Author: admin

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

Sunday, Sept 8
Today, started earlier than usual for me, so I could help John put a pork roast in the Crockpot. We cut up some freezer-chilled (to lower tear production) purple onions and some tomatoes. We put the Crockpot in the garage so the extra heat will not be in the house. Then as he was setting that up, I started working on his sandwich. I got it all layered, and he packed it and 4 plastic coke bottles ½ liter drinks in his backpack (one frozen). Any carbonated drinks have to be opened and “fizzed” here at home because at 4,000 feet the air pressure is sufficiently less that such bottles make a mess when opened. Traveling in a backpack doesn’t help either. WTA has been working between 3,000 – 4,000 feet elevation and if in shade they are about 15 degrees cooler than here at the house. Without clouds the sun gets a bit intense. They need to drink lots in either case – one of the many safety precautions covered every morning before they leave a trail head. Also, for additional liquid we packed a couple of the Pluots and a Bartlett pear. (The pear came home with him so we ate it before dinner tonight.)
After he left, I laid back down and slept in late, but I rationalized it was all right after a rough night with broken sleep and odd dreams. Must have eaten too late? I spent a lot of time on a bunch of projects, but have little to show for it. Well, the roast turned out tender and tasty so the early effort paid off.

Monday, Sept 9
We went to Costco after lunch, because John decided to go work at Mirror Lake on WTA trail again, tomorrow, negating a planned Tuesday trip. The Forester was almost out of gas so with Costco gas 20 cent per gallon cheaper than EBRG gas there is some small compensation for the extra miles. We were also going to be out of cat food in a day or so, so we bought needed animal food for the most part. Not counting the very berry sundae (frozen yogurt with generous strawberries. We did buy large packages of ground beef and pull-apart pastries to go into the freezer. We keep it quite full in case the power goes off and to prevent spur of the moment trips to a grocery store. Rural living has its little “gotchas.”

Tuesday, Sept 10
John left for a WTA work party at 6:30 a.m. I was up and then back to sleep until too late to get everything done in a timely manner. I was 15 min. late to my 9:30 a.m. meeting with emeriti geographers (only 3 others today) at Copper Kettle. I took a case of Roslyn beer for the hay-load-helper son of one of the fellows who comes to our meeting. I also dropped off some garden produce at 2 friends’ houses, yellow squash, scalloped and straight neck, red tomatoes, little sun gold cherry ones, and on to Mt. View Meadows, to see Jay Gorman, wish him a happy 86th b.d., and give him a gift of lyrics to songs we sang the last time our group visited there, (only the 5th Thursdays of the month)–not a lot of those in one year. Oh, good; just checked and October is one such month. He sang along on most of the songs, but his favorites are You Are My Sunshine and Red River Valley. I made a special edition for him with his name and a big sunshine clip art, and a total of 12 songs. He was totally thrilled. He calls me Nancy with the laughing eyes. This is another rewarding experience of playing music in nursing homes and retirement centers.
While there I had my eyeglasses adjusted (meeting the new MD at Boys-Smith), who had come over for a special event for anyone in town. I told him about my cataract surgery, and that someday I would need to have the little film removed but for now it is fine. He said that is a very easy and safe operation. We visited because no other people were there for the free clinic, and I found out he is from Brewster, WA. I think he was surprised that I knew of the town and had been there – it is not a big place but is in sunny eastern Washington
( 48.099670, -119.780907 ).
I also asked his optometrist assistant, who’d adjusted my glasses, what I could recommend to John to clean his. They had a table of cloth rags (soft), and little spray bottles of some blue liquid thing to use; they gave me two of each and said when I ran out I could come back by and they would refill for free. I only wear my glasses when I need extra good vision (if in the back of the room at a lecture, or in a strange town, needing to see little road signs, or for night driving because they correct a slight astigmatism, and make on-coming lights less aggravat-ing. With them on, I have 20/15 vision. Without them and with my intraocular lens replace-ments, I have 20/20 with both eyes, and close-up vision without glasses.
I must say I never liked Dr. Boys-Smith because he incorrectly diagnosed my eye problem (when it was really cataracts), and so I told Dr. Hanson the story and said, now that he’s dead, I can talk about him (not that I didn’t already, even while he was alive). I had been pret-ty upset at the way he treated me, especially when I found out the real cause and let him know he was wrong. He had sent me to his buddy in Yakima first and I spent > $100 on the “treatment” of a special fit contact lens for one eye. The procedure didn’t work.
It was still lunch time, and I had not had anything but a small piece of toast so I took myself to lunch at the new IHOP in town, using a special 50% off coupon. Had a fancy Chicken Fajita Omelet and 3 pancakes. I brought home half of it and 2 pancakes. I have to be back at Hearthstone at 6:30 to play music.

Wednesday, Sept 11
Historically a bad day – 9/9/11 – 2,996 people died of terrorist attacks in the USA.
Hard to believe the coming of age generation will learn of this as history. If 5 then, and 17 now, what experience most defines your life?
Back from several events & sitting down resting. It’ s after 4:00 and I left home just after 11:00 a.m. First stop, to pay the rest of my dental bill that insurance wouldn’t cover because it was not a metal filling!! (Jeez). I had paid $102 already, and now $35.00 more. So much for dental insurance. It was a TINY repair, not a major deal. While going there, I carried along a box of corn, tomatoes, and yellow squash and invited the only two people there on staff today (secretary & hygienist) to come to my car and take what they wanted. They loaded up pretty well. While there a little old lady emerged from the back room, having just had her teeth cleaned. She looked at me and said, “You’re the singer !” I laughed and said, “Yes, we play various places around town.” She asked my name and the name of our group, and I told her. Then she thanked me again, and wanted us to come back soon. (She’s at the same place where I was visiting on Tuesday, and our performance there was 2 weeks ago). I asked her name and where she lived. She didn’t know, but the staff told me it was Mt. View Meadows, and her daughter brought her in. Well, the fact she remembered our music, was great.
On to the Food Bank to play music and deliver some of our homegrown blackberries to our banjo player. She is limited on her fruit intake because of chemicals (she’s allergic to) used in growing commercial ones. The food bank has much bread for Wednesday morning pick-up, and they like for us to load up on bread while there after the pick-up is done (nothing else though, but bread deteriorates or molds rapidly because they have no way of refrigerating it). The offerings weren’t so good last week, but today I got a loaf of 3 Cheese French bread, one of Rosemary Olive, and some Holland Dutch Coffee Cake (isn’t that redundant?). Then for lunch, we were fed a nice baked boneless chicken dish, with a casserole I didn’t think I would like so only got a small serving, but it was very good. It had egg plant, quinoa, and garbanzo beans with some nice spices. Next was a cucumber/purple onion salad in a sweet vinegary sauce; I don’t like cucumbers, so just had a few onions. Then a large green mixed salad, but the only thing I could eat in it were the tomatoes. For dessert I had a piece of dark thick chocolate cake with dark chocolate frosting. [John says, Life is good when veggies are taboo and double chocolate is a better alternative.]
From there, off to the Adult Activity Center, where I unloaded the rest of the vegetables. I pulled up in front of the door and gave the box to one of my exercise classmates. Then across the street to park under the shade of a big tree, because shade is sparse in the parking lot at the AAC. By the time I got in the building all but one piece of squash and two little corn-on-the-cob were left!! People descended on my friend as she walked in. I was setting up the CD music and saw a large sweet muffin and two pieces of cheese cake, so I wrapped them and put in my empty box to bring home for John and me. We’ll thaw some strawberries to have on it later. My left foot inside ankle has been bothering me so I didn’t do any exercises today that would stress it. From there on to the pharmacy to pick up some of my meds, and cokes for John, dog biscuits for the dogs because Costco had none yesterday. They expect a treat when they return from their exercise — it’s part of the deal, with them. Annie, the youngest, lets us know with a very interesting (funny) vocalization. So, we comply. They have us trained pretty well. Finally, home and it is 95 degrees, but John helped me unload the car. We are waiting for the temperatures to go down so that I can help John pick tomatoes. We picked Sun gold cherry tomatoes, other larger red ones from three different bushes, and some more blackberries. I’ll take some to town tomorrow and John will freeze the rest.

John decided tonight to go on Sept 14 to the Cascades Beckler Peak Trail to work for the 20th Anniversary celebration. He only got started with WTA 7 years after their first work party. Read about it all, here. He’ll go to the Beckler Peak trail.

Thursday, Sept 12
It is the PCT near Mirror Lake for John today, and hopefully will get some photos of the “after” of the work he helped with Tuesday. My day only has a play date for music at the Rehab center, but with stops at the bank and a couple of places with produce to share from our bountiful garden. I thought many people would be missing, and that was true, but also two came that I wasn’t expecting. We had 2 guitars, a banjo, timbrel, 2 fiddles, and a clarinet. It was hot outside, but we had a nice time with the folks there. I carried in some veggies to share with a couple of people. It is the 83rd birthday of one of our members, so we sung happy birthday and gave her a present and card. (When I was at the bank, I got her a nice gold-looking coin, $1, but failed to note which one) to put in her card, along with a bag of Sun Gold tomatoes. Now that I look for it on the web, I believe it was the George Washington one because I did see a silhouette of a man.
And, I found a pretty red blouse to share with her. Many of our group are out of town, and one couple will be gone until December, traveling (their comments) doing music across the continent and attending the largest Celtic celebration in the world in Cape Breton Island (“Celtic Colours”).
I started packing the produce which we had to move from the kitchen to the garage because of the high density of fruit flies that seem to appear as mysteriously as virtual particles. We reduced their number with the vacuum cleaner but new ones appear each time. Updated more pix on the web page from last Sunday (now I completed this just on Saturday). Widen your window to see three pictures on the third row, for best results.
John came home from the mountain work trail work. After a short nap and slightly lowering of the temperature he has just finished the feeding of horses and cats. He already ran the dogs, in the heat. Now the temps have gone from 96 to 88. I had a lot of work on the jobs list today, and never got back tonight to my web page on John’s trip last Sunday. Today he brought me photos of the finished rock ramp and a co-worker will (later) send a few of the stepping stones (for hikers) and and rock ‘ford’ (for horses and mules) crossing at Mirror Lake’s small out flow stream. So that’s also put off until a future blog.
Temps today were strange. Highest was 97, and then it dropped tonight from the 88 mentioned above to 77, and now has gone back up.

Friday, Sept 13
Tonight is our annual trek to the Chef Extravaganza at White Heron winery. I plan to take photos, and have one taken of me in my newest musical shirt, made by Ellen Fischer, she just brought me yesterday at our playing at the Rehab. She is our clarinet player, and a great seamstress.
Heat is up to 91 here at noon, and we leave in a few hours for the hour+ trip to White Heron vineyard. John picked tons of tomatoes, squash, and even blackberries this morning. We made a trip around the block to share produce on the way to town to get gasoline before leaving for the dinner. Stopped off at a new neighbor’s house and had a nice visit. Finally, we left for the evening – John drove and I had a long visit by phone with John’s sister, Peggy. She wished she could be going with us, and John says, considering the variety of places in the Universe, Parma, OH is not the arm pit thereof, but you can see it from there. The weather was warm and the food tasty and interesting (pictures to follow), but for now, here are ones of us. The right shot shows the location of the vineyard, but John is talking, so I cut him out of the picture. The left one shows the area where people eat and listen to music. We sit up on a grassy terrace, to enjoy the evening in our folding chairs not far from the food tables. It is in the shade just as we arrive about 6:00, the start of the meal serving.

The performer’s platform is in the background, over John’s shoulder. Nancy’s fancy colorful shirt contrasts with the green of the vineyard. Grapes are doing well as harvest nears.
We left early and got home at 10:00 – John will be up at 5 and gone by 6.
I’ll fix up a web page later of the goodies we experienced at our favorite commercial event at White Heron. Our favorite is a private party of the volunteer pruners. This year’s was held Jan. 5 and was an authentic Raclette using French cheese, complete with wines made there, but with grapes developed from regions in Italy and Switzerland. We did that story back then and expect something similar this coming winter.

Saturday, Sept 14
John left at 6:00 a.m.. I spent the day, wasting a lot of it, on computer problems. John’s not expected back until after 6:00 p.m. and it is now after that. This was John’s trip to a 20th anniversary of WTA work party mentioned earlier in this blog. He just arrived about 6:40 and brought each of us light blue commemorative tee shirts. I’m very excited. He always wears long sleeved shirts out and/or working so a shirt like this is wasted with him, but I wear such things all the time. He put it on for the group photo of 4 workers, on today’s crew. I guess I am entitled because of being a volunteer, putting up web pages of photos taken on WTA trips, for over a decade. I will put that photo below. It was just after lunch; they didn’t work in those shirts all day. The Blue-Hat crew leader took the picture because he claimed he wasn’t allowed to have one of the volunteer shirts. He also claims a picture taken of him captures part of his soul or essence and leaves him depleted. Did we mention that after safety, fun is goal #2 of all WTA trips? The real fun for this trip was that Jon N. (who is known for food surprises) brought a pan of popcorn and a small gas burner and lunch was augmented with freshly popped corn. Then later, back at the trail head, he retrieved a large Canon printer carton that contained a large red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting. Sometimes that carton hides a small cooler with dry ice and containing the hardest frozen ice cream sandwiches you have ever had the pleasure of waiting for the softening. Also, this was Husain’s 5th work trip and so he got a shiny new green hat with is name/nickname one it. He chose ‘Who-sane’ but after digging and carrying 5 gallon buckets of rock for several hours he thinks he might change it to ‘Who-insane’. 20 more trips to go and he gets a black WTA vest.

John Hultquist Kevin Crandall Jon Nishimura Husain Barbhaiwata
Photo by Alex Ray, WTA “blue hat” crew leader ~~ 9-14-13

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