Ten Days to Halloween

Here is a picture that appeared on the cover of the Northwest Section of today's Spokesman-Review.

 I added the commentary.

Waverly Place Winery 2021

Hewlett-Packard was started in a small garage. Apple Computers was started in a small garage.

Likewise, the Waverly Place Winery is still in a small garage and not likely to change, unless we build a bigger garage.

Today we crushed 200 pounds of grapes that we purchased in Prosser last weekend. We have 100 pounds of Cabernet and 100 pounds of Syrah.

I tested the gravity on the two wines and it is up there. 1.110 for the Syrah and 1.100 for the Cab. We are looking at around 14% alcohol by volume.

I also completed a little work around the yard despite the half inch of rain that fell. We are supposed to get an inch on Friday.

I have put away the yard furniture and got some of the Halloween stuff down from the Carriage House. Look out for that bat!

R.I.P. Jim's Home Brew

It is official! Jim's Home Brew, one of my favorite businesses in Spokane, is no more.

I drove by yesterday and the building was a small pile of rubble.

I should have driven by on Monday. I've been keeping tabs on the building and should have realized it was coming down on Monday.

In any event, I will have nothing to do with Consumer Auto Liquidators (C.A.L.), who purchased the building, gave thirty day notice, and put Jim's Home Brew out of business.   

Trim Painting

I have completed most of my painting project.

I am going to wait until Spring to add a second coat.   

A Typical Retirement Tuesday

I have spent the day working on productive projects around the house. This is in spite of my having contracted the Covid 19 Virus. I am well past any major symptoms, having lost the sense of taste and smell. But they are back now and I am in quarantine until Friday.

I spent the day working in the yard. I am painting the trim around the base of the house. The same dark green that we painted on the front porch last summer.

Yesterday, I did most of the scraping. Today, I used my belt sander to sand out as much as I could from the trim. It's a pretty long stretch. From the front porch...

to the rear of the house...

and up onto the rear deck.

I managed to get the whole thing sanded and primed today. It took a while but I'm not on the clock. I'll do it in my own sweet retired time.

I'm pleased with my progress. I got everything sanded and everything primed.

If it doesn't rain tomorrow, I'll get started on putting down the dark green.    

Boiler Game Canceled

I have had to cancel the Boiler Game for this year. On Saturday morning, I noticed that the heat was on. I am not sure how that happened but I'm afraid it is a disqualifying factor for the Boiler Game.

It's really too bad because I had great hopes for a record this year.

Susan has gone to work today, having received a negative Covid test from the place to which she went. I am feeling better with my sense of taste and smell returning. No more Sluggo on the couch. It's back to life in the real world!  

Frustration and Covid

It is the time of year to start working on getting Halloween set up. We had no Halloween last year due to the pandemic. We have decided to proceed with the scary festivities for this year.

However,  a monkey has thrown a wrench into the works. I tested positive for Covid two days ago. Thanks to the vaccine, I have minimal symptoms. I'm feeling sluggish, sniffly, and my sense of taste and smell are on hiatus. Other than that, I'm feeling pretty good and am not really suffering.

Susan on the other hand is a twisted pile of seething frustration. She went to this local urgent care place (Indigo) for a test. She is feeling no symptoms but can't go to work until she gets a negative test result. 

She finally got a text this morning from them (Indigo) but when she clicks the link, it goes to a page that gives her no information about her test results, only that she did indeed show up there. Calling this place (Indigo) is like calling a brick wall. 

I think she is going to have to go up there (Indigo) and find out in person.

In the meantime, she is trying to work from home and can't completely access her programs at work. This causes a large amount of expletives' and unkindness to come forth from her angry, frustrated lips.

So I'm in quarantine for at least another week and Susan is beating her head against an intractable wall of frustrating frustration.

(Indigo) Not a fan

Editors Note: Italicized words should be expressed with distain and a sense of derision.

Susan eventually got her results and tested negative.  

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.

Lawn Service

 I have a new mower. It's rugged and sleek. It's sturdy and well built. Above all, it's sexy!

I call the new mower Susan, cuz that's her name.

Susan won't let me mow anymore. So she has been breaking out the Honda whilst I sip mint julips on the porch.

It's not quite that bad but if I want to mow, I'm going to have to do it while she is at work. That's how I do all the stuff she doesn't want me to do.

The big project for today is to get this cabinet

up these stairs.

From my preliminary investigation, I believe it can be done. The trick is going to be the switchback. I have cut a piece of cardboard to match the length and depth of the cabinet. According to my simulations, it should work. It seems like it will make the switchback.

In the end, we decided not to try it.

So we were looking at the cabinet and came to realize that it was put together like an Ikea cabinet. That meant it could be taken apart.

Sometimes, I'm such an idiot.

So I grabbed my power driver and a 5/32nd Allen Wrench and took it apart. The reassembly gave me a little trouble but I got it done.

Yea!

Mo' Yard Work

I don't think it would be going to far out on the hyperbolic ledge to say that we kicked ass today.

This is what the yard looked like yesterday.

Here we are after todays' work. I know that the side yard still looks like a barren wasteland but it is becoming a barren wasteland that we are controlling.

We got out into the yard about 1:00 and the goal was to get all the leafy, sticky, frondy crap into bags and off to the dump. By 2:30, we had to stop to allow a downpour to pass over us.

Once that was clear, we loaded everything into the truck and set off for the dump. We easily had 15 bags.

As we drove into the Waste to Energy Plant, there was a little fire at the entrance that was picking up momentum. I had my camera with me but did not have the presence of mind to use it.

It took about 20 minutes to get into the plant. It took about 15 minutes for us to unload. I should have taken a picture because I had my camera with me but did not have the presence of mind to use it.

From the dump, we went to Costco because Susan had seen a TV Stand there that she liked a lot more than the one she bought on line a few weeks ago. So we are going to take the loss on that table and use this much nicer one.

When we came out of Costco, it was just beginning to rain. We loaded the TV Stand box into the truck and headed for home. 

And that's where we are now. We have a good solid day of yard  work to be happy about and a rainy evening to enjoy instead of the month of heat we've had.   

Yard Work

The weather has finally calmed down  and cooled down to allow us to work in the yard. Susan pulled out the mower and took care of that job while I did some weed whacking.

Then we prepped ourselves for some messy shrub cleaning.

It was Phase Two of our cleaning out the leaves and droppings at the base of our Arbor Vitaes. I don't know how those things have been getting any water. There were so many years of leaves and bush detritus under them that the ground was totally covered by all the crap. I don't think very much water ever penetrated the ground.

Now they are clean and ready to receive water again. Tomorrow we will be cleaning up that row of leaves you see in the picture above and then we will lay down a new drip line for watering.

All this clean up means that there is going to be a dump run soon. Probably Monday.

I just love having a truck.

Here are some additional photographs of the shrubbery.

This job was long overdue. There were years of leaves under those poor bushes. It was really thick. I think we're going to see those things really start to thrive once we get the water on them.

Of course, we went to the pool once we finished.

Rain

The big news for today is that it has been raining. Not a lot but it's been enough that I'm not going to water today. The down side is that it is very humid out. Well...humid for Spokane. But the temperature is in the 80's today as opposed to the 103 mark we hit yesterday.

One of the things we got from Mom was this nice rocking chair that we wanted to put on the front porch. But first, we had to      Scumbag-Proof it from the Scumbags who slither onto peoples porches and take stuff.

I think we did a damn fine job. I placed an eye bolt into the corner of the front of the house and secured the chair with an eight foot chain. 

Eff U Scumbags!