Month: November 2022

The big event this week was Thanksgiving. Additionally, we began putting up Christmas decorations. There are plenty of family member photos this week so take a look.

I am going to begin with a quick reminder: The “Comments” button, where you can leave or view comments, is just under the blog title, toward the right side. Click on “Comments” to open a comments page where you can add your feedback.

Now that the housekeeping is over, I have a few photos left over from Toby’s visit. He helped me trim the bottom of the downstairs bathroom door, necessary to fit a low-profile threshold plate to cover the transition from the wood floor to the tiles Pam had installed.

Pam’s sister Becky drove to Elma during Toby’s visit, so we took the opportunity for this group photo.

We had accumulating snow the week Toby was here, but recent mild weather has melted it away. (More snow is in the forecast for this week.) Our leaky old windows yield some “frost” photos when the weather gets near zero.

The “big event” was Thanksgiving. Becky invited us to Greene for a meal and to celebrate 6 months in her “new” home. We were more than happy to help celebrate the first major holiday since she moved in.

Becky put together a great meal of chicken, stuffing, cranberry relish, bean salad, rolls, whipped squash, gravy, and mashed potatoes with cream cheese. Yum!! Pam baked pies for dessert – strawberry-rhubarb custard and pumpkin. Becky’s daughter, Lilly, joined us for the meal. Here are a few photos from the day.

Everything tasted great! Conversation flowed around the table, making the day even more enjoyable.

We had taken the dogs along and part of the afternoon found Becky and Lilly giving Jo and Bru some love. Blondie was not as sociable this trip.

We had a very good holiday and thank Becky and Lilly for the food and hospitality.

With the improvement of the weather, we ended the week by putting up the rest of the outside decorations. After more than a decade of use, Pam decided to replace a raggy-looking exterior garland, used along the front porch. (This was a two-day project with disassembly and reassembly needed.) In addition, some non-working, or partially working, lights were finally tossed. Elma’s Holiday Parade is this Sunday night so we try to have exterior lights ready for that; the parade passes directly in front of Heart House. Additional exterior wreaths + inside decorations + a live tree [in the Media Room] will be part of the decor in early December.

I replaced the mower deck and bagger on the John Deere LX 176 and attached the snow blade. I hope I don’t have to use the blade for a few weeks but I want to be ready when the heavier snow arrives. I need to get the snow blower running, a task for the upcoming week.

We hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving and you’re looking forward to Christmas.

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

Pam’s Penny

Every year when the holiday “stuff” is hauled out I think “Wow! How did we accumulate all this?” It’s unusual for us to throw anything out, but I’ve been putting off a re-do of that exterior garland for years — the time had come to strip it down and reassemble with new materials. (If the weather hadn’t cooperated, I wouldn’t have done it this year either.)

Heart House [with its three porches] certainly can handle quite a bit of exterior decoration. I try to make sure the decor is as attractive in the daylight as the lights are at night. This requires extension cords to be as hidden as possible and decorations in various media (lights, cloth, wood/evergreen, metal) to be distributed around the property.

Future indoor decoration will be “edited” with kittens in mind. That process can wait until early December.

Happy Trails.

With the cold weather, snow on the ground, and a halt to most outside activities, the pets become entertainment. This post is mostly about them and includes a new video, so take a look.

Pam happened to catch Blondie napping in the laundry room and thought the lighting was quite unusual. I agree. Here is the resulting photo, taken by Pam, of our 14 year old pack leader.

The kittens, Stirling and Vienna, are now 5 months old and are filling out. It appears both will be long in the body and not prone to getting fat, but it’s early days yet. Their activity levels are quite high!

I have a new video of the kittens playing with a favorite toy, Mr. Spring. You can watch the video without leaving this post by viewing it below. (Click the red “Play” button.) This is a feature I am experimenting with, embedding my YouTube videos, so let me know if you like or dislike it.

Outside, we have snow on the ground, the first accumulating snow of the season. We have been watching the birds at the feeder, the squirrels using the water bowl, and nuthatches and woodpeckers at the suet feeder. (Sparrows have also been using the water bowl.) I shot some video of birds at the feeder. This was taken through the library window while it was snowing and is not as sharp as I would like, but the birds fly away whenever I open the door to go outside.

On the medical front, I received word from the Mayo Clinic that my right shoulder could benefit from surgery to repair a torn rotator cuff. This diagnosis is based on the MRI taken a week or so ago. I am just trying to decide when to have the procedure done as it means little use of my right arm for quite some time.

Pam made a trip to the dentist to have a filling examined. A piece of tooth had chipped off, leaving a rough edge. The dentist polished the edges for the time being; Pam will visit dental world in December to re-do the tooth with a more permanent fix.

Toby arrived Thursday night and will be with us until Sunday morning. There is a lot going on in his life as he has a new girlfriend and is planning to move from South Bend to Las Vegas. (More on that in later posts.) It was good to see him and have long conversations about where he is, what his hopes and dreams are, and what he sees for his future over the next few years.

Otherwise it has been quiet. I have been shoveling snow as well as working on short videos. I had upgraded to a new web browser, Vivaldi, and mostly retired the Safari browser supplied by Apple on my Mac. Upgrading the Mac’s operating system would require purchasing new versions of the software I use most, a very expensive proposition, but the new browser is working fine where Safari was having problems. (With WordPress 6.1 and my blog software, for example.) The Vivaldi upgrade seems to be an interim solution so I won’t have to upgrade right now.

Pam came across this ad in the local paper. We are in the Bible Belt for sure.

Photo Archive

Just a couple shots taken on motorcycle trips in Colorado

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

Pam’s Penny

The year seems to be moving swiftly toward closure. Company is in-house, medical and dental issues continue, Solstice cards are moving along well — but –January-type weather is visiting NE Iowa.

Exterior holiday lights installation is on our calendar for the weekend after Thanksgiving; the Elma holiday parade passes by Heart House that Sunday night. If the weather doesn’t improve to above freezing during the day before then, the main portion of our light display this year may be installed after the parade passes by…

Happy Trails.

During the week I had technical issues with the Blog software and decided, after 11+ years, to change the “Theme” of the blog page. (Themes control the look and formatting of the blog pages.) The current theme is Hemingway from WordPress.

One change is the location of the “Comments” tab; it is now under the blog post title instead of at the bottom of the post. Please click on this link to leave or read comments.

Another difference is the Main Menu which has links that will take you to other parts of the web site. So far I have not found out how to make the links open in new tabs so clicking a link will take you away from the blog page. To return to the blog you would have to click on your “Back” button in your browser. I am working on this.

I hope you like the new look!

In other news, I had an MRI taken of my right shoulder at the Mayo Clinic on Monday. Nothing remarkable about this but it took longer than other MRIs I have had in the past. I coupled the trip with stops for shopping at a couple big box stores, so the event took pretty much all day.

We celebrated Pam’s birthday on Wednesday. Birthdays are now low-key events for us, but Pam did receive a few gifts from myself and friends, and both kids called and spoke to her at some length. It was a good day.

Trees in the area are now pretty much bare and neighbors’ leaves are blowing into our yard. We did a couple clean-ups; a couple more before the snow hits are probably going to happen but they should be much lighter (fewer leaves) than to this point.

I have a couple “yard” photos this time. The first is funny; Pam noticed a squirrel in one of the lilac bushes, “burying” a nut in the branch.

And, in spite of the below-freezing temperatures we have had, a pansy was still blooming until mid-week in the front flower bed.

Now the cold weather has settled in. The 10-day forecast has us at or below freezing for daytime highs the entire time. We have plugged in the outside cats’ water bowls and added an extension cord to operate the squirrel water bowl. (The cats have two bowls, one in the catio and another outside by the garage for the roaming cats.)

Windbreak tarps have been put up. These give some protection from the wind to the south (back) door and the NW corner of the dog run. Pam wrapped the maple tree in the east yard as protection from deer, who nibbled at the young tree last winter. (We thought it would not come back but it thrived this summer.) Screen door inserts have been swapped out for storm door inserts. None of these are big tasks but they did take some time.

Our youngest dog, Bru, went to the vet to have some skin growths removed. A few were beginning to bother her and it was time for them go. She has some stitches that will need to be removed but seems to be recovering OK.

The kittens are getting bigger and enjoying the run of the house. I can hear them in the upstairs hallway running and chasing each other. Elmo sometimes joins the fun.

I have a somewhat poor quality video of a black squirrel drinking out of the new water dish. (In my defense, my hands are not as steady as they used to be and it was windy and cold.) Click on this squirrel video to view the 51-second clip.

The upcoming week promises to be fairly uneventful. Little will be done outside due to the cold temperatures and chance of snow, but inside projects will continue. Pam is working on holiday cards and has a dental appointment to repair a chipped tooth. I am will work on the blog look-and-feel as well as starting to scan more of my negatives and slides. I will begin installing the inside window inserts in the smaller windows; the bay windows will wait until after we put up/then remove Christmas decorations.

Our son Toby plans to visit us before Thanksgiving and we are looking forward to his visit. (So nice to have a guest bedroom available for visitors, a room with a decent window and a modicum of heat.)

Neither of us likes this time of year. It gets dark so-o-o-o early, it is windy and cold, and the NE Iowa countryside is somewhat dreary after all the crops have been harvested. In some ways a blanket of snow is preferable as it covers some of the bareness of the fields and gardens.

Photo Archive

The first photo is of Pam’s mother, Lorraine, with two of her granddaughters. Felicity is on the left and cousin Caitlin is on the right. 1990 or thereabouts.

Next is an artsy collection of cameras at a camera shop in Boulder, Colorado, also dating from around 1990.

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

Pam’s Penny

Poor little Bru dog had 18 lumps + cysts + skin tags removed; she looks like a dot-to-dot. I will need to pull out a load of stitches in the next weeks.

One of my birthday gifts was a dog grooming razor (battery operated, from Jer.) When I use it on Bru later in the winter, hopefully I [now] won’t have to avoid 18 lumps/cysts/skin tags.

Sorry, no cute kitten photos this week. Elmo is busy teaching both Stirling and Vienna bad habits – like sitting on the dining table, opening drawers, climbing the wood slats on the rustic pantry cabinet…

Happy Trails.

It was a quiet week when it comes to post-worthy news. I did additional leaf clean-up, we took the dogs for a drive to visit Becky in Greene, and did odd jobs around the place.

One nice discovery this week. The city opened a compost site about 4 blocks from our house. This makes disposing of leaves and yard debris much easier and more convenient. I’ve taken a couple trailer loads to the site already, using the ATV to pull the trailer.

Parts arrived for the lawn vac / chipper and were installed. The unit no longer leaks fuel when it is running which resulted a savings in gas and making the rig much nicer to use.

The big trailer received final touches including the addition of a license plate bracket and illumination lights for the plate. The later is an Iowa requirement: “Either the rear lamp or a separate lamp shall be so constructed and placed as to illuminate with a white light the rear registration plate and render it clearly legible from a distance of fifty feet to the rear.” I plugged the trailer lights into the truck and checked to make sure all lights, including the new license plate lights, were working OK. All is well.

Thursday we took a short trip to Greene to visit Becky. I had not been there for a few months and was surprised to see how much she has accomplished since my last visit. The laundry room, kitchen, and living room have all received much attention and updating; the place is looking real good.

The upcoming week promises to be busier. I have a Mayo Clinic appointment on Monday to get an MRI on my right shoulder. Tuesday is Election Day and we will vote. Wednesday is Pam’s birthday. (We don’t make a big deal of birthdays anymore.) Bru goes in for vet surgery to remove growths and lumps on Thursday.

The kittens are doing well and continue playing with Elmo and getting used to the dogs. A couple photos, taken by Pam, are below.

Elmo, of course, is quite used to the dogs. Here he is sleeping with Blondie.

Photo Archive

Cars and steam engines are featured this week.

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

Pam’s Penny

Holiday card production is in full swing. I’m in my happy place while working on these.

Be sure to VOTE.

Happy Trails.