Closing in on All Hallows Eve

I got home from work last night and got right to work on the ghosts. I had to re-string the whole thing, which I planned to do anyway this weekend. The line broke the night before which forced me to re-string early.

But it is done and up and running and ready for tonights Pumpkin Carving Party

The video appears much darker on the blog than in my camera. Nonetheless, the effect is tres bitchin'!

I know that pride comes before the fall, but I am very pleased with myself right now.

Giant Punkins

We have friends who have friends who grow large pumpkins for the pure joy of growing large pumpkins. At the end of the season, he has no use for them and so our friends take them. They spread them in the woods near their home for the deer but this year, they brought them to us.

Now we have large pumpkins and we are ready to use them. We will be carving them up on Friday and preparing them for our display of many punkins.


Conditions must be just right today because I returned home to find nary a leaf in a tree in the front yard. The work I did the other day to clear the sidewalk and walkway is history.

It's pretty amazing how deep the leaves are. I need to break out the snow blower. There is a sidewalk out there.


Finally, if you picked October 26th (my sister's Birthday) for the day we turn on the furnace, you win! Congratulations! Send in your winning ticket and we'll send you the ten thou...no twenty thous...ten million dollar winning prize money.


This is a record, breaking the previous milestone by eight days. I'm so happy about the money we've saved that I'm going to crank up the thermostat and go nuts for the next twenty minutes.


Heat in the privacy of your own home. What a country!

Artificial Punkin Retrieval

We broke out the pre-fabricated custom carved pumpkins that we stow away every year in a very secret place. I think there are 21 or 22 of them there on the couch.

They look pretty good on the stairs too.

Halloween is days away now. I had a minor catastrophic failure with the flying ghosts last night. I tightened the line that the ghosts hang from but my knot failed. I think I'm going to re-string the whole thing on Saturday. 


We continue to live without the furnace. It was below freezing last night and it will be again tonight. And yet, we are doing okay just using space heaters. 


But the time has come to fire up the boiler. I only need to place a couple small pieces of trim and then I can replace the radiator, fill the system and fire it up.


I'll try tomorrow!

One Week until Halloween

Opening night is such a C.F. Here's a video from today. I find that three ghosts makes all the difference.

I got a little yard work done but it won't last long. I expect this clean and semi-orderly setting will be gone by tomorrow.

I woke up this morning and thought a smelled a slight essence of wine. When we got into the kitchen this morning, we found this sight.

The little yeasty beasties have really been active. You can see lots of churning and bubbling going on in the bucket. The gravity reading has already dropped several points making this a 7% alcohol fluid at this point. It still has a ways to go.


The top of the bucket is a mesh bag containing all the grape skins, a few vines, and probably the remains of several spiders. The bottom is all juice. It still tastes very sweet which brings me back to my previous statement...it still has a ways to go.

Presenting the Debut of the Burke Version of the Axworthy Flying Ghost

The Boiler Game

We have begun the decorating for Halloween this week. Susan has been all over the inside of the house and I have been getting stuff outside. Here's a nice shot of the porch.

And below is a shot of the overall house as depicted in height. One can sort of see the skeleton hanging from the peak of the roof if one look carefully.

I will be starting to put up the Flying Ghost set up this weekend. It will be interesting to see if I can make it work from three posts.


In the meantime, we are still going through our day to day lives without any heat. The boiler remains off and it is getting chilly. We are using are space heaters in the kitchen, bedroom and bathroom so we really aren't suffering too badly...yet. But it's coming. Turning the boiler back on will be one o my other priorities this weekend.

Anniversary Number Se7en

Thursday night we bottled a batch of wine from grapes we bought last fall. It's a zinfandel and we got 29 7/8 bottles out of it. We have tasted it and are very pleased. I don't know how much it will mellow in the bottle, but if it mellows not an stitch, I will not be disappointed. It is very good as is.


It was an urgent item on our agenda to get this wine bottled as we wanted to take one with us this weekend as we ventured back to Prosser for another 100 pounds of grapes.


This year, we are making a Temparnillo. It's red, it's fruity, and I'm looking forward to making it and then drinking it.

Susan and I left town Friday morning and drove three hours to Prosser, Washington. It right there in the same fertile valley as Grandview, Sunnyside and Yakima. We stayed at a bed and breakfast in Sunnyside and really enjoyed it. We didn't feel like we were in somebody's house, the breakfast was great both mornings, and we watched two movies we haven't seen. Plus, we had a giant bathtub in our bathroom.

Again,we bought a LOT more wine than we planned on but this time, we didn't drink as much. It is very easy to get a buzz when you are going from tasting room to tasting room. We managed to avoid that this year.

We made a 20 mile journey to Columbia Crest Winery which is a giant winery in t6he style of what you might find in Sanoma or Napa Valley.

I got a bunch of pictures of trucks delivering grapes

We ended up buying a case of wine there because they were having a big case sale and it only cost us $30.00.

We picked up our grapes on Sunday at Vineheart, the same winery we purchased from last year. We gave Patricia a bottle of our Zin and we opened our 7/8 bottle to have her try it. She said she was impressed.

I don't think she was just blowing smoke. I know one thing. Susan and I both really like our Zin. That's all that matters to us.

We made it back into town by two, which allowed us to attend a company party at the Caterer Susan works for. Fabulous food and drink...a great way to end a road trip.

We got home and immediately set about the task of getting ready for Halloween.

It's just one thing after another.

Title Goes Here

The Countdown continues and we are harried, but it's nice to have something to do.

I discovered I have to be careful when writing the word "countdown" as I have a tendency to drop the "o" in a critical spot.

We successfully completed the skywalk job and did it in two days. We did two skywalks on Sunday, working until 9:30 or something. We got the third one finished on Monday night, and even made it home in time to watch "The Good Wife", which we DVR'd on Sunday...so it didn't really matter what time we got home and now I've wasted valuable vowels on a superfluous sentence.

Susan has not yet finished her wall papering in the Hall Alcove so I haven't returned the radiator to service so we still have yet to fire up the boiler. Mark October 2011 as a record setting year cuz I don't see the heat coming on before next week. I'm pretty sure that beats the previous record but I guess I ought to research that before making some outlandish claim.

A Mess o' Countdowns

I've been trying to remember to write something here but life in the real world has gotten in the way. That's why I will not be getting involved in any social networking on line. I spend too much time in front of a computer as it is. 


Autumn has finally arrived in the form of drizzily wetness. It has gone from gentle misting to a good driving rain. It's been pretty constant. Today was the first day I wore a coat as I went off to work this morning.


We have two countdown clocks going right now and a third more urgent countdown clock was just added.


The first clock is the Countdown to the Heater. I will look back but I believe Oct 8th is the record.


We have added a complication to this years Countdown to the Heater as the boiler is not ready to be fired up. I have a radiator off line and do not want to hook it up and fill the system until Susan finishes her wall papering in the hallway.


The approach of Halloween is also counting down and soon I will be working on the ghost in the front yard.


The new monkey in the Countdown is a skywalk window painting project that was thrown at us yesterday. It is for an event on October 22nd, which is just over two weeks away. We really didn't feel we have the time to do this but we also don't want to turn it down and have someone else waltz in and get their paint stained feet in the door.


So we are going to do it starting Sunday and are scurrying around to get some projects done before we loose the three days.

Flying Ghost Project Progress Report

A Video is worth 57 words!

And yet, I'm going to use some more words.

The two critical components to this flying ghost thing working is tension on the wire, and a light weight ghost. We have jettisoned the idea of the styrofoam skull head as it is just too heavy. So now we have a balloon draped with a light gauzy material. It think the stuff I bought is used for wedding veils.

It seems to be working and I don't have to build an elaborate pulley system to keep the cable from falling off.

In short, K.I.S.S. Keep It Simple Stan!

I would like to say that I have a whole new respect for the manufacturers of chairlifts.

Major Halloween Project Progress Report #1

What a productive weekend! A hearty pat on the back to Susan and to myself for our diligence and hard work. Wow! We are amazing!

With the pep talk out of the way, let's have a few details to end the self congratulations and let the facts do the writing.

Saturday was hot hot hot. I think we broke a record for the high temperature. It was into the 90's. That's nearly unheard of in Spokane in late September when Fall has just arrived. Activities were packed with me selling coffee at the Farmers Market and then helping my friend Gale with her organizational issues. That pretty much took me all day. Susan had to prepare food for the church potluck the next day and then had to work her catering job until almost tomorrow.

After church on Sunday is when we really went into gear. Susan was mudding, sanding and removing wall paper. I was outside with the Major Halloween Project. While the previous day had been record hot, yesterday was gale-force winds and dust in every crevasse. Plus a little bit o rain. But, I made good progress and solved a couple of problems I was having.

Okay, let's just get into it.

If one was to "Google" Axworthy Flying Ghost, one would come upon the Major Halloween Project to which I am currently undertaking. It is quite an elaborate display involving the basic chair lift concept. You hang a very light weight ghost form the chair lift cable and it flies around your yard. That is the hope anyway. I still have some tweaking to do.

Here is a short video to show where we are at.

Don't make fun of my ghosts. One is a styrofoam skull head that hopefully will become a more elaborate ghost. The other is a napkin. A test ghost. You're looking at a prototype that is still in its infancy.

So there you go! Halloween is 35 days away and I still have a lot of work to do.

Satellite Guy

DirecTV is smart. I was all prepared to really lay into the technician when he showed up today to fix the satellite. I have numerous problems with the way they schedule and their subsequent follow up.

But they were smart. They sent out the friendliest looking guy I have ever seen. I could hardly take out my frustrations on him. He was just so friendly, as friendly as he looked.

It took him a while to trace down the problem and he was very thorough...which means I'm happy. But instead of showing up at 2:00 as promised, he arrived at almost 4:00. He had left me a message on my home phone but not my cell, which is the phone I requested they use to contact me. Unfortunately, that directive never made it to Mr. Friendly.

The nice thing was that with all the extra time on my hands, I was able to get a good start on my Major Halloween Project.

More details will follow in posts to come.

Satellite Technology

Two years ago on the Fourth of July, we became viewers of Satellite Television. It has been a satisfactory relationship with nary a problem.

Then, at the end of August, we got the new big screen HiDef Telly and things have gone awry.

We lost satellite signal last Friday night. Up until then it had been working fine since it's installation. I was working on installing a new light switch in the hallway and threw a few circuit breakers to isolate the right circuit. In the course of tripping the breaker, I seemed to have blown out the satellite.

A guy came on Saturday (pretty damn quick response) and got us up and running again but when I came home tonight, it was not getting a signal again.

So I call in and let them know that it is not working and they tell me a Technician can come on Thursday between non and four. Then I hear myself say, "Do you mean to tell me that I will be without TV for two days?!" As if not having a television in the house is a matter of life or death.

Oh my God! Do you mean that my wife and I may have to actually talk to each other?

After bitching and moaning for a while, it occurred to me to mess with the Digital converter Box that Susan's boss gave to us. I had tried to set it earlier on one of our old TV's without any luck. I decided to try again and the difference this time would be that I would read the instructions.

Wow! That works...reading the instructions. We have over-the-air digital TV. I am still having a problem which I hope to rectify by calling their help line tomorrow. I cannot get channel four, which I know is there and available. I have to find out why the antenna is not finding it when it scans channels.

Channel Four is the local ABC affiliate and if I don't get it, we will be missing the premier of the best comedy on TV right now, Modern Family. That will be disastrous as Susan and I will have to talk...to each other!

Wine Champions

I did a bunch of yard work on Saturday and I'm pretty satisfied with what I got done. Not  so much what I got done, but the amount that I got done. There was raking, killing mushrooms, weeding, mowing, cleaning, watering...a whole host of outyard activities.

Susan got herself some new glasses, which took her a good portion of the day. Glasses are expensive.  It's as if they consider vision important.

Saturday evening, we went to a birthday party at the home of my former neighbors, Jim and Michelle. Michelle turned 50. It was nice to be back in the old neighborhood and to see my old house. Todd, who bought it, is doing some great stuff with it.

Sunday was the Fourth Annual SpokeFest. I tried looking through the paper this morning to get a report on the number of people that participated. They were expecting 2,000. It looked about 2,000ish. I'm surprised there wasn't a brief article reporting on it.

It was overshadowed by the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attachs on the World Trade Center. You might have heard of it.

There were lots of stories about 9-11 commemorations that took place, both locally and nationally. That took the brunt of the news coverage. There was even a tribute at the start of SpokeFest. A short speech by someone, followed by the longest, drawn out version of the National Anthem in four part harmony I have ever heard.

Anyway, we have now participated in all four years of the SpokeFest. Unfortunately, we are not bike people. We did the 9 mile course and even that took it's toll on us. My nether regions went numb by mile 8 and that is not a good feeling.

After a good bike ride, the thing to do is go to the Spokane Interstate Fair. Nothing better than walking around aimlessly for several hours on legs that are already not happy with you.

It took forever but we finally got over to the wine exhibit to see how we did in the judging. We did well!

The Blueberry Wine we made got Reserve Grand Champion. I think that's a runner up. I'm amazed as I do not feel the blueberry is all that good of a wine. It might be good for blueberry, but perhaps, this is why good wine comes from the grape vine and not the blueberry bush.

We also got a blue ribbon for the Pinot Gris as well as awards for the labels for both wines. Our friend Ellen got a Grand Champion award for her wine label, which was designed by Susan.

So...all in all, we are happy with the Better than Fare Fair results.

Labrador Weekend

The unofficial end of Summer has arrived and moved on but nobody told the sun. The forecast for the next week calls for hot, Hot HOT! I am not complaining. I have no problems with summer hanging around for another month if it so desires. So my musings over not using my air conditioner in the last post are all but null and void.

In the meantime, let's get to my Weekend Roundup, a complete breakdown of the events for Susan and I over the Labor Day THREE-DAY weekend.

We rode our bikes downtown on Friday night to attend "Pigout in the Park. It's Spokane's annual food festival with lots of food and bands and music and food. We ate our fill and made it back home shortly after 9ish.

This was the view from my Coffee Booth at the Farmer's Market on Saturday morning. I've been working this event for my friend Brian since the start of the summer. I'm there from 8:00 to 1:00. Saturday was not a great day for coffee sales. Even the Iced Coffee was slow.

Fortunately, one o'clock comes eventually and then I'm free for the day. I went home immediately because the DirecTV guy was there installing out Hi-Def system for the new TV. He hit a few snags during the install but was finally able to get everything running to our liking. I still haven't got the VCR integrated into the new system but people are telling me that is old technology. Nonetheless, I plan to hang on to it because it is the last piece of television hardware that I am familiar with.

I returned Brian's van and then I hit the Home Depot to cobble together some things I needed for some planned Sunday projects.

I'm trying to remember what we did on Saturday night but it is not coming to me. I guess we went into a Hi-Def watching overload that completely blanked out my mental receptors.

On Sunday we went to church and then returned home to begin our respective projects. Susan had to be at work for the catering company at 2:00 so her time was limited.

Her current project is to complete the stenciling in the entryway.

She completed two of four sides. I think it looks fabulous and it really draws your eyes up to the stenciling on the ceiling.

My project for the day was, get through it. I actually had three projects. The easiest one was to anchor the outlet in the entryway and get a nice faceplate on it. Well, I had found a lovely faceplate at the Depot and so I was able to accomplish the easy one in a short span of a profanity laced time period.

Then it was on to the back hall. It is very dark back there and would be ameliorated by an absence of darkness created by a light.

I wanted to place a light similar to this one shown above. We bought that one at the Depot a few years back so I was confident I would be able to get another.

HA!

I finally found one that I thought would work at Lowe's so I was ready to begin the project.

This is the wall in question where the light will go to eliminate the dark.

As one can clearly see, there is already a hole there where a former switch had been. Conveniently, one will also note that the hole has a fish tape line in it ready to pull new wire.

I was very concerned about running the wire and if I would be able to do it by myself. It turns out that running the wire was the easiest part of this install.

After cutting an access hole in the ceiling of the basement room below the hallway, I easily found the old knob and tube wire and fed the new wire in to place.

Then it was just a matter of cutting a hole of the fixture and dropping the wire through the short length to the switch.

All in all, I was happy with the result.

Unfortunately, Susan was not. She doesn't like the light fixture. It looks very similar to the one I was trying to match but that is not the opinion held by the only person who really matters.

A quick note about Norman the fish. I am sure I have referenced him in these pages before. Norman is our goldfish. Susan gave him to me a looooong time ago. He was just a little minnow back then. He has grown over the years and we have had to keep putting him in larger and larger tanks.

Norman has always been a bit neurotic. He is now approaching the end of his life and he is pretty beat up.

We should have flushed him two weeks ago but we just can't bring ourselves to pull the trigger. He is blind as he has had some serious eye issues, He kind of has a curved spine. And he has been beating himself on the rocks at the bottom of the tank which has left him with many open sores. He is not a pretty fish.

He started spending much of his time upside down. That's when the flushing conversations began.

He's still hanging there as of Labor Day and is spending much less time on his back.

Monday was a lazy day around the house. I had to go back to the Depot to focus my needs a bit since my original plan on my next project was not working out.

My next project was to fix the power outlets on the front porch. To make it short, it finally all came together and the power is functioning and available for the front yard.

The Labor Day weekend traditionally ends with the Spokane Symphony Concert at Comstock Park. We gather with family and friends for a picnic and then some great music.

The concert was cancelled last year due to a lack of funding. So we were all very pleased to hear that a local Savings and Loan, Sterling Savings ponied up the money for the next three years.

Here are a couple of shots from the concert. It is a melancholy time for me as it signals the end of summer. Also, I ate some melons and I saw a collie.

Now it is onward towards Autumn.

September is Here

You can tell it's September as the sun is gone by eight and I haven't had the air conditioner going at night for the last two evenings. In fact, we had our first significant rainfall in over a month on Wednesday night. That gave me a night off from watering, which
I have been doing a particularly crappy job of.

Now we are coming into the Labrador Weekend, which means lots of activities and projects. It is in fact, the start of our Fall Home Remodeling Season Marathon. Nothing in particular is planned. It's just nice to give it a name. Makes it seem like we have a plan.

I'm not going to go into now. I'll report after the fact.

Have a GREAT Labor Day!

The Scroungers

When we were looking to buy our house, we knew the dish washer was sub-standard. It was missing wheels on the racks, which made rolling it in and out difficult to do. Once we used it a couple of times, we realized it is below sub-standard. It is an electric plate wetting device...nothing more.

Well, it has been almost se7en years now and we finally got around to replacing the dishwasher. We have a beautiful new stainless steel Whirlpool...well, new to us.

The only reason we got around to replacing it now was because we came across one that was free.

Susan's hairdresser recently remodeled her kitchen and her boyfriend insisted she replace her perfectly good dishwasher with a new one. So she had a perfectly good dishwasher to get rid of and we had a need for a perfectly good dishwasher. It happened to come up in conversation the last time Susan had her hair done.

Here is a picture of the piece of shit Plate Wetter.

Susan is a semi-professional scrounger. She would like to go Pro but that does require an element of time to devote to the profession that neither of us currently has. But she knows a good scrounge when she finds it and she jumped on this one. Her hairdresser didn't want anything for it other than for us to haul it away. We happily obliged but included a few bottles of wine prior to the haul off.

Here is a picture of the dishwasher hole.

I had a couple of issues installing the new dish washer. Thankfully, our house painter, Ronnie was there to save me before I started drilling holes and cutting into floors. All in all, the re-installation went well and there appears to be no leaks or problems.

Here is a picture of our new, fully operating, mostly free dishwasher.

Now I have a P.O.S. Dishwasher that needs a ride to the dump. I don't even want to burden someone with this useless pile.

In other scrounging news, check out the new television with stand and DVD and stuff. This came to us through my Mom's friend, who is moving to Seattle and did not need this anymore. We were happy to pay her but she refused. Wine is in her future as well.

Getting this all set up was a major nightmare. It still isn't quite right. And really, a 42 inch screen is a bit large when you only sit four feet away from it. Nonetheless, one doesn't pass up a major scrounge whwn you comes upon it, does one!?

I might normally be reluctant to talk about all this new expensive stuff that has come to us. With the InterWebs and the proliferation of people that could read this and decide to liberate this equipment from us, it does not appear to be the smartest move to talk about your stuff, show it off and even offer a road map to how to get to it.

However, we have invested heavily in a pretty good alarm system with a very reputable Security Company and we are very good and setting the alarm when we leave.

Also, please note the picture below.

We both know how to use it and I for one, do not have any qualms about pointing it and (if need be) firing it in the direction of an uninvited, soon to be former scumbag.

So it was a very busy couple of days with lots accomplished in the area of Home Entertainment and Kitchen Convenience. We ended the weekend with a lovely pork roast on the spit over the Que. I just love that rotisserie and it is the best way to cook...ANYTHING.

You really must try my Kraft Mac n'Cheese on a skewer.

The End of a Se7en Year Struggle

Shortly after we moved in to this house almost se7en years ago, I started attending the monthly Neighborhood Council meetings. Every neighborhood has a council that reports to Neighborhood Services that reports to the City Council. It's a nice way to keep in the know about what is going on the neighborhood and the city.

The problem is that I got sucked in to management. I was the Vice-Chair for a couple of years, the Chairman for a year and now I am in my second year as Secretary.

I am giving this background in order to explain this amazing thing that has taken place in the park.

Back when I first started going to these meetings, we were dealing with the issue of lights in Corbin Park. The east end of the park was very dark due to a lack of lightness in that region. The Emerson-Garfield Neighborhood Council had money to disperse for various projects and we had allocated $37,000.00 to put lights in the park. This was 2004 when we first allocated the money.

This is now 2011 and there finally be lights in Corbin Park. It took nearly 7 years and A LOT of red tape to skim through, but the lights are in. They were installed on Wednesday and last night (Thursday) they were lite up.

Yea, Us!

The next hurdle will be to replace the existing lights in the park with this beauty of a retro light pole, which we had enough in the budget to buy. Getting the Park Dept. to install them is the hurdle.

Assorted Items

I have been busy this week helping my friend Gale with her hoarding issues while Susan has been fussing over a small section of ceiling in the hallway. She also did a little touch up painting on the stair walls. Tonight, Susan is out with "Da Girlz" and I have the evening to myself. It is long past time to mow the lawn so that will be my main focus of attention. I'll do a couple of other little items and I am thinking of purchasing a small portion of cow meat to alite unto the grill.

We have made no further progress in the hallway project since before Margaret arrived so we will soon be needing to return our attention to that.

We have been wanting to start getting some pictures up on the stairway wall but I am afraid to start punching picture hook holes in the wall. We worked so long and diligently on that surface. The thought of filling it with holes, even though they be covered by pictures, does not sit well with me.

Weekend of Toil

We finished our sky walk painting project last night. We meant to do it Saturday after the bike ride but it was Saturday after the bike ride and neither of us was in any shape to do anything but not paint in a sky walk.

It only took us two and a half hours. Things were complicated by a slightly narrower window pane than the other sky walks so we had to re-adjust our stencils to accommodate the width. That added a little time but other than being a minor headache, was really not an issue. I don't even know why I brought it up.

Anyway, now we can return to working on the house.

Or not!