critters for the past many years.

Wednesday, Oct 30
Drove by a friend’s home to deliver some apples, and on by to check the price of gas, which was more expensive than another place in town, so I went afterward there on the way home to fill up. Food Bank 3 singers there, only 2 instruments. Interesting meal: Biscuits with sausage gravy, some sort of overcooked egg dish (not really a quiche), good fruit salad, and pumpkin cake, but very good — not like pumpkin bread. Off to the AAC only to deliver apples and accept thanks from people there and who had received some earlier; no exercise today because they were having a special session for 2 hrs on Medicare. I already know more than I want to about that program.

Today was busy, but the best thing was all the hours (3) we both spent on sorting through boxes of stuff and other things from the shed. We found stuff back to 1960s, when we were graduate students, even stuff from when I was a high school student, and undergraduate. I saved a couple of the best, but tossed the rest. I had some good notes from my first geography intro class and also my first geology class in college. Tossed tax records, business records, and house/land purchases from the early 80s. Sorted out a few things to share with friends and colleagues. Filled a real trash bag full too, not to mention boxes, which John will take to the transfer station (the fancy name for a dump).

Thursday, Oct 31 HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
Today we are entertaining with our music group, at Mt. View Meadows, expecting cookie treats when done. We are all planning to do our best to dress for Halloween. Ended up with a witch (complete with skeleton earrings and black hat), a Gypsy Princess with a large black wig, me in my pumpkins in love sweatshirt, and another in a wonderful sweatshirt with a cute front and a rabbit on the back with a pumpkin tail. I drove my car with a box of apples to distribute. John went to the dump, and disposed of .16 tons at a charge of just under $14. While he was out in the truck, he drove by Luft’s Trailer (horse and farm things) dealer after a recommendation from a friend that they often replaced pick-up beds with flat beds on 1-ton trucks. We were hoping we might get one from them. There was a Ripley’s believe it or not moment – they had an exact match (except color) for our F350 2003 truck. It is nearly new and of somewhat higher ‘trim package’ than our damaged one. We agreed to buy the damaged truck thinking it was “good enough” but later decided the bowed-out tailgate was unacceptably hard to get closed when open and open when closed. Also, upon contemplation we decided it would not accommodate a canopy. One thought was to look for a canopy with double doors that doesn’t use the tailgate. Still, whether or not the front would seal we did not know. The horse trailer place and the canopy place have co-located to a new road on the edge of town. John went from the dump out that way – the horsey-things place came first. He stopped in. Our truck is silver with a plain trim-package. In the back corner of their lot, they had half-a-dozen “take-off” beds. One bright green high trim F350 bed was among the offerings. It has chrome around the wheel opening, a sprayed-on bed liner with drain holes and tie-downs, and bright red and orange flames painted on it – maybe an extension of a paint job something like this one from the web:

We will take before (now) and after photos in a couple of weeks. Replacement is scheduled for Nov. 18. Our pick-up bed is damaged on the front end (rubbing into the cab), and the rear tailgate door is also bent out of shape. None of us realized the problems when we bought it used. The bed has a drop in plastic liner with no drain and no tie-downs. Water can get underneath and lead to rusting. The next photo shows two things: . . .

. . . near the top is a bracket to tie rope to. Ours is gone or hidden under the drop-in liner. At the bottom left of the photo you can see one of the holes in a truck bed to hold racks or whatever. On our bed, the one on the passenger-side front corner has been ripped upwards leaving several jagged edges. Our guess is someone tied something very heavy in the bed (an old upright piano?!) and it broke loose and pushed the box into the back of the truck, ripped the metal, and then bounced on the tailgate with nearly devastating effect. We’d love to know what happened if whatever it was went out the back onto the highway.

Friday, Nov 1
We spent the morning getting ready to go to the Seattle Center to attend the WTA Volunteer Appreciation Dinner, where John will be presented an award. John packed up 5 odd sized boxes (~75 pounds) of apples to take to the WTA folks who have been appreciative of the lesser amount of Honeycrisp apples he delivered to last week’s WTA work party at Park Pointe. Some of those went to a fellow worker while the Crew Leader took hers (~15 lbs.) back to the WTA main office in Belltown. They were such a hit we got an email from the director of WTA, whom we have never met. He also put together some of our onions, and Golden Health squash, and apples to take to a fellow ACL he has known for many years. She likes fruit and veggies. You can see Kara on this page. . . . 7 down, orange hat, and the membership manager. We carried all goodies to the Seattle Center and most went into Kara’s mom’s car parked nearby. About half the apples went to a van going back to the WTA office.
John had not wanted to make the decision on the pick-up bed until I saw it and agreed. So, on our way to Seattle, we allowed a little time to visit the trailer place to have my okay. Obviously, I was delighted. It was 2 hours to Seattle, and we made good progress through the Seattle traffic. We got to the parking garage early, found a spot right on the first level by the entrance, and tried to pay our fee. The instructions were to put the VISA card in with the VISA to the lower right. Well, our card was different from the version pictured so we were putting it in incorrectly. It seemed to take it and return it, and then asked us to push a blue button, but when we did, it sat, saying some like wait while processing, and then it said to take your receipt. The machine clicked but no receipt appeared. We called the number on the side of the machine, which got us to a person who couldn’t help me, and his supervisor came on and went through it with us. Phew. It worked when we got the card in the correct way. We have a receipt for the $10 now. We trudged uphill for a long block, and made our way to the entrance of the room. After saying hello to people we knew, and going to the restroom, we had a lot of time until the actual start time; I went out and took some lovely autumn photos of the Seattle Space Needle. This is taken from the front of the Lopez Room, in the Pacific NW section of the rooms nearby the basketball stadium, Key Arena.

We had great weather for our trip over and back.

Here’s a look at WTA numbers so far this year:
97,000 hours (and counting) of volunteer service to trails
3,100 volunteers across the state
23% volunteers age 18 and under
6,833 trip reports this year helping 2.3 million hikers find their next hike at http://www.wta.org/

I took many pictures and movies tonight, and sometime in the future I will post some of the best.
John was selected as one of the 11 awardees of the 2013 WTA Carhartt Awards! “This honor is bestowed upon the most dedicated and generous trail work volunteers from the entire season. Congratulations!!” That was part of his email received asking for his size of jacket and pants. We didn’t know what the package would consist of, but this is what it turned out to be.
Carhartt Men’s Sandstone Active Jacket – Quilted Flannel Lined J130
Carhartt Men’s Weathered Duck 5 Pocket Pants
If we bought on Amazon, it would cost $56.95 for the pants, and $115.00 for the jacket. Both plus 9.5% tax would be $171.95, plus shipping. In addition, the jacket has a nice embroidered WTA emblem on it,

which would be more costly, and no doubt the “goods” at a retail store would be higher priced yet. We have no idea what these things cost WTA but all the awards were really nice and the clothing looks great. Thanks, WTA!
I will have to get John to dress in his gift later and include the picture in a future blog. For now, here is a photo with him and the clothes in it, and with WTA crew leader, Evonne Ellis, who you might have read about earlier in the web page of the WTA trip to Taylor Mountain. She was the innovator of the Banana Dance to warm people up to go on the trail. The banana is my old bowling banana that I was pictured with in a previous week’s blog, when I told you we would tell you the “rest of the story” later. Here it is: John and I arranged with her “boss” to get the banana from us at a work party, and to present it to her at the Appreciation dinner. We pulled it off, and the photo below shows both people with their awards. John is holding his Carharrt jacket with the WTA emblem and the pants below.

Saturday, Nov 2
We slept in after our long and tiring day yesterday. John spent a couple of hours in the wind on yard and animal chores. We had 40 mph gusts through some of his time out. I stayed in the house working on things. We hope to get this blog out soon.

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

Saturday Oct 19
Already put a bit in about that day, but add now about the pounds of transparencies tossed — from filing cabinet drawers of teaching materials from John and from me. I worked on the song, My Grandfather’s Clock, and it was a chore. I had the music notation in one key (B flat), with no chords, the lyrics with chords in another key (C), which I had to transpose to the Key of D for our group. The key of G is too high for us to sing, and C was too low (off the G string on a violin). Meanwhile, I researched it and found what an OLD song it is (1876) and how it has been captured by the Bluegrass community and also sung by groups such as the Robert Shaw Chorale. Interesting history. I’m trying to get it ready to take tomorrow. (I succeeded, but found it was in the wrong key, except for our viola and bass fiddle player, so I changed it once home.)

Sunday, Oct 20
John is scheduled to leave at 6:00 a.m. for Tiger Mountain for a WTA work crew. I will be working up a web page on that trip, when I get all the photos. Stay tuned. Will give you the location link in next week’s blog.
I was scheduled for a bluegrass jam session at the Swauk-Teanaway Grange and ended up going up with Charlie (guitar) and Helga and only had to drive 7 miles to their house. I didn’t want to go on my own without my cell phone, which John had over on the west side. It was good we went. There were only 4 people there NOT in our music group, and 4 of us arrived, three with spouses.

Monday, Oct 21
After a late morning breakfast of leftover bacon with eggs and a nice pancake, we left to go pick Honeycrisp apples at friends across the valley. Picked 250 pounds, and then delivered some to friends and to the Adult Activity Center downtown, on our way from the hospital to get my INR (blood test). It is still low, so I guess that gives me the okay to drink some wine. We gave away a few apples to our favorite hospital staff members at the front desk and in the Lab.

Next photograph is an apple collage, described below.

In the picture on the right are 9 of the 10 boxes we picked–the front box had a few red delicious. Those are the old fashioned red delicious, so most likely they are. We don’t like the newer taller tasteless ones. We think the rest were primarily Honeycrisp, possibly with a few Jonagolds thrown in. They are very similar in looks, but not so in taste; the Honeycrisps seem to be crisper. Thus far every one tasted has been a Honeycrisp.
On the left of the above collage are pictures John took on the second picking on Thursday. We didn’t have our camera along on Monday, so this was my special request, and he fulfilled it. The top of the left column displays one of a bad apple. These Honeycrisps were not viable for commercial sale, because of moth damage. The middle photo is beautiful with the lovely red apples mixed with the fall colored leaves. Finally, on the bottom left is John’s capture of the moon in a nice blue sky behind some lovely apples. I see a flying bird in that picture, shaped by the apple tree leaves. Do you see it?

Tuesday, Oct 22
Off to Yakima, in two cars. On the way to the foot doctor, we dropped off John’s Subaru for its 60,000 mile maintenance work. We’ll have to retrieve it another day within the next 3. From there we left together and drove to my doctor’s office 5 miles away. I probably should spare you my frustration, but I think I will share it in case a similar thing ever happens to you. Speaking up was necessary today. I was called in right on time for my 10:30 a.m. appointment. The young “assistant” took me into a room and said, please wait here just a few minutes until the room across the hallway opens up. She closed the door on the way out. I impatiently waited almost a half hour, got up, opened the door and walked into the hallway. I saw a man waiting in the main examination chair of the room I was waiting for. There were some staff members standing down a few doors by a counter, and I got their attention by walking out and staring. One person said, can we help you? I said, “I assume I have been forgotten.” Just as they were listening, out walked the gal who was the attendant who left me. I said, “Did you forget me?” She said, “Oh no, I’m just waiting for this room to open up.” I boldly said, well, I should be in that room, not him– his appointment was 10:45, and AFTER mine. I knew my doctor was also his, (I heard him check in next to me, with another desk greeter), so I felt comfortable in saying that. She said she would talk to the Dr. and get back to me. I left the door open and sat down. My doctor came in very soon, and ushered me down the hall to the place where the laser equipment is, and went ahead and took care of the preliminary part that would have occurred where the man was sitting in the chair. I sincerely wonder how long they would have left me there. My “treatment” was over in 15 minutes, and I left.
From there we went for a lunch at Jack in the Box, and then on to Costco. Today, John bought a ladder, strong, that can extend to 15′. It will support 300 pounds. His best ladder is falling apart and when we looked at ladders at Bi*Mart, they were flimsily built only to sustain 200 pounds. Also filled up with dog and cat food, and picked up some yummy Danish pastries for us, some cheese for sandwiches, and some frozen food for the neighbor.

Wednesday, Oct 23
Actually, our morning was busy cleaning the kitchen for the repairman to arrive. About 9:37 a.m. the Culligan man came to service all our units. It’s going to be over $400. Yikes. Most of the parts are new a year or so ago except for the iron removal one. It is 25 years old and they no longer have parts for it. If it quits we will have to get a new one at a cost of about 3 grand. The 4 small filters under the kitchen sink performed nicely during our recent water issue. Crystal clear water was provided for drinking and cooking throughout the days of the problem with the storage tank and the pressure switch. The company wants customers to get into a yearly maintenance agreement “to protect the units”, not to mention their cash flow. We didn’t sign up for that originally but have now. Gives peace of mind and it’s only money. Right? This is a yearly required maintenance, filter changes, and checking the system. We did have two O rings leaking that needed replaced ($10) plus multiple filters and checking that everything worked as designed. We are going to put 15 to 20 gallons of the highly filtered water in gallon (or 2 liter) containers – then use and replace one a day. While moving boxes around last week, we found two 1 gallon containers of water with a 2003 date. We think that will go on a plant, but it still looks good. Today I left for the food bank soup kitchen music and on to SAIL class. Wow, 20 people in exercise SAIL today. John worked in the yard on various projects. Once home, I began searching for details about John’s getting the Ellensburg-Yakima Commuter bus to get himself to Yakima to pick up his Subaru. The fare is $4.00 one-way. Not sure yet when he will go, but wish to coordinate with my schedule on Thursday or Friday. Luckily, the Subaru dealer is willing to send a shuttle to pick him up at the Yakima Transit Center. It is possible, so they say, to get a transfer and then ride a city bus on a route that has a stop just 100 yards from the car place. The on-line city info with multi-colored routes coming and going wasn’t (for John) sufficiently helpful while indicating (maybe) a very circuitous route to get 10 blocks. Who knows? John called the dealer and watched the ‘odd’ Yakima characters at the transit center (that’s PC for bus depot) for a few minutes until his ride (a 2014 Outback) arrived and whisked him over to retrieve the car. The car had developed a cold-start rattle that the service rep recognized from our description. The heat shield around the exhaust wears over time and then during cold weather contracts just enough that 2 metal parts touch. The fix is a few properly positioned and gentle “tack” welds. Silent again.

Thursday, Oct 24
John went by himself and picked more Honeycrisp apples this morning with the help (again)of my former student who lives on the property. I believe they picked again as much as previously on Monday. We have been dishing out apples all over town.
Music today was at Hearthstone, and I dropped John off an hour early to get on the bus for Yakima to pick up his car. While he was waiting for the bus, he ran into our hay broker. All went well, and we expect the problem with the rattle noise (described above) was fixed by the dealer (at some cost to us). I haven’t seen the bill, but know it was over a grand (the timing belt also was replaced). Most of the cost is labor (~70%) so replacing the belt while the transmission is apart seems the way to go, rather than go another 5K or 10K and then incur all the labor cost again. It’s only money, right?

Friday, Oct 25
Noon luncheon at the special conference room in the SURC (Student Union Recreation Center). This is a beautiful board room with huge leather chairs and a humongous mahogany table. There are a dozen leather chairs with the Wildcat paw print on them on both sides of the table. I took some photos and had my own taken with my Halloween (cute pumpkins-in-love sweatshirt). This is the same room where we have our Christmas potluck, and John always attends with his two requested Pecan pies.

Left above is the board room, and the right above is Gabriella Bacon and me at AAC.

I went from the scholarship luncheon to the AAC Halloween party to take some photos especially of my friend & neighbor, who I knew was dressing in her Hershey Kiss costume. Another friend took our picture, and I took a few for the staff at the center because they were busy putting on the party. There were many different games to play (with monopoly money), and winning some in return to be used in an auction at the end to fight for donations local businesses gave. One was to drop pennies into a small pint jar covered with water, inside an aquarium. Another was to throw bean bags into holes on a slanted board. Another was 3 softball throws at a stack of large fruit cans piled into a pyramid. I did best on that, and second best on throwing 3 darts at balloons. It was a lot of fun. From the auction, the only thing I brought home was a plastic fly swatter and a happy face spoon (plastic) with holes in it, to be used as a ladle to drain juice, we guess.
While I was out playing, John worked on putting the new tags on the front bumper of the truck. It was a totally frustrating experience and took him 1.5 hours, but it is now done. I left out the entire story, because I know it pains him to even think about it.
He started moving stuff from in front of an old refrigerator in our shed, we brought here in 1989 from Idaho. We do not heat that shed, and the frig does not do well (especially the freezer unit), when the temperature in the building gets so cold. He will move it from there to our garage, where we have access to heat to keep the water softener and other systems warm during the winter. [John says: most fridges have only one inner control so the freezer doesn’t work properly if the just-cold part is naturally below its threshold for chilling.]

Saturday, Oct 26
Today was clean-up work on moving and sorting things day. John was ahead of me outside. I worked in the house on clothes washing and doing dish washer preparation. I worked through some of the other emails needing attention and planning for the potluck party with some of our music group tomorrow night.

The collage of two photos above, in front of the big shed to the left, out of view, where the junk and stuff needed to be moved out for John to access the old Hotpoint refrigerator. The top photo shows a black chair I sat in to sort boxes of old materials (mostly books) from our past. I had two apple crates to put stuff I wanted to share with colleagues and friends. I had a box for Urban & Economic, Environment & Resources, Quantitative Methods and Statistics in Geography, and another couple of boxes for paper, magazines, plastic, and garbage unrecyclable stuff. I worked straight for 3 hours, with one break to get a drink. John put in a full day. He has since moved the two boxes of stuff to recycle with specific people into the garage, where I can get names from them and share with folks to see if they want a copy of the book. I’m not carrying a box of books in, if the items in it are unwanted. I saved a bunch of magazines, I can take to our City Library, and put on shelves for others (a take and replace thing). It is a service to the community which the Hal Holmes community center provides. I can take paperbacks (fiction) to the Adult Activity Center, as well as magazines. I found some Audubon magazines from 1992, which I will give to our friends active in the local chapter. One of the funniest things we found was a large box of plastic containers for old magnetic tape data storage from 1970s & ’80s mainframe computers. A day ago, John had found a large box full of plastic containers for protecting VCR/VHS tapes better than the paper holders which do not prevent dust from entering. No one uses the technology anymore, and the Media Circulation at the University Library, has suspended its operation. No one shows 16mm movies anymore either. How times change! Guess it was time for me to retire.
The bottom shot in the above clean-up collage consists mostly of sorted and packed boxes which now are in the back of the pickup to take to the paper products recycling place in town. In addition, are two boxes of dried split wood pieces (nothing bigger than a loaf of bread) which John will deliver to our neighbors across the street, next week. Those have been in the shed for about 7 years – dry by now?
John cooked me a dish to take to the potluck tomorrow night. It is beautiful, with about 50 cubes of Golden Health squash, cooked in brown sugar and with pecans, in an extremely large square Corning Ware dish we picked up at a yard sale a few years ago. In between eating dinner and washing a load of dishes, I now passed this to John for him to work on for posting. He gets to leave an hour later Sunday morning for WTA trail work. Two adults and 4 teens from a YMCA are coming and they have a policy of not starting before 9:30 so WTA has gone along. This is a new trail at Park Pointe, a City of Issaquah park on a plot with a long and troubled history. It is 102-acres on the edge of Tiger Mountain, adjacent to Issaquah High School. The City of Issaquah preserved Park Pointe (that final ‘e’ was a Canadian developer’s naming; now bankrupt) as part of a 2010 agreement involving a transfer of development rights to protect open space and views near the city. A trail system is being developed for the area that will provide a loop trail within the property and connections to the High School trail and other access trails on Tiger Mtn. Some of this trail system will be completely new trails and some will follow the trace of old logging roads. When finished, the trails should be a couple of miles in length. Probably because it is a new trail, there will be mostly brushing and grubbing work needed. No structures to be built, yet. On his way home and back to the potluck (6:00 p.m. here in Ellensburg), he plans to go by the Tiger Mtn trail where he worked last Sunday, to take some finished project photos.

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

Sunday, Oct 13
Worked most of the day creating the blog for last week, and I spent more time throughout this week, updating the link we sent out in last week’s blog at the end. It is a web page to describe the WTA days John put in on Friday and Saturday. Check this link.
We also retrieved an artifact we have plans for, and we took it into the yard and took pictures to share. We’ll eventually share the entire story with you, but for now, here it is for posterity and to keep you involved in our life.

This was a cheerful addition to my school office window since 1988, in 3 different campus buildings. Note the discoloration from the sun, for 11 years in one East-facing office window.Made a phone call to John’s sister to catch up and use our minutes on our home land line. We have 120 minutes each month included in our cost of service. Sometimes we forget to use it all. Must use it up by the 16th of the month. We still have 50 minutes left after talking for 43 with Peggy today.

Monday, Oct 14 Columbus Day
I just heard yesterday about the University being closed today on Columbus Day. Wonder about other places in town. I’m not going to town today, so it doesn’t matter. Oh darn, I’m sure the post office is closed. So much for getting my anniversary card to my friends for their 64th in the mail today. I put it in the mailbox, where it will stay until tomorrow, the actual date of their wedding. I should have put in the mail Saturday, but I was too busy with other pressing things. Fast lunch and back to work. John wants a wide sight-line along our east fence and has been cutting trees there. We tackled more in the kitchen and I finished loading the dishwasher and started it. We were wishing to cut his hair, but it didn’t happen – no daylight via the windows and thus darker than I like. We’ll put that off and cleaning out boxes from under the tarp, until tomorrow. Several are still there from the garage water tank replacement clearing. I think I have made it through the academic materials ones, and have clothes, blankets, and ‘stuff’ left. I’m truly not sure what all is out there.
My socks were delivered today. I’m happy I didn’t pay $30 for them. They are not wool, but only a small percentage, mixed with other fabrics. Oh well. I suppose the $6.77 extra I paid will make the cost $2/pair, and they might be worth that!
I worked off and on with other projects, including email through the day. I’m sharing time between putting in music for How Great Thou Art and working on a web page describing the rest of Saturday’s trip you saw the start of in last week’s blog (link is now at the top of this page).
We played around opening faucets all over the house and yard again today and we think perhaps the air is decreasing in the pipes. I surely hope our problem is just residual air in the system.

Tuesday, Oct 15
Finally, we have water again without much interruption from blasts of air. What a joy! Finally, I got John’s hair cut today, and arranged for scheduled maintenance on our Culligan system as well as service on our Sears appliances (that expires Nov 21). Our new range (from 2011) has been without a back right burner for much of the time. We never made it to the pile of stuff in the front yard under the tarp, but I went through other boxes in the house and have one more that was sorted out from under the tarp.
I’m going through Urban Geography stuff right now for my colleague teaching the course I used to. I don’t need all this stuff anymore. Today, I threw everything I took out of one drawer of a filing cabinet from our Wine Class – a little more to go through there. I imagine most of it goes to recycle too. It felt so good. I stacked the paper in a recycle stack, threw away old transparencies (mostly John’s physical geog that SOMEHOW got in the wine drawer), pulled out manila folders and large mailing envelopes, even if used, for use in storing things. Found a cassette tape advertising some product, and tossed it along with all the associated brochures.
Off to play and sing hymn music tonight at Royal Vista nursing home. We ate late — bourbon chicken (commercially frozen), baked Honey crisp apple with cinnamon and sugar, some of our tomatoes, and red grapes.

Wednesday, Oct 16
Today off to food bank soup kitchen for music and on to SAIL class (which I decided against staying for after setting up the CD music, and taking in some tomatoes in to share. My ankle was bothering me even to walk, so I didn’t feel up to all the movement in all the exercises we do. A couple more stops on the schedule before heading home. Delivered more tomatoes to a couple of friends, and onions, picked up some free light bulbs and shower heads from the Utility District, and came on home to work on a piece of music that did not check out right when 3 of us played it today. Spent over an hour on the phone with a couple of people, from our past.

Thursday, Oct 17
John and I went outside and worked together on boxes under the tarp and others he brought over from the big shed. I found a filing drawer box full of old printouts from very old green & white computer printer paper, that was in very large binders. All can be tossed/recycled. Plus I loaded a wine box full of other white office paper to recycle, and found more things to trash. I sorted out a full apple box of things plus filled a canvas tote bag to take to Mat Novak, John Bowen, and Jen Lipton for classes they are teaching that pertain to the materials (Urban, GIS, Economic, Air Photo & Remote Sensing).
John drove in with me, and we stopped off at the jeweler to pick up his repaired wedding band. Then off to drop me off at Dry Creek, and while I played and sang, he took my car for a fill up at JRs (only just finding out if he paid cash he could save 10 cents/gallon). JEEZ.. We now need to plan ahead better. He then went to two stores for canned cat food & dog food, some donuts for his crew helpers tomorrow. He went by the Court House and bought new plates for the recently purchased used truck. He spotted that there was not a plate on the front and neither we nor the dealer has a clue as to why. (News on this, see Saturday.) Then by CWU surplus, but first, on the way, to my friend’s (banjo player’s) workplace to give her a box of pears I forgot to tell her to wait around for at the end of our playing time. At surplus, we made some bids on 2 x 4s, plastic pipe, plywood, cement blocks, and bought a roll of blue carpet for $5.00 (it is 22′ long, and 3 feet wide). We can cut a couple of rugs for the entrance, to front and back doors and for the kitchen floor. I think that will work just fine. From there to Dean to deliver the apple box full of things. While there, we had a very nice visit with Marilyn (our secretary in Geography since 1996). On back home to do more work on things, and emails, and I ate two of the donuts because I had skipped lunch. I didn’t realize he’d bought them for the crew. John fixed sliced roast beef and our onions, baked 2 of our little potatoes, toasted a buttered cheese roll in the oven. Temps are down to 40 right before 11:00 and heading for 31 tonight, with clear skies.

Friday, Oct 18
The white Subaru needed gas and John was headed over to the wet side (near Tacoma) so he left early. You can see where he went using Google Earth, go here:
47.276516, -122.089474
The short post that precedes this one has a photo of spawning Salmon he took from a high bank on the south edge of WA’s infamous Green River. The white looping road is for worker access only. It is gated at the top where the red marker is on this photo.

WTA volunteers and a couple of King County folks are building new trails in a 1,200+ acre natural area. This part is called the O’Grady Trail. Trails are in the woods south of the river (right of the yellow marker in the above view).
I continued working a couple hours going through the boxes piled on pallets, in our concrete front yard outside the garage, where John moved things to, when needing more space for the new pressurized water tank. Primarily, I have sorted through academic materials. Today I tackled a huge box of clothes, blankets, and spreads. I didn’t enjoy doing it, so I moved back in the house with some blouses and tops on hangars to go through, from the top of the box. A couple of things I will keep. The rest I will take to friends in my music group or at Briarwood when we play tomorrow.
I loaded the dishwasher and need to be in the house when it goes to the dry cycle to turn it off and dump the still slightly orange water from the top of mugs.
Hung a nice throw knitted blanket (don’t know where from), on my fence to offer to my neighbor, when he drives by. I know he crochets, so don’t know if he can repair two dog chew holes in it or not. It is gold, with white deer outlines on blue on both ends, and some red bulb looking things. Maybe someone will want it to keep their legs warm.
While sorting through filing cabinet contents, most of which gets recycled, I found information about a video a former student recently wrote me about remembering from my Urban Geography class (2005) on the sewage problems of London, back in the 1700s. I looked for it in my VCR collection but could not find it, so I assumed I had checked it out from the library. I now know the name of the series it is in, (Films for the Humanities), –“METROPOLIS. PPS 1995 and the video is named A Big Stink!
I called a friend in the CWU Library to see if it was accessible still in their system. It’s not, but is available on something called SUMMIT from Southern Oregon University, and can be borrowed as a book on Interlibrary Loan. I did make some more headway on recycling 2 feet of folders from the filing cabinet, second drawer, primarily urban stuff. Thus goes the day.

Saturday, Oct 19
Been working today on finalizing this blog for John to post. I’m heading out for a few hours of music and stuff in town this afternoon, going by the grocery, and to get gasoline in the car for his trip tomorrow. When I started it in our driveway there was a rattle or engine sound. The sound goes away and the car drives fine. It was just serviced a few hundred miles ago so maybe they forgot to tighten a bolt – or something. Years ago the local Chevy dealer replaced belts but didn’t get the fan properly bolted back in place. It slipped forward into the back of the radiator and made an odd sound. We stopped at a mechanic shop and borrowed a proper size wrench to tighten the fan. 20 years later we haven’t looked at a Chevy product. We will go to Yakima on Tuesday to have my feet looked at (from the laser/toe nail thing) and will stop at the Subaru dealer for a consultation. Now about the missing plate on the truck. John took the new plates and was going to put them on, but . . . the space between the holes in the license plate does not match the spacing of holes in the bumper. Not even close; 2 to 3 inches difference. Also, the bumper slants back sharply so even if a plate could be put there it would be hard to see. That’s a project for the coming week. Stay tuned.

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

Sunday, Oct 6
Was included in last week’s blog because it wasn’t published until this day.

Monday, Oct 7
On John’s “run” with the dogs this morning, he cut it short, when he saw a coyote at the lower end of our pasture. Without the dogs, he returned with the truck to make lots of noise and exhaust smell, and to go into the area where a spring flows. A tree had fallen over it and the path. Because the horses occasionally take that route through the woods, he cleaned up. Haven’t seen ol’Wile E. since. Mere coincidence?
John is outside, cutting down some trees, after spending recent time cutting up fallen ones. Earlier we searched for the cause of the air in the house water. He wanted to have more information to discuss with our plumber. His main work today involved checking various faucets, connections, and checking out the noises. He’s decided the entire house system has air in the lines, but why the frost-free line to the horse trough also has air, makes noises in the house (garage) in the water storage/pressure tank, makes no sense. If the pressure switch failed with the line open perhaps the outside line could draw water out of the tank. More later.
Right before John fixed dinner, I managed to order my Sierra Trading order again, I thought I had completed it on my birthday, with a $30 gift certificate. The goods never came, so I called to check. There was nothing in their system. I requested a new certificate from Subaru to replaced the one that expired 9/30. I couldn’t find the same socks and flannel booties I originally ordered, but I found 3 pairs of nice wool socks of varying sizes on the length of the cuff–one above the calf, one midway, and one closer down around the ankle. I hope this order arrives in a reasonable time. I have been tracking it, (UPS), and it made it to Spokane yesterday, but no activity since. I guess UPS doesn’t deliver on Saturdays. The Subaru folks extended my certificate to the end of this month, and this was also a good sale on stuff at the end of the year I guess. I don’t know why wool socks would be considered seasonal especially when one of the best buys has snowflakes, but I suppose the other two were used for non-winter hiking boots.

Tuesday, Oct 8
When we awoke this morning, all the water faucets spewed blasts of air. Bad pump? Low water level in the well? John filled the dog’s water bucket from a barrel of rain water (crystal clear) and then we went for the monthly Emeritus Geography Profs’ meeting at the Copper Kettle for coffee, tea, hot chocolate, or iced water. Seven of us visited from 9:30 to 11:00 a.m. After the meeting, John and I first went to the hardware store for filters for the in-line to the water heater. Then off to a jeweler to have him cut John’s wedding ring off. His ring finger knuckle is arthritic (or deformed and enlarged from years of hard hand work or just age). After the ring was sawed through, it still took awhile to get it off. It will have to be rejoined with gold, and the price of gold has changed since 1969 ($35 per oz. versus ~$1275) making the fix about 3 times the cost of the ring. It will take them about a week to complete the task. Making it fit over the left knuckle makes it too large for a ring on that hand, so they will fix it sized to his right hand. I looked up on the web what wearing a wedding ring on the right hand meant. Supposedly, that is currently the fashionable thing to do in European countries. Then we went by the Mid-State Coop, and got the name of their water pump technician. He was out on a job, and was going to call us later, when he was free. He lives only 1.5 miles NW of us, so it was right on his way home. He spent an hour determining the problem. The decision was that the holding tank bladder had ruptured so the tank needs replacing. The pressure switch had failed also — completely filled with crud (probably mineral deposits). We are having to pay him by the hour for his labor ($75). We definitely went into the wrong profession. He also recognized that the tank we had (38 gallon), is insufficient for our system needs, and will be bringing and installing an 82 gallon one. He expects to be here around 9:00 a.m. John has to get up early to move stacks of boxes from the left side of the softener’s salt tank to make room for a much wider diameter water tank. We hope that fixing that one thing will solve the problem and not require replacing the pump (which has been in since 2000). We don’t know the life of a well pump. I had to leave for town, just as he was leaving our house. I was expected in town at 6:30 to play church anthems and sing with The Connections, at an assisted living home, Hearthstone Cottages. The people there are in better shape than many of the other nursing homes we attend. John had a lot of chores to do while I was gone, but when I got back at 8:00, I had to wait only a few minutes for dinner he’d cooked after feeding the horses, cats, and talking to his sister (in Ohio). For dinner it was a fresh tomato, pot stickers, and Korean seasoned chicken thigh strips, fried onion and yellow squash. The stickers and chicken were on sale at Costco recently, so we got them for situations when actually cooking something is time-dependent. For lunch, we had tomatoes, and egg rolls (same idea from Costco).

Wednesday, Oct 9
Our water problem was traced last night (maybe) to a bad pressure holding tank. The technician is bringing a new one this morning. He’s due any minute. John has been moving junk and boxes from the garage to create space. I am only here for awhile before heading to town. I hope I come home to water in the system. I know it will need a lot of filtering to remove all the crud from all the pipes, that has been blown off during the air spurts of the past week.
I went for my Food Bank Soup Kitchen music-providing event, and afterwards, we had pork chops, applesauce, rice with corn & cheese, and coleslaw. From there to the AAC for exercise. All went well, and I came home to have water in all faucets at a turn — not clean or clear, but running water… yippee! I waited a couple more hours for the hot water heater to heat up before washing dishes. John had drained the tank and put in a new filter. We will wait several days for the sediments and color to clear up before washing clothes; otherwise, all the whites won’t be. John moved dozens of boxes and stuff to the concrete slab in front of the garage and covered the pile with a tarp. Some haven’t been seen in a decade but now we have to sort it all out and throw most away. We were hoping to leave this task to the next house owner. But, while the task only just been started, one good find is a box of Urban Growth books I knew were there, but had been missing for a several years. I had promised them to a “new” prof who was essentially my replacement, and teaches GIS, Urban Geography, and other courses I taught. I gave him most all my materials for the Urban class, but it was offered for real the first time this fall, since he arrived. I had promised him two dozen of the USGS Special Circular 1252 hard copy reports, “Urban Growth in American Cities,” that uses Aerial Photography infrared color images of 16 large towns in the U.S., (e.g., Atlanta, Las Vegas, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Seattle/Tacoma), seeing the tremendous growth outlined by the imagery, for decades since the 1970 Census. I had access to the circular on line when I was teaching the course, but when I went looking for it, I found there is a NEW version available from Amazon for $12.50, and if it still exists on line- it’s not available now with the gov’t shutdown. I’m glad I’m no longer teaching and depending on gov’t sites for my data for map-making in my classes!

Thursday, Oct 10
We went for my fasting blood draw early this morning, in time for breakfast at Carl’s JR. We had the special large Biscuit with egg, cheese, Canadian bacon, and sausage. Normally that’s two kinds of bacon, regular pork strips, but I asked for a (free) substitute of a sausage patty, which is our preference. We stopped off at Les Schwab (tire place) for a change of season check of air in John’s car’s tires. From there we went to the grocery to get some sandwich meat for John’s WTA trip lunches on Friday and Saturday. Then when we returned, he took time to take the dogs for their morning exercise, while I ran off copies of the changed music for the group. When he returned, we had to weigh onions: 10 pounds each for two persons and 5# for another, and bag them for me to take to the Rehab, where we played today. John stayed home to work on cutting fallen trees into firewood size pieces for our neighbors. This weekend, while he is in the hills, the clan is gathering to celebrate the arrival of a new great grandbaby. The able bodied ones are to come take a couple of pickup loads for the wood shed – John has usually done this but would rather be making trail.

Friday, Oct 11
John got up at 5:00 a.m. and was out of here at 6:00 a.m. for Hobart (near Issaquah) to do WTA trail work. I stayed to work on clean-up projects from the activities associated with no water for a week, and moving boxes out of the garage to the front yard and put under a tarp. I intended this morning to add something to this blog, but after doing emails and phone calls, I turned off my computer to get to work on other pressing projects. My computer was off for hours (very strange for me when not traveling away from home). I fought with the water and air in every pipe. Worst was the hot water, because I wanted to wash dishes, and couldn’t. I called and talked to both the pump technician and our plumber. The first tech who just put in the tank didn’t really have a clue, but the plumber made a few suggestions. Finally, after running every faucet in the house and outside, it may be getting a little better.

Once it got to 60° outside I bundled up, got a chair, lifted part of the tarp, and started going through a few more boxes from school that I had not tackled in years. Most of the stuff was from the early 2000s or even some the 1990s. Disgraceful. Much could be tossed totally because of outdated technology–example everything to do with overhead projection systems, transparencies, and special holders to protect transparencies! I found a brand new box of a dozen WHITE lead pencils, and am curious what they are used for. I looked on line, and found I could buy a box on Ebay for $20. I also tried to find out their use, and only could find that sometimes woodworkers use them. Books of stuff back to 1970, which are of no use to most people, but I pulled a few that might be of interest to some friends and will offer before recycling. Lots of old term or project papers that can just be recycled immediately. I pulled off any usable covers and will take them to school to share with the students. I actually always preferred a plain staple.
Found some stuff to add to the box I’m making for the person now teaching Urban Geography, mentioned earlier in Wednesday’s blog report. Covered the remainder with the tarp. I uncovered a nice flower pot with a saucer, hung in a macramé hanger. I cannot remember its source. I hope John can. I need to find someone special to give it to. I think it’s associated with my mom in some way, but I don’t think she had anything to do with making any part of it. Maybe I just got it for her, or from her, and it’s been in our things. This one is red, and I recall having a dark green one. Maybe it will turn up in another box. Then after getting cold and tired of sorting for 2 hrs. outside, I returned to work on the dish loading into the dishwasher. I finally held my breath and started it, hoping the air spurting in the hot water faucets would not affect it. It’s doing all right, right now 1/2 way through the cycle. It made a few noises, but managed to clean the dishes, and I turned it off before the dry cycle to dump off the red water caught in places such as the tops of mugs.
I got a call from Kim Khan that John’s wedding ring is ready to pick up, but I told him it would be next week before we’d be in. John made it home about 5:45 p.m. and had the feeding and exercising chores to do. Then he fixed a nice dinner.
We had a phone call to respond to tonight from a friend about her horse’s problem, possibly Pigeon Fever, and she remembered we had the problem once with one of our horses. Now we are getting ready to finish up things and hit the hay. Tomorrow morning John leaves early for the same park he visited and worked in today. It is a new trail, in a county park, with a lot of new digging required. The names of the trails there are Elk Ridge and Carey Creek, on
Taylor Mountain near Hobart, south of Issaquah.
Seventeen worked today, with the Crew leader and two Assistant Crew Leaders (ACLs) as John is. King county rep (Jack), with a chain saw, was there too. Tomorrow, 30 total are signed up, with a couple more ACLs. John’s not going but there will be a like-sized crew there on Sunday.

Saturday, Oct 12
John left at 6. I stayed to fix stuff and wrap presents for the neighbors’ great grandson’s party, and lunch. The stuff I fixed was cleaning and de-stemming a bowl of sun gold cherry tomatoes (our last for the year), and washing but not de-stemming 2 large and 2 medium red tomatoes, in case needed. I opened a new jar of Blue Cheese dressing and carried it. After a nice filling lunch (lasagna, ham, beef/corn casserole, several salads, a nice Chinook salmon spread from fish caught by a son in the Juan de Fuca straits, one with quinoa & garbanzo beans I skipped, a cheese plate with Blue Cheese (my favorite), two cheddars, and goat milk cheese with a cranberry & sugar coating, a mixed green salad with beet greens, spinach, & endive, and some cooked/spiced beets. There was a platter of yellow and red peppers, and other veggies, including someone else’s red cherry tomatoes and some of our Sun gold ones added. We visited and then opened gifts and watched pictures of the recent wedding of the baby’s parents. We had a dessert choice, or a little of both, of white frosted chocolate cake and an apple/pear crisp. I then honchoed a work crew of our neighbor’s family (one gal, and 4 guys to pack wood from our property across the street to their parents (or grandparent’s) woodshed, to use to heat for the winter, supplemental to inside electric furnace house heat. Over the years, John has cut up fallen trees from their place and ours. We call it trash-wood. It is mostly cottonwood and quaken aspen, with minor amounts of WA Hawthorne, a few pine limbs, and some willow from the wet areas. Eventually, John made it back about 5:40 and went out with the dogs, to feed the horses, and then back to visit with the folks still loading wood. At dark he came back in to get food to feed the ferals. All four were there tonight. I took care of our inside-outside cat while he was out visiting, and I closed the window on the doggie door to keep him from messing with the ferals’ food.
Now John’s back working on a post to say this won’t be out before tomorrow, and I have to take photos off my camera I took at the party, and off my old camera that he took a few pictures of the trail work today. Before he got back home, a gal on the trail took a picture of him working, and sent it to my email (from her I-phone). I have put that on line with a couple of the photos he took on my camera today. They were taken in low light, and so the focus is not as crisp as normal. While I was finishing working on the page (below), in came a report from Evonne, the crew leader, with a link to a bunch of pictures a fellow, nicknamed Big Rock Jonnie, takes on his camera, and gives the flash card to the crew leader, who puts them all on Picasa for everyone to share. At the moment I only pulled two special ones from there; maybe more to come. Meanwhile, here is the link to check.

Sunday, Oct. 13
Water problem is not fixed.

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

Nancy was busy at the neighbors today.  Granddaughter brought her new baby over from Seattle and various family members came to lunch and visit.

John was doing trail work and got home at 5:30.   Chores and supper are now done but the blog isn’t.

We expect to get it on-line by Noon – our time – on Sunday.

Anyway, an exciting week it was not!

John

Saturday, Sept 28
The National Weather Service folks in Seattle had reason to believe western Washington and the Cascade Mountains were in for a major weather event for this weekend. WTA, with John too, had committed to hold a work day at the Talapus Lake trail head which, using Google Earth, can be seen at
47.401082, -121.518184
They did get some rain all day but not as much as some other places west and north of them. Washington did not get winds as strong as expected but did get lots of precipitation. [That moist air continued eastward and showed up as snow in the upper mid-west later in the week.]
I had worked on the blog, with a bunch of pictures. It takes several minutes for John to process and store each photo for inclusion to the blog so he only put a couple in for the week. I have put the others, with text, in a page you can find here.

Sunday, Sept 29
A new season is here and we forgot to put in a photo of fall colors we took last week on the September Equinox. The Ash tree pomes (like an apple but often called berries) are orange on their way to red. They are exactly the same color of the squash we recently harvested. John held one up against the tree so here you see Mountain Ash and Golden Health squash against the green of the tree leaves.

We were pretty wiped out from yesterday, and spent all day trying to catch up. John cut a lot of weeds. We told you about cheese weed last week and he filled a garbage can twice today with the stuff. Weeds are the bane of a gardener, especially one using irrigation water with all its included weed seeds. These are from the dog yard that also has a constantly disturbed surface and the small seeds are easily moved about.

Monday, Sept 30
I stayed home today to work on music projects, receipts, records for our volunteer service, and other chores. John made a magnificent dinner after going to town today for cat food, and some other stuff, bought some nice chicken breasts (huge) which he cooked to very tender with our own onions, some of the mushrooms we bought for the Friday luncheon, and added some of the baked apples from the Friday dinner potluck, plus a baked potato we grew. What a “lovely” dinner.

Tuesday, Oct 1
My, my, we usually start our day at the computer with the local weather report and weather station figures recorded at the airport 5 miles south of us. Right before midnight last night, the temperature gauge there lost its brains, and was reporting 1 degree F. It is still broken many hours later. The National Weather Service site says “. . . because the information this site provides is necessary to protect life and property, it will be updated and maintained during the Federal Government shutdown.” Pendleton, OR is our local NWS location and about 3 hours drive away. So, we figure they will have to bring parts from there. [The next day they did.]

We left for town a little after 11:00 to meet our friends since 1971 from grad school days in Iowa. We arrived at the Mexican restaurant planned for the meeting place to find it closed. Drove on to my favorite Chinese place, the Golden Dragon, and had an excellent buffet of at least 15 different selections, including: Egg flower soup, chicken & pork in various modes, noodle dishes w/ veggies, rice, Lo Mein, Chow Mein, etc. Wonderful visit and catching up for the whole year. Ann & Fred live in Marquette, MI and once a year come to visit relatives in WA. They always detour toward us and we meet for a lunch and a much too infrequent visit.

Our waitress, Lisa, who knows me by name when I come into the restaurant, took the photo above. Over the past many years, I took my REM 515 GIS in Resource Management graduate seminar down for dinner following an evening class if a guest speaker, for the students to “network” and to thank the visitor. Since then for a few special occasions after I was sick, we returned for visits, with visitors through town. This lunch buffet is much better than the platter I used to always order for dinner. For future meetings, this will be my choice. All of us had the buffet. It is available several days (but not every).

Wednesday, Oct 2
Food bank music (4 people there!) with baked beef ribs, and when they ran out, they gave the last people steak. I got a choice, and my request was for the most tender– the cook decided ribs for me, and they were good. I didn’t particularly like the other side dishes today, but had a large helping of the green salad, and some cake for dessert with real whipped cream. Took my violin into exercise class because the temperatures outside were 54 and too cold for a wooden stringed instrument to sit alone in the rig. During the summer I had been carrying it in because of the heat in the parked car, which the violin does not like either. Fussy things.

While I was gone, John finished with the farrier and trimming 3 horses, and then got his mower started to do the grass (weeds) up by the road (300′ from the house). These are on the dog walking route and when wet or snow covered John minds even if the dogs don’t. Late afternoon, in the COLD, we picked for an hour, the last of the squash, tomatoes (many picked orange), and found the spider while cutting away plant parts to get to the fruit. Got her picture from above and the side.

On the way back to the house, I picked up some Carpathian walnuts from the ground that had popped from their green husks, and found 4 neatly eaten ones lined up on the ground by the Douglas squirrel. John has to fight him for our share. I did not position those nuts on the ground. They were just like that. I left one still in the green cover on the ground above.

Thursday, Oct 3
Early, John took off at 8:00 a.m. by himself for Yakima to have the lube/oil done on our 2009 Subaru, then to Costco for gasoline and check out the sale items. We didn’t need anything but he did get some sale priced prepared egg rolls and pot-stickers for when a meal seems to need something else. I stayed home to work on chores and finish a letter of recommendation for a former student for a job reference, and left right after 1:00 to go play music at a nursing home. Actually, John took me, dropped me off, and went on to the grocery store to get meds, my Almond Breeze, and take advantage of their sale on canned cat food, this week only signiicantly below the Costco price, and Brownie Mix for a great price. Tonight, we are going to a lecture at the university, and picking up our 100 pounds of onions. The lecture is, “A World of Ice: Alfred Wegener, Glaciers, and Continental Drift,” by Mott Greene, U of Puget Sound, Emeritus Professor of Science and Values.
Also, we had a phone call mid-day from the WA Trails Association (WTA) that John has been selected as an awardee of the 2013 WTA Carhartt Awards! The WTA says, “This honor is bestowed upon the most dedicated and generous trail work volunteers from the entire season.” They were calling to obtain his sizes for the Carhartt pants and jacket he will be presented, Nov 1, at the WTA Appreciation Dinner at the Seattle Center. We do not look forward to the trip across the pass and hope for no winter storm. Film at a later date.

Friday, Oct 4
Skipped the potato bake potluck today at the SR center. John was going to go work on the PCT at Stevens Pass, but the trip was cancelled because the trail goes on US Forest Service land there. The government shutdown includes closing the gates and turning off the radios WTA uses in case of any fires or other evacuation needs. The WTA is not a government entity so they switched the volunteers over to a King County park southeast of Seattle.
Today we awoke to a water problem. If you missed the short blog yesterday scroll down on this page and look for the heading “Joys of rural home ownership”. We hoped it wasn’t’ the well pump gone bad. We checked all the faucets in the house and they were spittin’ dark water, as if air was in the pipes, but then in the kitchen and one bathroom, the water flow diminished to almost nothing. John went out to the barn faucet to run water (it comes from the well, but bypasses the filter and house water conditioner. Also, it hasn’t been used in about 3 months. He experienced muddy water but it also had some spurts of air in the flow. He thought, however, it was in much better shape than the house. For no good reason he decided to replace the 10 inch all-house filter, Big Blue (which he had just done in June). He replaced the filter (a 20-minute task that requires depressurizing the unit, getting wet, and a messy job). Meanwhile, he had a low flow in his cold-water bathroom faucet, so he cleaned out the filter there and found some pieces of oxidized stuff, just the size of a large pinhead. After he finished, all the lines are still full of iron-colored water, but at least the water is not spouting from the faucet like an interrupted geyser.
Then he went mowing in the back yard, the orchard, and above the ditch by the road.
Rascal cat just arrived; must go feed him. All four cats were there tonight for their vittles. I saw Lemon up close and personal (through binoculars), and determined he is an unneutered male. There must not be any other intact males in the vicinity, or he would be getting hurt fighting. Our other 3 males and 2 females are fixed.
John fixed a great dinner: seasoned pork ribs with our purple onions, our fried yellow straight-neck squash, and a toasted piece of buttered bread with parmesan cheese.

Saturday, Oct 5
We had planned to finish the blog early today because we are invited to the Food Bank Saturday at 5:00 p.m. for a Dutch Oven cooked dinner. However, just messing with our water, talking to our favorite plumber, and taking care of horses, dogs, and cats has limited our computer time. Thus the blog is delayed. I did take a few pictures of the Dutch Oven experience and the report is here.
Sunday, Oct. 6
The water issue is still waiting for attention. We have usable water so it seems not prudent to mess with the thing on a weekend and, maybe, going 100% without.
They say problems come in 3s. So, I sent an e-mail with a download of this blog to an account for John to download. He did and about 3 lines into working on it the Word Document crashed. What has happened a few times in recent weeks is he will strike a key, say an ‘e’, and that will start repeating. It will fill lines and pages and there is no way to stop it. He can switch the power off, losing all open tasks, and then reboot the machine and start over. Apparently there is something going on with the document created on my lap top (newer) and his MS Word 2003 running on Windows XP. Last week when this glitch happen he reopened the document and continued, eventually getting the blog done. Today, when he rebooted and tried to open the same file he got a warning message that he probably didn’t really want to do that. So I created a new document, sent it to him, and he opened it and immediately copied and pasted the text to a file already open on his machine. That seems to have worked. But that was only problem #2. For #3 – his keyboard quit. He was just typing a word and then nothing happened. This might have stopped us for the day except he has an old style PS/2 keyboard connected directly to the motherboard that isn’t dependent on software running for it to work. This old Logitech keyboard usually just leans against the tower and any key on it acts as an instant-on switch. Because it was already attached he just moved the malfunctioning one aside, brought the other out of its vertical position, and kept on typing. Problem #3 had a ready solution. Now he has gone to exercise the dogs and I will have another go at this.

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

Water issues

We are experiencing a house-water situation. There is air in the system from a currently unidentified malfunctioning part. The symptoms include pressurized air blasting and sputtering from the faucets and sounds of an unknown drummer when toilet tanks are flushed. All the rocking and roiling in the lines and tanks is breaking loose many years of accumulated mineral content of a rusty orange color. For reference, see this document.

All of this is particularly galling insofar as we are having a perfectly gorgeous fall day – going for a high of 63, sunny, and only a slight wind (for our Valley “slight” is equivalent to none). But instead of being out and doing things we will be in. We can maybe (not likely) solve the problem. We can maybe (more likely) eliminate a few possible problems. We can (most likely) provide our plumber with a better idea of how much time he will have to allocate to this job.

We’ll likely post a blog late tonight – Saturday, but (more likely) Sunday. This is Nancy adding a note after John’s comment on posting Saturday. We are attending a Dutch oven cooked dinner tonight, and more on that later in the future completed blog.

Saturday, Sept 21
You caught some of the start of today earlier. We stayed home today to work on the blog. Called Peggy at the end of the day after the blog was posted; then off to the garden to pick blackberries, tomatoes, and squash.

Ended up seeing our orange garden spider in her web, and I went back to grab both cameras to record the event with hopes of identifying her. We both spent a lot of time after I took the pictures from my cameras. As of now, we don’t know, but have sent to a few folks. (Latest update 9/26: it must have gotten too cold for her and she disappeared). We expect she was an orbweaver, perhaps an Araneus diadematus.

I didn’t get to bed until 12:30 a.m. and so I slept in until almost 10:00 after getting up at 7:00 and seeing beautiful skies and colorful clouds on a deep teal back drop to the east. Sheez… it was completely different a couple hours later, sprinkled some, and clouded over. Now the sun is out and beautiful again. I almost put on my shoes to go take a picture of the pink and blue clouds and bluer sky just above the ridge to our east but didn’t. Probably missed my chance for this year.
We just finished a LUPPER (lunch + supper): started eating at 3:40. I know “brunch” is the meal combining breakfast and lunch, but what is the name of the one between lunch and dinner (or supper). I like Lupper better than Linner. Ha ha. Omelet had broccoli, tomato, onions, sausage, cheese, and eggs, of course. We only had a 1/4 of it because it was so big & thick. Then, 1 1/2 pancakes w/ maple syrup, and bacon. We’ll have our pears and plums later.
Rascal, whom we didn’t see for 36 hours stretched across the couch to the dismay of the dogs. He stayed there until the middle of the night, left, but showed up this morning about noon, ate, and went back to bed in a box next to the Jade Plant in the back guestroom. He just awoke, meowed, and probably went outside. He didn’t come into the den, where earlier I had taken his picture.
More trying to complete things needing completed. Been trying to identify the spider today and yesterday who has weaved a 10 inch across well-designed web. We’ve determined she is an orbweaver, but as of yet, we haven’t determined the species. She is bright orange, and nestled in one of our largest Early Girl tomato plants. So, many of the pictures we take of her have green or red tomatoes for scale, along with plant leaves.

Monday, Sept 23
Nothing much going on, but a lot accomplished, nonetheless. Rain and Sun have prompted many thousands of seeds to sprout so John sprayed in an anticipated long break without rain. One of our many weeds is commonly called Cheeseweed because its seedpod looks like a miniature wheel of cheese. See the photo here (about the size of an eraser on a #2 pencil).
They like the disrupted soil of a new strawberry bed or freshly leveled ground for a new round pen. A local company is scheduled to bring “10 yards” (That’s 10 cubic yards and about 32,000 pounds) each of re-processed concrete and sand. The former is to top off and smooth the road to the barn and the latter is to go into the round pen area. There John was ‘popping’ rocks out of the surface, using the small ones in a walkway, and stockpiling the larger ones. He set the delivery up for dawn on Tuesday – just when we are supposed to be heading for Yakima. I called the dispatcher and rescheduled for Thursday, one of many little projects for me today. I took care of soaking my feet and cutting my toenails that I could, to get ready to go to the podiatrist for my laser surgery (on all 5 toes). My big toe on the right foot, with the fungus, seems to be growing out, and coming in fresh. Go figure. Maybe the laser will remove what’s left and I will be cured. What a great concept. Hope springs . . . and all that.

Tuesday, Sept 24
We left after 8:15 to drive to the podiatrist for an appointment at 9:30 a.m.!! (in Yakima), and afterwards to take my new car by for its 3,000 mile check-up. I carried along my computer in case of wait times. Only 15 minutes wait at the first stop, but then the work wasn’t finished until an hour later. On to the Subaru dealer for my Forester’s check up. It only took them 45 min. and all was well. Using synthetic oil the next date is 7,000 off. My father would roll over in his grave to hear that, because he always changed oil every 1,000 miles. Wonder if the fact he was a salesman for Quaker State Oil Company for many years had an influence on him. From there, to Jack In The Box for a special coupon for two spicy chicken sandwiches and two free tacos. We carried our own drinks and ate in the car under the shade of a nice tree. The temperature there was 59 but the sun warmed the interior. Our dessert came later — a Very Berry Sundae (the berries are strawberries), at Costco, as we left.
The toe thing is a fungus on 5 toes on my right foot. Not a clue where I obtained it. Earlier in the blog, I described my frustration with finding the solution. I go back to Yakima in a month for a redo of the same thing as todays. Then, I wait 6 months before going back. Expectations are that the laser pulses kill the fungus (not any other part of my foot or nail), and new nail will grow in to replace the weird looking toenails (rather like the material of an animal’s horn–hard, rough, misshapen, and thick).
The procedure and the prep took the better part of an hour. First, the main doctor clipped and Drexeled my nails to make them ready for the laser treatment. Then another Dr. did the laser pulsing part. It heats up and he only does a pattern on the nail of about 20 pulses, before moving to the next toenail.
It went all right and then today is a little sore from the trimming of the toenails, but the actual pulsing wasn’t that bad. Try this link — it gives a good description of the process.
Wednesday, Sept 25
I slept in this morning and went to the food bank, and then to my SAIL exercise class (not feeling like doing all of it, and then went for a haircut. When I got home, I went out to the round pen to see all the work John’s been doing getting rid of rocks and scraping it. I took a couple of photos of the activity. It is threatening rain, and the temps went down.

Thursday, Sept 26
This morning at 7:45 we got a load of gravel for the drive delivered, and he then returned to EBRG and brought a load of “off grade” (cheap) sand for the round pen base.  The one originally ordered was a coarser grained sand used for construction / road projects, and they figured this other was preferable.  John, in consultation with the lady at the counter, chose the larger grit size thinking it would stay better in our winds.  We’ll see.  What was delivered is a dollar a yard less.  I played music at Hearthstone Assisted Living and John went to the grocery to get a few things. At home, the mail had arrived and, finally over a week later, I got the results of my mammogram. Thankfully, there is no cancer.

Friday, Sept 27
Scholarship luncheon at noon.  We are providing the main dish for the first meeting of this school year.  Nice, because I won’t have to fix any more dishes for the rest of the year, except we will make our normal two expected pecan pies for the Christmas potluck.  All the $5/plate goes to Ruth Harrington’s Scholarship fund for needy students, so we each put in $50 for the year.  My group usually meets on the 4th Friday of the month.  We expected 13 (including John) but there were 2 no-shows.  He’s going to help me carry everything in.  We’re fixing a special chicken alfredo, starting with one from Costco, and adding cashews, peelings from a bright yellow squash, slices of our purple skinned onion, cut up fresh mushrooms, some of our sun gold cherry tomatoes, and on top: thin strands of Havarti cheese and fine tiny flowers of broccoli. The top ended up speckled green and golden and got great reviews.  It tasted good too.  We hurried home to prepare for a potluck for my music group that starts in town at 5:00 pm.  For that, we baked Honeycrisp apples (in halves) with brown sugar, cinnamon, and a little nutmeg.  Ham and turkey were served and much else, including country potato salad, veggie plates, salad, beans, homemade rolls, apple/raisin Dutch apple pie and homemade chocolate chip and macadamia nut cookies (homemade from Otis Spunkmeyer frozen gourmet cookie dough.  The company began in 1977 as a California chain of retail cookie stores.  Drinks included lemonade, Crystal Light (we took), coffee, and hot cider.  We drove separate cars so John could eat and get home to feed horses and ferals before complete darkness.
We took 13 half-apples and brought 3 halves home.  Later I brought some cookies and part of a pie – all left by others.  John fixed some of the things he will need for trail work and then worked on the parts of the blog that I had started.

Saturday, Sept 28
John left at 7:00 a.m. this morning to just west of Snoqualmie Pass for trail work.  A major storm is headed WA’s way but may impact more to the north and west of where he will be.  If not they may be washed out and have a short day.  We’ll know before this is posted, and is added below.  [From John: we were wet but the wind missed us.  14 miles west had rain and wind sufficient to blow over trees.  The plus of the rain is that we can see what the water is doing on the trail and know that our drains and structures are working – or not!]  While he was getting wet and dirty, I went to play music at Briarwood (warm and dry) and they feed us neat things afterwards.  “Us” is going to be very few as there is much running hither and yon for the members.  I believe we will have one guitar, a timbrel, a fiddle, a viola, and an extra singer.  It will be fine.  (And, it was).  We had a good responsive and appreciative crowd.  For food, they had split pea soup with ham and carrots, rolls, crackers with salami, mango pieces, two kinds of cookies, a pasta salad, and a Jello/fruit salad.
I had a long afternoon, but it was all right, and John had a much longer day.  He made it back safely from the trail work.  It was accomplished with a bunch of boy scouts.  It rained on them most of the time, but the wind didn’t start blowing and not very hard until near the end.  They stopped early, at 12:30, skipping lunch on the trail.  They still had the usual end of the day drinks and treats (todays were Pepperidge Farm cookies) provided by the leaders of the WTA trail work crew for the day.  John ate his lunch in the car on the way home, getting here at 2:30.  I didn’t leave where I was until almost 4:00.  Then went by the Palace Café to pick up my birthday dinner (can get one of two things or take $10 off anything on the menu), but it has to be used sometime during the month of your birthday.  I was running out of time.  My free choices were Chicken Alfredo or a Chicken fried steak dinner.  I decided to have the free Chicken Alfredo to mix with the small amount of leftovers from our scholarship luncheon one yesterday.  The regular price on the menu is $18.99 !!! Wow.  It comes with French bread.  We paid $15.95 for the Costco one (about 4 pounds) that doctored up yesterday by added all the stuff to– but we fed 11 or 12 people.  This was a generous serving for one, including a different pasta from the Costco one, which was Penne Rigate.  This was a more truly small diameter and long fettuccine pasta (a little more like spaghetti).

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