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I woke up this morning on my day off to wonderful rain. I guess about a quarter inch fell over the night and into the morning. It's the first rain we have had since July 27th and that was a minuscule .02 inches.
Whatever the amount of rain that fell was, it knocked the smoke we have been inundated with out of the sky. I could see Mt. Spokane this morning.
We made some progress in repairing the ceiling panels in the Dining Room. Susan did what she could do to the panels and now it was time to get them back up. We used a whole tube of liquid nails on Panel Number One and got it up on the ceiling. However, we had a major problem in that the panel was kind of bowed and it did not want to stick up.
So we improvised a support beam. I grabbed an extension pole we use for paint rollers and extended it as far as I could. We placed a short 2x4 up against the panel and them propped the pole up against it to keep it in place.
Susan them built up a base of 2x4s on the floor until it reached the pole. Then I fine tuned it with shims until the support held itself in place. That is one Mickey Mouse piece of engineering.
We are leaving it in place for 24 hours and we shall see how it holds.
Arnie and Rob are two of my oldest friends that I still have regular contact with. We've known each other since Kindergarten. Arnie lives in San Francisco with his wife, Haley. Robba lives here in town and recently retired...so we hate him.
A month ago, Arnie e-mailed to Rob and I and said that he and Haley are planning a trip to Spokane where we will all go out to Rob's lake place and enjoy a long weekend together.
So we planned and worked the numbers and set this past weekend for the festivities. We would all go up on Friday morning and stay until Sunday afternoon.
Rob has a great lake cabin at Coeur d'Alene lake that his Dad built in the 60's. It's very comfortable and sleeps about 90 people. It has all the comforts of home except TV and the Interwebs. TV is available if you have a DVD.
So the stage is set for our wonderful weekend.
Arnie and Haley flew in to town about 7PM on Wednesday. I picked them up and brought them back to the house where Susan was preparing a lovely dinner.
We sat around and ate and drank and chatted but we were all in bed by ten.
I had to work on Thursday and so did Susan. So I left my car behind for Arnie and Haley to go out and adventure around the area.
Thursday night was a trip to Spokane Indians Baseball. They won!
Friday morning we had a leisurely breakfast and finally got around to heading for the lake around noon...with a stop at the Hub.
We arrived at the lake about 1:00. We got ourselves unloaded and into our rooms and then set out for the dock. Many beers were consumed while we sat on the dock and occasionally jumped in the water.
At 5:00, we went up for cocktail hour. Rob made margaritas and we prepped a fabulous dinner. The drinking continued into the evening as the sun set and darkness enveloped the deck.
Our wives all went off to bed about 10:00 and that left the boys and a bottle of whiskey all to ourselves.
At some point, I believe Rob said, "Let's go skinny dipping." Without a thought, we threw off our clothes and dashed down to the dock and jumped in. It was fabulous!
To get back to the cabin, one must climb a long flight of stairs.
It begins here.
As we stumbled back up to the cabin, I climbed up on hands and feet to just short of that bench. Then I lost my balance and rolled to the right. That vegetation at the top of the wall is a thorny bush. I rolled my naked body right through that bush and six feet down to the beach...landing on my ass.
Here is the scene of that bench the next morning. I sat there for quite a while. I finally hiked up to the cabin, leaving a small trail of blood all the up.
I have a series of many scratches from just under my left armpit, wrapping around to my butt and on down my legs.
It was a wonderful weekend.
I have done a horrible job of updating our progress on the TV Room. Nor have I waxed on about life in general here in the Summer of '18.
We are in the middle of a hot streak as far as the weather is concerned. The official high temperature yesterday was 102 but I saw as high as 104 on a couple of signs.
I have noted before that we have the best neighbors. Neighbors with cars, trucks, tools and pools. We have made great use of our neighbors pool this summer and especially during this stretch of heat.
Along with the heat, we are experiencing hazy skies due to forest fires from around the region. I don't think there is anything raging in our immediate region but we sure are smokey.
Tasks for today are many and varied. Susan wants to start cleaning the house a bit for friends who are visiting later next week. But first she is trying to repair the dining room ceiling panels I so effectively destroyed several weeks ago.
For my part, I'm trying to run a new phone line and re-run the cable line to a different wall in the TV Room.
Last week, I was able to add two new outlets to the room. I'll update this later.
4:15PM: Both Susan and I have done well today. Susan seems to be somewhat satisfied with her work fixing the ceiling panels. I think they look pretty good.
The panels are drying for a while. We are in no hurry to put them back up until they are ready.
I was most successful in moving the cable line, which I have proved that it is in working condition. I also was successful moving the phone, but it has not yet been tested.
To do the work, I had to climb into the hole shown above and crawl back to the space under the TV Room.
It is a dark, foreboding space with only enough headroom to crawl, kneel or sit. It wasn't terribly difficult to deal with the cable but the phone line offered a number of challenges. I had to fish a lot of wire through the width of the house. I left a string behind in case I ever need to fish something across the span again.
I should finish up and check that the phone line works but I'm fairly confident it will and the pool is calling. It's time to get a couple of beers and head for the pool.
