Vacation - Four Days and it's Over

I have just gotten up and begun my day. I got up because I had to get the garbage out. But Susan did it when she left for work. I guess I could go back to bed, but I'm already up and have a nap scheduled in a couple of hours.

So, my first thing this morning is to shave off the goatee.

Well, almost.

I'm going to shave the Custer chin off tomorrow. I don't even feel comfortable being seen in public with this look. But it's okay for a comedy value here on the blog.

Now I'm going to take my new look and run over to the General Store to buy an air filter for the car. Then I'm going to drop my car off for a tune up. It's not running great and there is something wrong when starting it. It takes about three tries. It might be serious. It could well be the end of the car.

10:45AM: The car is over at the oil change place. It's costing $200.00 because I'm having them replace a belt. Every time I go to one of these oil change huts, I feel like I'm getting ripped off.

While the car is being worked on, I'm going to work on the front window in the TV Room. 'Bout time! 

Hey! I just thought of something. Anywhere I go out there in public, I'm going to be wearing a mask, so it doesn't matter what ridiculous style I come up with for my chin.

1:12PM: I'm back with the car and it still has a problem with starting. I didn't expect the Oil Change guys would be able to look at it. I'll try to take it in next week.

I got the windows done but not really. I still need to do some work on the locking clasp. It's not a good fit yet.

I guess I'll get the deck chairs down from the Carriage House.

1:31AM: Okay. That's done! I've got a few more little things to do and one of them is going to be the Hub Tavern.

3:48PM: Turns out I haven't made it to the Hub yet. Susan is home now so it is time to start celebrating the weekend. And that will happen at the Hub.    

Vacation - Fi5e Days and Counting

Today is canoeing day. I've had my breakfast and read the paper. Now I have to get in the shower and prepare myself to go to the river.

Once that is out of the way, I can buckle down and finish my work on the TV Room front window.

Pictures to follow later!

Later: I took a shit load of pictures. Mostly because my camera has the motor drive function that just snaps away. I took over 180 pictures today. Here's the best of them.

I don't think there are any Pulitzer's in there but I had fun making them.

Today is also the Annual Marge Arndt Pool Plunge. We met across the street with some fellow plungees and indulged in the cold crisp waters of the pool. 

Another great day of vacation.

Vacation - Six Days To Go

I slept in a little bit today which is my prerogative and I make no apologies for. Todays marks the half way point of my time off. I have been enjoying the week off immensely and have been imagining it as if I were retired. It looks to be another great day and I'm trying to organize my schedule. 

I think I shall mow and get that out of the way. Perhaps I can fit in a trip to the river later but I think I will wait until tomorrow. It's supposed to hotter tomorrow and I need to be available at 3:30 today for an appointment with a Financial Advisor.

12:58PM: I've been out working in the yard for about two and half hours. I still have some work to do but I'm going to take a break with a free pizza slice and a beer at the Hub. Back shortly.

3:20PM: I have to get out of these work clothes for our 4:00 appointment with a financial guy.

It's after 7 now and I am full. After meeting with the financial advisor, I went with Susan and her girlfriends to the Cathay Inn. I had my usual, the Number 6 and ate most of it. I have some chow mein and some rice to nibble on today.

Another good day of vacation! 

Vacation - Se7en Days Left

 Waking up at 7:00 is so civilized and a wonderful way to start the day. I'm not prompted by an alarm to get up. I'm not thinking about my agenda for the day. I just get up when I'm ready. Coincidentally, I'm ready at 7.

Now, time to think about the agenda. It's a nice day out so I'm going to get some paint on the deck railing. This is something we have learned we need to do every other year. The railing is just too exposed, too abused by the elements of the earth warming around it on an ever growing basis for the paint to stick around for very long. And so, we adapt, we overcome, we improvise, and the railing gets painted.

I really want to make it out to the Little Spokane and drop the canoe in the river. I think I will schedule that for tomorrow at some point. 

I also need to acquire some peat moss. I want to mix it into the front yard dirt patch before I lay down the seed.

For now, I'm eating some bacon, enjoying a nice cup of decaf coffee with Irish Cream generously slopped in and reading the newspaper.

9:28AM: I clean and refreshed and I have a clean shower. I always wait too long to clean the shower.

I just turned on the tractor sprinkler in the backyard and I'm warming some more coffee to keep me company as I hand water the parking strip on Wall street. It gives me a nice chance to be contemplative whilst accomplishing an task. My next task, and it is no minor feat, is to find the right color of paint I'm going to use on the deck railing.

10:42AM: I found the paint with alacrity, sagacity, and my thesaurus. I just finished my coffee on the front porch. It is a great looking day, perfect for painting a rail. Here I go!

5:16PM: I did great on the railing.

It's not an intensive re-paint. Just getting the rails looking good.

I made it to the Hardware store and found peat moss. I had to make a second trip because I forgot to bring a $10.00 off coupon I had.

I stopped my the house of my pal Jerry, only to learn they are packing up the stuff and leaving town for a year. He and Janet are letting their new pastor live there for a year. They are going to travel around in the motorhome he's had for a few years. Catch later, Jer!

I got the peat moss spread and it pretty much filled up my bare patch. I need to get another bag and some more grass seed. But my patch has a head start.

I climbed up on the roof and retrieved my weather station. Most of the components on it stopped working a while ago. The wind speed directional indicator hasn't work for over a year. The rain gage kind of worked. I think only the thermometer worked.

I got some nice pictures though.

When Susan got home and went out for her run, I decided to hop on the bike and go for three laps around the park. That's three miles to you and me.

It was a bit of a workout and it definitely gave me a workout. The good news is that my feet didn't hurt when I was done.

Vacation - Eight Days Left

I'm not going to go into details but Blogger has a problem with their editing software. If I add pictures or images of any kind, I have to come back and edit after publishing the post because the type size is all messed up. It's annoying but I don't know how to fix it and they don't seem concerned.

Hi, how ya doing? I'm on my Monday of Vacation Week. Today I got up and got vaccinated. So far, no repercussions from the second Moderna shot. I'm happy for that.

After the shot, went north to the County Dump Site and got rid of 300 pounds of leaves. My car does not smell like dirt but I did get my shirt and jeans all dirty.

Did I mention there were nine bags and they were really packed in?

On my return home, I stopped at Winco Foods to get some peanuts for the squirrels and some decafe coffee for me.

By then, it was well past time for breakfast so I indulged myself at Dolly's Cafe. Eggs Benny - Good!

I took a trip to the valley to see about getting my tool belt repaired. It's the one I use at work and I had worn out the pocket where I clipped my measuring tape. I have been lamely clipping my tape to the belt itself but it never sat right and would fall off ALL THE TIME!!!

The guy at Indiana Harness trimmed a little leather, put in some new rivets, charged my five dollars and sent me on my way.

With that completed, it was time to work in the yard. 

I'm going to attempt for about the fifth time to fill in this bare section of dirt, which should be grass. I spent two hours out there turning the soil, loosening the soil, and mostly hitting roots.

Tomorrow, I'm going to get some Peet Moss and mix it in with some garden dirt I bought. Then I'll throw in the seeds and see what happens.      

Vacation - Nine Days Left

 The weather did not cooperate with my plans yesterday so I had to do things like, go to the Hub and eat pizza. I also took a nap.

Today does not look promising for a great weather day as well so I plan to work on the windows in the TV Room. I have to fix a glitch I caused on one window. When I placed the side jamb on the window, I put it in too tight and now the window won't open all the way up. I have to pull the side jambs and reset them. Then I'll be adding a handle and a sash lock.

I would also like to spread some garden dirt I bought yesterday and get some grass seed down on a bare patch of the lawn.

I'm not going to get any of that done if I keep sitting here posting this important information. It's 11:11 AM. Let's see how I do!

3:03PM: Here's what happens when I'm not paying attention to Home Remodeling projects.

You get curtain rods installed in all the wrong ways.

It's supposed to be like this.

The rest of the work I did was outstanding.

It was pretty easy to remove the side jambs and replace them so the window opens and closes easy. Not that we'll ever open it, I think.

I got the handles on both windows and the locking cleat on the east facing window. I need to do a little more work to get the front window complete. I realized I still needed to stain the side jambs for the front window. The fact that I found them out in the Carriage House is pretty fantastic. They've been out there all winter.

Speaking of staining, it's one of the things I do best. Especially to shirts and certain parts of my pants.

Here is proof that I have the side jambs for the front window and they are now stained.

The curtain in the middle will go at the top of the north facing window and a longer lace curtain will take it's place. But hell, it's a start.

Susan is outside doing in little house plant gardening. She is cutting off a lot of growth.

Here it is just after 3 and I have met my goals. That means I need new goals.

4:09PM: Susan is finishing up her plant work and I have just finished loading 9 large garbage bags of leaves into my car. I'm going to take them to the county dump site out by Chattaroy in the morning. I have to be out north for my second Covid vaccine so I'm trying to be efficient. That efficiency means my car is going to smell like dirt in the morning. Even worse, I don't think I'll have time to do the dump first and make it to get my vaccine at the appointed time. I'll have to do the vaccine first. Which means I'll smell like dirt at the vaccine office.

In any event, it is time to visit the Hub.

Vacation: T-Minus Ten Days

 I'm off of work for the next ten days. I plan to get a lot of stuff done. Here is my list.

• Complete work on windows in TV Room
• Cut down dead Arbor Vitae at back of house
• Clean up wood pile
• Take a load of crap to the dump
• Go canoeing on Little Spokane
• Clean hot tub, fill it and have technician look at heater short out
• Annual Majorie Arndt Pool Plunge - April 29th
• Reorganize Carriage House Main floor
• Remove Weather Station TriPod from roof
• Remove Heat Cable from roof

I will be adding to the list as I discover more items but that should keep me busy for a couple of days.

2:01PM: I went out about 10 and got to work on the dead Arbor Vitae. That was probably the easiest thing to accomplish on my list. 

It took about 5 minutes to cut it down and 30 minutes to clean it up.

I then worked on the wood pile and I am happy with the progress there.

I intended to go out to the Little Spokane and drop the canoe in the water. But the water coming down from the sky changed that plan. Instead, I went to the General Store and bought some dirt.

Next I stopped and took some pictures of the White Elephant. It was an iconic Spokane Army Surplus store that closed last year. The building is going to be torn down soon and I wanted pictures.

I decided to use some free pizza slice coupons we had and grab some pizza and eat it at the Hub. While at the Hub, I watched a spring college playoff game between North Dakota State and Eastern Washington University. EWU was ahead for most of the first half but NoDak caught up and overtook them (21-20) just as the half ended.

I'm back at home now and writing this update.

It kind of feels like it's time for nap.

Front Porch Opening Day

It's a beautiful spring day and I've got work to do. I am going to mow. The lawn doesn't really need it but I can clean things up quite a bit. 

But first, I need to clean things up quite a bit. I have a bunch of branches all over the back yard to clean up. I've already been out to get this computer running properly. You can tell it has been straightened out because you are reading this.

It not been starting up properly and never gets to the main menu. I have tried running diagnostics on it but with no results. Then I carry it over to Friendly Computers, they plug it in and it boots up. The computer is making me look stupid.

Okay, out to the yard.

5:35PM: We've been sitting on the front porch for an hour. Despite that, we were both productive today. I mowed the lawn, mostly sucking up leaves rather than grass. I harvested a galore of leaves, which equals about se7en bushels. I got the hoses connected and did some watering. I also got a lot of the tree branches in the backyard cleaned up.

Now I have to fire up the barbeque for some early season grilling. Pork chops and asparagus.

Curtain Rods and Caricatures

It's a pretty nice day out and we are being really lazy. It's 2:00PM and I just got up from a good hour and a half nap. It was great! But come on. Let's do something!

We are back from the Home Depot to buy curtain rods for the TV Room. Susan spent most of yesterday sewing these lace curtains that her sister sent her. They're very similar to the curtains in the living room and dining room.

But they do require curtain rods. I thought this was going to be something easy to get. We don't want anything elaborate. Just simple, small golden curtain rods with a simple, small golden finial on the end. How difficult can that be to obtain.

Apparently, it can be quite difficult. Nothing at the General Store and nothing at the Depot. Susan mentioned that the last time she bought these, she got them on line.

The newspaper featured this full page, suitable for framing poster in the Sports section and it's really good.

For the most part, the caricatures are spot on. It's a nice way to remember the team. The sad part is, in a year, I won't remember any of their names. So I added them to the poster.

    

Pile of Charred Hoops Hopes

Well, I've had a couple of days to process everything and I'm coming to terms with it.

Gonzaga lost. They lost bad. They lost by 16 points. They were never really in the game.

Now that I've had time to think about it, I've come to realize that it couldn't have gone any other way. 

Trying to go for a perfect season is just too unreasonable of a goal. It's just too much to ask for. If they would have lost a couple of games during the season, there would not have been the huge pressure hanging over them for the final, and arguably most important game.

Still, they had a good season and I'll be watching them again when November comes around.  

Gonzaga's Big Night

Spokane is not the kind of place that shines in the national spotlight. We're not comfortable with it. It makes us nervous. 

So with G.U. going up against Baylor in tonight's NCAA Basketball Championship game, the spot light is bright. It is sharp. It is unyielding. And it is angry.

We are leaving right now to go watch the game and find out how angry. 

Stand by:

I don't wanna talk about it.