Memorial Weekend 2012

It's the first day of the Memorial Weekend and we start it off feeling a little small. Perhaps too many inebriates were consumed last evening. I don't like to judge.


While we have great plans of working on the house over this three day break, none of it was to happen today. We planned a canoe trip with friends. The weather wasn't completely cooperative but neither was it a rain out. It was actually quite comfortable except for the wind, and that wasn't a constant.


Here are a few pictures.

Fun was had by all during our three hour adventure, and that included stopping for a picnic lunch along the way.


Now we have a few hours to kick back before going to see a play at the Civic Theater. "Annie"! I'll tell you about it "Tomorrow, Tomorrow, I'll tell ya, tomorrow. It's only a day away."

Lawn Mower Man

Here's a quick run down of the week for anyone who may be interested. And if you are interested, you really need to assess your priorities in life because trust me, what you are about to read is not interesting.


I screwed up the lawn mower last weekend and had to take it in for repair. A brace in the front undercarriage got bent and hit the blade and then it really got bent and screwed up the whole lawn mowing system. 


So I hauled it over to my local Lawn Mower Repair Facility and for $70.00, he fixed the brace, tuned the engine and sharpened the blade.


I think the blade sharpening was a mistake because the mower works really quite well now. It's only been a week since I mowed and it seems like I was emptying the bag every three or four passes around the yard. The bag holds 2 bushels and I am sure I harvested about 30 bushels of lawn. That's a lot for a 60 gallon garbage can to contain. I hardly have any room for garbage.

I rode my bike to work three out of five days this past week. You can see from the picture I had great weather on my side. I like to keep track of the river flow as the year progresses. This is already down from just a couple of weeks ago. It was running as high as 35,000 c.f.s. This picture shows it at about 21,000 c.f.s.


I take back my earlier statement. That last paragraph was really interesting.


And now, here's something for the bird lovers in my readership

The baby robins at my Mom's seem to be doing well. The Mom Robin is no longer freaked out by us sitting on the patio and she flies right in to feed. The three chicks seem to be eating and getting larger but they are still quite helpless.

We went down to see the Lilac Parade last night. I am of the opinion that if you have seen one parade you have seen them all and too many at that. However, we do like the parade for the fact that it is the one night of the year that you can walk right in to the Olive Garden and get a table.


Pictured above are photographs of our dinners which brings me back to my original assertion. 


This is not interesting!

Mutha's Day

Another hurdle has been successfully conquered by us with the passing of Mother's Day. Susan prepared a fantastic meal that we carted over to Mom's this afternoon and enjoyed with a party of se7en. 


It turned out to be a beautiful day. I would have liked to have had the time for being around the house, but I was okay with making the mother's Day thing happen.


We went to church and then finished the Historic Home Tour sponsored by the museum. We saw 4 houses today situated on the South Hill in the Rockwood Blvd area. We saw some really nice homes.


We then returned home and got to work on our catering job. Susan had most of it under control and I just followed directions.


We got over to Mom's just before four and got to work getting everything set. Once at Mom's, I had to fire up the grill to cook a couple of flank steaks for the main course.


While there, we discovered a good example of a bad mother. Well, perhaps that is too harsh. Let's say a mother who did not plan well or think ahead very far.

Above is a picture of the back patio light at Mom's. You can see she has lost a battle with a persistent Robin. While we were all out there on the patio enjoying the weather, we discovered that eggs had hatched and there were hungry chicks in need of nourishment.

The pinkish feathery shapes in the picture above are the three freshly birthed chicks. At least, I think they just hatched. While we were on the patio, Mama Robin was having a fit trying to figure out how to approach the nest and feed. We finally went inside to give her a break.

The whole Mother's Day thing went well and we went home where Susan passed out from exhaust...I mean, exhaustion.

Bloomsday 2012

The alarm went off at 7. That's too early on a Sunday. But, it's Bloomsday and that means getting downtown to get in line to run the 10K's. Or the seven and a half...which ever you prefer.


Susan is running as well as our friend Mark. They have both been training but not seriously. Just enough to not doe on the course.


My running daze are over and while I think I could walk it, I prefer not to. So I drive them down and find a place to park. Then I unload the bicycle that seems to be attached to the bike rack and ride around and check out the Bloomsday sights. Lots of people hate Bloomsday because of the massive crowds but that is the exact reason I love it. It's a great energy and it's fun to see all the fun stuff going on in the park.


Here's an assortment of pictures.

The river is running waaaaaay high right now. It's great to have so many people from out of town here and able to see the falls at their best. I like that picture above because of the Powerhouse building in the background. It still says Washington Water Power. They changed their name a few year back in order to represent a more global, non-descript identity. Avista. Boy, does that suck!

We went to the salvation Army yesterday in order for Susan and Mark to purchase cast off clothes. It's a win-win for Goodwill and the Salvation Army. They sell them one day and then get them right back. You're not buying the cast off clothes. You're renting them.


It's about 3:30 right now and I'm sitting on the front porch making this entry while Susan is blissfully napping upstairs. I did a short little bike ride earlier with a major hill climb and now I'm thinking of going over to the Hub for a beer. But then again, I could have a beer here. That sounds more appealing.


I really have no desire to leave the front porch. It's nice out here right now.

In fact, here's a picture.


Okay, now I have a beer...I'm happy!


One last thing for today. As long as I'm showing pictures, I might as well get the hops progress cataloged here. So here they are.

That is the Sterling Hops up above there and below is the Hallertau.

I suspect they will reach the top of the rail by next weekend.

The Day After Star Wars Day

Some would prefer that I acknowledge Cinqo de Mayo but it is not a holiday I endorse or participate in. Instead, it is the day before Bloomsday and that means CARBO-LOADING!


The whole carbo-loading deal is a myth perpetuated by the Italian Restaurant Association. For it to be effective, you have do eat specific carbs during the week leading up to a race...not the night before. Also, gorging yourself is probably not the best idea.


Anyway, we went out to enjoy some carbs with some people from church. We had a great time and played some game I can't remember with a machine that gives you words or phrases that you give clues to in order to make your team guess the word or phrase.


It was an early night home cuz Susan and Mark are running tomorrow.

Star Wars Day

It's the Fourth of May. You probably already know that today is Star Wars Day. I think my favorite line from one of those movies is, "Dammit Jim, I'm a Doctor, not a Bricklayer!"


It is also the end of a perfectly retched week. The weather has been rainy and cold. Work has been hectic and busy. And I got a Dear John letter in relation to my attempt to get a part time job at the ballpark. The Dear John letter did come with a couple of vouchers for box seats to any up coming game...so it's not a total loss.


So now it is time to move into the weekend. It looks to be a busy one but with good weather. God is looking out for us working stiffs, making it rain during the week and cleaning it all up for the weekend.


That is why God is great!


May the Fourth be with you!

May Day

This is not the first picture taken with the new camera but it should have been. Let's just lie to ourselves and say it is. 


So we have a camera and we have a mini deck.


Life is good!

Photo-Rific Opporbilities

After her initial disgust with me, Susan agreed that we cannot be without a camera. So she looked through the sales material in today's paper and found a $100.00 Canon that will get us by.


Here is the first picture I took with it.

So we are back in the visual realm of the Interweb.


I bought my first digital camera about twelve years ago. It was a Canon with a 1 Mega pixel resolution. It cost about $550.00 and that was with an employee discount through the store where I had a friend by it.


Today's camera cost $89.99 plus $12.00 for a 4 Meg SD card. It's resolution is 16 Mega pixels and it takes video.


There was a faux pas in the transaction. I had to take the camera back to the store because I could not get it to take any pictures. The lens did not appear to be connected to the view screen. They ended up giving us the demo model and $10.00 back.

Good News, Bad news

The Good News is that we had a very busy morning of accomplishing stuff followed by an afternoon of not so much.


I was up bright and early to take part in our Annual Neighborhood Dump Day. The Emerson-Garfield Neighborhood Committee, of which I am a part, does a Clean Up Day every Spring. The City provides these giant dumpsters and people show up and get to unload their crap for free. Our committee pays for it through grants we get through the city for dump passes and Spring Clean Up days. 


As usual, it was a busy day and we filled eight dumpsters. I think each dumpster is 30 yards, which doesn't sound like much. But these things are bigger than a dump truck...maybe bigger than two dump trucks...and we filled eight of them.


The Bad News is that I have no pictures to show of the event. At some point during the day, I lost my camera. I was up on top of a dumpster, jumping up and down to compress the load of yard waste and I'm pretty sure that is where I lost it. 


I realized it pretty quick because I was taking a lot of pictures. I climbed back up on the load and looked around but it was gone.


DAMMIT!


I think I paid about $180.00 for that camera and now I will need to get another. I cannot go on without a camera. That is like...um...me without a camera!


DAMMIT!


I would also like to announce the finish of our new mini sub-deck around the hot tub. Now we have reduced substantially the risk of falling in the hole around the hottub by removing the hole and putting in its place a new mini sub-deck. Aren't you paying attention?


DAMMIT!

Dear Scumbag,

I walked out of the house this morning and saw that you had visited us over the night.

You left the car door of Susan's Honda open when you were finished with your ransacking, which I find most discourteous. It was good that the battery didn't get drained from having the dome light on all night.

I hope you were able to find what you were after. The two pairs of prescription sunglasses you took will serve you well, providing they match your prescription, which I doubt.

I commend you on your attention to detail. You managed to take the items that would screw Susan over the most. She'll have to spend about three hundred dollars to replace those glasses.

You are a parasite of the worst order. You have no value to society and you are the reason I support the death penalty. Preferably, a slow, cruel painful death penalty.

I am using all my will power to keep from unleashing a hail of obscenity laced insults upon your worthless waste of skin self. But that would require your ability to read from the computer you stole for it to be effective.

So go forth and have a good life. My only solace is the knowledge that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, you cowardly low-life fuck-wad piece of shit.

Oops! Somehow the obscenity got out!

The First Weekend of Summer

Wow! What a weekend!!!

I'm not sure where to start other than to say that we are at the tail end of a fabulous weekend.

The weather was great. It was warm yesterday (Saturday) but today was stellar. My little weather station says it got up to 104 degrees today. I would say it was more like 80ish. Officially, it was 79. In any event, it was a fabulous day. And we did fabulous things with beautiful people in interesting places.

I guess let's start at Friday. There was supposed to be a little gathering at the Hub Tavern on Friday but the food portion of the gathering never materialized. Fortunately, the beer portion of the event was working fine.

I must make a comment concerning the hops. On Saturday, I marked a spot on a post to measure the growth of this one particular shoot on the Sterling plant. When I measured it again on Sunday, it had grown four and a half inches. That was at noon. I measured it again at 6, and it had grown another inch and a half. I really think you can just sit out there and watch it grow.

That one shoot is well over ten inches from where it was Saturday. There are about se7en other shoots coming out of this one root and they are all doing fine.
The Hallertau is doing great as well. I snipped off over 20 small shoots on it on Sunday to allow the five or six big ones the room and resources to grow baby grow.

Susan has officially finished the wall papering of the entryway. I think I can make a case that this has been going on for two years.

The above pictures show her placing the final historic piece of wall paper.

Now we have to begin cleaning the house. It has been a while since we have really really cleaned the house. We've just been making too much of a mess. Now, the mess making is over for a while and it is time to clean.

Does anybody know where the vacuum is?

The Suck of Social Networking

There is soooooo much life going on, who has time to Blog?! I have avoided all Social Networking platforms like the plague but find myself slowly getting sucked in to it. I now have a presence on Facebook but there's not much there. I think I'll add a link about this Blog and that will be my conduit into the world of Soshing.

In the meantime, I have a few projects to do today and I shall bring this post along for the ride.

12 Noon: It is twelve noon and we have just arrived home from church. Susan has some wall papering to do. She is hoping to finish the hall project today. I am waaaaay behind in what I'm doing in the hall. Partly because I'm a slacker and partly because new little things pop up. The latest thing to pop is a small seam around the doors where I am replacing trim.

I have paint to remove that I just didn't think about. So I am going to stop typing and get downstairs and get to work. Pictures to follow.

1:00PM Update: This is the one o'clock update. Unfortunately it is 1:19 and that's about how I expect this to go.

Here are some pictures.

The most exciting news to report is the discovery of a major find. After cleaning all the coats out of the hall closet, I stumbled across a winter parka I forgot I had. In it, I found my alternate car keys that I lost about two years ago. I knew I had left them in a winter jacket of some type. At least, I had that inkling of a thought.

 As soon as I saw the coat, I started rummaging through the pockets and felt the keys almost immediately. I'm such a dumbass! But now I'm a happy dumbass.

The important thing is that my remote door lock has pretty much had it. It had gone through the ringer and then some. The one on my alternate keychain is as pristine as the day the car was purchased.

3:00PM Report: This is the 3:26 report. Here am some mo' pichurs.

These pictures are of Susan working, who never gets enough credit here in the ol'Blog for here tasks. The last picture shows the last wall to be papered in this project. It doesn't feel like it, but that's a landmark. Well, it's not a landmark yet because she hasn't finished it. It's no major blow if she doesn't finish. Other than to her ego.

My closet door project is coming along. I'm putting down a final stain tomorrow after the wood putty has had a good chance to dry.

In the meantime, I am scraping the kitchen door frame. We're getting close to calling it a day. We have a nice roast to put on the barbeque rotisserie tonight. I am looking forward to that.

5:00 PM Edition: This is Stan checking in for the 5:00 Edition at 11:18PM. What can I tell you. I got involved in stuff.


I'm not even going to get caught up. I'm just going to hit publish and continue with life. Cuz there's a lot of it going on...almost everywhere you look.

Repair Day

We have three water heaters.

It's not that we really really really like hot water (which we do). Nor are we lovers of foolish waste, consuming mass quantities of natural resources for no apparent reason (which we are).

The house was formerly a group home and so they required a steady flow of hot water to keep everyone clean and happy.
We have only been operating on two water heaters. There is the one main water heater which used to be set up in tandem and then there is another water hater which runs the laundry primarily.

A while back I noticed the carpet in the basement was a tad dampish.

Closer investigation revealed a leaking water heater. I decided it was time to pull it out and replace it with the one we disconnected years ago in anticipation of just such a need.

So I made note of how it was connected to the water lines, and where the electrical connection was.

Then it was just a matter of draining the old tank, moving it out of the way and replacing all the fittings and wires onto the reserve tank. Simple!

"Ha!", I say unto thee, "Ha!"

I connected the hose to the drain outlet and had a great deal of difficulty getting any water to come out. I eventually had to call my Emergency Help Friend Jerry (E.H.F.) to give me some advice.

He suggested I try sticking a coat hanger up the valve as it is probably caked thick with calcium from our hard water.

I wanted to get everything back up and running before Susan returned from church where she was helping prepare Meals on Wheels for Easter Sunday. So I managed to move the full water heater out of the way and proceeded in an orderly fashion to efficiently and correctly reattach that which I had detached.

That all went well and we currently have hot water.

I man handled the old water heater into the laundry room and over to the proximity of the floor drain. After a good deal of struggle and toil, I managed to fish a coat hanger into the faucet outlet and, sure enough, got a stream of water draining from the tank, along with a great deal of calcium chips. It took a good long time and I had to occasionally adjust my wire in and out to get an new stream going.

The tank is now drained and waiting for a strong friend to stop by in the future who I can wrangle into helping my lift this bitch out of the basement.

So for now, I'm pretty pleased with myself and am ready to have a beer as a reward.

April Fools Post

It's Sunday and we have just returned from a busy morning at church. Susan is co-Chair of the Committee to Feed People on Sundays Committee and we had to feed some people today.

It's a very complicated algorithm but on months with five Sundays in them, we have a potluck after the service on the fifth Sunday. Today is the first Sunday and April Fools to boot so we moved it to today.

So that took up most of our morning. Now we are home and have a few hours to do as we please.

Not so for Susan though, as she has to work at the Arena tonight for a continuing Hockey Playoff Game. This is the time of year where she roots from them to lose.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do. It rainy out so there's not a lot of planned outdoor activity. It was so nice last Sunday and then followed by a week of rain. I think we had one of the wettest March's on record.

I'll report back in a little bit and update any exciting or even less than exciting progress I have made on anything.
4:48PM: It is a windy day but it has turned into a sunny day. It's still pretty cold with the wind.

I was out in the yard and came across a positive sign of Spring. Hops!

Both vines are starting to produce shoots. I'm going to have to cut back to three shoots a column. Otherwise they are really thick and they grow slower.

9:24PM: I been doing some odd jobs around the house but for the most part, it has been a lazy day.

I took a nice twilight picture of the house that I like.

I also got this shot with the house and the moon. I love the house and the moon shots. I have lots of them.

I guess that's it for today. Someday soon, I'll talk about the house.

Weekend Weather Wonderland

Saturday we skied. It was a nice day with a thin cloud layer that kind of let the sun through, but not completely. It was a good to be on the mountain and we definitely felt it afterwards.

Sunday the sun came out in force. It was a wonderful spring day with the temperature hitting the 60's. I worked out in the yard a little bit while Susan did some stripping in the kitchen. I later told her to put her clothes back on because the neighbors where watching.

No! That's not right. She was stripping the paint off the door jam between the kitchen and the hallway. I later removed the trim on the kitchen side of the door jam. That was a bitch because it was in a couple of pieces.

Anyway, it was such a nice day that I pulled out my bike and went for a little ride. I was even considering riding to work the next day. The weather made the decision for me.

A record rainfall was set yesterday. The Weather Service says .62" fell but I had .67" on my WeatherStation 2000. I can tell you that a shit load of rain fell yesterday. They say more is on the way but it's quite nice right now.

Mo' Sno

A wet heavy snow has been falling most of the night. I woke up to use the bathroom at about 4 and it was snowing and sticking but not to the streets or sidewalks. By 6:15, everything was white.

The drive to work this morning wasn't too bad. It just sloppy everywhere. I passed a trailerless semi truck that was off the side of the freeway and facing the wrong direction. I'm not sure how that came to be but it took some finesse.

Beyond these reflections, it appears I hav nothing further to say. There goes a minute of your life you'll never get back.

Welcome Vern

Our old friend Vernal Equinox showed up last night and in honor of his visit, he brought snow this morning. That just adds to our crazy non-winter...soon to be late winter. You've heard of Christmas in July? It looks like we are having Winter in Spring.

Of course, it is not unusual for snow to fall in Spring. I can remember a Bloomsday several years back where it snowed lightly the morning of, and that's in May.

But Vern is here now and it's time he act like he cares.

We have had a lackluster week of no accomplishments around the house but lots of meetings to attend. Susan and I are spread out all over the place. We don't really care. But we want to finish the hallway so we can move on to getting the living room ceiling sheet rocked before the Solstice.

So we have a whole season. You wait, I say that now and we'll be scrambling come Solstice time.

Fabulous Holiday Weekend

As the header suggests, we have just completed a Fabulous Holiday Weekend. St. Patrick's Day fell on a Saturday this year and there was fun and festive festiveness all about. We slept in until 9 and then had breakfast at Dolly's Cafe with some friends.
We then went downtown to check out the St. Paddy's Day Parade. This is an event that requires no pre-requisite to be involved. The Sons of Norway trailered their Viking Ship through the parade route. We watched for about half an hour before heading out to drink some green beer.

This weekend has been planned for for quite a while. It is our traditional amnesty weekend where we go off the diet. I weighed in at 210.9 this morning. That's only a pound or so up. I'm trying to get to a flat 200 pounds. These last ten will be the tough ones.

Saturday afternoon we headed east for Wallace, Idaho. Wallace is a sleepy little North Idaho mining town with a rich ribald history that one might expect from a community populated by miners. One of the huge mines was recently shut down for six months by the Bureau of Mines of some government entity like that in order to reinforce the mine's integrity.

As such, the already depressed economy of the Silver Valley is even worse off. You can buy a fairly decent little house in Wallace for $40,000.00.

The only thing the area has going for it right now is the area. It's gorgeous country with lots of outdoor activities to enjoy. We were there to ski. In the summer, there are bike trails you can't believe.

Here are my collection of pictures from skiing this weekend.

This 9is a shot from the top of a run called Marmot looking down into the far east end of the Silver Valley.  Montana is to the east at right.

This shot is at the bottom of the Marmot run. I took the previous picture from waaaaaaay up at the top.

This is the same picture that I cannot seem to delete.

This is the picture that should have been above there. It's taken from the same spot but looking west towards the Silver Valley. Wallace and Mullan are out there somewhere and you can see I-90 which takes you there.

Saturday Night Concert

One of the many gifts Susan gave me for my birthday was tickets to see comedian Adam Carolla. The concert was last night. After a day of working on our various projects, we headed downtown to the Knitting Factory. 


It was the first visit to the Knitting Factory for both of us. We got down there about 20 minutes before the show and managed to find a pair of decent seats. I got into the 15 minute bar line to get us a couple of plastic cups of $6.50 wine. Each!

When I returned I found I was seated next to  a group of  six 30 something guys who had been drinking heavily already. When they returned from the bar, Susan said they each had three beers.


I was lucky enough to be seated next to the largest of these guys. I managed to move my chair a little bit out of his girth zone. He wasn't fat, he was solid. And...he was drunk.

The concert began with all of these guys feeling compelled to share thoughts with Adam. They all felt the show would be much better with their contributions. I know this because I used to be one of these Douche Bags.

Anyway, the guy was an affable enough drunk, at one point inviting everyone in our section to a party at his house after the show located at 151 Bacardi Lane or something like that.

It really wasn't too bad until the last 20 minutes of the show when the solid affable douche next to me started to fall asleep. At one point, he cupped his hands behind his head and his elbow slowly sank onto my shoulder. I know his friends noticed. I would roll out of his way and startle him back to consciousness, only for him to slip back towards his friend and then follow with a tide change back to me.

We had a good time and Adam Carolla put on a totally different show than I expected. I think he is usually pretty extemporaneous except when he goes to a place he has never been. It was clearly a thought out presentation with plenty of room to riff and respond to Douche Land next to me.

I thought he would be too crude for Susan...and he was crude. But, he was just plain funny too. I'm glad I went and I will go again.

We left the show and had a couple more glasses of wine at a new spot we found downtown.

We finished the night at home with a dip in the hot tub and then off to bed to prepare for the change to Daylight Savings Time.

No Agenda

I'm not sure why I'm writing today. I think it will come to me but right now I don't have an agenda, an direction or an subject...just poor syntax. In any event, it is clear to me from this opening paragram that this is going to be my Best Post Ever. So let's begin.

Not much work has been going on at the house over the last few days as we have been steeped in concentration over my birthday, which was yesterday.

Susan showered me with gifts all week. On the first day of my birthday week she gave me a version of Freecell on the new Macbook. Freecell is my favorite computer game and Susan is becoming a fan as well.

On the second day of my birthday week, I got a pair of movie tickets.

On the third day of my birthday week, I got a gift certificate to replace my windshield. It has a big crack in it but nothing that's really blocking my view. It'll be nice to get that fixed but I'm going to wait until after the spring gravel season.

The fourth day of my birthday week, I received a gift certificate to my favorite store, Jim's Home Brew.

On the fifth day of my birthday week, my true love gave to me...
I can't remember. I'll figure it out.

On the sixth day of my birthday week I was invited to join Susan at the Hercules Inn in Wallace, Idaho.

On my birthday, I received tickets to see comedian Adam Carolla this weekend. I also got a bottle a wine, which we drank, and a wonderful dinner.

I'm 55 now and it is time I grow up and take on some responsibility. But probably not.

I have an App on my iPod called the Death Clock. You answer a bunch of questions about yourself and then it calculates how much longer you have to live. As of today, I have until age 74. The actual countdown I have available to me as I write this is 18 years, 11 months, 28 days, 23 hours and 54 minutes. Oops! Make that 53 minutes.

You know, if I make to 74, I think that's a pretty good run. I'll be happy with that!

In the meantime, I have to start planning. How much beer could I drink between then and now?

208.3

Today is the end of Phase One of the South Beach Diet, which means I drink again. This is especially important in view of this very special day from whence I sprang forth from my mothers' loins not but two score and a tricade ago.

I made up tricade to denote 15 years. I like it. I think it works. I'm going to get into some on-line dictionary. Then, after having it copy writed and registered it with ASCAP and BMI, I can sit back and rest on the income it will generate every time somebody uses it in a sentence.

After work, I went to the Hub where Lee Nordstrom showed up, along with Robba, Olga, Steve and another guy. I had more than one beer which was bad.

But it's my birthday and that's good enough for me.