Goodbye Summer

The Autumnal Equinox hit today around noon o'clock. It was a nice day, sunny with a bit of briskness to the air. A perfect day to welcome the Fall.

The main event of the day was acquiring a new Cement Bench for the front garden. You may recall that our old one disappeared a year ago on June 1st.

I finally bit the bullet and purchased one through a local cement statuary company for $168.00 under the guise of a birthday present for Susan. Her birthday is in July. This is September. 

This one came with a built in security cable to make it a little harder for some Scumbag to haul it off. See the chain?

And we had to return TinMan to the bench. He's very kitschy but I somehow like him. I've even given him pronouns.   

Finally, Rain

For the first time in what seems like a very long time, it is raining. I mean, substantially raining. It started lightly yesterday afternoon and continued sporadically today until about an hour ago when it let loose.

We are on the verge of having a half inch fall between yesterday and today. At least, that's what my rain gauge indicates.

Today's newspaper said that we are likely to get more rain this weekend than we got in all of July and August combined. That's not hard to believe because I don't think it rained at all in July and August was very sparse.    

A Day at Cd'A

Today, I rode out to Coeur d'Alene Lake with my friend Rob. He has a place out there and he needed help closing it up.

We didn't do a full shut down. He'll go out later this year to drain all the water and winterize the cabins.

Today we hauled the gangplank from the shore up onto the main dock. There it will sit in its winter home down the bay.

Rob has been doing this for years by himself. Since I am now a retired person of leisure, he invited me to help. Although he didn't really let me help much.

Here he is with a strap attached to the gangplank that is wrapped around him as he pulls the gangplank to the dock. All I did was help lift the end up on the dock, slide it forward a little bit and then took a bunch of pictures.

Afterwards we barbecued some Brats and drank some beers.

It was a good way to spend the day.

Chop Saw

I solved my chop saw conundrum today by purchasing a new one. Well, new to me. I'm not paying those high retail prices for a saw at Home Depot that I can get for half price or more at the local pawn shop. Pawn One, to be exact.

I'm quite happy with it.

It helped to turn that unsightly pile of scrap wood into nice little pieces for the fireplace.

As a bonus, it came with a nice sharp blade.

That pile is significantly larger now but I forgot to take any pictures.
   

Interstate Fair 2021

We went to the Spokane Interstate Fair today.

It was better than last year's since it was canceled due to Covid. But because Covid is still around, it was extremely scaled down.

For instance, they did not have a wine competition this year. The exhibits were about 50% of the number they would normally have been.

There was lots of food but two Fair favorites were conspicuously missing. The Shriners Elephant Ear booth was closed. No activity. 

And the Boehm's Chocolates ice cream bar was missing.

With all that was missing, it didn't prevent me from spending $55.00 in no time at all.

Messy Space

 I had a very productive Friday. I got to work on cleaning up the area between the garage and the Carriage House. It was full of mostly scrap wood and a lot of garbage.

I loaded the garbage into the bed of the truck and I'm going to the dump tomorrow with Mark and bunch of his garbage.

I ended up with this pile of wood that will soon become fire wood. That round table you see is going to remain intact. The rest gets cut up into easily handled fireplace lengths.

I would have gotten started on that today but my chop saw is no more. The safety switch on the trigger seems to have a problem completing the circuit. I can only turn the saw on some of the time. It's quie annoying and therefore, toast.

Labor Day Float

 It has been a wonderful Labor Day Weekend. The weather was fantastic all three days. Hot, but not too hot. We had some excellent food and there was of course, plenty of beer.

We rounded off the weekend today with a float on the Little Spokane.

With our friends Randy and Karen, we parked a car at the confluence of the Spokane and Little Spokane rivers. We put in at the Robinson property and took a three hour tour.

The highlight was passing this moose who was happily grazing in the river. We kept our distance as we passed her and she didn't seem to pay us much attention. 

If only we had seen a squirrel too!    

Labor Day 2021

It's Labor Day weekend which means the unofficial end of Summer. I looked back at my posts from last year to see what we were up to. We were varnishing the floor in the TV Room and cooking a brisket on the barbecue.

This year, we don't have anything as ambitious planned. I have just finished staining and varnishing a shelf for the armoire we are using as a stereo hutch. I think we'll be cleaning out the old and moving the new into place.

I'm going to work on the hot tub. It needs a cleaning and a filling, followed by a servicing. When last I had it filled, the breaker in the tub was flipping off when the heater was turned on.

The first thing I'm going to do is glue a piece of tile into place. That means I'm off to the General Store for some Gorilla Glue. But first, my final visit to Jim's Home Brew, which is closing forever after today.

5:28PM: As usual, some other stuff got in my way and prevented me from replacing the tile. It's not a problem though because I managed to get the hot tub cleaned out.

It's been sitting empty since last Fall and it had some small puddles of water and some badly decaying organic matter...mostly leaves.

So I got it scrubbed out pretty well and it is filling now. I'm going to run some chemicals through it to clean the jets and all the attached tubing.

Then I will drain it tomorrow and glue the tile in place and hopefully, refill the tub by the end of tomorrow. At 500 gallons, I'm using a lot of water this weekend.

For now, the tub seems to be heating but we shall see how long that lasts.

9:24PM: We have just returned from the Hub where we watched the first half of the WSU vs Utah St Football contest. It was a very low scoring half with the Cougars putting up 9 goal scores and the Utahians placing 5 goal scores. In the end, the Cougs lost by 3.

We barbecued some tri tips but the cat got lost so mine was slightly overcooked while we looked for her somewhere in the yard.

I drained the tub mostly after running the chemical stuff through the jets. The water was very cloudy and it seems like I may need to fill and drain a couple of times.