TV Returns

A week ago, our Satellite TV crashed. The hard drive in the main unit crashed. This meant we lost all the shows we had recorded, we couldn’t record anything new, no access to replay, and no access to Netflix or Prime TV.

It was like, we had to watch regular television, which we hate. We like to pre-record shows and watch them at our convenience, which allows us to skip through the commercials.

The new cable unit arrived last Saturday. It was reasonably easy to install, just plugging it in and swapping out the old connections with the new.

Then I got this screen.

It was up there for quite a while and didn’t seem to be advancing or making any progress. 

So I called in for a little tech support and they were able to make it go.

We have TV again.

2024 Corbin Park Carriage Ride

Another Carriage Ride is in the books and I think everyone had a good time. We managed to fill the carriage for every trip around the park. A large crowd showed up on the lawn at 709 W Waverly Place and enjoyed the wide variety of treats, hot cider and a blazing fire.

I made the mistake of taking a bunch of pictures with this iPad which does not have a flash. So here’s what I got.

Randy and Karen joined us for the fun. If only we had snow!

Christmas Begins

We are now officially into the Christmas season because the tree is up.

We got it yesterday as the rain poured down. We gave it a night in the Carriage House to dry out and it was all ready for us today after we got home from church.

We still have a few baubles to add and of course, I have to set up the train. 

It’s a little different this year with the piano being at the musical hospital and all this space is available. I may try a new configuration for the train if I can get permission.

Tonight is the annual Corbin Park Carriage Ride. The horse drawn carriage will be here in about an hour and fun will ensue.

Barbecued Turkey

Okay, here we go! 

Today, I am cooking a 14 pound turkey on our Weber Kettle barbecue. I have not done a turkey before but I feel pretty confident about the outcome. The only real question is how long will it take.

I am using the charcoal snake method. This will allow me to cook the turkey for several hours without ever having to remove the lid to add charcoal. It should provide a nice even heat around 275° for up to six hours.

The deal is that you light one end of the snake and let it burn around the outside of the kettle.

Also, I’m going to sprinkle some damp apple wood chips on top of the snake. That will add a smoked quality to the cook. I will place a small pan of water in the center of the charcoal which will add a little moisture to the cook as well.

The turkey has been brining all night and I’m about to take it out and rinse it in the sink. That will remove any excess salt. Believe me, there is plenty of salt in that brine.

Here is the delightfully brined bird. It’s been soaking for about 18 hours.

I have removed the turkey from the brine and rinsed it in a sink full of water for 15 minutes.

We did the normal turkey prep…separating the skin and basting it with melted butter.

11:50 AM: I have lit the starter charcoal which I will pour onto the start of the charcoal snake when it’s ready.

12:15PM: The turkey is in.

I am using a bluetooth meat thermometer. You can see it on the left side of the bird just below the wing. The brand I'm using is called Meater. I really like it. It is essential for doing these long cooks on the barbecue.

I've used it a few times when I've done brisket. The nice thing about it is the data it provides to my iPad. 

It lets you see the temperature in the grill, the temperature of the meat and the temperature you are cooking to. It will even provide an estimated time to finish but there are a lot of variables with that and I generally don't pay attention to the time until the very end. It gives you a little guidance but I'm looking at the temperature of the meat. 

1:42PM: It seems to be cruising along quite nicely. I was expecting it to get up to around 275 but right now it’s at 320 and still climbing.

Right now, MEATER is estimating it will be done around 3:40. We’ll keep an eye on that and see how it does.

2:24PM: We couldn’t resist. We had to look. Susan wanted to know if we were getting any drippings.

The answer is not much in the way of drippings. It actually looks a little burned on one side. That may be from the apple wood chips I spread on top of the snake. I only soaked them for a couple of hours so they might be catching fire rather than smoldering. We decided to cover it loosely with foil.

The good news is we did not loose a lot of heat when we lifted the lid.

The latest data indicates it will be done at 4:00.

3:34PM: It appears we are on track for about 4:00 to pull the turkey off the barbecue. The temperature is up to 368 in the grill. I’ll have to remember that for the future. I can get it to 350ish when cooking with the charcoal snake.

4:08PM: I just pulled the turkey off the grill. We’re going to let it rest a bit and then I will carve.

It’s a little more charred looking than I would like. We’ll see if it burned under the skin.

5:30PM: I am happy! That was an excellent turkey. It was moist, just a hint of smoke and not salty at all. I was a little worried about that. Susan said she bit into a piece that was really salty but I never hit one.

I think I have a new tradition. Total cook time was about three and a half hours. The barbecue got up the 370 but it took a long time to reach that temperature. 

We have another turkey Susan bought in case this didn't work out. I am going to want to do this again for Christmas.

Thanksgiving Report and BBQ Turkey

 We were invited over to our friend’s house for Thanksgiving, kind of at the last moment. Susan and I had planned on a quiet Thanksgiving here at home. Since there was no pressure to present a perfect meal, I decided I wanted to try and barbecue the bird using the charcoal snake method.

That has now been moved to Saturday. Right now, I am boiling up a brine solution to soak the turkey in. I’m going to go for about a 16 hour soak.

The brine solution is a mixture of apple juice, kosher salt, brown sugar, garlic, pepper corns, bay leaves, rosemary, orange peels and water.

It’s been sitting on the stove for a while now and almost to a boil. Then it has to cool before I put the turkey in it.

Yesterday’s Thanksgiving meal at Randy and Karen’s was great. So great, I gained three pounds. There were two pies, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole and lots of stuffing…mostly me.

Piano Repair

We are doing a major project on the piano. 

We met Michael at the Fair back in September. He had a booth to get the word out about what they do. I told him we had an old Steinway that had a cracked soundboard. He said he could fix that and put a new finish on it too. I told him there will be no refinishing.

We made an appointment for him to come by, take a look and give us a quote.

Ultimately, we accepted his bid and today, they picked up the piano.

The bid for repairing the sound board, regilding the harp, restringing the piano, tuning it, plus pick up and delivery is just over 10 grand.

Now we have a big empty space in the living room. It’s going to be a couple of months.

Weather Report

It has been wet.

After our first snow of the season last week, it’s done nothing but rain since Wednesday. I just went out and checked my rain gauge and it had filled up to the two inch mark.

According to the weather almanac in the newspaper, we are about 2 inches short of our normal rainfall for the year to date, but we are about 2 inches over the normal rainfall for November. And there’s more rain in the forecast.

Even though my ski season has been cancelled, I have been looking at the Mt. Spokane website and watching the snowfall. 

They are hoping to open next weekend. At least, a partial opening.

Lookout Pass is open on the weekends and they have pretty good snow coverage.

First Snow

As we went to bed last night, we were getting the first snowfall of the year. They had forecast it and so I went out to check about 10:00 and the lawn was white. A very wet snow was falling. It turned the grass white but the streets and sidewalks were just wet.

By this morning, no sign of even a flake.

It's still early in the season. I wouldn't expect to get much snow yet. We have promising signs in the mountains. There are even a couple of ski hills that have opened, Lookout Pass for one.

  

2024 Great Pumpkin Toss

It is Election Day and to turn our attention away from that, we did our annual Pumpkin Toss today. Mark and Randy came over and we had quite a few pumpkins to toss.

I don't want to brag, but I think I was the only one to cleanly sink my pumpkins...at least a couple of them.

Zags Return

Today was the first day of College Basketball. That means the Gonzaga Bulldogs are back on the air for our viewing enjoyment.  Neither Susan or I are big basketball fans but we like watching our local team who, at the start of the season is ranked 6th.

Tonight they played Baylor here in town at the Arena. They lost the national championship game to Baylor three years ago. I think it was three years ago. I might need to be fact checked on that.

They looked really good tonight and they easily put Baylor away, winning 101 to 63.

Their next game is Sunday against Arizona State. It’s stood to have them back!

Halloween Wrap Up

Halloween is over and we are exhausted. 

I want to start by saying thank you to our helpers: Mark, Robba, Randy, Karen, Kelly, Ron, Bob, Dan and Gina. These guys showed up at noon to help us get everything set up. There is no way we could do this without their help. We are forever grateful.

But we have to start asking, how much longer are we going to do this...at least on this scale.

Here are some pictures.

I don't have an exact figure of trick or treaters but it was somewhere around 1,900. From here on out, I think I'll just tell people we get over a thousand kids and leave it at that.

Pre Halloween

We are ready for Halloween.

We have all the tombstones and assorted decorations out on the front porch. We have a crowd of people coming over to help at noon.

Most importantly, we finished carving our eight pumpkins.

Here they are.

We are loaded with candy and Susan has the food all set up for our helpers.

This will be our 19th Halloween on the park.   

Witches Ride

This is the weekend before Halloween which means that tonight is the Party Night in the bars. There was a day when I would be in the thick of it but those days are gone for this old man. And I'm okay with it.

At 4:00 today, a crowd will be gathering in the park for the annual Witches Ride. The group does a little dance routine on the basketball court and then everyone rides their bikes around the park, concluding at the Hub Tavern.

We're going to go over for the dance, drive to the Hub after and enjoy the festivities there for a while.

Our neighbors, Derek and Terry Green are hosting a Halloween Party and we will head over there around 7:00.

Susan and I have again entered drawings in the Hub Tavern Pumpkin Coloring Contest. I think Susan is going to win. As of last night, there were only four entries, so our chances of winning are pretty good.

Stand by for the results!

The results are in and as expected, Susan won the coloring contest. There was a late entry that knocked me out of second place.

The party at the Green's was a lot of fun. Lots of neighbors were there and there was a lot of great food. Plus Jello shots and I brought a bunch of ice shot glasses there were a big hit. 

Boiler Game Faux Pas

If not for a Technical Difficulty, today would be the end of the Boiler Game. It got down to freezing last night and it was pretty chilly.

Unfortunately, the boiler has been running for a couple of weeks and I did not realize it. I thought the "Heat" switch was turned off. I checked it a while back only to discover it was in the "On" position and had probably been running for some time.

So, you all get your money back. But hang on...next year is just around the corner.

We are continuing to prep for Halloween, which is next Thursday. This week we will be carving our eight pumpkins, loading batteries into equipment and lights and bringing all the tombstones down from the Carriage House.

We are covered for candy, having over 2,000 pieces. Some are lollipops and licorice whips, some are fun size and a few, very few, are full size candy bars.

Getting Ready for Spooks

Susan and I went out today to get our supply of candy for Halloween. By my estimation, we spent about $120.00 and have just short of 2,000 pieces of candy. That total includes candy we already had on hand. I expect our friends who come and help out will bring some too so we are pretty well prepped for Halloween, as far as candy goes.

Our front porch is pretty well decorated so we are definitely in the Halloween season.

Beware of Tracy King

We are only a few days away from the start of the Fall Equinox, which has out us in the wonderful place where we don't have to run the air conditioner at night. The weather has cooled off dramatically in the last week but not so much that it leaves you feeling like Summer is over. Even though Summer is over.

We haven't been doing a lot around the house other than the side yard. Susan has been working out there trying to get it cleaned up. It's the one area of our yard that we've neglected and it pretty much shows it. The grass is all dead and the gardens are just growing wild. 

We planted three arbor vitae's earlier this year and they have all died. Every time we try to fill in our hedge, they just don't make it. I'm sure I watered enough but the shrubs tell me different.

Next weekend, we are cleaning up all the stumps from the tree we took down. Some friends are coming over with a wood splitter and we are going to split them chunks o'wood.

The big challenge we are dealing with right now is an attack on our bank accounts. Yesterday, Susan got a call from a guy named Tracy King who said he was with Publishers Clearing House and we won two and half million dollars.

I was at the Hub when he called and he told her he had sent a verification code to my phone that we needed to confirm that we are who we are. I got the code on my text and was wondering what it was when Susan called. I ended up going home from watching the Apple Cup to call this guy back.

We are not stupid, just greedy. So we didn't give this guy any information. He already had all our phone numbers, our names and our address.

I finally got to the point where I told him this sounded like a scam and Tracy immediately told me to "Go suck off my wife." 

I'm not sure how they train people at Publishers Clearing House but I'm pretty sure that kind of language is not in their guide book.

I used several choice words myself and the phone was hung up.

Shortly after, we got a call from our bank saying somebody was trying to add a different contact phone to our account.

As of now, our bank account is locked, as is all my credit cards.

We have to go to the bank tomorrow and change all our accounts. This really sucks and I wish we hadn't let the ever so slight possibility of winning big money cloud our better judgement.

Of course, taking advantage of otherwise well meaning folks is how these utter pieces of shit make their money. I still have Tracy's number and I am tempted to call him up and have a conversation, but to what end. Even if he answered, he would just hang up.

So, I'm going to try and fight the urge and just live my life...and change all my passwords.  

Front Porch Rail Completion

 Susan has finally completed the front porch railing project and it looks great. Here are just a few pictures to show before and after.

She really put a lot of time and effort into this. It really came out well.

Front Porch Work

Things seem to be okay with the refrigerator. It does not appear to be leaking on the floor anymore and the ice being made is no longer brownish.

Susan is going great guns on the front porch railing. Here are some pictures of her progress.

She is using a lot of Wood Bondo. It’s an epoxy wood filler that sets up really hard and really fast. She only has a brief amount of time to apply the putty once it is mixed up. Therefore, she only mixes small amounts at a time.

I did some staining of two long lengths of quarter round that I need to finish up in the kitchen.

I hope to get a coat of varnish on it tomorrow and get this damn kitchen job finished.

Bird of Prey Sighting

I was sitting in the kitchen trying to avoid work when Susan shouted at me from the front door and told me to come out to the porch. She had been working on scraping the railing when this large bird of prey landed on the lawn. 

By the time I got out there, it had flown up into our chestnut tree and posed there long enough for me to get some pretty good pictures.

I have since gone on line to try and identify the race of this bird.

I think it is a Red Tailed Hawk. According to what I looked up, the Red-Tailed Hawk is the most common hawk seen in Washington. I don't have any good shots of its tail so I can't be sure. But the breast coloration and the color of the eyes make me think it's a Red-Tail.

I'm happy to entertain anyone who has a different or more educated  opinion.

In any case, it was pretty cool!