Month: December 2020

This week was a “lazy” week. With the arrival of very cold weather, some snow, and Christmas Day, only a few projects received attention.

Pam continued to work on her project of adding material to the new drapes. This involves a combination of sewing machine work and time-consuming hand hemming.

Another of Pam’s projects was adding a sign above the kitchen entry, going into the living room:

I went through more boxes in the garage and scanned a few more slides. Minor basement work was done to clean it up a bit; I removed many of the old, and now unused, wire clips and nails from the beams.

Another of my projects was to replace the wick in my old Aladdin TR3000 kerosene heater. I use this, along with my Craftsman kerosene-fueled “torpedo” heater, to give me some heat in the garage when I am working out there.

With the new wick in place the heater works well and produces a good quantity of heat. It is rated at just over 10,000 BTUs which is high for this type of unit. I also found a local supplier of kerosene who I will use when refills are needed to my 5-gallon kerosene can. I only start either heater when I will be in the garage for a longer period of time and welcome the extra comfort.

We received a light dusting of snow on the night of the 23rd which resulted in a white Christmas Day. I took the John Deere out to plow the sidewalks, mostly as a trial run as there was not much snow to be moved. The sidewalks are uneven and the blade caught on several edges so I have to go slow to avoid damaging the blade or tractor. Plowing may also serve as a notice to neighbors that they should clear their walks as well.

On Christmas Day we opened our gifts. Pam received a Weather Tech (brand) phone holder that can be used in the house. I received a new pair of flannel-lined jeans and a pair of “house pants” that are on the order of sweat pants but higher class. Pam’s sister Becky sent us a new doormat and shoe scrubber and Pam’s friend, Julie Nickles, sent a few cat-themed holiday items. We enjoyed opening everything while sitting around the tree and listening to the Christmas music playing in the background. Later, we ate pumpkin pie and enjoyed a slow-cooked roast. Christmas during COVID.

In medical news, Pam’s recent series of medical tests (blood and EKG) were perfectly normal across the board. (The tests were partly as a follow-up to the gall bladder surgery earlier this year.) Good news.

A couple weeks ago I had scheduled a doctor visit so I could get a new prescription to treat my Type-2 diabetes. Up to that point I had been using the prescription from Colorado but it expired on my last refill. As part of the exam a full slate of blood tests were done.

On the positive side, my A1C came in at 6.6 indicating my type 2 diabetes is very well controlled. I’ll take that. But my PSA result (prostate enzyme) was somewhat high. The doctor wants me to have a biopsy taken; that will happen mid-January and I have to drive to Mason City to have the procedure done. Not looking forward to that.

A small change was made to my camera gear. My old point-and shoot was giving me some trouble so I replaced it with a used Panasonic DMC-ZS3 camera. (The above photos were taken with this camera.) Although several years old, the ZS3 has a reputation for being a durable camera which produces very good images. It came without the cable needed to plug it into a computer for image transfer so I had to buy one from Amazon before I could really start shooting with it. A battery and charger were included in the purchase so I did not have to acquire those.

This past week was a mixed bag of small projects, a trend that will continue for the next few weeks as the temperatures fall and snow builds up. There won’t be much to report on so my posts will probably be pretty short!

Photo Archive

This week’s archive features our son Toby. Photos were taking in 2004 and 2005.

That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in!

Pam’s Penny

Frigid white Christmas. Wind chill. Cold dog paws and colder cats in the catio. Did I mention the wind chill? Iowa in winter – not my favorite. But, with the Solstice, at least hours of daylight will s-l-o-w-l-y begin to increase.

Happy Trails.

We didn’t do much this past week that is worth special note. Ongoing projects received some attention as did a few household repairs and garage updates.

Pam finished sending holiday cards and we have received a few in the mail. It’s always good to read the newsletters (when included) and catch up with the goings-on of our friends and relatives.

I ripped some lumber and put up my first section of pegboard in the garage. (The lumber strips are spacers that separate the pegboard from the wall.) It is good to have various tools once again handy and have a dedicated spot to store them. Besides, this is one of my planned “winter” projects and gives me something to do outside the house.

I purchased a free-standing shelf unit for the garage as well. It is time to get some of my lesser-used tools out where I can get at them and these shelves will help. At some point I will buy a couple more, but one unit was all Walmart had on hand this trip.

While unpacking some tools to hang on the pegboard, I found a box containing several packages of slides taken in Colorado between 2003 and 2005. Digging into my old photo supplies, I was able to put these into pages of transparent sleeves. This makes the slides easier to sort and view. The photos in this week’s Archive are scans from this batch.

The water supply line going into the upstairs toilet developed a leak and needed repair. Unfortunately the install had been done with “oddball” parts instead of standard water supply lines so it took two trips to the hardware store to find the correct compression fittings needed to affect the repair. The leak is now gone. But we are looking to get a quote from the local plumbing shop to move the toilet away from the outside wall. (So inconvenient to find frozen slush in one’s toilet on a frigid morning.) This was going to be a future project, but the condition of the plumbing and exposed location of the water line have moved it up on the list.

Pam started a sewing project, adding a border to curtains which will be hung in one of the downstairs rooms she will be refurbishing. The home’s windows are taller than standard curtains cover, which means regularly available curtains must be altered. So, a border to extend them is in order. I had a small part in this as Pam told me to go to the soft goods store and find a suitable shade of thread to match the border fabric. There is a Mennonite-run dry goods store a few miles out of town that has many sewing supplies and a good selection of threads. I was able to find an appropriate shade and the work is now progressing.

Last fall, about the time we had our first snow, Pam dug up a couple self-seeding pansy plants that had established themselves near the house and brought the pansies indoors, in a small pot. One pansy bloomed, a small blossom, but it kind of tickled us. Of course, Elmo discovered the pansy on one of his nocturnal paths of destruction and demolished the flower. (At least we have a photo of it.)

During this downtime, a conversation with my friendly lumber yard manager revealed he regularly utilizes a place to send saw blades to be sharpened. I pulled the blade off my mitre saw and added my 60-tooth table saw blade and took them in. Both blades are 10 inch and carbide-tipped, good blades and expensive to replace. Sharpening will cost about $8.00 each. It may be a week or two until they are returned; by then I will be ready to start working on the bay window winter inserts and will have sharp blades to do the cutting.

I don’t often touch on more personal matters, but one of them cropped up recently. We are in the process of settling my mother’s estate and there was a probate hearing this week. My parents had put all their assets in a trust which was revoked when my mother, in 2018, had a guardian appointed by the courts to handle her estate. This means there was no [recent] valid will; the estate ended up in probate.

The court hearing was to determine who should be Personal Representative for the estate. The choice was between the former court-appointed guardian and my brother Jon. I attended by phone and answered a few questions the judge directed to me. After discussions between the guardian’s lawyer and Jon’s attorney, plus the few questions to me and my sister Carol, the judge decided to appoint Jon as the PR.

Another issue was whether to re-instate a will from 1999 that existed before the trust was revoked. This was an easier issue to resolve as the will was consistent with state statues and processes. There were no contested elements so the judge decided to let the previous will stand.

The estate attorney will now be able to file the necessary paperwork with the courts, publish a “request for claims” against the estate, and take care of getting the land titles cleared in preparation to sell them. (Mom still owned two lots located along the Black River in Greenwood when she passed.) Two different buyers had expressed an interest in buying the lots but nothing could go forward until this hearing settled the representative issue. Jon will contact these people and see if there is still interest in purchasing either or both parcels.

The timeline to settle is not short, certainly into 2021, and this hearing advanced the process another step. Generally settlement tasks are routine; I hope they proceed smoothly in this case.

A Christmas Poem

(My apologies to Clement Clarke Moor and his “Visit from St. Nicolas.”)

T-was the night before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.

The cats and dogs were all snuggled in bed with dreams of cat treats and dog bones stuck in their heads.

Mama in her kerchief, and me in my cap, had just settled in for a long winter’s nap.

When out in the yard there arose such a clatter the dogs jumped from their beds to see what was the matter.

With barking and woofing they ran round the house waking every one, including my spouse.

Out on the lawn there was new fallen snow glistening white beneath the branches and boughs.

From up on the rooftop I hard a strange noise and there was Santa with a sleigh full of toys.

I started to speak but he waved silence and said “2020 was a year that I dread.”

“With angry elections and a pandemic too this past year was a downer, most certainly true.”

“But people rose up, gave each other a hand, and acts of kindness broke out all over the land.”

“The New Year is coming, and we realize friendships and family are the gifts of our lives.“

“The people you love need to know that you care even if you can’t physically be there.” 

Then he jumped in his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle and off they all flew like the down of a thistle.

And I heard him exclaim, as he rode out of site “Merry Christmas to all, and to all a Good Night.”

Photo Archive

The year was 2005 and Felicity visited us (in Colorado) so we took a road trip to the Maroon Bells wilderness area. This well-known attraction is located near Aspen.

That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in!

Pam’s Penny

An unexpected visitor at the outside cat feeding station – an opossum – means I will now be pulling the cat food out of the exterior feeding location every evening. What a surprise to open the access door and have a possum snout peek out at me. Guess I’m lucky it wasn’t a skunk or a coon.

Also, out in the catio, one of the cats has developed a drool, which usually means teeth problems. Assuming I can catch the cat, Zip, he has a vet appointment toward the end of the month. This Iowa vet has obviously not interacted with rescue folks much. For some reason a cat dental was proposed. I don’t care about a feral cat’s dental hygiene, just that he has teeth pulled if needed. Sedation and a tooth extractor would do it. Cat dentals are major surgery and quite expensive. Geez. No good rescue deed goes unpunished. I continue to appreciate the rescue vets who actually worked with me in Colorado.

I’m dreaming of a brown Christmas. So far, so good.

Happy Trails – someday.

This week we concentrated on getting a number of jobs done. Among these were putting up our Christmas tree, adding some more lights and a wreath to the front porch, adding more window decorations, working on cards, and general putzing.

Monday was a good day for a road trip to a tree farm, where we selected and cut a 6-foot Canaan Fir. The farm “wrapped” the tree for transport and it fit nicely into the back of the RAV-4 to make the trip home.

The tree is upstairs in the Media Room, which is closed to the cats and dogs. Lights and ornaments were strung and the tree looks quite nice. You can see the lights through the bay window at night, including the star tree topper.

A wreath was secured from the tree farm’s gift shop as well. I installed it above the front porch steps, as something was needed in that spot. Pam likes to have decorations that look good in daylight, and I’m the “lights by night” kinda guy.

Going through Christmas boxes, Pam found several more wreaths she had purchased last year. One of these was added to the front porch, filling an empty space, and the others were mounted on the dog run and garden gates.

A couple other outside decorations were put up.

Other decorations were put up, including a second “heart” (shown above) in the parlor bedroom bay window and a small lighted decoration on the west wall of the house. The place is looking very festive!

The first batch of cards was mailed out. Writing brief notes for each card is the time consuming part, but cards need a personal greeting, not just a signature and/or a newsletter. Pam handles that task except for the very few I do for my family.

Non-Christmas jobs included replacement of the F-150’s left mirror. I had caught it on the edge of the garage door and broken the glass. A new mirror was purchased through Amazon, and after watching some “how-to” videos on YouTube, I installed the new mirror. (You have to take the door apart to do the replacement.)

Along with the mirror I had ordered a new remote for my TV and was finally able to make changes to the screen. Now the left and right sides are not cut off by our cable TV box. The Sony set we have requires a remote to make these changes as there is no menu built into the TV itself. The original remote got lost somewhere in the move from Colorado.

Another small item was the addition of an antenna to my garage stereo system. Now I get radio reception, including a local station that is playing Christmas music all the time. It is nice to have some tunes while working in the garage (other than my old cassettes and CDs).

I readied the John Deere for snow plowing by removing the bagger and mower deck and installing the blade, suitcase weights, and tire chains. Unfortunately the battery finally died. It had been weak for some time but the cold weather finally overcame the battery’s ability to turn the engine over and start it. A run to the nearest Walmart, on my motorcycle, resulted in getting a new battery. The John Deere now starts easier than it has in several years.

Along the same lines of getting ready for snow season, I checked out and started the snow blower. While the chance of getting snow is low this week, there is a 50% possibility of getting “significant” snow next week. I am not sure what “significant” snow means in Iowa, but am guessing it means there is enough to have to shovel steps and sidewalks.

In summary, it was a “small jobs” type of week with a variety of tasks completed, some holiday related, some not. As the weather gets colder the number of tasks worked on decreases. While there are a few indoor projects in the works, for the next couple of weeks the pace will be much slower than in past months.

Photo Archive

Here are a few more photos taken in 1999 during our trip to England. I had an early digital camera, rated around one megapixel, so these photos do not have a high level of detail.

That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in!

Pam’s Penny

Holiday cards are out. Solstice is almost here – daylight starts to increase once more.

I’m pondering what to purchase for updating two downstairs rooms come January. But for the moment, I’m taking a break from house projects. The dogs could probably use grooming touchups again. Now there’s a project…

Happy Trails.

The big excitement this week was the installation of new windows in the west wall of the downstairs ‘snug’ area. Other activities included adding Christmas decorations to the outside of the house and windows. A final yard leaf pick-up was completed. Holiday card manufacture advanced.

One of the 2020 “to – do” projects was completed on December 2nd when Bob the Builder [and his helper Bill] arrived to install new windows in the downstairs ‘snug’ room.

This room is off the living room and currently houses a sofa that doubles as a dog bed and a trestle table that Pam uses for craft work. The door to the downstairs bathroom enters into this room. Pocket doors (one side operational!) are at the room’s entry.

The snug’s existing window frame had been drastically cut up when a previous owner installed a large window AC unit; the window was leaking copious amounts of cold air in the winter and hot air in the summer.

The new windows are vinyl, double-hung, and have self-storing screens. The glass portions can be tilted inward for cleaning. While not state-of-the-art, they are very good windows and appear to be very well built. We can already feel the difference when we walk into the room — it’s now the same temperature as the living room!

Below are a few photos of the installation. Areas around the frame, never calked when the original windows were installed, received a combination of expanding foam and silicon calk to make sure air leakage was reduced to a minimum.

Note: The bottom sill has been “boxed” with aluminum to cover the badly cut-up sill left over from the window AC unit installation. (Look at the lower right-hand corner of the first photo to see some of the damage.) The finished job looks crisp and attractive!

Now there’s only one more job that we had wished to get completed this year, wiring of the garage addition. We have not heard from Jake the Electrician about when/if he will be here to complete that task.

While several smaller jobs were done this week, the most time consuming job was to finish decorating the outside of the house. I now have the timers set so lights come on and go off at about the same time. One string of lights was replaced when a bulb burned out, shutting off half the lights in the string. I later fixed the defective string by replacing all the bulbs, one at at time, until I found the bad one. Pam laughs at me for spending time doing this as new lights are not that expensive, but I hate to throw things away without some attempt to fix them. We did throw out a bunch of light strands inherited from the previous owner, however.

Speaking of throwing things away…

When Bob the Builder was here he had a large dump trailer parked nearby. The old windows he replaced in the ‘snug’ were put in this trailer to be taken to a disposal site. I mentioned I had a bunch of additional old windows – and a door – I had removed from the basement and were now in the garage attic. Bob offered to let me put these in his trailer as well so I could be rid of them.

Pam and I worked as a team to get the old stuff down from the garage loft. I think there was a total of 12 or 13 old windows, some old screen door frames, and one old (and rotting) wooden door that we were able to put in the trailer.

Along the way some of the old window glass broke, initiating a clean up, but overall the project went pretty well. I was pleased to be able to free up the storage space and get rid of this junk, particularly as I’d had no idea how I was going to dispose of it. My thanks to Bob for his offer.

We did keep the three old-fashioned screen door inserts for the existing porch doors. I had labeled them when putting in the storm glass inserts so I will know which screens go where when we get ready to use them next summer.

Another project involved adding Christmas lights to the porches and inside decorations to windows. This is a work-in-progress as we see what seems to look good and work in our setting.

Pam took one of the rope lights and made a heart in the downstairs east bay window, shown below in the first photo. So far this is the most singular feature of our holiday lights. Here are a few photos taken this past week:

We’ll be cutting our live tree this coming week and it will go in the upstairs Media Room. Pam had already assembled an artificial tree for parlor bedroom bay window display, but the cats thought it was Tree Disneyland, so it ended up out on the porch.

Thursday I finished what looks to be the last leaf clean-up of the year. There are still areas of snow on the north side of the house so my efforts could not cover all areas of the lawn, but I did get the heaviest build-up of leaves from around the garden enclosure, dog run, and near the garage. Some of the mulched leaves ended up on the east side flower bed (the Mary Lynn Memorial bed) and the rest were taken to the compost/dump area I have been using all summer.

Pam encourages me to get out of the house during these shorter winter days and I get a chance to play with my ‘big boy toys’ so we both win. Next week I will put the blade on the John Deere and get ready for winter snows.

Other than that, it was a quieter week than most, with more down time. Between projects I’ve been reading and helping Pam with holiday card production. Pam provides the artistry and design (and most of the assembly) and I help by printing photos and labels. Cards will be going out in the mail over the next ten days.

Photo Archive

Back in 1999 Pam and I took a trip to England. This week’s gallery features some early digital photos of that trip. (More will be featured in upcoming posts.)

That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in!

Pam’s Penny

I was pondering, while assembling holiday cards and writing notes, the greatly-reduced number of cards I now prepare. We sent over 100 back in the day; now it’s slightly under 50. And how it’s very likely, in twenty years or so, sending cards during the holidays will be reduced to about a dozen. Maybe the postal service won’t even exist by then.

Much as Himself enjoys playing with Big Boy Toys, I have always enjoyed cut-and-paste and find it relaxing. Perhaps it’s crazy on my part to assume recipients of a hand-made card appreciate the effort. Himself already sends an increasing number of digital cards for holidays; that may constitute our entire card-giving experience in the future.

Happy Trails.