Month: December 2024

As mentioned in an earlier post, the house across Main Street was scheduled to be demolished due to a fire, and will eventually be replaced. The first part of this, the demo, occurred this past week. Photos and a clip are in this post along with a few miscellaneous notes. Enjoy!

Back in July, the house across the street from us experienced a fire. The damage could not be repaired and the home was scheduled for demolition and eventual replacement. The demolition phase happened this week, with a large excavator with a “thumb” on the bucket arriving to do the work.

The first day was taken up with knocking down the house, and over the next two days the debris was loaded into a truck and hauled away. Finally, black dirt was brought in to fill the hole left by the foundation. (I did not take photos of the debris being hauled away.)

We understand a new modular home is being built and will be moved onto the lot, but it appears a lot of work must be done before that happens, including pouring a slab in lieu of a foundation.

If interested, here is a video clip of the big machine at work. (Run time is 1:36.) Note: Falling snow confused the auto-focus on the camera and parts are not a clear as I would have liked!

House Demolition

As you can see in the last photo above, we received snow this past week, about 3 – 4 inches or so. I spent a couple hours clearing our sidewalks and our group of mailboxes. This photo of the house was taken this morning, Saturday, December 21st, Winter Solstice Day.

Changes are in the works for my web site. I have decided to retire old videos that have been up for two or more years as I doubt anyone is interested in looking at them any longer. I had been using a combination of self-hosted clips and YouTube; the later will remain up for a while but the self-hosted stuff will be, by and large, removed over the next few weeks. If you should have a favorite video in this later group, accessed from the “Videos” tab on my web page, let me know and I will leave it up.

The only other event of note this week was a visit to the vet to have two outside kittens, Blizzard and Tornado, spayed. Both seem to have survived OK and are once again outside and running around, experiencing their first snow.

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

Pam’s Penny

It’s Winter Solstice. Come back, longer days!

I’m wrapping up the household accounts for 2024 — noting a few payments disappearing as well as projected budget alterations for 2025. Our retirement years hardly involve high finance. Still, I stay on top of changing (slight) increases in pensions and such.

Receiving holiday cards and newsletters makes the season special for me.

Happy Trails.

Last Sunday Pam, Becky, and I attended the Luther College Christmas concert. It was great! Projects received attention, including a Mac computer upgrade and finishing of the holiday cards. Let’s jump in!

A heart-felt “Thank You!” to Becky for purchasing the Luther College Christmas concert tickets. We greatly enjoyed the two-hour event that featured several choirs, a jazz number, and audience participation.

We kept talking about the music and reflecting on the various performances all the way home. Luther College is located in Decorah, Iowa, and is about a 50 minute drive from us. For more details about the college and the music program you can open this link: https://www.luther.edu/music/christmas-at-luther

This was the front of this year’s program.

Pam finished the holiday cards and all have been mailed. We have been receiving some cards as well and they are good to see. (Sure beats bills in the mailbox.)

I have completed my Mac computer upgrade for the most part. The older Mac Pro with a 4-core processor has been replaced by an 8-core model and the operating system upgraded to the current version. All software was either re-installed or new versions purchased. The older unit’s hard drive has been wiped and a clean version of the operating system installed. Now I need to take some photos and list it on E-Bay to see if I can recover some of the money spent on the newer unit.

The remaining holiday lights were put up and the tree decorated. Not quite as many outdoor lights as last year, but the cold snap somewhat limits outside time anyway.

Our local birds and squirrels are on “life support” — enjoying the feeders and water dish, giving us many opportunities to keep an eye on their antics. I particularly like watching the small birds at the water dish as they bob up and down while drinking. It’s also interesting to watch squirrels as they drink, head down, while still clinging to the tree. I hope to get some video, or at least a still photo, of these antics.

I continue to search for a spring for the old mortised lock set used on the east door. While this type of lockset was once common, finding parts these days is a real pain. The spring in question keeps the door bolt extended until you turn the knob to retract it and open the door. It is a small leaf spring, and I did create a partial solution by using an old spring from a screen door latch, but it’s not as strong as the original and works only so-so. I may have to double up a similar spring if an original cannot be found. This is the lockset partially disassembled:

Looking on-line to find a replacement spring or lockset has proven to be futile as none of the sets I found, new or used, have the same dimensions, particularly the length of the front plate. Oh the joys of living in an old house…

We observe a slower pace over the winter months. NE Iowa did get a bit of snow last night so I was out this morning to shovel the sidewalks, a task many of our neighbors seldom do. Not that many people are walking, but I generally feel better having our walks cleared and it gives me a bit of outside time and exercise.

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

Pam’s Penny

Thank you, Canada, for a series of frigid weather “clippers” already this season. Freakin’ miserable outside conditions, with wind chill factored in. Depressing to monitor the weather at the Colorado property (9,000 feet +) and realize it’s consistently warmer in the mountains.

I’m finding it extremely difficult to experience the “joy” of the season; the frigid weather is not helping. The blast of orchestral and choral music at Luther College, on the other hand, offered a temporary lift.

Happy Trails.