A Normal Week

Well, as normal as we get. 🙂

In truth, not much went on this last week. The weather was cold and had a mix of snow and rain which curbed our outside activities. To make up for this, Pam began to paint a bedroom and update the bedroom furniture.

Up to this point Pam has been sleeping on our roll-away bed during the transition; available beds is one more thing to update. A new day bed and mattress arrived and found their home in the soon-to-be-updated bedroom.

The pink cover is to keep the cats off the pillows. The old mattress is under the bed until we can find a place to store it. The new bed is “comfy” to sleep on, as the cats will attest.

I spent a few hours applying some updates to my Galleries pages. A sharp eye will note that there is no longer E-Card, OC-3, or Scout II galleries. The OC-3 and Scout II were sold before we left Colorado and the E-Card gallery requires Adobe Flash to work. Flash is no longer supported by the major web browsers so I decided to remove that gallery.

On the other hand, one might notice two new galleries: the “Heart House” gallery has a few photos taken in and around 702 Main here in Elma and will get more photos in the future. The second link is to a couple of motorcycle-related videos and is titled “Bike Videos” which may be of interest to my biker friends.

I made some changes to the underlying structure of the pages, adding code that would allow me to add or remove navigation buttons and footer information from two files, one for the nav buttons and the other for the footer information. This eliminates the need for me to go in and modify every page individually, a great savings of time and effort.

As I continue to unpack the Media Room, I am getting more and more of our old LP records back on their shelves. It is good to see these (and dozens more) “old friends” again, and I try to make sure I listen to some music every day. I’ve also been going through my old cassette tapes as well.

We have begun to contact various service providers; the local electrician stopped by a couple days ago and gave us a quote on bringing the house wiring up to standard. His schedule is about three weeks out and so it will be mid-April before that work can start (depending on COVID-19 infiltration in this area).

We have also spoken to the air conditioning folks about getting a current quote and getting on their work schedule, but the install can’t begin until after the electrical service is installed. Hopefully the work will be completed before the hot weather season begins – there is a waiting list. And again, the HVAC company (based in Elma) is putting together its own COVID-19 plan.

Next up will be to contact the company that seals foundations with a spray-on material. Our foundation is of mixed stone and allows a lot of cold air to enter. The sealant should make the place much easier to heat and cool and is a high priority for us to get done.

I would like to get started on a garage addition that would be able to handle some of my big boy toys and the Ford F-150 truck. I have not sought a quote yet for that project, which may have to be done in stages starting with cement work.

Pam is planning a fencing project to replace the temporary dog run I put up last fall. Poor JoJo has not had a proper place to stretch her legs since last fall, and she does love to run!

Hanging over all of these plans, as noted, is the COVID-19 issue; we don’t know if the businesses we need to do the work will be able to take on new jobs. We hope for the best but the situation is “fluid” to say the least.

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

Pam’s Penny:

Sometimes I lose track of Fields. He’s generally up in the Media Room, listening to music. There are worse ways to start a retirement than “sheltering in place” with music.

Happy (Future) Trails.