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I woke up this morning to another less than stellar day. That is, if your measure of value is a bright sunny end of summer day.
The main thing on the agenda for today is to attend the Spokane Symphony Labor Day Concert at Comstock Park. However, if the weather is going to be sketchy, I'm leaning toward bagging it and staying home.
That is not a very likely scenario because we haven't missed a Labrador Concert in...like...forever.
In any event, I prefer to look at the weather of this Holiday Weekend as a foreboding harbinger of the wicked winter to come. It's not like I'm having a premonition or psychic flash. I just prefer to think this way.
The coming months will bare out the flashiness of my mystical psychicness.
Later that day: The weather came around to favor us and we went to the Labor Concert. It is a tradition for Susan and I, one that nobody else who regularly attends with us, decided to keep this year.
Everyone we invited to join us canceled on us today. I went up to the park at 3 to stake out some real estate and it turned out to be much much more than we needed.
As always it was a great event to be a part of...even if it was only Susan and I...and 3,000 other people. They breezed through their program and even deleted a couple of songs because of the chill. It's not good for some of the instruments.
They usually do the same concert in Liberty Lake on Saturday but the weather was so bad they moved it to Sunday, and then canceled at the last moment on Sunday because of the cold conditions.
Now we are back at home at a decent hour and can wind down our Holiday weekend in front of the TV.
It is the Labrador Weekend which means that after a summer of looooooong stretches of stifling heat, it will rain. It is Day Two of the weekend and Day Two of the Rain.
No biggy to me because I'm working in of doors. I hooked up the thermostat for the heated floor and it in itself is quite cool. I have powered it up and it appears to be working. It has a full color touch pad display. It is programmable, which is something I wanted and it appears to be easy to use.
I have it set to heat up right now and I'm waiting to see if it is going to work. That is complicated by the fact that Phil is here working on the ceiling prior to placement of dry wall. The big panel is off the former doorway so the chilly air has free range.
That being said, I can confirm that the heated floor is working. In less than fifteen minutes, it brought the floor temperature up from 64 to 67 degrees.
So, since that is working, I need to move on and find something else to do. Perhaps I can offer my assistance to Susan who is painting the front porch.
I just removed the air conditioner in the kitchen. Now I need to stow it away. Then I will find another project.
The project I found next was helping Susan on the front porch. She painted the whole ceiling and has been working on a few little areas. She has wanted for some time to paint access stripes on the pillars. Today we did! We painted the rings at the top and bottom of the pillars. They are a nice burgundy, as you can see in the pictures.
We are heading up to visit Mom, who is still suffering chronic back pain. It's pretty frustrating to not be able to do anything to help her feel better.
After Mom, we are having dinner at Webster's. They have all their menu items priced at $6 on Sundays. Plus, they have $2.00 PBR's, so it's very classy.
I'm back! Did you miss me? Did you even know I was gone?
My modem crashed on me. I had a couple of connection problems on Thursday night and when I got home from work yesterday, it was dead. I tried resetting it several times to no avail.
So then I went on a search to solve the problem but I am locked in old guy technology that hinders my ability to make smart shopping decisions.
Century Link is my InterWeb Service Provider (ISP). I called them, waited on hold for ten minutes, only to be told that it looks like my modem is dead. They then confirm the modem was not a leased modem and I owned it. They told me to go to Best Buy and get a modem that is ADSL2+ compatible.
So I drove out to Best Buy last night because that's where the person at CenturyLink told me to go...and of course, they didn't have any.
The moddem issue would have to wait until today because we were heading down to "Pigout in the Park", Spokane's annual Festival of Gluttony. We went down last night because I wanted to see Junior Brown.
Susan and I each had our traditional Pigout meals and then we went to the Clocktower Stage to catch Junior at 9.
Junior was great as expected and played for almost an hour and a half. If you are not familiar with Junior Brown, do something about that. The man can strum a gitbox.
So now it is today and I managed to get out of bed by eight. I got dressed, got some coffee and breakfast and headed out to get a modem.
My mind that has a 1980's operating system. I decided to try Radio Shack and if not them, perhaps the Home Depot would have a selection of modems.
I was wrong. Home Depot has a few modem but none with parameters that matched my needs.
As far as Radio Shack goes, I can't seem to find any. They may be all gone. They have four locations listed in the most current phone book, (more old technology) but I can tell you at least two of those locations are empty storefronts.
Then I recalled that one of those big box office supply places like Staples or Office Office Office might have a modem.
Staples turned out to be the helpful place. Staples is six blocks from the house. So sixty dollars later and after a little work on the phone with Sonjay at NetGear, I'm back on the grid.
The really big event of the day was the installation of a heated floor grid.
Here are the pictures.
The house smells like someone is getting a perm. I hope that doesn't last! We are not finished. We still have to lay down another bag or two of self leveling compound to get a final depth and a level floor.
Phil is coming in tomorrow to start dry walling.
I can't believe I have been talking about temperatures in the hundreds only a couple of weeks ago and now I am turning on my heat in the car in the morning.
Well, I shouldn't be surprised. It is September, afterall.
Today is the day that the heated floor gets installed. I'm taking the afternoon off because I want to be there and be a part of this installation. I would like to install a heated floor in my closet at some point and I want to know how it is done.
So I'm leaving work at noon and planning to meet Shaun at 1. Once the fun begins, I'll report on it here.
10:25AM: I just the call from Shaun to cancel for today. He is having some back issues (back pain) which has slowed him waaaay down and has to finish some other project that he is now behind on.
I'm still taking the afternoon off. I have plenty of things I can do.
7:35PM: Well, I think I had a successful afternoon off from work. I did a little cleaning in the Carriage House...not much, but enough to create some work space.
Then I mowed the lawn.
Then I did some work on the upstairs bathroom. The faucet on the bathroom sink has been a problem. I got underneath and discovered the hoses were pretty badly kinked. I had to clean out everything in the cabinet and pose in many uncomfortable positions but I got it done.
That felt like a major victory.
I then proceeded to play the piano for a while.
Then I did some vacuuming upstairs.
I also began the process of filling the radiators with water. I had a fear that I had a small leak and it turned out to be true.
The leak is very small and not in any of the radiators. The leak is in a connection to the main drain line from the water fill line. It appears to have some corrosion and a small rusty pin prick of a hole has developed.
I shall consult some of my construction experts to see how I should proceed.
It took only a couple of hours to finish my work in the bathroom. I am now ready for Shaun to come in and put in the heated floor. I also fixed the problem with receptacle that wasn't working. I have a problem distinguishing between the meaning of "Line" and "Load".
We are experiencing the joy of rain. It was coming down good and had been since this morning. It finally stopped around noonish and we have clear skies.
In a totally unrelated bit of news, we seem to be experiencing a crime wave in the neighborhood. There was a drive by shooting early Saturday morning. Nobody was hurt but two houses had bullet holes.
I just now learned that a neighbor down the street was assaulted in his garage this afternoon. He's okay but apparently made a trip to the hospital.
I don't want to say whether or not I have a gun, but I invite scumbags to stop by and find out.
We are back in remodeling mode. A guy I know from church is coming this week to install the heated floor in the bathroom. I still need to bring the floor level up so it matches the floor height in the hallway. To do this, I am installing quarter inch cement board (Hardy Backer) over the plywood sub-floor. This brings the level up and provides a great surface for tile adhesion...or in this case, heated floor adhesion topped by self leveling compound.
I have purchased special screws for the Hardy Backer. I'm screwing into the joists but also into the plywood.
As you can see from the picture, this floor isn't going anywhere. I've put down three pieces of Hardy Backer and used 200 screws.
It's been cloudy all day and the wind has been blowing off and on for while. It has been threatening to rain but nothing substantial has fallen.
We did have one three minute burst of rain and that little bit did seem to clean the sky. But then the wind came up and everything got hazy again. The picture above was taken right after the rain fell. It was the first and only time I saw blue sky in days.
Since we returned from Iowa, the air in Spokane has been very hazy, a result of all the fires raging in the state.
We really need some rain. The smoky conditions are pretty vast. We encountered smoke filled skies in Wyoming. It was smoky off and on through Montana as well.
Here is what it looked like on my way to work this morning.
And here is what it looks like in the neighborhood.
We were shut out of Audio Books for the day because, as predicted, the i-pod was dead. So we had to spend our 10 hour drive actually talking to each other. When that didn't work, we started scanning the radio. We found some stuff to listen to but it was spotty, so we still had to talk to each other. I found out that Susan has blue eyes.
We stopped at the $50,000 Silver Bar but we didn't stay long. They have even more crap than they used to. But don't go there for a cowboy hat. They don't have them anymore.
We rolled into town about 4 and pulled up to a house that had been lived in by cats for the last week and a half. We unloaded the car and walked to the Hub. Priorities!
It seemed like the cats were happy to see us but it's hard to tell. They can be so needy.
In any event, it's great to be home and I like that we have an extra day to decompress.
We hit the road shortly before 8 AM and we were on our way. We started listening to a new audio book called "The Goldfinch". This book is almost as long as the one we just finished. We won't get to the end of it before we reach Spokane.
I have a tradition of leaving something behind whenever we stay with Phil and Margaret. We discussed it prior to leaving and I felt assured that I had everything. I even made a final sweep through the house.
Towards the end of our driving day, I figured out what it was a I left behind. My charging cord for the i-Pod.
That meant we would probably not be able to hear the book the next day. Which turned out to be the case.
We drove about 700 miles and made our goal of Sheridan, Wyoming after about 12 hours of driving. We checked in to the Super 8 and unloaded our cargo. We had the joy and thrill of a KING SIZED BED.
We then went in search of a nice little Sheridan bar and grill to have some dinner. We were looking for a bar the GPS suggested when we came upon the Wyoming Rib and Chop House. It looked just right and it was.
It's amazing how much long drives take out of you. We were pretty tired. I can't imagine crossing the prairie in a covered wagon and making maybe 12 miles a day.
I'm sure I would have been dead shortly after leaving St Louis.
Today was our last full day in Iowa and the agenda was an easy one.
We slept in a little later. We went to Valley Junction for lunch and then I abandoned the ladies so they could shop and I could drop.
I had a nice relaxing afternoon involving some reading, some piano playing and some napping. Then I got talked into a game of miniature golf. Which I won!
We had a nice dinner back at the house and then went down to the Greenwood one last time to hear Neil play with the Soul Searchers. He had extra duty tonight because the bass player had to take his daughter to college. That means Neil played bass on the keyboard.
We got out of there after their first set and returned home to one more night in the small bed.
Today's agenda: The Bridges of Madison County.
I must say that I loved the Bridges, and Madison County was my favorite county.
That's a line from a short-lived sitcom called "The Knights of Prosperity". Susan and I both laughed our asses off when we heard it but it appears it is funny only to us.
I made a comment about Madison County a couple of days ago and Margaret decided it would be an excellent addition to our itinerary.
We left the house about 11:00 and headed for a little winery called the...get ready for this...Madison County Winery. It took about 35 minutes to get there and it is in Madison County. And it is in the middle of nowhere. We met Phil and Neil there and enjoyed some wine tasting and some beer tasting.
The beers were pretty good. Iowa wine is nothing to write home about. It's not that they are bad. They are just not that good. I would say that they are a little bit of okay!
From there, we drove another 20 minutes to Winterset, Iowa...the birthplace of Marion Morrison. Marion only lived there a few years before the whole family moved to California and he became John Wayne.
But the town is very proud that Marion's mom birthed him right there on John Wayne Drive, which happens to be the exact spot at which they built a John Wayne Museum. Talk about a coincidence!
After the museum, we set out on the real reason for our adventure; the discovery of covered bridges. We drove to a local city park where the Cutler-Donahoe Bridge, built in 1870, has been relocated. Yes, they are all named. There are only about eight of them left and most of them have been moved from their original location.
Also in the park was a hedge maze. The height was just above my head so it was difficult to see over to find your way out. It wasn't really big so it wasn't really difficult.
They also have what Susan and I refer to as a Thomas Kincaid Bridge.
The next interesting thing we found in the park was the Clark Tower. We had to drive a couple of miles through really dense Iowa forests to find this three story, stone castle.
These are the views from the top.
And just a few more pictures.
The bridge we had the most interest in was the Roseman Bridge. That is one that Margaret and Susan's Dad painted a lot. He didn't paint the actual bridge. He made paintings of the bridge.
There is a story that the bridge is haunted. Apparently, a criminal was tracked to the bridge and trapped there by posses on opposite sides of the bridge. Somehow he managed to escape but people have heard maniacal laughter that they attribute to his ghost.
We finished our visit by having a drink in a bar that was in the movie about the bridges starring Clint Howard and Merle Haggard. I'm going to double check those facts.
Then the half hour drive back to Des Moines and a fabulous home cooked Chicken Parmesan dinner.
Throughout the night, I heard the crack of thunder and the sound of rain. When I got up, it was pouring and had been doing so for some time. The paper will later report that just under two inches of rain fell, but I know it was a lot more.
Today we drove to Redfield to visit the cousins. It was raining.
Louise and Irene grew up on the farm in Redfield. Today it is farmed by Ed Swinger. We met everyone at the Dexfield Diner where we had an authentic, made from scratch meal in an authentic, farm town diner. Dexfield is a combination of the names of the two towns, Dexter and Redfield.
We got there a little after 11 and the place was empty. And it was raining. By the time we left around 1, it was packed and jumpin'. And...it was raining.
From the diner, we drove the 3 minutes out of town to the farm. The big attraction was the new house the Swinger's are building.
Ed and Sue have been working the farm since about 2000 when Louise and Irene's Dad, Jim died. They lived in the old farm house and Louise lived with her Mom in the rancher style house they built in the sixties.
Ed and Sue broke ground on this new house in the Spring of 2014, so they are 15 or 16 months into this build. They were in no hurry to get it done. But now that it is nearly finished, the urge to move from the turn of the century house that leaks (Did I mention it was raining?) and is being held together with duct tape and baling wire into the ultra modern spacious open floor plan deluxe farm mansion they have built is considerable.
I expect they will be moving within the month. Just some flooring and minor finishing issues need to be finished.
Susan and I were quite jealous of the many amenities they have added. The cabinets are especially appealing. The drawers open and close smoothly and suck in slowly at the end of the close. The cabinets are easy to access and all the shelves slide in and out. They have a special shelf that swings up and out that holds a mixer. They have a central vacuuming system and a little toe kick area that you sweep all the dirt to and then kick the button to suck up the dirt.
After the tour, we returned to Louise's rancher for dessert. Susan got a special late birthday present of a new Tin Man.
Louise gave usa Tin Man the last time we came to Iowa for Christmas and it was stolen from our front yard later the following Spring. Now we have Tin Man Too and all is well.
We headed back to Des Moines about 4:00 and it was raining.
By the time we reached Des Moines, it was starting to clear. Blue sky was evident and warmth was returning.
Every time we come to Des Moines, the Latin King is a restaurant we must visit. It's great Italian food. Also, we try to snatch as many books of matches as we can. I'm not sure how that tradition started but it is a major goal and keeps us in matches well into our next visit to Iowa.
By the time we left for dinner, the sky had cleared and it was a nice evening. We rode out in Neil's 1963 Cadillac Sedan DeVille.
As we enjoyed our meals, we noticed it began to rain. One might describe it as a deluge. The experience reminded us all that classic cars of the sixties had really shitty ventilation systems and it took most of the ride home before the wind shield was clear of fog.
When we got back to the house...it was raining. Two inches, my ass!
