Iowa Trip - Day Three

Since our drive today is only about four hours long, we didn't get up until 6:30 and did not hit the road until just after 8. It's the Winter Solstice, the short daylight day of the year. So we are happy to have a short drive and be done with this travel portion of the Holiday.

We got the car packed and went into the little kitchen where Super 8 provides a nice little breakfast. It's one of the reasons we stay at Super 8's. The breakfast alone saves at least 20 bucks.

I drove the first two hours and had the same problem towards the end of my shift. I have yet to research narcolepsy and found out if that may be my problem. 

Susan took over and again the road conditions were very favorable to travel. We listened to the end of our audio book, "The Girl on the Train." The movie just came out and so we are interested in seeing it and comparing it to the book.

Our GPS said we would arrive at Margaret and Phil's at 12:26 and it was right on.

So now we have to acclimate to not moving which I am happy to do.

I also need to start downloading some of my pictures I've taken and sort them out.

So much to do, so little beer!

Trip to Iowa - Day Two - Narcoleptic Driver

We left Billings dark and early, about 45 minutes ahead of sunrise. We wanted as much daylight as possible. I'm no longer the gung ho get there driver I used to be. In fact, I kind of ran into a problem that I must investigate.

Susan drove the first leg for almost three hours. I took over when we stopped for gas in Gillette, Wyoming. I drove for about 2 1/2 hours and made it to Wall Drug, about 125 miles into South Dakota.

I was really fighting falling asleep. I'm wondering if I'm becoming narcoleptic. I need to look into it.

Conditions for the drive where just right. The skies were clear, the wind was minimal and the roads were in good condition.

Susan ended up driving the rest of the way across the state, about five more hours until we made it to Sioux Falls. 

We found our Super 8 Motel, got settled in and went to Fuddrucker's for dinner.

We are now about four hours from our final destination. I'm going to look into narcolepsy and prepare for driving in the morning.

In the meantime, Spider-Man is our co-pilot.

Traveling to Iowa, Day One

As I started loading the car this morning, the snow began to fall. It was coming down pretty good by the time we hit the road at 8:26 AM. It was fairly slow going until just after Kellogg, Idaho. We drove ahead of the storm and the sun actually came out.

We had great driving conditions until we hit Livingston, Montana, about 30 miles east of Bozeman. The blowing snow made visibility really really bad. It was Susan's turn to drive at that point and she made it for about an hour before it became too nerve wracking.

We found a little turn off and I took over. Oddly, that's where the conditions improved and we sailed into Billings at about 6PM.

Overall, we drove for about eight hours and about 575 miles. 

We wanted to try and make it to Gillette, Wyoming but darkness and chilly weather made us decide to take it easy. This will be a three day trip.

The car is handling great and we both like it. Now we just hope to have better conditions tomorrow. The goal is to make it to Sioux Falls, South Dak. That looks like about 660 miles, a good ten hour day.

Prepping for Iowa

I picked up a rental car today. 

It seems this little accident might turn out to be an unexpectedly serendipitous event. Instead of driving to Iowa in my car, which has 171,000 miles on it, we will be traveling in a brand new Kia Sportage. It's a mid sized SUV with all wheel drive. It's got lots of cool features.

We are leaving in the morning for Des Moines. The one in Iowa. It's 1,500 miles away.

It is snowing out right now. So that means the trip is going to be very exciting. We will just pace ourselves and take it easy. Instead of two days, we might take three.

The reason for the drive is our insane cheapness. We can drive there and back for less than the cost of one airline ticket. That includes motels and meals. As for our time, that's not worth much.

Besides, we like the drive. And the company is fabulous.

How's Your Morning?

Here's how my morning went!

Nobody was hurt as it was a rather low speed collision on I-90 at about 7:10 this morning. We were both able to drive off the freeway and get to a parking lot where we exchanged information and talked to a State Patrol Trooper.

I fared better than the other guy, who was cited for following too close.

Looks like I'm going to be dealing with insurance and a car rental agency for the next few days.

Let it Snow!

We have our first substantial snowfall of the season.

With snow on the ground, it oddly feels a little warmer.

About two inches fell yesterday and another couple fell over night, giving us a good solid four inches.

My snow blower tore through it with no problem at all. It even started right up. I did my usual routine of the whole block. I did a little extra work on Ted and Rhonda's so they will return from their cruise today with a clean driveway.

Here's a nice (although dark) picture of the house from last night.

Now I'm just kicking around the house doing little odd jobs here and there.

I've been looking for the forecast and it appears we have more snow coming but I don't know how much to expect.

An Ode to Willy

We lost Willy today. I must admit that I was not surprised when I found him as he has been on a steady decline since Summer and has been especially lethargic the last few days. He had stopped eating and he laid around a lot. I don't think he was in pain, just tired.

So now we are down to Oscar. He is older than Willy was but seems pretty healthy and pretty fat.

Holiday Setup Weekend

What a wonderful welcoming Christmas door. Don't you feel welcome? Well, if you're a burgler, take a hike...and have a Merry Christmas. Somewhere else!

I mentioned on last Wednesday's post that we are trying to develop a common Christmas theme around the park. We notified the whole neighborhood, whether the house was a member of the home owners association or not, and told them we were buying wreaths. So far, we have over thirty participants.

The wreaths are in and I have started contacting neighbors to come by and pick them up. I have ordered a total of 45 wreaths. I have received the first shipment of 30 and that's what I'm distributing this weekend.

The goal for me this weekend is to get the house Christmas-ized.

Susan already has MantleVille up and all seems fine in the village.

I have a crap load of lights to get up. So stop bugging me and let me get to work.

I have been hard at work and all the house Christmas lights are up on the front of the house.  Look at our big warm welcoming front door entry way come-on-in-unless-you're-a-burglar now. Susan added the bows and now the lights are on.

As of 1:23 PM, I have dished out 10 wreaths. Eleven if you include ours. I would like to go out and get a couple of things but Susan has left to work the whole day at the Arena and I want to hang around until about 5 for wreath pick up. So, I'm hanging out.

It's now 2:34 and we are up to 16 wreaths out the door. I was double checking my inventory of wreaths. It didn't seem like I had enough and sure as shootin', I was eight short. I counted it a bunch of times and kept coming up eight short.

I was checking who I had already given wreaths to when I saw two big boxes in the corner of the dining room. "Yea!", I screamed to nobody. Now my books balance!

It is just after 5 PM and I am abandoning my post as wreath distributor to go out and get a couple of things.

It is now much later in the evening and I am fairly pleased with my progress for the day. I have unloaded 16 Christmas Wreaths, I have decorated the house for the Holidays and I have created this personal digital Christmas Greeting that I'm going to e-mail to friends and family.

Don't you wish you were friends or family?!

Skee and Kni Report

Mt Spokane says they are opening today. I checked out the webcam up there and got this nice photo.

Also, I think we can verify that they generally for the most part wipe off the new snow sign every day at 5PM

I'm trying to figure out a day or a night to go up and ski. I need to make up for last year.

However, like last year, I am having a knee issue. This time it's the righty.

It started yesterday...kind of in the afternoon. I am noticing that there are certain positions I move my knee into that causes a weakness feeling. It feels like if I push the knee one more millimeter in whatever direction I was going, it's going to collapse under me. 

Last night my knee was very sore and I felt this weakness thing several times. 

This morning, the pain was gone and I thought it had gotten better. But the weakness happened to me before I even made it down the stairs.

So, I'm watching it and I have chronicled it here.

Shower Saga

I have successfully ordered the missing parts I need from the manufacturer, Delta Faucet.

They are treating it as a warranty issue so there is no cost to me. That is cool considering I think I have lost the parts rather than received a package that was short the parts. In any event, I will soon be back on the road to installing the shower. I am hoping there are not other parts I am missing.

If that is the case, the shower saga shall continue.

And I shall report on it here.

Neighborhood Coordination

The Corbin Park Homeowners Association, of which I am the Presiding Grand Homeowner, has decided to purchase wreaths for the neighborhood in order to try and develop a neighborhood wide ornament.

We sent out a flyer and offered to pay for half the cost of the wreath ($15.00). We got over thirty responses, which I think is pretty good.

I received the first delivery today at work. I had them sent to work so they would n't be sitting on the front porch for any roving scumbag to abscond with. I have eight giant boxes containing 30 wreaths. I could only bring four of the boxes home today.

Here is how the wreath looks.

Until I can figure out how to secure it, I think I'll be bringing it in at night.

Last Day of Thanksgiving Weekend

It's a chilly Sunday with an ever so very slight threat of snow coming maybe. Since we are now done with our sky walk painting, we are free to do whatever. 

This is Susan's first day off in at least a couple of weeks so we have no plans for the day. We are just puttering around the house, watching Gonzaga play Iowa State, (they barely won) watching the Seahawks (they totally lost) and basically hanging out (Winners).

While Susan works to pack up the Fall decorations and starts to bring up the Christmas niknaks, I'm going to renew my search for the missing shower surround parts.

Later: I have struck out as far as my search goes. I don't know where else to look. I'm sure I haven't thrown it out. Why the hell would I. I just can't seem to find an extra box hanging around anywhere. 

Now I have to go to the Home Depot and see if I can order the parts that are missing. CRAP!

I decided to go to the Depot tomorrow during lunch. I had other fish to fry today. My rear passenger side tire has a small leak. I have been adding air every few days. It got so low today that I had to fire up my compressor in order to get enough air in it to drive to the local air supply station and really get it filled.

I made a deal with my Pastor last week. He had a generator he was selling for 75 bucks and I told him I would buy it.

Today, while arranging to drop by and pick it up, he told me he didn't feel right charging me for it because his brother had given it to him. So now I have to figure out a way to pay this forward.

In the meantime, I'm really looking forward to the next time we have a power failure.

TMI-at the start

8:02AM: I got up early at the urging of my bladder and noticed my neighbor Lou was putting out his garbage cans. I forgot that Garbage Day was a day late this week because of Thanksgiving. 

So rather than go back to my warm bed with my cuddly wife, I got dressed and went downstairs to get the cans out.

Now that I was up, I didn't really feel like going back to bed, despite the prospect of my cuddly wife. But I wasn't so active that I was ready to face the day. So I made some coffee and lowered myself into the new bath tub. I even filled it up with water. It was lovely.

Okay, enough for the sharing of Too Much Information.

We have one sky walk left to paint and we are hitting it today. I'm letting Susan sleep in a little because she worked Hockey last night. I think I hear her stirring so we will be heading out in a little bit. 

I'll bring pictures of the final sky walk.

3:07PM: Oh no I won't! My camera was low on battery power. No pictures of the last sky walk.

That's okay because it does not alter the fact that we are still done with sky walks. Now I have to assemble my various invoices and get them e-mailed to their respective places.

8:44PM: I had every intention of starting on assembling the shower surround in the bathroom. Unfortunately, I'm missing some components. I can't find the lower track that attaches to the base. It is the very first thing you put into place so I haven't really gotten started yet. 

I know I've seen another box somewhere...perhaps in the garage, perhaps in the Carriage House...but I cannot find it now that I need it. I'm going to start an intensive search tomorrow as it is a day of freedom. Nothing for us to do but hang around the house.

Thanksgiving Day 2016

Happy Thanksgiving!

Here are the many things we are thankful for.

We just returned from painting the windows at the Northtown Office Building. I think it's one of our best windows ever. 

What do you think?

So we're thankful we have another window done and that it came out so well.

We are hosting dinner tonight for our friends Randy and Karen and Mary. We may have an extra that Karen met today while serving Meals on Wheels. She's a gal in the military with nowhere to go. So we are thankful we can offer someone serving the country a little bit of home.

Okay, I have to stop writing now and do some pre-guest cleaning. So I'm thankful for my Shark Steam Clean Mop and a container to put ashes in.

The fireplace is cleaned and stalked. The front porch, steps and walkway are free of detritus, although there are some chunks of pumpkin still laying about.

I have moved the laptap upstairs and am currently writing from the office, which we never use. Someday, it will be a sewing room. Then we will never use that.

We have less then three hours before our guests arrive and Susan does not seem too stressed. I had better get to mopping or that will not be the case.

It is now after 10PM and the evening has passed and was a success. We are full. We are winding down our day in preparation of another sky walk to paint tomorrow. Then there will be one.

How I ended up in the Hospital

It sure is nice to have a Saturday when you can kick back or not, and do whatever you want to do.

We don't have those kinds of Saturdays. We were off to church at 9AM to prepare tomorrow's Thanksgiving Dinner at Plymouth.

We do it every year on the Sunday before Thanksgiving right after the service. We cooked and carved fi5e turkeys this morning, prepared mashed taters and green bean casserole. And we got the dining area all set up. 

I like to consider it my dress rehearsal for the REAL THING.

We got home about 1:00 and Susan immediately took off to the grocery market to collect the fixins' for our feast on Thursday. I practiced my song I'll be playing tomorrow during the Offering.

Then I did a few assorted jobs around the house. 

One of those jobs was to replace the missing down spout from the hapless gutter shown above.

The spout has been missing for a couple of years...maybe four. The gutter doesn't really collect that much because it is installed at such a severe angle. But the runoff it does collect flows down to the empty downspout which dumps a surprisingly verbose amount of water right onto the middle of the steps. If it's raining, you will get wet.

I was surprised that I found the old downspout AND the angle joint as quickly as I did. Almost immediately, in fact. It's been in the garage for a couple of years...maybe five. 

I was also able to find a compatible adhesive, something I failed to use when I installed the downspout. Hence, the reason I'm doing this job again.

It was really a simple procedure. And I completed it really fast. But I'm getting to the age where climbing ladders and walking on roofs isn't as fun as it used to be.

I sucked you in with the false headline and I apologize for the cheap manipulation. There was no hospital visit...this time. But I'm sure I'll visit within a couple of years...or sooner.

Weekend in November

It is the end of a long and busy weekend.

Susan had appointments and Hockey yesterday so there was no sky walk painting.

Instead, I concentrated on the yard. I pulled out the mower and went to work on the lawn. Mowing had the double benefit of cutting the grass and mulching and picking up leaves. I had to empty the bag every couple of passes so it really took a long time. All together, I must have been out there for a good two hours.

After having it sit outside for over a year, I finally got around the taking the old door that was in the bathroom, to Brown Building Supply. They offered me $25.00 for it but I ended up doing some trading with them to get some chain for a Halloween fence for next year. 

I was able to get Jerry over here to finish hooking up the heater in the bathroom. That's one more thing to cross off the list.

Today we had a full day of sky walk holiday painting. We did two sky walks today which gets us up to six completed, half way to being finished.

The theme this year is "A Charlie Brown Christmas". The civic theater is putting on the play and so we are able to use their license to paint Peanuts images.

We are finally home now and winding down before bed and another hectic week of work and painting.

Sky Walkin'

We have been going out every night after work and decorating sky walks. It's that time of year again. When we are finished, we will have added a good solid three grand to the remodeling fund. It's a tough couple of weeks but a good payday when it's over.

2016 Punkin Toss

One of the last events to officially close out the Halloween season here at Casa del Scary House is something that I have never written about here on the Blob.

I'm really surprised I haven't mentioned something about it or at the very least, posted a picture or a video of the event. It really has come to be the slime on our decaying Halloween Brain.

The event is the annual Punkin Toss. We take the pumpkins we have left over and move them up to the balcony. Then we place the Garbage Can, I mean the Punkin Toss Receptacle below the balcony and attempt to throw the pumpkins, toss them actually, into the receptacle.

Well I am finally posting a video. And here it is. This is me tossing a pumpkin from up on the balcony as Susan looks on whilst being videoed by Camera Man Mark.

I really don't think I have to say anything else.

Clean Up and Stowage

Faith Bible Church is having a free leaf dump today. It goes from 9 to 1. I have a few bags ready to go but a whole bunch of leaves that still need to be bagged.

This pile of leaves is equal to the one I had on the other side of the yard. I also still have some Halloween remnants.

So I'm in a race to get as many leaves bagged before 1PM as I can.

I did pretty well and had the car loaded at 12:30. Now I just had the short three block drive to the church.

When I got there, they were shut down. A kid told me they were full. I have a car full of bagged leaves so I have no choice but to drive out to the Waste-to-Energy Plant and pay to dump them. 

It only cost $9.95 but it took a lot of my time because it took 20 minutes just to get into the facility. The line was clear out to the road, which is probably a quarter of a mile.

In any event, the yard is pretty well cleaned up for now. There are still leaves to fall so there is no point in going nuts on raking right now.

I am happy to report that last years removal of the post holder sleeves was not a fluke.

I came up with the idea of spraying the spike of the sleeve with WD-40 prior to pounding it into the ground. Last year, they came right out of the ground. 

I had the same success this year. I just applied a little leverage with a shovel on a block of wood, and the sleeve lifted right out of the ground. It 's nice to have an occasional success.

I got most of the Halloween stuff put away last night. There are only some bits and pieces that have yet to go up. I'll get to them today.

2016 Halloween Wrapup

It rained for most of the day. The wind blew at a pretty good clip for a good part of the afternoon. Plus, it was just plain cold.

And yet, it did not stop over 1,600 witches, warlocks, super heroes and assorted ninja turtles from stopping by for a visit and a candy bar.

The Horobometer, which is my neighbors with a clicker, cut off at 1,555 at about 8PM. We went for another half hour passing out hands full of Twizzlers. So my over 1,600 is an estimate, but one I am comfortable making.

The first Trick or Treater arrived at 4:30 and after that, the flow was pretty steady. I saw a lot of Bat and Spider Man. Wonder Wonder and Super Girl were represented as well.

At one point during the evening, there was a line down the walk and down the sidewalk for a good 20 minutes.

 My Flying Ghost operated well all night. It did not jump the line once. That's probably my best results since building the Axworthy Flying Ghost five years ago.

Here are more assorted pictures.

Next year, we need a fence for both sides of the yard. We already have one for the Tombstone side of the yard. We need a fence for the Pumpkin side of the yard. Too many people just walk right on through and over a bunch of decorations.

Lots of people like to take pictures in front of the pumpkins, which is fine and I fully support. But poking and prodding carved pumpkins is not cool.

Many thanks go out to Ron, Kelly, Karen, Randy, Mark, Olga, Natalie, Rob and Mike for helping out. We could not pull all this off without their help.