Keeping track

Thanks for all the birthday wishes on email, animated cards, postal snail mail ones, and phone calls.  I repeat some of this below on the real day, with added touches.  I started receiving wishes a week in advance.

Sunday Aug 26  After a bunch of bloodcurdling cat screams awakening us in the middle of the night and finding our Rascal asleep on the loveseat, we went back to bed.  Early this morning, John saw all 3 ferals (Woody, Sue, & Cashew), leaving their haymow loft and walking off through the corral into the swamp, so we know they all are okay.  Now John had to begin his morning out moving horses out of where they are not supposed to be, up by the new pole building.  My horse, Frosty, is notorious for going through temporary ill-built fences and teaching the others to follow.  I also went next door to feed, water, and give attention to the neighbor’s cat while the owner is overseas.  Need to water her plants too.  A few days ago, John mowed her blooming knapweed, so it would not spread throughout the neighborhood.  It is nasty stuff.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffuse_knapweed#An_invasive_species

http://www.mtweed.org/images/client/diffuse-knapweed/weed-id-1453265453_3bba542399_b.jpg

Today has been slow, but both of us have been busy on chores.  I have worked on various projects inside, and John has been outside, except for a 40-minute much needed nap.  High temperatures were up to 91 today, and he tried working all outside ditch digging in the shade of our cottonwood trees.  He has managed to construct a new diversion and short ditch to water the pasture on the north of the new building without impacting the construction site or approach thereto.  Previously water went past the front of the building and that is now an entrance driveway of dirt, rock, and crushed gravel.

We had a nice late lunch with leftovers from Friday night’s potluck and a new ear of corn from our garden, plus some other stuff in the frig.  We had crackers, Jarlsberg cheese, the rest of the kippered salmon and tuna . . .

[John says about “kippered” — seems to describe another food product insofar as this fish is in a small glass canning jar and much like tuna from a can you might buy in a grocery store.  Not this sort of thing:

http://www.sausagemania.com/kippermania.html  ]

{Sorry, Nancy here.  A fellow who spent much time in Alaska referred to it by that name, after tasting it.  He said it had been smoked and salted.}

. . .from Friday, two kinds of grapes, and our shared ear of corn.  John worked until late and so did I, but we had leftovers (pork, sauce, tomatoes) on toasted hamburger bun, with another ear of our own corn, and a bunch of grapes.  Nice.

Monday, Aug 27  Taught SAIL exercise class and rushed to a 2:30 meeting with my co-author at Dean Hall, CWU.  We had a productive meeting, and I took along a box of books and materials to distribute to colleagues there in Geography and History.  I think I have said we are preparing a paper to give in Olympia, the first week of October, on the Kittitas Valley hay industry and export market.  I am in charge of setting up interviews with a few growers, and John Bowen is setting up the interviews with processors/exporters.  We start those interviews next week.

Tuesday, Aug 28  Today started early with getting ready for our annual physical exams, and driving via I-90 to Cle Elum, because Hwy 10 is still closed, from working on the bridge (the infamous Taylor Bridge that caused the fire).  We both had good reports and went to lunch afterwards in Cle Elum.  Then we visited the Kubota dealer to check out a tractor with a backhoe and front-end loader.  Very pricey!  From there we came on home via highway 970 and 97 with views of some of the fire damage at Bettas Road and at the wind farm east of 97.  Was rather amazing to see where the fire had run up the hill, crossed 97, and went on eastward.  John had his camera and I had two of mine.  I put one on a movie to get a round perspective of the Bettas valley.  Close to the road John took some pictures of the large trees cut down to stop torching and firebrands – See this

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

and search the text for ‘firebrands.’   It didn’t help.  The fire came up the slope to the road and burned the guardrail posts.  Long stretches of railing will have to be rebuilt.  The county put up large orange cones to warn people of the fragile nature of the guardrails.  The location where we stopped is here:

47.151655, -120.696388

Zoom in to see where we parked.  Follow up the gravel road and there are 4 wind towers.  Just east of this are two ridges of 3-bladed wind towers (blades are white, shadows are black).  The fire burned through all the grass and brush on both sides of the road.  The large trees along here are Ponderosa pines.  Zoom way-in across the road from our parking site.  This location is 11.2 miles from our house to the east-south-east.

From there we drove down by some burned out houses and some that were saved.  Went cross-country east at Smithson road, but missed part of the burned area, getting closer to us going across Reecer Creek Road.  We came on home, after stopping and taking a couple of pictures for the presentation on hay growing and export from our valley with its importance in the global economy.  Best news today/tonight on the local newspaper’s Facebook page:  Tuesday, August 28, 2012 5:14 pm posted By DAILY RECORD staff —

Fire officials expect the Taylor Bridge Fire to be 100 percent contained by 6 p.m. today, according to an update from the type 3 incident management team that’s been managing the fire since Saturday morning after taking the reins from the larger type 2 team that managed the fire for the first 12 days.  “Because of the number of residences that were threatened, the team utilized palm infrared thermal units to ensure that heat near the containment line and homes was located and extinguished by fire crews prior to determining the fire was 100 percent contained,” said incident commander Alan Lawson in a news release.

Wednesday, Aug 29  I don’t remember much about this day except many uncomfortable feelings.  I got up and saw John off for his trail work, at 7:00 a.m. (see below).  Then I got ready myself and started in the dental chair at 9:00 a.m.  My dentist and his ace assistant worked on two major molars in the left upper side of my mouth.  The work had a few glitches, such as the clamp for the rubber dam flying off from my mouth and hitting the wall.  There was much cleaning and build-up needed, and then impressions taken because they are going to put a bridge in the next time I am in there (about 3 weeks) that fits onto the two crowns and puts in a tooth where I’m missing one.  I didn’t leave the chair until 11:30.  A very long 2.5 hours.  I had taken squash from our garden with me, and the dentist, secretary, and 2 assistants, came out to my car to take what they wanted.  I still had some left, so my next stop was to set up to play music at the Soup Kitchen of the Food Bank.  My mouth was all numbed, but I managed to sing and play, and eat a little lunch they offered us.  I gave another squash to my friend that plays and sings with me.  After that was over, I drove to the Adult Activity Center, set up the music and told them I did not feel like staying.  I was beat.  Drove home by way of our Geog. Dept. secretary’s house.  She has been in that job since 1997.  I dropped off two plastic grocery bags of squash, mostly yellow, inside a brown paper grocery bag with handles I used to hang it on her front locked gate.  Then once home, I rested all afternoon with a couple of breaks to feed Rascal (he was asleep on the loveseat with Shay, when I arrived).  Eventually he awoke, wanted fed, and then left.  He was hanging around when the 3 ferals were in to the haymow for dinner, and then left to go over to the swamp area.  Today, earlier, we saw all three orange cats; that means there is one un-caught and un-fixed roaming around.  John talked nice to it but even that shooed it away.

John left early for a WTA work “party” near Stirrup Lake, on the Pacific Crest Trail.  Here is the report from the crew leader back to the 12 folks there:  Well, a wet day, sort of, but a good day’s work done by all.  Didn’t get to see the process, but MikeT and MickiK and MartaS led the teams that rebuilt some 150 feet of rocky, grassy, rootbally, generally BAD trail into GOOD trail (that team included Dana, Mark, John, Carli, and Louise…she of the WFPie hat) .  Up above, Pete and MikeH finished off yesterday’s retread/regrade/ford with a rock wall and still more retread (as MikeH put it: “Not bad for two septuagenarians and one octogenarian”).  The work looked good…as a matter of fact, were I a thru hiker I would feel I’d fallen into heaven while walking all that new trail.  Thanks, mikeo 

John will explain the WFPie hat comment above. 

[ After 5 work trips a volunteer earns a new Green hat with their name or chosen nickname.  Louise wanted her nickname to be “Works for Pie” but that is too long so she has WF Pie on her new hardhat.  This photo shows a temporary name-tape one wears until the 5^th trip.

http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1052/525907456_eeb436a412_z.jpg

More experienced workers can earn an orange hat and if one develops the skills and wants the responsibility the next step in the rankings gets you a blue hat.  Beginning workers = green; Assistant Crew leaders (ACL) = orange; Crew Leaders = Blue.  Other agencies have other colors.

http://www.wta.org/magazine/1023.pdf/at_download/file

Note in the write-up that a most important function of the “Blue Hat” is to distribute snacks – trails don’t get built without a lot of chocolate! ]

Thursday, Aug 30  Today is Mt. View Meadows entertainment.  Nine of our music group showed up, and without some of the regulars, that was amazing.  I stopped and visited with friends who are having some serious medical issues, and took them some squash, yellow beans, and clothes that no longer fit me.  Came on home arriving just before John returned from his trail work today.  He stopped by a fruit stand and bought some larger beautiful tomatoes, a huge onion and some peaches.  Tonight we had BLTs for a late dinner.  I will get up early to put another together for John to take for his lunch tomorrow.  I forgot to get lettuce today, so our neighbor kindly shared some with us.  I went over to pick it up after going to our other neighbor’s to take care of her cat.

Friday, Aug 31  Stayed home today.  Had offers of tomatoes from a friend and needed to pick up a thesis at the library, but I didn’t see any need to drive to town for that with a gallon of gas costing $4.15.  One trip to town without any running around would take a gallon.  Our exercise class was cancelled because of the fair and rodeo.

An interesting phone call came in from a neighbor who reported that a black bear had gotten into another neighbor’s bees.  Apparently, there are several bears around, and there was the cougar around last month, over the creek and through the woods from our house.

Saturday, Sept 1  Happy birthday to me!  I have had an incredible number of birthday wishes, more on Facebook than I’m able to respond to, but I’m reading them.  I will wait until the end of the day and send a blanket post on my wall to everyone acknowledging their kind wishes.  Also, I have appreciated all individual emails, animated cards, and even telephone wishes (the old way, huh), and certainly the postal mailed ones.  THANKS.  While I stayed inside working on chores this morning, John picked a large box of squash and a smaller box (but large amount) of yellow beans.  We will have to sort them later and put into the outside shed refrigerator, until we next drive to town and can deliver some to friends.  We figure we have given over 80 pounds of squash away, and we have frozen a little for us, and eaten a lot as well.  Also, while he was out working (more on that below), I made us BLTs for lunch.

Lovely day for butterflies outside my window.  Just saw a beautiful Lorquin’s Admiral on our Nanking Cherry trees on the side of the patio.  Also have been pale yellow ones flitting around today.

Here is the report on John, who spent an hour moving the borrowed heavy magnet on wheels around our driveway and front yard graveled parking.  Totally amazing how much he retrieved (full nails, metal, and paper clips).  That page (link below) begins with pictures of the large magnet’s results from the floor of our new pole building.  Today, I have added a picture of the box of things picked up since John started using it, just including today’s additions (or should say retractions!).  I will add to the page that is continuing to be constructed to back up images of things we’ve been talking about in this blog through August.  Next week after the fair/rodeo/Labor Day weekend is over, the owner will return to pick the magnet up.  He was the contractor for our pole building.  (That link, again, with changes from last week, is

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

Another interesting chore of yesterday and today for me was tallying our volunteered miles and hours.  They have to be reported each month to the RSVP program in Ellensburg.  RSVP stands for Retired Senior Volunteer Program.  I volunteer all my music around the county and John volunteers his time in the forest working on trails for the WA Trails Association.  He most recently worked 3 days this week and that time is reportable to RSVP, as is mine.  I also record the mileage we both use to get there.  That is no longer of interest to the RSVP folks, but it is something John and I can deduct from our income taxes as a mileage donation.  FYI, I put in a total of 46.75 hrs and drove 402 miles over the month of August, and John put in 25.75 hrs and drove 386 miles on the last 3 days of August.

Today is the first day of hunting season, and there have been several rifle shots to the west and north of us.  Could be deer, or someone shooting a cougar or a bear, or as John says, perhaps someone just got a gun for a birthday present.

Okay… that’s enough for this week.  I will go work on the page still under construction whose link I have given above.  I have added a few pictures of the new pole building and some of the fire.  I will keep working on it, and share with you when I add more.

Hope your week was a good one.

Nancy and John

Still on the Naneum Fan

Sunday Aug 19  Interesting morning.  First, I slept in for much needed rest after the past week.  It was scary this morning to awake at 5:00 with flashes of “dry” lightning in the sky right before daybreak.  More with thunder followed that.  At 6:00, we got a few drops of rain.  I tried going back to sleep.  John went outside to work on fencing while it was still below 70.  He has a lot of work to do to make changes to gates, fences, to replace those he moved for the building construction.  More rain later and he came inside to cool down.  He saw helicopters flying over and later we heard there were lightning strikes a few miles to the east.

We got a call from our contractor that he had a present for us.  He brought by the final bill and accepted a check to pay the balance.  We had a nice visit and I continued with house and email chores.  John went back out to work on fence.  Late this afternoon our friends with two rescue horses are coming to take a ton of hay we are donating to them.  I passed along a notice from a member of the Swauk-Teanaway Grange about a community meeting tonight on the fire.  I have had a couple of calls, one from a fellow at the radio station who saw my post to the list (Elk Heights-Taylor Bridge Fire).  Guess I should stay inside to ‘man’ the phone, while John’s out manning the fence building.  On the well-photographed old barn on Hwy 97 . . . Good News! . . .

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pictoscribe/1454173065/

from near-fire-resident Marc Fairbanks that the old beautiful structure was spared.  Had heard differently from several others.  Rumors and bad information were rampant with this wildfire.  The County has a large area and a small population so the firefighters (many volunteers) and equipment were out-matched by this fire [they were dealing with 4 or 5 fires elsewhere as word of this fire came on the air waves].

Megan and Chris came over tonight and loaded 24 bales of oldish hay (~a ton+) from our barn onto their flatbed trailer.  We donated it to them for their two rescued thoroughbred horses, as mentioned earlier.  Otherwise, we are home until tomorrow at noon, when John will use the new pole building to assist the farrier with 3 of our horses.  At the same time, I’m going to go for a haircut on my way to town to go to SAIL exercise and to the bank to move CDs to our checking to cover the rest of the finished building.  It wasn’t enough so we will have to get a bit from our home equity loan that’s tied to our checking account.  It costs us $50 to have the service, and 4.5% for the money.  Of course the question remains as to whether that is the best solution, or would be taking money out of a retirement account—some of which is in the S&P500 that has gone up ~13% so far this year.  Sell high, they say!  Decisions.

Monday, Aug 20  It cleared up here yesterday, but started pouring smoke back into the valley today.  Some of that is from set fires [wind is now blowing back into the burned zone] to widen the lines around the last of the area burning, and keep it from jumping initial fire lines when the wind shifts again – which it will.  At least we are getting usefull reports now unlike before when rumors and confusion were swamping actual information.

I tried to sleep in till 9:00 because I was up till 12:15.  It didn’t work.  I got a call from a friend.  I needed to call the AAC to see about an appointment that got left off my calendar (which I finally found last night).  Needed to call the dentist to reschedule an appointment that conflicts with possible jury duty.  Then our horse farrier came 2 hours early (20 minute notice), and messed up my getting ready for the day.  I was scheduled for a noon haircut.  I only got a cup of coffee for breakfast.  Did get the haircut and had made myself a tuna fish sandwich to take along to town to have for lunch.  I made it to town, amidst the smoke.  Went inside, grabbed a piece of poppy seed cake with sugar frosting, and went over to a “give away” table, where I was going to eat my lunch and drink my lemonade.  While eating, I looked at some of the things on the table and ended up loading a few things into a nice carry-bag with tropical fish on it and even a zippered pocket (also for grabs).  I took some note pads, a few greeting cards, an insulated holder for a bottled drink (for John), and a neat new tee shirt for me with Camp Appalachia written on it, in big bright red and green letters.  I can always wear tee shirts, in this kind of weather.  Tomorrow I have to go back to the same place for foot care, and I will take some squash and yellow beans for the very same table.  Tonight I went to my neighbors and delivered some heavy boots that are too big for me but should fit the farmer and also took them yellow beans.  Returned canning jars and was rewarded with two pint jars of apricot jam, thanking me for all the apricots I have recently brought them.  I’m the one that came out ahead on that deal!  Canning is something we left behind in Iowa.  John cooked a boneless roast in our Crockpot with tomatoes and barley.  It was amazingly tender for a late dinner.  We had one (our first) red tomato of the summer, and it was scrumptious too.  John picked enough yellow beans and squash tonight to feed a very small army.  I will also take some by to other friends in town, and maybe even drop some off at the food bank.

Tuesday, Aug 21  Foot care and massage: 2:00 and 2:30 and I made it to both.  Winds started blowing this afternoon with up to 43 mph gusts.  I’m surely glad they have gotten rid of all the hot spots.  Here is an interesting part of a report today.  Comment on fire:  Commander Reed said the Taylor Bridge Fire is in the top 10 of dangerous, catastrophic fires he’s witnessed and worked on throughout the country.  In just four hours, the fire spread 14 miles.  “That’s just unheard of,” Reed said.  He said it was the perfect storm of conditions, fueled by Kittitas Valley winds.

We did some interesting cleaning today.  John was looking for a box of work gloves bought and buried about 8 years ago.  He searched closets, stacks of boxes, and I don’t know what all.  In the hall closet, which we seldom use, he found some interesting things, some things I don’t even remember.  A pair of almost new hiking boots I must have gotten at a yard sale; same with a pair of felt boots (slippers), with tops, which fit fine and I can use to walk around the house or take to wear at people’s houses when I remove boots, in the winter.  Found some interesting posters, and things in map tubes.  Most interesting was John’s mom’s diploma from business school in Warren, PA.  He doesn’t know how or when he got it.  We are going to tell his sister and suggest if she doesn’t want it, it might go into a museum in Warren, PA.  It is a neat historical document.  (Actually we talked to Peggy a few days later when she called to check on us.)  We decided to photograph it and send that to her, and perhaps also to the Warren Historical Society or Museum, to see if they want the original mailed to them.  Neither of us are interested in framing and keeping it.  Found two boxes of pennies.  One had $21.50 worth rolled up; the other is a ceramic dish about two inches high with a diameter of over 6″, full of loose pennies.  Our bank has a mechanical counter that sorts them and rolls change, so we will have to haul those in one of these days.  I forget all the other stuff he uncovered.  Oh, one thing was a gift from our neighbor when she and her husband went to China and we took care of their house, chickens, plants and dog.  They brought me a lovely 100% silk yellow blouse, but it was too small for me to wear then.  Now I can wear it and it is very nice.  They brought John a small framed painting of a horse.  Now we can use both, after all these years.  Found John 3 brand new shirts still in their packages (from yard sales a few years ago).  At least 3 nice sweaters, one fits me, and the others, John.  It was like Christmas.  I’m sure I’m forgetting some things.  John piled them all on the bed, so we had to sort through before the evening was over.

Wednesday, Aug 22  We were late at the Soup Kitchen starting music because of tons of people coming to carry away food from the Food Bank.  For some reason, a lot of folks were up from Selah (30 miles away near Yakima).  I got out in time to make it to exercise class, carrying my beans and squash along for folks there.

Here’s a link worth seeing–particularly the deer and fireman.  Do not know the location of that one.  Look at the whole bunch of pictures.  Someone on one of the site’s comments mentioned about the picture saying the fireman with the deer was named Cody.

http://inciweb.org/incident/photograph/3152/8/

Thursday, Aug  23  Never found time to make notes on this day.  Will try to remember a little of that busy one.  John went with me to drop me off to play music while he went shopping at 3 stores.  We had a good turnout at Hearthstone.  John, not having found the box of gloves he lost track of, bought a new pair for WTA trail work next week on the PCT (Pacific Crest Trail) south of Snoqualmie Pass, just north of a lake called Stirrup.

Coordinates: 47.301607, -121.415301

One other thing he bought today was a large package of pork chops at an excellent price, at Safeway, where he’d gone to pick up a good deal on Pepsi.  It provided a really nice dinner, and made him realize we needed to go buy more the next day, before the sale was over.  We almost never shop at Safeway – they require using a special card and they have one of the most complicated (busy) ads in the newspaper.

Friday, Aug 24  Today was an incredibly busy day.  We baked cobbler for 16 people for a night potluck.  I left John to finish cooking them, because I had to go to town for two blood draws at the hospital, to pick up 10 large intact packing boxes we loaned my deaf student to move across town, grab a bite for lunch ’cause I missed it, teach my afternoon SAIL exercise class (that I only started and another lady took over so I could leave), pick up some stuff at the grocery, and then come home and pack all the stuff (Lemonade, Ice Cream, kippered Salmon/Tuna from my Indian (Native American) student’s father & crackers for appetizers, and pears for the table, along with two large pans of cobbler (our pie cherries, local blueberries from the Yakima canyon, and our Carpathian walnuts)–all above were for the potluck with our music group last night.  Couldn’t have done it without John’s help.  We left at 5:00 p.m. going to Grace Episcopal Church for the eating and then music afterwards.  We did not get home till after 10, and John still had all the outside animals to feed in the dark.  I tried to work on email responses.  Didn’t crash till 11:45, and I really did crash.  Slept in until awakened Saturday morning by a phone call.  I guess I needed the rest.

Saturday, Aug 25  This morning I got all involved helping John unload the last of our stuff from the travel trailer, so he could drive it around the block and into our pole building. [It and one of the cars were loaded and parked so as to leave in a hurry as necessary.]  While he was driving around, I had to open some gates, and be there when he returned to be sure he got through the gate without touching on the side he cannot easily see.  It’s better coming straight in and not having to back up as once before.  There was plenty of room and he was at the right angle today.  Earlier in the day, he’d shown me the large magnet (which I cannot get too close to with my ICD), and that our contractor loaned us after demonstrating and picking up a lot of nails, screws, metal pieces, and whatever from the re-used concrete that makes up the base of our pole building.  Truly amazing.  I hope to put a picture out on the developing web page of our Pole Building in time to add a link to this blog.  I still have much work yet to do on that page, so it will be another site under construction.  Here:

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

Same with my page on the Wilkins reunion, the wildfire, and probably another couple of things.

Just got a note from a former student who is a member of the Yakama tribe.  [Note: Tribe spelling is with a middle ‘a’ while us white folks use an ‘i’ there.]  I thought I would share this, because their celebration of life is truly touching and interesting.  One of  my other former students (a Yakama) died within the last year, and another friend (former Geography Professor, Morris) attended the 24-hour funeral.  Here is the recent note (from Dana Miller on Facebook):  Arrangements for Uncle Marcus Slome; dressing will be Monday, August 27, 2012 at 9AM at Toppenish Creek Longhouse.  Washat services to follow and then lunch.  After lunch, move to the 1910 Shaker Church for overnight services.  Garment ceremony at sunrise and burial at the 1910 Cemetery 8AM.

Another Facebook reminder from Caitlin LaBar, our NW Butterfly expert:

Check    http://northwestbutterflies.blogspot.com/   for the following:

Northwest Butterflies: Question Series: Butterfly Senses

John spent most of the day out and reports the young deer still have spots although seem to be growing like weeds.  Or maybe weeds grow like young deer.  Actually, being mid-summer in the steppe zone – it is dry and the weeds are about done growing.  Milkweed are about to burst open, to this:

http://www.betterphoto.com/uploads/processed/0920/0905131824491butterfly_milkweed_2009_05_10-.jpg

We share our space.  Milkweed and butterflies are closely in sync and it is interesting to watch this throughout the flowering of the plants.  As for the follow-on stuff, John uses Caitlin as an information source.  Read her comment on her page about “Taste” and then see this:

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

Note the thing about poisonous glycosides in paragraph 3.  Ain’t life grand?

The temperatures are down (Summer’s over!) and the fire is contained. That’s enough for this week.

Hope your week was a good one.

Nancy and John

Still on the Naneum Fan

Sunday Aug 12  John left the house early while it was 65 to water the garden and take down the old round pen.  He hasn’t gotten to the latter yet, because of all the other chores.  He did take Shay with him and she was a happy companion.  Rascal was outside, but I haven’t seen him since the middle of the night when he wanted fed canned food.  I need to get going and get to work on my research on Timothy Hay now that our friends from Lake Tahoe have come and gone from Ellensburg.

My day should have been less stressful, but it turned into just the opposite. Yikes; the airport says it is up to 70 now and worse that we will have 99 degrees today.  Turns out we went to 100 and it stayed at 99 for several hours before and after the 100 recording.  I surely hope the fellow gets here soon to deliver the round-pen panels.  It will take a couple of trips, and luckily it’s only about a mile round trip, and that they offered to deliver it.  It takes a much larger flat bed than is on our truck.  We got a call from his mom at 11:00 that it would be later in the afternoon.  Right in the hottest part of the day before 3:00 p.m. at 100 degrees.  The hour ahead and the two after were 99.  They were able to get all the panels delivered and John started setting them up, only to realize when the gate was the last panel delivered, that it had to be connected to one of the previous panels already standing.  The gate had been welded with a connector about ½ inch off so a panel connector had been cut with a hacksaw to make the two fit.  When they delivered the last pieces it was too hot to figure which panel, but later in the evening John determined which it was.  Sadly he had a lot of work with no help to move the pieces and reconnect.  I don’t think he’s through yet.

Much of my time was spend working with our computer that kept losing its connection to the Internet.  I was trying to work on two major projects, one required searching the local newspaper for articles on the production of Timothy Hay in the Kittitas Valley (where we are located), and the other was to help advise an REM graduate about her interview for a job tomorrow morning.  (Update, she ended up getting the job!)

Monday, Aug 13  Bad news came today with news a fire was started west of us near Cle Elum.  The winds were severe and the dry brush, dead grass, undergrowth, and Ponderosa pine forest caused a horrible wildfire.  It was a fretful afternoon, evening, and night.  I think I may have some repeats in my story below, and in advance, I apologize.

We drove out at almost dark to see where it was.  We got on Reecer Creek road and up to Hungry Junction, at the top of the hill and could not see flames.  Deputies were coming to 1.5 miles west of us on Wilson Creek road telling residents to be ready to evacuate.  We were pretty sure we were safe.

Tuesday, Aug 14  The fire was still raging and the winds were extremely  high, consistently.  Unfortunately, we are right in the line of fire (pun intended).  I made a surveillance trip up to the north and west of us on Wilson Creek road, on my way to town.  The one road up Lilliard Hill was too rough to traverse in my Subaru.  I passed a neighbor driving to the spot I was seeking, whom I had never met before.  He took my cell phone number and was willing to call me after he found out the situation and how close the smoke and fire was from above.  He did call me before I got to town, and told me that he thought they had created a back fire to burn back toward the advancing one from the west.  I continued my trip to deliver some squash, pick up some apricots for my neighbor to make jam, and to go take digital images of some of the historical photos in our city library collection on Haying in the Kittitas Valley.  I’m co-authoring research for a presentation on Hay here in our valley, with a colleague who took over teaching some of the classes I used to teach.  We are going to present it in Olympia the first week of October, at the Association of Pacific Coast Geographers’ yearly conference.  I was in the library about an hour, and when I came out I saw the plumes of smoke much worse than when I had left.  I postponed the rest of my squash deliveries, and drove straight home.  I was quite worried on the way home seeing the big plumes of smoke west of our home, and then I got a call from a friend who is a firefighter and was concerned we needed to get out of the path of the advancing fire.  I also heard from another person that the fire had jumped the firebreak that was attempted.  There were firefighters who claimed that it was going so fast that, if the winds kept up, it might well go all the way to the Columbia River before stopping.  We would have been in the way of that advance.  Very LATE afternoon we found the residents in the area within our country block square were being advised to evacuate, when a deputy came to our door, advising we should be “ready to evacuate.”  We are on the east of that “block” on Naneum road.  North of us is Charlton, South is Thomas, and West is Wilson Creek.  We really never thought it would come all the way to us.  They were bombing with retardant until dark, and John recognized the winds changed and found they were expected to change even more later–to Easterly.  That’s very unusual for around here, as they are normally NW or WNW.  Ours and everyone’s prayers must have been answered.

However, John kept working to right before dusk to contain the horses.  I spent all my time searching for valuables and packing them into the car.  At 11:00 p.m., I drove over 2 miles west to Wilson Creek road to check for signs of fire.  I saw none.  The lady who cuts my hair lives on the road south and west of us.  I saw her lights on at 11:02 so called her and asked if she would call us before they took off in their 5th wheel.  They are much closer to the suspected advancing line.  She will do that, so that means we can get some sleep.

Our travel trailer was almost all packed and my Subaru had all our musical instruments in it (except keyboard, piano, pump organ), plus meds, my ICD checker, tax receipts, the external backup for my last two laptops and some clothes, shoes, work boots, pillows & snacks.  John fixed a safe haven for the horses away from the trees in the middle of our pasture over the irrigation ditch for water and gave them hay.  He carried panels to keep them contained (like a big round pen, yet it’s multi-angled to keep it standing).  They were comfortable there and we didn’t have to cart them away.  Thanks to all our friends offering trailer assistance and pasture (many of our friends did, and that was a wonderful offer).  Thanks also for offers of packing, transporting, spending the night at friends, and encouragement to keep a positive attitude and not to stress out.

We took Rascal out in a crate with hard and soft food, and left him a couple hours in the travel trailer.  The reason we did, is that he is an inside/ outside cat and if we fed him, he might have left and not come back till after we left, had we determined we needed to.  Once I was home from the recent surveillance trip, however, I decided to let him out again.  He came back in the house with us now, after stepping out of the trailer.  I’m sure he had no clue what happened, but the fact it had a happy ending was positive.  He had two plates (canned food & dry).  He ate all of the canned and somehow transferred a full covering of the saucer with hard food from the other bowl.  We figure he was making a statement, but it would have been interesting to see how he managed it, and to understand the reason for his actions!

Wednesday, Aug 15  We awoke at 4:45 and John took off to run the run I had previously been doing to check for fire progress in our direction.  His was a round trip of over 10 miles, but it gave us confidence this morning when John could see no smoke or fire, and the winds were calm.  The temperatures went to the 50s and the wind direction changed from WNW to S and E (winds take their names from the direction from which they come).

Facebook, which I almost never do was active this morning, when someone sent me a message through there and I was notified by email.  I figured I could notify a lot of people if I could figure out how to post to my Facebook Wall.  Here’s something similar to what I wrote:

Hoping this makes it to my wall and to all of you.  I wrote this to a friend in Bend, OR, after she contacted me on FB, sending it to my wall.  I’ll add to it, but wanted to let you know we are fine.  Thanks for everyone’s offer of help.  We were right in the line of fire (pun intended), and served notice to evacuate late yesterday afternoon.  We packed our travel trailer with crates for dogs and cat, and waited to leave till the last minute.  Right before midnite I drove to where I could see and didn’t see any flames or even a glow.
We stayed knowing we would hear from a friend 1.5 miles closer to the fire when they decided to leave.  At 5:00 this morning, after a little sleep, John took the trip I had been taking (plus farther and more) and saw no signs of fire or smoke.  The winds are calm.  Thanks for your prayers. We all in the neighborhood were spared.  LUV, Nancy

It worked and almost 60 folks replied.  It has been hectic, stressing, and all adjectives you can think of.  We were right in the path and it got to within 5.16 miles of us (measured on Google Earth, by my friend, Miriam in Indiana who got access to the fire data of the hot spots.  I will eventually  put it on line with a link for you to see it.  Her map has our house on it; talk about personalized.  Very neat and nice of her to do.  We were in the advisory zone for evacuation, so we fixed up our horses (John did) in the middle of the field behind the pole building (now completed), and put panels up to contain them away from the trees and in a wet area actually over the irrigation ditch so they had access to water and gave them hay.  We kept a watch on the fire from a hill about 6 miles down the road.  Every 5-6 hours or so.
Previously, John moved our travel trailer up closer to the house, put crates in for the dogs and one cat (ferals were going to have to fed for themselves), and hooked to the truck, heading out the driveway.  While John was building the place for the horses, i packed and loaded things into the travel trailer, but mostly into the car.  I got really tired carting all that stuff outside and packing.  Then at several hour intervals I drove to see if the flames were any closer.  That day the winds were blowing severely from the west, bringing the fire right toward us.
We did not evacuate and the fire was stopped with fire retardant from airplanes.  The winds changed and we were spared.  The fire continues on the west side of Hwy 97, and north into the timber.  It has flared up tonight on the north side of Hwy 970, the road that goes through the Swauk Prairie and near the Teanaway, where we have a friend living.

Links worth watching regarding the wildfire has some striking photos.

http://www.dailyrecordnews.com/free/top_story/taylor-bridge-fire-percent-contained/article_6845d20e-e6fc-11e1-921d-001a4bcf887a.html

One of the better reporting places is King5 news (Seattle); this is an earlier one:

http://www.king5.com/news/Woman-didnt-lose-all-her-animals-in-wildfire-after-all-166350016.html?fb_action_ids=10100481078846203&fb_action_types=og.recommends&fb_source=other_multiline&action_object_map=%7B%2210100481078846203%22%3A10150981724871193%7D&action_type_map=%7B%2210100481078846203%22%3A%22og.recommends%22%7D&action_ref_map=%5B%5D

Thursday, Aug 16   Report on Aug 16: http://www.king5.com/news/local/Kittitas-Cle-Elum-Taylor-Bridge-Wildfire-Wednesday–166245586.html   I have never completed writing up my story on the fire, and needed to finish sooner to get it off to people who are asking.  Where does the time go?  I never made the report to send out on email, and decided to try to keep this blog entry up-to-date, so I could just use it for both needs.

Here is another link that shows a lot of pictures on the situation:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wastatednr/7789659164/in/set-72157631083674982

Our morning was filled with chores, meeting with the county agent who came to review/inspect the new pole building’s completed state, and pass on it.  That went well.  Two visits, at the start to look at the holes for the poles; then at the end to be sure the bolts were properly in the trusses and the purloins were done properly, and maybe something else inside.  There was no viewing of anything on the outside, not even the poles.  That required building permit is going to cost us $750.  Yesterday, I called about putting it on our insurance as an outbuilding.  We cannot because of the wildfires, a moratorium on any new additions to insurance was imposed.  John went with me to play music today, and we went ahead and ate at Burger King.  Last time there (several weeks ago), we got the food to go, and didn’t realize till we got home that it wasn’t the complete order we had paid for.  I called and talked to the then manager, Alex, and he said he would give my information to his supervisor and it would be sent to Yakima and I would receive a free coupon.  I never received anything.  That story has a happy ending.  We got our lunch and part of dinner free today.  I asked my favorite checker and she called the manager (now Rhonda).  She was extremely nice, and told me they would replace my missing chicken sandwich with two, along with small fries and drink, and I had already gotten a cheeseburger for John to eat with the one chicken sandwich I expected to get, originally.  Ended up when she tried to write that separately, it took it and put it on her card, and they paid for our whole meal (and we had leftover a full original chicken sandwich we brought home in our cooler).  We had taken the cooler full of squash to share with the people in our music group.  The Geography secretary for 27 years (Lois) is now living at this assisted living retirement center.  She is in good shape and loves to dance still, so as we played waltzes, she came to the front and danced.

Friday, Aug 17  Today was a wonderful lunch at the Adult Activity Center.  It cost $3.00, but wow–what a meal.  I wish I had known there would be leftovers because I could have brought a cooler for taking home a bought plate for John, but the meal started at 11:30 and I didn’t leave town in 100-degree temps without a cooler until almost 3:00.  Here is the menu:  BBQ (large beef ribs, baked beans, cornbread, and strawberry shortcake), with coffee & lemonade.  Then I left to go to two close-by garage sales, and got some neat stuff for 25¢ (small mirror on a fold over stand), 50¢ for a pair of down boots with leather bottoms; and a bunch of free stuff (pillows, tongs, plastic CD holders, and a nice heavy plastic carrier for a Skil Saw).  The neatest part of that sale was two Melodicas for sale.  One had twice as many keys as the one John’s sister Peggy sent me, and the other was smaller.  They had no clue what they were, so I explained.  They’d looked the one up on Ebay and found their asking price of $70.  I would not have bought it at that price at a yard sale, even if I didn’t have one.  I returned to the center to lead my SAIL exercise class.  Another group member led Wednesday when I was still getting through the excitement of the fire.  I cancelled all activities in town that day to recuperate.  Next week I will lead the group again on Wed. and possibly Friday.  Another person in the class is sharing leading when our “leader” is feeling bad, gone for some reason, or out of town, as all next week.  It’s nice we can keep it going.  There are several people who are over 86, one man who’s 89, and a neat lady who’s probably in better shape than all of us, who is 92.

Friday night newspaper reported on a house that escaped the fire in the Bettas Valley.  This is an interesting story:

http://www.dailyrecordnews.com/free/news/family-s-bettas-road-house-survives/article_a60192dc-e895-11e1-9f0a-001a4bcf887a.html

Tonight I waited for a 6:00 p.m. phone call from someone needing music at a place west of Cle Elum, the Ensign Ranch.  It never came.  I guess I’ll wait longer.  (still not here by 7:00 p.m. Saturday).  Hmmmm.  It came finally a few minutes after I sent this to John to review and post, and we will not be able to do the “gig.”  The plans were for a singles group from NW Washington, Mt. Vernon, Bellingham area, Everett, and they wanted “music in the woods.”  With the age and conditions of our group and the location, I declined.  Several of us have been there before, and it is not a pleasant experience.  One time we had to ride on a raft across the river and carry in speakers.

Saturday, Aug 18  Started at 8:00 a.m. at a yard sale down the road and over from our house, at friends of friends of ours.  It was on a dead end road (narrow) and we didn’t know there was parking at the house.  So we started walking and then the owner met us on the road to tell us.  John went back for the car, but I continued walking to the house.  Guess I got my exercise for the day.  There John found a book on Seattle that has “then and now” pictures of the Smith Tower my grandfather worked on at the start of the last century.  And, he found a 2 gallon gas can like this but older:

http://openairenergy.com/images/418ji3maaql.jpg

The company has been sued repeatedly – They say people used the cans to pour gas directly on a fire; lawyers say the things were poorly designed and dangerous.  John says: I have no idea, but an article is here:

http://www.miamiok.com/news/article_3841b81a-0bf7-11e1-b0d0-001cc4c002e0.html

John says if anyone is close enough to a fire to pour gas on it from any type of container – he or she should get a Darwin Award, not a financial reward.  A better plan is to partly fill a small can (tomato, peaches) and throw that from a distance – once launched, run like hell, but watch over your shoulder as the fire returns along the vapor trail.  Entertainment before the digital age!

Then we decided to go back to another couple of sales in EBRG, and found some neat stuff.  Our first stop was where I bought a few things yesterday and saw some containers in which I can pack sweaters.  They were still there, so I grabbed them.  The nicest find was at a different sale, a pair of new (worn once, maybe?) boots for $3.00 that fit John!  They’re leather on top and rubber on the lower part, something like this (by Northside Boots)

http://astore.amazon.com/nortcom-20/images/B002HWS5K6

We couldn’t find two more streets that have been extended away from the city and are unattached.  Came home and found them on Google.  (I hit them later in the afternoon, when I went back to Briarwood to play music.  The last place we stopped was a great find for me.  There was a very nice cowboy hat (I participate in several musical events where the theme is western), and while talking the lady down on the price of the hat, I saw 3 music stands in excellent condition with “make offer” on them.  While I was debating, she took my picture with the hat because I said, I need a mirror to see what it looks like.  She showed me on her phone and I said, well, I will pay half your original price, I guess.  She said, how about you give me $10 for the hat and the 3 music stands.  Wow!  If I had made the offer it would have likely been for a little more for the stands, so I got a fabulous deal.  She even took my email and shipped me the picture she took.

We managed to unload most of the stuff in the trailer and the Subaru when we got home.  Now we are grabbing a fast bite to eat and I’m returning to town to play music at Briarwood, and deliver some squash and yellow beans.  If I have time, I may stop at one of the two sales we missed earlier.  ( I did).  Bought too more packing crates for half price, at the sale where we were this morning, and they had reduced all the quarter items to free.  I grabbed more things and carried them away in one of my tote boxes.  Stopped by another sale we had missed earlier, but got nothing.  Also found another we had missed, and bought for 50¢ a pair of insulated flannel bedroom shoes with leather bottoms.  The others I got this morning are a little large, but might be all right with heavy socks in the winter.  On to the place where we were playing music.  Only 6 of us showed up today, but we had an involved and interested group, plus they fed us amazingly again (as usual).  On the menu was:  Oriental chicken (cold salad with slaw), macaroni salad, hot bread and butter, grapes and cut cantaloupe, cheese & crackers, homemade zucchini/pineapple bread made from one of our zucchinis I took by to the cook, Bill.  The dessert table was full.  Two types of brownies, one with German Choc topping, and the other with choc.  Peanut butter homemade cookies, 3 other store bought cookies, and the best peach cobbler I think I have ever had:  made with maple syrup and pecan crumbles; covered with real whipped cream.  I do not need any dinner.  For drink, I had pink lemonade.  People who wanted coffee could have it.  Really cool, my former student, Glenn, has just moved into Briarwood Commons.  He has eye problems now as is being hearing impaired, but I wanted to introduce him to the people there, and have him join us for our music and for the food.  They welcomed him and were really happy I invited him.  I think he enjoyed himself and got full.

I’ll get this to John now for his additions and posting, and meanwhile I will try to start work on putting put some recent photos out on a web page to share.  I might not get it done until next week — or even later, but perhaps I can get a preview soon to catch you up on all our recent happenings.

Hope your week was a good one.

Nancy and John

Still on the Naneum Fan

Saturday, Aug 4.  Morning started with our builder coming for his backhoe for a short/small job southwest on Look Road – partly doing a friend a favor.  After he left and the gate to the road closed, John let the horses up into the driveway area with grass beneath the orchard trees.  The fellow planned to return at noon, but he got here 2 minutes before John got to the road to open the gate at 11:30.  John had moved the horses back to their pasture and opened the (second) gate to our work site.  I spent much of the day on the blog, paying bills, and cleaning, and we had leftovers for dinner.  Now we are waiting to have raspberries on ice cream and go to bed.  I hope that the house will cool down tonight because tomorrow will be a very warm day.

Sunday Aug 5  We planned the trip to Costco to get Acetaminophen and a few other necessities, and because at 100-degree temps it is too hot to do anything else outside, other than drive an a/c car to a store with a/c and return to our house with a/c.  We did, and spent 5 hours away.  For lunch, we had a piece of pizza (large combo) of which I had two little bites, and I had a polish sausage, giving John about a 4-inch piece of the “hotdog.”  We had a VERY BERRY Sundae (it’s a cup of soft serve frozen yogurt with LOTS of strawberries mixed in, and more dumped in on the side).  All that cost us total $5.14.  I guess that’s a decent price for a lunch for two with the dessert and refillable drink (Pepsi/diet pep mix).  We spent $267 dollars (over $7 was tax), but bought $26 worth of stuff for one neighbor and $10 for another.  We got red seedless grapes (from Richgrove, CA) and blueberries (from Oregon), and salmon (a bag of pieces that we have had before that is very good), some marinated boneless turkey breast that we’ll have tonight for dinner leaving leftovers for this week, and dog and cat food.  We also got 3 colors of bell pepper (red, yellow, orange), bread (Rosemary), and some Crystal Light (I still drink for my drink of choice, after giving up Pepsi, many per day); and toilet paper, which is cheaper than I ever remember.  We should have bought two packages!  Have any of you had those pretzels filled with peanut butter?  They’re HK Anderson originally made in PA and we got a huge canister of them under the Kirkland brand.  Also some mild German Sausage, frozen beef patties for when we want something quick without a lot of effort.  John even bought some large blueberry muffins so we’d have something different for breakfast.  Oh, yeah, and my two containers of Acetaminophen I went down there for, along with the gasoline for my car.  It was driving on vapors when we arrived, and I saved $3.14 on 14.25 gallons!  It cost us $14 to drive the 100 miles, however, (if I’m getting 25 mpg)–oh well.  Mostly we make such a stop on a multi-purpose (doctor or car care) trip.

Oh–I bought one of the $20 phone calling cards to share with John’s sister.  We still have $12 left on the one we have, but this one is cheaper and has more minutes than the one she is getting.  I called and gave her the numbers to use when hers runs out.  John watered the garden and (unrelated) has gone to lie down.  I think I will take a nap too.  It’s too hot to do anything else, but our a/c is keeping us cool.  John was down for 2 hours and I slept at least that much and maybe more.  Guess we really needed it.  Yum, turkey tenderloin with squash, onions, peppers for a late dinner and blueberries on ice cream for dessert.

Monday, Aug 6  John picked 5 pounds of lovely yellow (mostly) and green squash this morning, and 9 ounces of yellow beans.  We have had a few of them and they are wonderful.  Also ran out and took some pictures of the building floor, and they came today with a large dump truck full to put in the base of recycled concrete.  Two guys are working on screwing the little pieces of board onto the trusses that will be propped up on the poles and cross pieces.  John went back out with his camera to take more pictures of the last load of recycled (broken concrete pieces) that will be compacted into the flooring.  It is 1/2 as expensive as standard gravel.  Clouds moved on and temperatures are up again.  At noon, up to 91, and John just came back in, very hot and tired, and frustrated he’s lost his wire fence tool, maybe buried it in the stuff in the back of the pickup where he’s been throwing things.

http://www.etoolsetc.com/images/products/CHA-85.jpg

A little searching and John found the darned thing was in a bucket in the shed.

I’ve been transferring some You Tube videos up to the web so people can access them.  More building supplies and machinery delivered this afternoon.  John showed them where to put the boards needed and then showed a different guy, later in the afternoon where to leave a piece of machinery they will use to lift the trusses.  This is quite an operation.  Tomorrow or soon, they will come out with a load of gravel to smooth out the edges of the base of recycled cement pieces.  Good thing John was around to coordinate.  I also didn’t go to town this afternoon, so I could use my ears to hear the arrivals.  I heard the brakes squeal on the last delivery before the dogs saw the machinery coming down the drive.  John was outside when the boards arrived earlier.  Tonight, just before dinner, I looked out the window and up and saw the most beautiful Mammatus clouds. Not ours, but here’s one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mammatus-storm-clouds_San-Antonio.jpg

We both took our cameras out and starting shooting photographs.  We have more color (orangeish) in ours — awesome.  I will put the best out on the web one of these days and point you in their direction.

Tuesday, Aug 7  Today started very early as expected.  The building crew with an extra person arrived at 5:55 to put up the trusses.  John and I went out for 1/2 hour to photograph the work from 6:30.  I was very tired, and still am, because of not sleeping well last night.  Unusual for me.  It got to 59 last night but the house didn’t cool inside as much as desired.  Morning has broken and the temps are expected to reach 97 today.  Bummer.  At 8:15, it is up to 68.  Today I go to town to deliver some squash and get a massage for my aching shoulder muscles.  I did and went shopping for some CO₂-drinks for John.  While there I got half my meds order and a sirloin roast on sale (for the Crockpot), so that we don’t have to heat the house using the oven.  We are both tired, especially from no afternoon nap.  Dinner is late, but we’re eating and going to bed early.  John picked raspberries this morning and blueberries tonight and I just finished cleaning, sorting, and sugaring them.  Turned out not to go to bed early.

Wednesday, Aug 8  I slept in this morning, while John got up and opened the gates for the builders at 6:00 a.m.  They worked all morning and left at lunchtime.  The temps never got above 85 and the winds were above 33mph up to 38 from early morning.  I left for town for playing at the food bank and going to SAIL exercise.  They fed us a good lunch today (pasta w/cheese, tomatoes, mushrooms, sausage, chicken salad on large tomato slice with grapes and celery, green salad, garlic bread).  We played music and had a good time.  John stayed home and put the roast in the Crockpot about noon, added tomatoes, onions, carrots, and barley.  It was truly scrumptious and served with the red grapes.  We went out tonight after it cooled some to take pictures of the building progress, and John explained what they did today.  They finished all the top roofing supports and cross pieces having to do with the trusses.  Tomorrow the metal will arrive at the builder’s house, be put on his long trailer and he will bring it in the morning for attaching to the roof and sides of the building.  It’s beginning to take on a personality, and I like the shape it’s in.  Then we picked 9 lbs. of yellow and a few green squash and 10 ounces of yellow beans.  We had some of the yellow beans last night and they are very good.  The squash have a hard time sucking up enough water in the hot dry air.  John splashes their large leaves with water a couple times each day and they seem to applaude that relief:

http://tinyfarmblog.com/tag/summer-squash/

Scroll down to “Perfect (market garden) squash!” – this is what ours look like now.

Thursday, Aug 9  Only thing on tap in town is playing at the Rehab where I spent 7 weeks.  John is going with me because there is a Thursday 12 hr “produce sale” at Super One.  We took our 9 lbs. of squash in and shared with our music group.  Morning was filled with assembling music, taking pictures of the building, and cleaning the kitchen.  The building now has its metal roof and one complete side finished with metal.  It’s looking nice.  After we got home, I spent a lot of time helping students and friends with projects.  We got Bing cherries for our neighbor and for us, more red seedless grapes, which we will share with our friends from South Lake Tahoe who arrive tomorrow night.  In addition, nice ears of corn that we had one of tonight with beef Crockpot concoction from last night with fresh Bing cherries from Chelan.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UtoaUVKiNA

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelan_County,_Washington

[I think the first one has audio, but a power-outage maybe has knocked that function out here – something to fix.]

Friday, Aug 10  Most of last evening and this morning was helping proof and provide content suggestions to a gal from CWU who is applying for a job gotten from an announcement on “my” jobs list serve.  We were getting help from my geographer friend, Miriam, in Indiana on vacation.  John picked yellow beans this morning, and we are taking them by to friends with more squash.  We traded one person for some of her tomatoes.

It was a crazy day, and as we were fixing dinner, our power went off, and stayed off for 2 hr 22 min.  We were frying “babies” (yellow squash), and sausage to have with beef leftovers that had not yet been warmed.   I’ll let John tell that story of fried babies.  [In the early 1900s, my mother’s family lived on a farm with very little dollar income and a big distance to the nearest store.  The young girls used yellow squash as “baby dolls” to dress and play with.  My thought is that they used the ‘extra’ ones (perhaps larger and tougher).  The best for eating are tender and when scraped will ooze liquid that is slightly sticky (sugar?).  These squash, sliced to half-inch rounds and fried in butter, are a treat.  Thus, “fried babies.”]

We needed to go to town to meet our friends from Lake Tahoe.  We didn’t leave until almost 8:00 P.M. and then didn’t return ’til after 11:00.  It was scary to come into the house and smell hot iron skillets — we had left turned on and not thought to turn off when the electricity went off.  Luckily they were both heavy cast-iron!! And, nothing flammable was nearby.  See Point #2, here:

http://www.macheesmo.com/2010/07/ten-reasons-for-cast-iron/

The few pieces of squash we had not taken out were quite crisp.  So the stove and all the lights – including all those indicators on the stove back – went out when a tree fell from the wind.  About this — John’s going to make a suggestion to the power company for their monthly booklet.

Saturday, Aug 11  Morning started with waiting for a phone call from our friends – mother, daughter, and daughter’s friend (both recent H.S. grads) from South Lake Tahoe, CA.  We were going to meet them and take them to breakfast at the Wagon Wheel in Kittitas.  We got there about 9:50.  Had a nice breakfast and brought home a doggie bag with pancakes, sausage, English muffin, and sourdough toast.  Sent them off to have a tour of the Wildhorse Wind Farm a few miles east –

http://pse.com/inyourcommunity/kittitas/Pages/Wild-Horse.aspx

but haven’t heard if they stopped or what they thought.  They are headed for Rathdrum, ID, from where they will leave tomorrow for a raft trip on the West Fork of the Clark Fork River in Montana.  It was a nice visit.  It’s been about 7 years since they were here for a visit.

After we ate, we drove home by way of a yard sale with horse things just a mile north and west of us.  We purchased a large professionally constructed round pen (used very little), and with perfect bottoms on the panels to prevent horse injury.  Somewhat like this one:

http://www.hideawayfarm.co.uk/H-Images/images/Round_Pen.jpg

Search images for [ “round pen” +horse  ] and see the variety.

We have one we put together a bunch of years ago, but it is unsafe at any speed.  Like this:

http://www.wyattlivestock.com/horse-round-pen.jpg

If a horse caught a foot in the lower rail making up the “foot stand for the panels,” it could easily break a leg.

You can find videos on horse training using a round pen on the net.  Have at it – interesting stuff.  Example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhRq2AiegC8

John had already decided to move the panels in our current round pen to encircle the new pole building to protect it from the horses messing up the metal sides, or getting to the hay inside.  The lady’s son has a 20′ flatbed trailer and in the cool of the morning (Sunday) he and friends will  dismantle it and bring it to us.  He claimed he only needed some beer to convince his buddies to come along and help him and John with the move.  I know what you are thinking.  Did we win the lottery?  Nope, but we have a couple of bank CDs about due with a 4% rate about to roll over to an actual rate of just above zero and an effective rate below zero.  Also, we had a bit of individual stock in companies that were doing zilch, so we sold those too.  And our bank is so thrilled to loan us money they make it easy — we have a ‘protection equity’ (house; almost paid for) loan attached to our checking account that prevents our checks from bouncing and we get stuff and they get their money back in monthly installments and our interest – and that is still tax deductible.  Whew.  Govt., taxes, rules – the head spins.  Besides, our government spends money it doesn’t have, creates more, making ours less valuable and encouraging purchasing things now that will be worth more of the funny money they are creating.  Or, something like that!

Temperatures are high enough (max. of 98 at the airport) this afternoon to keep us in the house.

Hope your week was a good one.

 

Nancy and John

Still on the Naneum Fan

Saturday July 28 and Sunday July 29:  Everything is sort of running together this weekend.  We both slept in longer this weekend than all of the past week, and John picked strawberries and raspberries yesterday that we fixed and ate last night.  In addition, both days he mostly worked on removing fences and thinking about adding another to keep the horses away from the pole building rising in the pasture.  I tackled a few chores in the kitchen and den.  Mostly I worked on getting the pictures and videos off both cameras, arranging an email list for my 2012 WOFTA class members, and working with the stack of bills and other things needing attention.  I spent over an hour on the phone with John’s sister Peggy about using Google Earth, because John had added stuff to the blog that required navigating with their controls.  We had a good time and both learned a lot, but on her dime.  John napped through most of it, but got involved at the end.  Off he went to move some more gates and poles, and next door to set up a charger on our neighbor’s battery on her riding lawnmower.  After that, John took me out to show me all he had done and I took a few pictures, pet 3 of the horses, and came in the back yard by the outside cats.  John came back around later, and they were waiting for him in the loft of the haymow.  So funny, they are trained quite well for being wild cats.  Cashew is the friendliest.  I took a picture of him twice today.  Once on the top of a fence post and now watching the pasture from atop the hay.  I took a movie clip of him jumping from a 6′ fence post in the backyard.  On my way in, I got some pictures around the place.  John fixed a great dinner with our own yellow squash in it, penne noodles, tomatoes, chicken, zucchini, and cashews.  Except for the squash and cashews, it was from a bag we bought at Costco last time there.  Not bad.  However, we forgot his wonderful applesauce we’d thawed today.  Will just have to have it tomorrow!  Rascal came home, ate, and went to bed.  He was warm, so perhaps he had come from a visit to a neighbor or slept in the hot cathouse today.  He was out cattin’ in the middle of the night, and back this morning for food.  I wish he could talk and tell us about his day.  He doesn’t seem to pal around with the other 3 cats outside except in the evening at feeding time.

Monday, July 30  Time to pay more bills by phone and postal mail.  Never seems to end.  They piled up from being away last week, and many places are not open on the weekend to reach by phone.  Wind is blowing hard again but at least that saves John from spraying the horses’ faces :- ) to keep the flies off.  He’s run the dogs and now is out trying to figure where to put the new fence across the pasture, replacing the one he removed.  I doubt that I can talk John into going, but the two of us have to go to a 1.5 hr presentation in Yakima to qualify for a gift of a Norwegian or Carnival cruise for 8 days free with a ticket for two round trip tickets between two major airports.  I have till 8:00 tonight to accept.  Any two people can participate in the trips, but a “couple cohabitating” in the same house have to listen to the talk, and have to be approved by a list of questions; one of which was about being retired, annual family income, and speaking and understanding English.  I may be able to get him to go with me, but he is rather skeptical and doesn’t want to waste his time on such things.  I will see if I can check it out on the Internet.  I did, and found out that the Dream Vacation setup is a scam.  It is not surprising, actually, and I’m really not the cruise ship type anyway.  I would have taken a friend or relative along if it had happened.

I went to town for exercise and to return the violin I borrowed, pick up apricots from them and deliver raspberries and squash.  I took a free on-line class at 6:00 my time for an hour and a half (getting on at 5:50)  more about that later.

Tuesday, July 31  Today started before 8:00 a.m. with a call from our contractor who will be building our pole barn.  While John was out with them, I took care of several things, including a phone call to Ohio to speak with Christian (Chris) Howes, the violinist, whose class I took last night.  I wanted to take him up on his offer of a phone call because he cannot use his hands for long periods of time to type emails.  He has a class that meets in Ohio for a week and people from all the world come.  I was in south GA during the time, and I don’t know if I will ever participate, but meanwhile, he has on line classes called Creative Strings.  Right now he has a one month free subscription which I want to start the end of August, so I called after I had written a question in an email and he sent me his phone number and requested we talk in person. Check this link

http://creativestrings.christianhowes.com/

and watch the two videos.  I saw him give a free concert in Ellensburg at the University and bought two of his CDs afterwards for only $10 each.  He plays a conventional violin, but also an electric one that he records back ups he then plays with.  It is totally fascinating.  He really promotes improvisation; well, if you look at the videos you will get a preview.  I should have given you a video to his mixing.  This is the closest I can find, and I know I had access to one earlier, but if you listen to this, you’ll get the idea how he blends with himself, using improvision, harmonies, and chord chopping.  That’s Chris on the right of your screen.

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

Had a tough acupuncture/massage followed by meeting about music with our banjo player at her office in EBRG.  Came home to very sad news from a friend in Montana that her 41 year old son had died.  She was very supportive to John while I was in ICU because she has been an ICU nurse herself.  This death was sudden but maybe we can offer some support from a distance.

Wednesday, Aug 1  This morning started very early with an accidental phone call from a friend who dialed wrong at 5:27 a.m., but it was good to awake because the contractor was to come close to 6:00 a.m. to work on digging the holes for the poles and putting in concrete footers.  I had not slept well last night, so I went back to bed and slept in late.  John stayed out working with them – and says:  Local building codes apply.  Years ago pole barns involved digging holes, putting in posts of the desired height, packing rocks and dirt from the digging back where such came from.  Not now.  Much of our area has compacted river cobbles as a soil and digging a 40 inch deep hole requires an excavator:

http://www.publiquip.com/photo/-944441708.jpg

Sometimes the sides of the hole collapse and the hole grows outward.  Each pole has to be on a concrete footer that is 3 feet below the original ground surface.  Then the entire hole has to be filled with concrete.  The footer keeps the pole from sinking and the “mass” of concrete keeps the building from being blown into Grant County (east, across the Columbia River).  Our little barn will have open ends and will face so the prevailing NW wind can go in one end and out the other. This diagram is called a “wind rose” and shows the direction and speed of wind for our area.

http://www.efsec.wa.gov/kittitaswind/addinfo/A14_Wind%20Rose.pdf

Several barns in the valley were built with closed backs and the wind has torn the tops and/or sides off.  We had to locate the new structure according to the County’s “Flood Zone” map, so it is not exactly where we wanted it.  Our preferred location would have had it on ground a foot or so higher but “the map” claims that is in the flood zone – as is our entire house!  Except the map is crap!  Done before all the tools of GIS (Nancy’s specialty), so they just drew a line from the center of the creek.  In our case, we are on higher ground to the east and on the other side the land and the creek are at nearly the same height and there is no high ground beyond.

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/such-is-life.html

Nancy’s back:  Later I went out and took some pictures of the progress.  Then I had to drive to town to play music at the Food Bank Soup Kitchen, go to SAIL exercise, and pick up meds I was out of.  Came on home and the inspector had come and left, and while they waited for the inspection, the contractor cleaned out our center ditch while his son mixed and poured the concrete footings.  The irrigation ditch clean-out is a major project that would have taken John forever by hand and pulling out trees on the sides with his truck and chain (that he has worked on some every year).

I got home and then a delivery truck dropped off the big treated poles and lumber.  The lumber will become the “girts” as shown in this drawing in blue –

http://www.builderbill-diy-help.com/image-files/purlins-girts.gif

to which the metal sides will be attached.  See last part (Walls):

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

Before that, some will be used to hold the poles vertical while the concrete sets.  I hope the wind goes down some when they are trying to set the poles.  It was 39 mph today.

Thursday, Aug 2  Builders were here (3 of them) at 7:00 a.m. and have put in 7 poles.  John took pix of the process and I went out to see the 7th one being seated, and took a couple more pix.  Now I’m back in to run off some music (Kaiser’s Waltz) that my friend in Winlock scanned and sent over to complete our playlist for this August.  Forgot to say our “pay” yesterday was in day old bread that really wasn’t “expiring” until Aug 7.  I got a pkg of Whole Wheat & Sour Dough English muffins and a package of nice sandwich rolls called Crustina.  We halved and toasted one last night to go with dinner.  At 2:00 today will be our normal music in nursing home gig, and we will be at Royal Vista, the closest to my house (21 miles r.t.).  Nothing else much on the docket, except trying to organize and toss.  Whoopie — I got a load of dishes washed before leaving.  I ended up taking more time getting home than I wished.  I’m sore and probably ought to take some Acetaminophen.  While scanning my machine for viruses and malware, I read the WA Old Time Fiddlers’ newsletter that came in today’s mail; it had a nice report on a lady fiddler who died and for whom there was a celebration of life with fiddle players from her WA district and around the state.  The person who wrote it up, ended with this sentence, which is beautifully said, and I will pass it along to the family of my friends.  Here is the quote that was not identified as to who said it:  “Death leaves a heartache no one can heal; love leaves a memory no one can steal.”  I looked it up on the web and found that it is from a headstone in a cemetery in Ireland.

The poles all got set today and ECP – ‘the only game in town’ —

http://ellensburgcement.com/about_us.htm

sent enough concrete to nearly fill each hole around each post.  John took pictures this morning and I followed getting some of the pouring.  Good thing they are well anchored as the winds have been blowing all day and are up to 39 mph.  Also, the builder’s wife brought their grandson, who collected a frog and water skipper.  He will bring it back soon and put it back in our ditch.  Cute kid, 7 years old, named Andy.  Tomorrow the builders come back to put up the horizontal crosspieces (girts) on which to connect the metal siding.  The trusses were supposed to arrive next Tuesday, but they arrived early.  Must be the metal siding and roof that will arrive next week.  Everything is going faster than planned.  We are very happy that nothing is called for this Sunday outside.  It will be hot again… 95, then a little less on Monday.  John came in tonight to tell me to look through a south-facing window into our small round pen.  Two little fawns were there (eating tops of weeds?) and their mom was keeping an eye on them.  Dan (male Brittany) followed into the room and went out the doggie-window and mama took the two little ones off into the creek-side brush.  I updated my volunteer hours for July today:  24.5.  June had been 25 hours; both months I missed a whole week, first in GA and then in Kittitas, WA, so that August should be higher.

Friday, Aug 3  I was gone from 11:30 till 3:45, to a luncheon (bring your own) of the ladies’ auxiliary of the Swauk-Teanaway Grange of which I’m a member.  They meet for lunch every first Friday of the month.  Normally I cannot go, because there is an Adult Activity Center (AAC) free potluck and afterwards I usually play fiddle with an accordion player and we both sing, giving the audience large print lyrics so they can sing along.  It’s a different set of songs each month, in conjunction with the season.  I cancelled on the AAC lunch in favor of the Grange thing — it was at the house of a lady I have known for a long time.  It’s a huge log home built by her and her husband (who died of cancer).  She has a lovely garden (flowers, bushes and trees) all around her house and a pond in the back yard.  Instead of her fixing dessert as planned, her son went to town and bought dark chocolate and lemon bars.  I had a half of the lemon, one of my very favorites.  It’s from Vinman’s Bakery a very good but quite expensive “in place” in EBRG.  It’s in the high 80s today.  I started in the shade but the sun moved and my car was over 90 when I left the party.  It was a work meeting to assign people to do cleaning chores at the Grange.  I was let off the hook till I am better able.  (I didn’t ask, but the President offered that I not be).  She saw me when I was much worse from my open heart surgeries.  She plays the Mandolin and is whom I got mine from.  The Grange is a very nice new building, replacing the old one after a fire burned it down.  I have played music there for several occasions (the grand opening and the annual Hunter’s Breakfast on the first day of hunting season in October each year.  They rent it out ($500 for 3 days) for community affairs such as weddings or parties.   It is a real deal, but cleanup has to be done prior, and while the renters are expected to clean up after themselves, sometimes they don’t and the ladies of the Grange have to get it done.  Occasionally the husbands will help out.

Last night John took me out after it started cooling down to see the progress on the pole building and all the rocks that were moved to the holes onto the base of footers.  Piles of rocks near the ditches have probably been accumulating since the 1880s when the first modern settlement happened.  Near one pile there were remains of a stone boat:

http://www.inquiry.net/images/stone_boat.gif

The following link has discussion and a photo (scroll down) of an old one:

http://www.mytractorforum.com/showthread.php?t=98481

Our contractor scooped these stones up and used them as part of the “fill” to make the inside of the barn have a level floor.  Some are soccer-ball size.  With other “dirt” collected on-site we are now ready for a cover of crushed recycled concrete:

http://www.hedbergaggregates.com/graphics/products/mediumsize/recycled-concrete2.jpg

This will make a nice floor inside the barn.

Also, yesterday the trusses (24 feet span) were delivered (ten of them), but without the overhang and butt cut:

http://www.hitec.ca/images/basicTruss.gif

and next week the metal siding, roof, and trim will arrive.  We used an on-line color-visualizer to select the colors.

http://www.fabral.com/colorvisualizer/

On this site, choose (on the left) “Post Frame” and click on the middle photo of a red barn.  A random selection of colors comes up.  Whatever appears, you can change it.  Below the photo are 3 horizontal strips of colors in small squares.  Top row is for the roof.  Click on one of the blocks and the roof will become that color.  We picked Caribbean Blue, the 9^th from the left.  For the side we picked Ivory, 3^rd from left, and then Tan trim from the bottom row.  Our building is even simpler than the one used but if you want to play with this idea, choose “Residential” from the very bottom of the page.  Pick one of the photos or try them all.  Some colors work well together, some not so much.

John takes time to keep the garden growing with watering and pulling weeds.  Thus, we were able to pick 7 pounds of yellow squash and a small number of blueberries off one of the new plants.  I talked earlier about the “trained” wild cats, but tonight was a funny story.  John was out working on a fence around the pasture not too far from the cat’s haymow loft, in which they are fed and watered every night.  Cashew (Johnny Cash) and Sue (his mom) came over talking to him; he figures telling him they were ready to be fed.  They went under a nearby horse trailer still meowing.  He finally finished and told them to go back — that he was coming to feed them. They were in their feeding places by the time he got there with the food.  Woody, the darker colored long haired female was there also, but from where she came, we did not see.

Saturday, Aug 4.  Morning started with our builder coming for his backhoe for a day job over past us a couple of miles.  Then John moved the horses out of their pasture into the orchard area to “mow” the grass.  I will finish this blog for him to embellish and post, and return to room cleanup, sorting, recycling, and tossing.  This is a horrible project, but okay for days like today when there are no other events and it is in the 90s outside.  I’m almost out of Acetaminophen, so tomorrow when it will be 100 degrees, we will drive to Yakima to go to Costco (10 AM opening).  Again, it will not be conducive for outside work.  While there we can also fill up with gas at a much better price than in EBRG.  Today the regular is .18/gal cheaper and the premium is .22/gal cheaper.  I don’t know which Subaru we will take.  My 2004 is supposed to use 92-octane (premium), and John’s 2009 takes regular and I think gets better gas mileage than mine.  Still I really like to drive my car better than his.  It is much more comfortable for me.  I don’t know why that is, and his is much more comfortable for him (more head room) than mine.  Go figure.  The more headroom thing is because mine has a sun and moon roof and the 2009 doesn’t.  I’d best stop and get this on its way to you, via John.  He always proofs my writing, adds something and web links to what I start with, and then I have to proof his again.  I need to make a web page of some of the recent pictures, but that will have to wait.  I till haven’t organized the ones from the GA family reunion, nor from the week at music camp in Kittitas, nor the recent pole building documentation.

Hope your week was a good one.

Nancy and John

Still on the Naneum Fan

Friday, July 20  Sent out the blog early, but things still happened after it was published.  John went back outside working on removal of the cross pasture fence.  My accomplishment for the day was sorting, cleaning, and tossing 10 boxes of paper to be recycled, plus a box of used batteries (such as AA).  It was mostly piled on the floor in front of the curved glass china cabinet in the den, in boxes with open tops.  I had to clean out the dust, and dog hair using the vacuum, then pack the boxes full, taping them, and writing on the outside with indelible ink:  Recycle Paper (or Magazines).  The last box I opened had materials from my Urban Geography class.  I sorted through pullng out books and materials to give to geography colleagues still teaching at CWU.  I have already shared all my PowerPoints & notes & books with several for all of my classes, not just Urban.  Tons more stuff is still packed.  We didn’t get around to eating dinner till right before 9:00 p.m.  It was a good stir-fry with pork, cashews, red peppers, onions, all cut up and fried, with cut-up toasted bread the size of croutons on top.

I took a break while John was in the back of the house either working on the computer or contorting his fingers into guitar chord positions.  I spent time washing and picking through drained raspberries and giving them a sprinkling  of sugar.  We had a generous serving over ice cream and hit the hay.  We have a resident doe with twin fawns – still with white spots.  They just went by along the back fence about 30 feet away.

Saturday, July 21  John started the morning by picking more raspberries that I need to clean up and “fix.”  Meanwhile, we had lunch and I have been cleaning out more boxes.  I found a framed certificate of my standing record bowling at Bowlerama in Moscow, ID (when they closed).  My friend Suzanne got it for me and gave it to me after I was in WA.  It’s a nice memory.  The framed certificate reads:

Award of Merit

Nancy Hultquist

bowled a series of 679 in sanctioned competition

at Bowlerama during the 1979-80 season.

This series stands at the highest ever bowled

at Bowlerama from 1958 through the 1996 season.

                                         May 15, 1996

Once I got to WA in 1988, I quit bowling after many years.  I had started in 1957 before I had a social security card and thus could not work for pay, except by bowling and for trade for merchandise or services (free bowling, bowling balls, shirts, and related goods carried there).  It was across the street from my house in Atlanta, GA, in the Broadview Plaza Shopping Center.  There were 32 lanes.

Today our day was full.  We got home late (after 7:00 pm.) from the fun filled party across the valley.  We played a lot of music and had a great audience.  We had 5 very small children dancing and keeping time to the music and one little guy was completely entranced.  I had the microphone for leading the singing and we had 5 fiddlers, 2 mandolins, 2 guitars, and a bass fiddle.  They fed us and it was good.  BBQ chicken legs, the biggest I have seen.  Normally I’m not a leg fan.  Then, salads of all types.  Then a table full of desserts.  I had my share, for sure.  Then we played another hour and finished with a group National Anthem.  No music.  When we got to “the bombs bursting in air” there was a fly-over by seven Air Force B-2 Spirits (aka stealth bombers):

http://www.airforce-technology.com/projects/b2/

Okay, just kidding there, but it was a good picnic just the same!

John drove the truck and loaded in comfy plastic lawn chairs and my music stuff, plus a chair for me to play music in (my mom’s old kitchen chair with double fold-out steps).  Had a nice little stool, for putting our drinks on, and a cooler with my lemonade and his Pepsi mixed drink (with soda water).

Tomorrow is a lighter day.  I unloaded two more boxes of stuff today, but these required more thought and decision-making.  Have one for recycle, one for me to put elsewhere in a filing cabinet, and a box of books and materials to take to school for my friends.  It’s going slowly, but it will get done.  Tonight I fixed the raspberries John picked this morning.  During the day, a bunch more ripened.  After we eat these tonight, we will freeze the remainder because of another couple of pounds being picked tomorrow.

Sunday, July 22  Morning included picking another pound of raspberries we shared with friends.  We were away from home a lot today.  Had to run to town and to deliver the berries, and while there, hit 3 yard sales.  Nothing at the last two, and at the first, I bought several packages of some wooden sticks (all for 50 cents) that hopefully we can use as chopsticks on the Cajun fiddlesticks songs we will be learning with cross-tuned fiddles.  I think they were meant for skewers–wooden things to BBQ veggies & meat on.  Don’t know if they are big enough.  We’ll see.  (They turned out to be very usable, and I shared with everyone in the class who had not brought chopsticks.)  I will explain the cross-tuning below.  Also got some free things; one a large circular Christmas glass platter that will use for a potluck dish such as cookies or a pineapple upside down cake.  We went to the school in Kittitas where the music workshop will be to sign in and signed up for some mini-workshops, held after class, later in the day (4:00 to 5:00).  The other thing was to buy a tee shirt for me for the week, and we both picked up our name tags.

I’ve been off working on both violins, mandolin, and tuning John’s guitar.  I thought of taking a mandolin mini-workshop but decided my knowledge and chording ability was not sufficient to gain anything. There is an aging and arthritic fingers class (mini-workshop) John will be taking.  I ended up sitting in on that one too.

I’m taking two violins for the regular classes.

Heard tonight that a woman who plays guitar with our group had a large spruce tree fall on her house in today’s high winds.  It didn’t get above 52 mph at the airport, but the firemen told her there were several downed trees in EBRG and that the winds were 60 mph.  She’s okay but her house is damaged.

Monday, July 23  Today begins the WA Old Time Fiddlers Association summer workshop in Kittitas, WA about 11 miles from our house.  We are scheduled to be there for the organizational meeting, first thing in the morning at 9:00 a.m. in the Gym.  Things got so busy I have forgotten to make notes on this blog.  We both went to our respective classes, and John returned home after his was over at 11:30.  I stayed till the end of mine at 3:30, plus then I went to a mini workshop at 4:00 to 5:00.  John came back and picked me up.  Then that evening I drove back to Kittitas to play in the city’s Gazebo

[Google Earth at:  46.98506, -120.41839 ]

Before zooming in to see the Gazebo, note the red-roofed building in the upper part of the image.  This is the elementary school where the WOTFA meets.  After zooming in to see the Gazebo – zoom out to see the green irrigated Kittitas Valley and the surrounding hills.  Zoom out more and Mt. Rainier will show up to the west, 64 miles from Kittitas.

Anyway, back at the Gazebo, a dozen plus musicians from around the state play tunes for those community members (and ourselves) who showed up.

Tuesday, July 24  This morning started with getting ready to leave for the workshop.  I had to take two extra fiddles today for use in class (to tune differently to play Cajun and an Appalachian tune we are learning in class).  One was my old ¾ size fiddle I had from the 4^th grade.  The other was loaned to me from a friend in our music group who came out to play at our Gazebo performance.  A young girl in my class borrowed my fiddle for the week.  Took my own lunch and stayed till 3:30 when John came to retrieve me and take me to the hospital for a blood draw for my Thyroid test and my INR monthly test.  We came home and John fixed an early dinner, and I drove back out for the Gazebo performance again.  It was very special because a couple of friends from our trail riding club and a lovely lady and two of her family members came out to watch.  The sweet lady was my roommate in 2010 when I was in the rehabilitation center learning how to walk again.  She was such an inspiration to me.  I sang a song just for her and dedicated it to her (You Are My Sunshine), and she was mine.

Wednesday, July 25  Wow, today was another very full day.  We started by leaving home at 8:15 for Kittitas and the old time music workshop.  I had my class from 9:00 to 3:30 and John  took his from 9:00 to 11:30 and went home to take care of the animals.  In my class today, we learned about playing with “fiddlesticks” to add rhythm to Cajun and Appalachian songs:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=PY2Z3EQzwGE

The fiddler has to hold one position so the partner keeping time on the neck of the instrument doesn’t have to chase.  The tuning of the fiddle strings must be changed to something called cross-tuning.  Normally they are tuned from low to high, G D A E, but cross-tuning is G D G B.  The A string is tuned to a G an octave higher than the low G string, and the E is tuned down to a B.  WHY? asks John.  I will try to explain.  We used an Open G Tuning.  This allows a drone to happen on adjacent strings, and it is easier to play both strings at once.  Say your melody is on the A string (G in this case), then you can bow the open adjacent string, usually D, and it will fit fine.   If you want to learn about the term drone in music, look at Wikipedia, but shortly, here is an idea:  a drone is a monophone effect (an accompaniment) in which a note (in this case an open string) is continuously sounded along with the tune on an adjacent string).  That’s an explanation for a violin.  Drones on a bagpipe are the 3 higher pipes over the piper’s left shoulder.  On a five-string banjo the fifth string is a drone.

John returned at 3:30 and we both attended a great mini workshop on planning for shows in the community, and all the warnings about things to consider (is the instrument in tune?).  We left there for town to meet my teacher and her daughter for a Chinese dinner.  We had a great visit, and didn’t get home till almost 9:00 p.m.  It was just before dark, so John could still see to feed the outside animals.  I sat down for a 10 minute rest, but spent a lot of time instead on emails.  Now I have to get up and put up raspberries that John picked this morning.  Early morning picking is in the shade, it’s cool, and there are no bees or wasps.

Thursday, July 26  Supposed to be warm today (lower 90s) with no wind.  It’s another long day with a performance tonight in the Gazebo, all day classes, and the mini-workshop for “aging fingers, etc.” at 4:00 to 5:00.  John’s been trying hard and practicing each night but it is still a very hard “reach” for him to get his fingers on the chords.  He is using small-chords, such as fretting the first string (on the 3^rd fret) for the G note and then using just the 4 strings as D G B G  — not doing the low (5^th & 6^th) strings; those on the left in this diagram:

http://www.play-acoustic-guitar.com/images/GMaj-Free-Guitar-Chord-Chart.png

Well, the workshop on aging was nothing like we expected.  It was a little weird, actually.  Mostly people were sitting in a circle sharing stories about things wrong with the body that affect music playing.  John and I BOTH expected something entirely different–such as simpler ways to finger a chord if your hands were stiff and arthritic like (as the above explanation).  Nothing like that.  I don’t even think I will try to describe it entirely.  I guess a few people there enjoyed it and shared some similar dietary and pain control items, but many of them were into the need for no caffeine, no sugar (yet they all ate fruit in some form, so John and I both wonder how they rationalize the natural sugars there).  Also, we were advised to avoid red meat and even chicken, maybe allowed some fish.  Nothing from the “nightshade” family that includes potatoes and tomatoes.  Yikes!

http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=george&dbid=62

We weren’t convinced.  We got home about 5:30, did the usual chores, and fixed a late dinner of stir-fry “red” meat (beef), red peppers, sweet potatoes, and toast.  It was wonderful.  I went back in to the park Gazebo tonight and had a really nice time.  Several of our friends were there, and we got to visit a little before and a little after.  John stayed home to take care of the animals.  Tomorrow is our last day of the workshop.  We’ll have morning classes, and then the all week class recital will occur starting at 1:00 p.m.  Those are always fun.

Friday, July 27  Well we both made it through the week.  Hard to keep up with the 10-yr old hot shot in my class, but I made it and memorized our play tune medley for class.  It was very well done, but I failed to start the video on my camera.  I turned the camera on, but didn’t hit the button– duh.  So I did not get our performance on video.  Dang.  I had a great place set up on the table out front with the sound controls that would have captured the whole group.  I did get one in the classroom on our last practice session.  So all is not lost, but I failed to get the recital and Roberta Pearce and her daughter Katrina Nicolayeff played the Cajun cross-tuned fiddle piece together, Fiddlesticks, with Katrina hammering on the strings with the “fiddlesticks” (chopsticks).  I had hoped to put this out for folks to see, and because that is not possible, the one linked to above will have to do.  That will come later when I get some of them out on You Tube and fix up a web page linking to them.  All that takes time I do not have a lot of.  We didn’t get home till 3:30; gone since 8:10.  The dogs and Rascal (cat) got along fine without us.  All of them go in and out of the house through the “doggie door.”  That was good.  John took them for a run soon as we got back, and I went through the mail.  Our building permit (for a pole building) was delivered, but with restrictions (two) to the design criteria.  I would have never thought to call and be sure that a copy had gone to the contractor, but John said I should call the County and ask.  Sure enough.  Ours was sent and there was a copy in the file, but the contractor was not sent a copy.  Wouldn’t you think?  We certainly cannot revise and resubmit the specs about the height of the building (above 16′) or the Truss plan change.  Jeez.  I got on the phone to the County and reached the contractor on his cell before 5:00 p.m. so I could tell him about the required changes. The county had sent him a copy of the letter although they said they had not.  The reviewer apparently did not turn the pages over because what he wanted had been submitted (truss plans and specifications, properly stamped) – he just didn’t “see” them.  And we were wanting an 18 foot clearance but must have an architect review and stamp plans for heights over 16 feet.  That used to be 24 feet in the code.  Nothing much would be gained to have the extra 2 feet but it would cost a fee and delay of about 3 weeks.  No thanks.  [Unloading hay from a Harobed with 18 feet is easier, but can be done at 16.]

Then we turned around and went back out to the evening performance.  I had not signed up with anyone, because I didn’t expect I would have the energy to return, but right before 7:00, John asked if I felt as if I wanted to go.  I had invited some friends and I thought, well, why not.  We did, and it was interesting.  I carried my violin, and I could have joined a group at the end for the last two songs, I’ll Fly Away, and Red Wing, if I had had a clue they were going to do that.  By the time I realized it, they were well into the first song, which I thought was the last.  It wasn’t — so next year I will know to put together a small group of friends for our own performance, and then play at the end with others.  Live and learn.  We got home late but before dark so John could feed the horses and the cats, but we hadn’t eaten dinner.  He fixed a frozen pizza – after a week of running back and forth to places the fridge was depleted of fresh food.  Nothing special is happening with us for a few days, but we have plenty to do around the house, yard, and garden.

It is Jazz in the Valley weekend, but I am not interested.

http://www.jazzinthevalley.com/

Several years ago my friends and I would perform in the Kittitas County Historical Museum, but they have gone to more commercial groups being brought in.  It’s not our cup of tea, metaphorically.  Other drinks will be abundant in EBRG these 3 days – a good reason to stay out of town.  They are going to have nice weather – well, out-of-town visitors may sense some wind, but for EBRG folks, gusts under 30 mph go unnoticed.

Hope your week was a good one.

Nancy and John

Still on the Naneum Fan

Subtitle: Happy findings about Wilkins Family History in Seattle

Saturday, July 7.  Got the blog out at 4:00 p.m.  Phew.  Spent the day as much as possible in the house because of the high temperatures.  Supposedly, at the airport, 5 mi. south of us, it got to 100, but it never went above 93 on our front porch.

To compare locations, put the following coordinates [  47.033, -120.53  ] into Google Earth and then zoom in (and out).  The temperature sensor and other equipment is inside the circle (made of large concrete Jersey-barriers as seen on highways):

http://www.americanconcrete.com/commercial/barriers/Jersey-Barrier.jpg

http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/mtr/cpm/mmts.php

There are established standards about the location of these things but many are not properly sited.  See here for an example:

http://www.norcalblogs.com/watts/2007/06/how_not_to_measure_temperature_12.html

Our small thermometer closely resembles this one:

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00005NN9E.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

. . . with the unit on the right located under the overhang near the front door.  By late afternoon shade is all about but there is still lingering heat in the house and concrete from earlier in the day.  So, we measure temperature at the house and the airport measures temperature very close to the runways.  That makes sense to pilots.  If we had a unit that would send a signal about 200 feet we could have one out under the big trees down by the creek.  That would be interesting but we don’t live down there.  Well, no one lives in that little circle at the airport either, but that’s what the National Weather Service uses to report our Ellensburg temperature:

http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?CityName=Ellensburg&state=WA&site=PDT&textField1=46.9967&textField2=-120.547&e=0

So, back to our activities:  We finished putting up the strawberries and then had some for dessert on ice cream.  Tomorrow, it will be warm again.

Sunday, July 8  I expect John will be up early to get the chores done before it gets hot.  He was, but it got hot anyway.  The high for the day was 104 and lasted over 3 hours at the airport.  We never saw the temperatures as high on our front porch; only got to 96 or so.  It was a lot hotter in the direct sun.  John watered the thirsty raspberry bushes, and they were quite happy ~~ not ours, but soon:

http://www.raspberries.us/three-raspberries-636.jpg

We stayed inside during the heat of the day; doing all sorts of things.  I spent time writing music for our group.  Today I finished Hi Li-li, Hi Li-li Hi Lo as well as I Want a Girl (Just like the girl that married dear old Dad.)  Those scores were given to me by our banjo player Evelyn, who found them in a songbook she has.  Now I’m ready to start I’ll Fly Away.  I brought that sheet music back from GA.

Also today, John and I got on separate computers with Google Earth, and found the spot where my grandparents (from GA) raised 3 children while in Seattle, while my granddad worked on construction of the Smith Building (built from 1909 to 1914).  Today it’s called the Smith Tower, and once it was the tallest in town.  They built their house in southwest Seattle, south and up the hill from Fauntleroy Way (the end of the electric trolley line south from Seattle), on the NE corner of SW 44th Ave and SW 102nd St.  My cousin Susan and her husband John (yes there are many Johns in the family) plan to fly to Seattle July 18th and wanted to see the old house.  John and I had taken Granny there back when we were still living in Idaho.  She flew up, and we drove to Seattle, picked her up at the airport, spent the night in a motel, and then came back to Idaho after showing her around Seattle, and the finding old house.  I don’t remember the date, but someday we will turn up the old slides we took and they will have a date on them.

Still hot; but cooling off.  There are thunderstorms south of us.  The lights are occasionally blinking.  Apparently, there were some serious (lightning-ignited) house fires south of us in Yakima.  It was colorful and very windy and rainy here.  I heard from a former student in Moxee that lightning struck some houses.  Very sad.  We didn’t have any strikes or even noise here; just lots of flashing lights.  It beat the neighborhood fireworks on the 4th.

Monday, July 9  Wonderful progress on finding out about the house my grandfather built in Seattle.  I’ll outline what I found out.  Here’s the scoop– from what I wrote Susan and John who plan to visit the house next week.  I’m sure they were only planning to drive by, but they are thrilled they will get to go inside and see the work of our grandfather, long ago.  The house was built in 1913.

I found out the real address of the property is 10122 44TH AVE SW Seattle, WA 98146.  You can look that up on Google Maps or Google Earth, and drag the little orange man to get street views.  However, be careful, the photos are taken before the garage was built there in 2004 on the old foundation.  I got access to the King County Assessor’s records on line, and found  many details about the house as well as the owners.  My former student Nizar (now working in Renton, WA) sent me the link and then a worker from King County Assessor’s Office called me (in response to an email I sent them).  He didn’t know the address, which Nizar had found, so I gave him the information, and he walked me through the extra pictures in their database.  I had only found one photo, which was of the garage.  Then he gave me the name of the Archive where they put all information from before 1982.  I have yet to contact those folks in Bellevue, WA.  The Assessor’s office does not have that much room on line to store it.  I found the owners’ names in the database records for the parcel, and then I looked them up on switchboard.com finding out where they live and their phone number.  Their son is living in the house.  I talked to the lady for almost a half hour.  She was very happy and interested to hear about the history of the house.  Her name is Sue W., and her husband is Roy.  Their son is Matt.  She is willing to give my cousin Susan and her husband John a tour of the house next week.  Ironically, the son is a Carpentry Contractor.  My granddad was a carpenter working in construction projects.  I find that really ironic.  The son added a garage on the old footprint (which had rooms in the back probably used for a chicken house), and he kept the architectural design of the main house.  There have been some rooms added in place of the old sun porch out front, and the son uses that as his office space.  He also refinished the “fir” floors in the kitchen and has not destroyed the bin-type (tip out) cabinets for potatoes and such off the kitchen, that were built into the space by my granddad. This couple bought it in 1986, for $58,000.  [Likely within 2 years of our visit with Granny.]  It only has one bedroom, but now has an appraised value (for taxes) of $266,000.  I forgot to say that the stained glass windows are still in the front room of the house.  Susan and John are going to visit the owners next Thursday afternoon/evening and get an inside tour of the house.  How exciting!  We have appointments we cannot change, which keeps us from driving over to join them for a few hours and for the tour of the house.  Susan assured me she would take her camera and record the event.

Meanwhile, I also managed to call about my violin shoulder pad that didn’t fit my violin (too large), but it fits my viola.  I called to see if I could figure out what I should have ordered, and I asked if they sold medical tubing I could use to recover mine that has  deteriorated over the past 15 years.  The sales rep I spoke with said she had the same need awhile ago, and she went and bought two feet for 50 cents.  She is in Rhode Island.  She was willing to share some with me, and took my name and address to send it.  I hope that happens.  I am anxiously awaiting it.

I was able to send out 9 jobs today from the jobslist.  It now has 520 recipients.

John went outside for an hour with our farrier to put the wedges in shoes on Ebony’s front feet to relieve some of the stress on her bowed tendon.  John is still doctoring her twice a day.  I threw leftovers together for supper while John took care of the horses and cats.  It didn’t start cooling down till right before 9:00 p.m. when it finally reached 81, from a high of 105.  I haven’t looked to see what’s on tap for tomorrow.  I do have to go to town for an appointment at 5:30.  I had made it later in the day, to coordinate with music at 6:30 on Tuesday night, but that was cancelled for the month of July (and August).  John and I will soon be enjoying raspberries on ice cream (from last year).  He picked only five raspberries today, and within a day or so, he’ll be able to start adding to the freezer.  Tomorrow may produce some more strawberries for him to pick as well.  The strawberries really don’t do well in this much heat.

Tuesday, July 10  Nothing till 5:30, a shoulder/neck massage for Nancy.  It was a rather rough session, but I think it was successful.  My shoulders are quite affected by the tenseness of the tendons and muscles that control them and are near my neck.  I wish I knew the names of them and something about the condition.  It seems to be aggravated by my playing fiddle, which is unfortunate considering how much I enjoy doing that.

Wednesday, July 11  Noon playtime at the Soup Kitchen/Food Bank, followed by SAIL exercise.

It was awfully hot (no a/c) at the noon lunch & play/sing date, but the food was super–donated by Ellensburg Pasta Company, including spaghetti, tomato sauce w/ bratwurst pieces and all topped with cheese.  Quite yummy, and included sides of mixed green salad with tomatoes, watermelon, pears, and garlic bread.  Once home John and I had an afternoon snack — a piece of carrot cake covered with strawberries from yesterday evening’s work.  John went out this morning and picked about 5 more pounds and he fixed them while I was in town.  They haven’t been frozen yet, so we will have some for dinner, and then before bed, we put them in freezer Ziploc bags.

I took in the 3 new songs for Evelyn and me to try out, and we made some changes that I have to do.  I need to lower Hi-Li-li, Hi-lo to the key of C from G, so we can sing it.  I also have some note changes and one chord to change in I Want A Girl, and I made up and added a newly created verse, “I want a guy, just like the guy that married dear old Mom.  He was a jewel and the only one that Mamma ever had;  A neat old gentleman with heart so true, one who loved nobody else but her.  Oh, I want a guy, just like the man that married dear ol’ Mom.

I added two more verses to I’ll Fly Away; there was only one on the music I transcribed from.  Evelyn knew at least one more.  I found a nice rendition of a You Tube video by Randy Travis, where I got the rest of the lyrics.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLka8rRyIGg

However, there is a great story that goes with the original lyrics, written in 1932.  I have reproduced it on our new web site, at the link below:

http://www.ellensburg.com/nancyh/LyricsPlusStoryI’llFlyAway.html

I really don’t need any more work to do, but it is too hot to do anything anyway… even house cleaning.  God forbid I should want to do that!   I did load the dishwasher when I got home.

Thursday, July 12  Our 43rd anniversary.  We had a rather busy day.  John worked a lot outside on chores including with the horses.  I stayed inside most of the morning working on music corrections on the 3 songs we tested yesterday.  Today I carried copies for everyone, and we did amazingly well as a group, on the new ones, before we played our regular stuff.  Charlie brought their visitor from Belarus (Paulina, till Sept 9th), who is part of the Children of Chernobyl project here in the states.  Today’s meeting was 2:00 at the Rehab where I had physical therapy for 7 weeks after ICU in the beginning of 2010.  It was amazingly cool in there today.  Normally it is very warm.  We didn’t have much time after getting home, but we both rested.  Then we took off for a 7:00 meeting of our trail riding club.  A local veterinarian (Sam, for Samantha) spoke on the topic of laminitis in horses.  Sadly, we have experienced this twice.

Friday, July 13  Nothing much planned but I went to SAIL exercise and took my 86 yr old friend to do some shopping afterward.  She needs assistance with reading labels, because of her macular degeneration.  John did an amazing amount of yard and animal work yesterday, until late.  He was worn out and so I helped put together dinner.  That’s about the first time in 3 years for my creating a dinner from scratch.  He has been extremely supportive of me forever.

Saturday, July 14  This is our day to play music and be fed at Briarwood Commons retirement home (a series of individual apartments at a reduced rate).  I picked up my friend again on the way in and she enjoyed visiting with old friends and listening to us play music.  She was able to sing along on many songs (we gave them the lyrics to most things we played).  There were only THREE of us there today, two violins and a mandolin (occasionally he was on violin).  What a nice food spread today!  Three plates of little ¼ -sized sandwiches of tuna salad, chicken salad, and egg salad; a bowl of green salad; a bowl of cut fresh large strawberries; a bowl with cut up pineapple, cherries, and mandarins in a white sugar sauce.  Wait, there’s more! Another bowl of a different and very good homemade chicken spread with Triscuits.  Some Sun Chips and a whole table full of desserts including a birthday cake for one of the residents.  We sang Happy Birthday at the start and at the end to her.  Also on the dessert table were homemade chocolate chip cookies, frosted butter-sugar cookies, pound cake, and other goodies.  One of the residents who sat on the front row with my friend is 99 years old.  Afterwards, I took my friend to Fred Meyer to pick up her meds.  On the way home, it started looking like rain and a few drops fell on me on the way home and for my walk into the house.  I put on my large sombrero from the car, to act as an umbrella.  The clouds never produced much rain, but there was a storm with thunder north of us on the mountains.  Now it is cloudy and cooling down.  John rested and then went out to work in the yard again, leaving me to finish the blog for this week.  He is removing a fence between two parts of our pasture where our new pole building will soon be.  Film at 11 – just kidding.

Sunday the high is supposed to be just 78 – then slowly rising through the week with some thunderstorms in the area.

Hope your week was a good one.

Nancy and John

Still on the Naneum Fan

Saturday, June 30  Some of this you heard part of the story in last week’s blog, but the afternoon BBQ changed a little from the original plans.  We drove to Roslyn, the place where Northern Exposure was filmed between 1990 and 1995,

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

up through town on Pennsylvania Ave, to our friends’ house on the hill on the way up to the old cemetery.  Roslyn was historically a mining community and the cemetery is filled with numerous cultural artifacts from all the different nationalities and ethnicities, represented in the town over time.

This comment is from Wikipedia:

“Between 1886 and 1929, workers came from countries such as Italy, Poland, Germany, Lithuania, Slovenia, Serbia and Croatia as well as from England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales to work in the mines. These immigrants maintained the traditions of their homeland, as seen in the historic Roslyn Cemetery with its 26 individual ethnic and lodge cemeteries. Many Roslyn residents today are descendants of these immigrant miners.”

What’s neat to me is that my grandmother, Alouisa Petash Wilkins, was from present-day Slovenia.  Okay, back to the BBQ.  We were there early, but actually sat around and visited until the bratwurst, all beef hot dogs, veggie burgers, sirloin burgers, and corn were grilled.  People brought some neat salads and we had taken a large pan of our Cherry-Blueberry-Walnut Cobbler.  We didn’t get back to EBRG to pick up some music for tomorrow until quite late, and got home, even later.  John still had all the animal chores to do (exercising dogs, and feeding all the outside cats and the horses).

Sunday, July 1  Truly this is a day of rest (at least for me, as I slept in).  John started early on the computer and then out to move the rest of the hay into the barn.  He loaded all but 19 bales, because he had to stop to train (remind) Jazz that he is not supposed to walk away from him in the field when he walks toward and calls him.  John has been fitting in horse-training sessions with the younger horses for some time now.  It is sunny and no longer rainy, so that is nice.  He came in to cool down and for a mid-day nap, and we just finished the last of the Jewel strawberries fixed in the fridge.  He will go pick more this afternoon and give me another chore.  Today I must spend time on getting the music together that a few folks were missing for tomorrow’s EBRG – BBQ & musical performance.  It’s in fairly good shape so won’t take a lot of my time.  The major thing I must do today is give John a haircut.  I have needed to do it for several weeks.  I surely wish we had put in the price of a haircut over the years since I have been cutting it.  We would have a nice nest egg for retirement!  (Unfortunately, the haircut never got done in time for the events we attended this week).

Monday, July 2  Patriotic music in Ellensburg today (our group played for an early 4th of July Picnic inside the Hal Holmes community center next to the city library).  We began playing music at 11:45 and played for over an hour.  The first and last songs were the same, and everyone in the room stood and saluted the flag.  We sang the national anthem a cappella with the audience.  It was moving.  After we played and sang a number of songs, including patriotic ones and songs about the USA, we were treated to a free lunch, consisting of hamburgers, hot dogs, beans, potato salad, macaroni salad, large sliced tomatoes, lettuce, chips, watermelon, lemonade, and ice cream.  We also had a nice visit over lunch.  Shortly after I almost finished my lunch, my friend Karen, came in with her accordion and her packets of music lyrics for everyone in the audience to have access to the words for the sing-along.  I went on the stage with her and we lead the group, singing and playing our respective instruments, for another 45 minutes.  It’s no wonder my body ached from all the bowing activity.

Tuesday, July 3  Today marks the day 2 weeks ago that I received a box in the mail from John’s sister, Peggy, in Ohio, with a neat Hohner Melodica with a 27-key keyboard.  It is a German-made instrument her friend Kathy had for use in the classroom years ago (she recently died at 86).  It is an instrument one blows on and plays similar to an accordion, with a smaller keyboard–the only problem is you cannot play and sing at the same time! (Ha ha).  It was so nice that she shared it with me.  In addition, she included two music books, one of them songs of the sixties by Peter, Paul, and Mary.  I’m thrilled with that so I can put the music into my software to make for the groups with which I sing.  Folk songs are ALWAYS popular.  It is impossible to find music scores on line free anymore.  The other book is a beginning guitar book, which John can use to learn.

John picked over 5 lbs. strawberries this morning, and we fixed them and froze 4 packages before I went to the imaging session at the hospital for a mammogram follow-up to the one 6 months ago.  It was a tough session; being a complete regular mammogram, followed by four magnification X-rays.  Lifting my arms out of my range of motion, and leaning in and turning my head was painful, and trying to get around the ICD while being squeezed for the X-rays.  Filled the car’s gas tank on the way home and came back for lunch.  John is taking the truck and dropping me off for an acupuncture treatment at 2:00.  He’ll go do some shopping and then pick me up and we will go over to pick up the travel trailer.  It took us an hour and a half to deal with the trailer.  The head of the service department charged me for certain things, but also threw in other stuff free (e.g., fixed the screen door that was missing a push piece to close out bugs; steam cleaned the carpet; gave me the battery warranty free).  He installed a new 12-volt battery.  Filled our water tank, propane tanks free, and put gasoline in the new generator.  This afternoon we bought a water line replacement and the connections for the sewer hose.  He showed us how to start the propane fridge and water heater, plus the inside room heater.  Before that, he had shown us how to start the generator, turn on, and adjust the newly installed a/c.  They had fixed the wiring on the tail light that was screwed up, and replaced all running lights, tail light bulb, and many little things on the trailer for connections or door access that needed fixed.  They had to change the wiring connection to the electronic brakes and the power to the trailer.  So much for buying an old trailer “as is” at a good price.  We paid for the rest of the work and left for home.  I have been hydrating myself with lemonade ever since getting home because of all the stuff done to my body today.  I should have taken a nap, but now it is too late.

Wednesday, July 4  Happy Fourth of July!  Both John and I slept in, worn out from our activities of yesterday.  We drove an hour to George, WA for two free concerts and a free piece of a giant cherry pie (with a slab of ice cream for an additional 50 cents).  While there, we met and visited with our friends since 1988 at CWU, Jim Hinthorne (and his wife Jean), who was a geologist that I team-taught GIS with, once arriving.  There were 3 courses we teamed on, all with UNIX based G.R.A.S.S.  (Intro GIS, Advanced GIS, and Database Development).  He has since retired and they own a large motor home that is their home on wheels, pulling a car behind it.  They have come up to Crescent Bar on the Columbia River to stay for several weeks, and come to Ellensburg to visit their daughter’s family.  It was a nice reunion (only 20 miles up the hill from the Columbia River, to meet us in George).  The music groups playing were “Jangles” (Seattle’s Premier Western Swing Band) at noon, and at 1:30 a young group of boys, called “North Country,” played Bluegrass.  We met our friends about 1:00 p.m. and enjoyed a great visit under a huge Hackberry Elm tree, with a view of the stage and the two musical groups.  They brought their dogs, and many of the youngsters enjoyed petting them.  We stayed until 5:00!  I was so tired when we got home I laid down for at least an hour; never went to sleep but vegetated well.  Our neighbors started fireworks before dark, and finally have stopped, we hope.  Two of the dogs get anxious and the horses get excited but what they think is unknown.  Even though the Britts are “bird” dogs we haven’t done much with the current group.  The CWU era was not conducive to training and field trails. We transitioned to short horse rides early and that has waned with my health issues.  One dog settles for a crate and the youngest one goes between John and me, wanting attention and assurance.  I think she picks up on her mom’s anxiety.  Thankfully, the other two Brittanys were fine with the noise.  John also went out twice to give the horses some carrots to keep them calm.  Our neighbor – other side of a row of trees from our pasture – was setting off large firecrackers and a few aerial rockets.

Thursday, July 5  Nancy slept in and John started early with chores.  We will be playing music at Royal Vista nursing home and delivering packing boxes to a friend for moving across town.  That got done along with several other things.  Now it is after dinner, and it’s late, but we need to fix strawberries.  They are lovely looking.  John picked a big mess of them; all beautiful and large – variety = Jewels.  They would win a blue ribbon at the county fair, but it is not till Sept 1 weekend, and they will be done by then.  We just fixed them up and have 3.5 pounds of strawberries to freeze.  Now from last night we will have some on our ice cream before falling into bed.

Friday, July 6  Started with having an estimate for a pole building to house hay and our travel trailer.  John took Ebony to the vet for a bad front left leg – bowed tendon.

http://www.mdhorse.com/showarticle.asp?kk=50

$150 later, we have medicine for her pain and will need to get her front feet shod with lifts to relieve some pressure.   She’s getting rather old and we haven’t ridden her in the last 10 years or more – for the very reason that she has had this before, and as the linked article indicates, these injuries easily get worse and never really fully heal. Late in the afternoon, I drive to Silver Ridge Ranch to play music for a square dance for young people on the (Puget Sound area) Mormon trek re-enactment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormon_handcart_pioneers#Reenactments

[Start at the top of the link for a fuller story.]

We will be there from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m..  Here I am, reporting back after the last 4+ hours.  I am quite tired from my escapades.  I stopped off at the Cottage Cafe in Cle Elum and had a nice layered breakfast for dinner at 4:45 p.m., a Corned Beef Hash Skillet, with hash browns, choice of eggs (3 I think), corned beef hash and covered with cheddar cheese.  Last time I had my eggs over easy, but this time I had them scrambled.  I had salsa on it.  Also, it came with toast, so I had an English muffin with strawberry jam.  It was funny how I ordered it.  I asked to have 1/2 of it packaged to take with me, and I intended to eat a half there sitting at the counter on a barstool.  Well, not exactly.  I had one piece of the toast, and couldn’t eat all of the 1/2 served, so I added the remainder into the package to go.  I should have asked for only 1/3 to eat, as it is an extremely generous portion of food.  I put the carton inside my cooler for the trip to the square dance play date and then on home.  We will eat the remainder tomorrow.  I was frustrated to see the price of gas in Cle Elum at a cash-only place, was $ 2.43/gal., when I had paid $2.61 a few days before in EBRG. They will take credit cards but add 10¢ per gallon.  John had found this place last week when I was out of town, while traveling to the Buck Brannaman horse training clinic.

Where we played tonight was only 15 miles west on I-90 from supper and is called Silver Ridge Ranch.  The place is mainly an RV park but horses are encouraged, and John and I have ridden before on the roads and trails there.  I was vaguely familiar with the surroundings, so I managed to find the area where we played without too much effort.  The musicians had never played together before (not more than a pair).  Two Asian violinists are brother and sister.  Bob and I play together in two groups.  The other violinist has never played with any of us.  The keyboard player and bass had played together, the guitar player has played before with Bob, and once, I guess with me, long ago.  It was our first time to play together as a group, and we did amazingly well.  The violins and guitar had electric pickups on our instruments so we could be heard.

The kids were good sports, but they had not had any lessons in square dancing, and there was not a caller there.  We started them out with Oh, Johnny, Oh, which has square dance calls in the words of the song.  Therefore, we had to teach them dosado, allemande left, promenade, and a few other movements.

http://noriks.tripod.com/ENGLISH/514100e.html

The leader could not carry a tune, and kept getting out of synch with our musical accompaniment.  So, after several failures, I took the microphone from him and lead the group.  Considering I have never done that in my life, it was rather neat.  I think I last square dance I danced was in elementary school.  I only called the one song, multiple times.  After that we just taught them the moves, described it, or had someone from the audience demo (for example, a couple from the RV park joined in and taught them to waltz, later, after the Oh, Johnny, Oh stuff).  The kids eventually got very good at that.  We also taught them the Grand March, where they pair off finally up to 8 people across.  It was fun to watch, finally, when it all came together.  We played from 6:00 to 8:00, and for the 15 minutes previous, trying to get used to one another and get the volumes on the microphones correctly balanced.  The drive home was troublesome because of the setting sun that was blinding in the mirrors.  I had to keep changing them (side ones and the rear view one).  It took me just under an hour to return, however.  My body was also aching from all the action playing and climbing down and back into the bowl, carrying instruments, and other equipment.  I used my mom’s old kitchen chair (with steps), a nice old stool, that I can prop my feet on the stairs, and also put a pillow in it.

While I was gone, John picked a bunch of strawberries and fixed them.  We had a bunch on ice cream when I got home.  We are planning for Sat. — in the heat of the day — to freeze the rest and include some to be picked in the cool morning.  Also, while I was gone, my family physician reported in an email that my mammogram was fine and showed no more signs of calcification for which to be concerned.  That’s a big relief.

Saturday, July 7  I was very tired and slept in, putting a heated bag of flaxseed on my upper right arm and then on my neck.  John went outside to do many chores, especially watering things, as we are expecting full sun and 96 degrees today and 98 on Sunday.  I am extremely happy we have a/c in our house.  We opened up the windows last night and brought the inside temp to about 72.   Now we’ve closed the windows and won’t need the a/c until late afternoon.  Well, we both just went out in the hot sun nearly to the far end of the pasture, to doctor Ebony.  John hollowed out a carrot and inserted powdered phenobarbital and sugar.  Once she got a taste of it, she spit it out.  He held her mouth shut and tipped up and got most of it ingested.  He removed two bandages and put on a liquid spray called equine leg paint.  Good I was along to hold her lead and shoo away the other horses.  Maybe he will get this posted on the blog in a timely fashion now, and we will then do our work in the kitchen on the strawberries.  Thankfully, we do not have any scheduled events for Saturday or Sunday, and not even Monday, except for my SAIL exercise class, which I have missed all this week.

Hope your week was a good one.

Nancy and John

Still on the Naneum Fan