Category: General (Page 14 of 60)

The week leading up to the holiday was a busy one. We entertained another visitor, fresh pies were baked, major grocery shopping was undertaken, and good food was prepared for every meal. I have several photos from the week so let’s get started.

Becky’s daughter Caitlin drove to NE Iowa from the Minneapolis area to stay overnight and spend some time with her mother. Christmas Eve day she headed out, after lunch, to the LaCrosse area where she will spend time with more family. We had a lively visit and caught up on all her activities. Being the owner of a resale clothing shop (“Cake”), Caitlin had her share of COVID-related problems in 2021 but the business survived. Hopefully it will thrive in the upcoming year.

Here is a photo of us with Caitlin (front) and Becky (mid-step) on our front porch entry.

Pam and Becky put up our second tree (the “heart” tree) and decorated it. This one is on the main floor in the parlor. The cats, particularly Elmo, love it. Elmo is now known as the “de-decorator” as he has tried re-arranging the lights and ornaments already.

The local paper published “Letters to Santa” and this one just caught my eye. We all need more rainbows and kindness. (Click on the image to open a larger, and more legible, version.)

We opened our presents on Christmas Eve. Becky, Pam, and I received several gifts but the most enchanting went to Pam; a small garden statue of Gromit (from the animated series “Wallace and Gromit”) was Pam’s gift from Santa. This Gromit features a bobbing head, mounted on a spring, and a spring mounted tail. Gromit will become garden/yard art next year.

It was an enjoyable Christmas Eve for all of us. Speaking of “all of us,” here is a photo of Becky’s cat, Vanna. I have mentioned Vanna a few times in these posts and thought I’d better include a photo so you can see what she looks like.

Pam noted how pleasant it has been to interact with young people this holiday season. A few more photos show off the lighter side of Caitlin’s and Toby’s visits.

In non-Christmas news, I put together two new Galleries, one with photos of mine sites around the Telluride area (Savage Basin Road) and another containing photos of the Colorado Yule Marble Quarry near Marble. There is a new feature on both of these; I have included an introductory voice clip that gives a short explanation of the gallery. Clips are located at the top of each gallery page. If these work out I may add similar voice clips to my other gallery pages.

Photo Archive

This grouping of photos is from all over.. taken in the early to mid-’80s.

Finally, a couple of sunset photos.

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

Pam’s Penny

Happy Solstice and Feliz Navidad. Thanks to those who “took a chance” and ventured to mail cards to us. (Our postal “service” … <sigh> …)

Happy Trails.

The big story this week was the arrival of Becky and her cat, Vanna. Both will be with us until Becky can find an apartment in the Madison, Wisconsin, area. Second to that was our son Toby’s first visit to Heart House. A sub-story was the arrival of an F-0 tornado over Elma as part of a major winter wind storm.

Becky arrived last weekend. She winterized her mobile home in Rice Lake and brought the cat and last carload of household goods down to Heart House and moved into the guest bedroom. We have already enjoyed her company and look forward to having her with us for a while.

Becky’s cat, Vanna, is still getting used to having a house to explore. She is not familiar with dogs and careful of the other cats at this point, but appears to be getting more comfortable as the days go by. We are getting used to the sight of a pure white feline going up and down the stairs and walking through the house.

Toby arrived on Friday after a 7 hour drive from South Bend, Indiana. This is his first visit to our NE Iowa home. We have spent several hours visiting and catching up with news from his and our end. One of Pam’s goals for the visit was to have Toby take home a few boxes of his stuff that we had been saving for him (for twenty years). Toby was delighted to find that we still had his collection of Pok-e-mon cards and football trading cards from the late ’90s. Some of these cards may be worth anywhere from a few dollars to a few hundred dollars each. Toby plans to catalog them and do some research to find which cards, if any, have collector value.

The weekend was spent in good company and eating good food. Toby and I took a tour of local holiday lights, including the Elma Park Christmas light display. It was a very nice way to spend the weekend before Christmas.

The down side of the week was a major wind and rain storm that passed through Elma last Wednesday. This storm had been forecast a few days prior so was not a surprise, but the estimate of top wind speeds kept going up. We lost power for about 3 hours and had some dead branches on our yard but suffered no real damage. After the storm passed the weather service classified it as a F-0 event, with winds between 40 and 72 miles per hour. Unfortunately, nearby towns suffered a bit more damage and had no electrical power for most of the following day. One fatality was reported. Damage included loss of roofs and downed trees.

Ahead of the storm we set heat records for the month of December, with temps getting into the mid-60 degree range. The state of Minnesota recorded its first-ever December tornado. With no snow in the forecast for the upcoming week a white Christmas is doubtful. While I would like some snow for the big day, I certainly would not mind a milder winter this year.

In other holiday related news, we finished decorating our tree. A few purchases have arrived, including my Bean Boots and a couple pairs of flannel-lined jeans. Neighbors have added a few more outside lights and decorations to their yards and the town is beginning to look more and more festive. A week away from Christmas and we are pretty well set for it. Becky’s daughter, Caitlin, will be stopping by for a several day visit in the next week and we are looking forward to visiting with her.

Pam has been busy planning menus and organizing the house for Becky’s and Toby’s visit and working on embroidery projects; she is staying busy. I have been scanning more slides and have added photos to my Old Equipment gallery and started to change the John Deere from mower to snow plow. I have been hindered in this by my bad shoulder which is s-l-o-w-l-y improving but is far from normal. I had planned to replace the main drive belt as I know there are cracks in it, but this requires under-tractor work that I don’t feel like taking on. I may just mount the blade and hope the belt holds though the season. Tire chains and extra rear weights have already been installed. As there is no snow in the 10-day forecast I am in no hurry to finish the conversion.

We are finishing the year in pretty good shape, although a couple projects (laundry room, upstairs shower) are not yet finished. I did get my last load of yard debris out to the dump and unloaded, and finished what I hope is the last yard clean-up of the season. The mulched leaves from that session were spread over the Mary Lynn Memorial flower bed located on the east side of the house. I never thought I would be mulching leaves in mid-December but the storm had blown a large number of leaves in from surrounding yards and these had accumulated around the catio, garage, and fence lines. I took advantage of the mild temps and got rid of this accumulation.

We are looking forward to Christmas. At this stage of our lives we buy ourselves items we want or need and generally have a quiet day. This year we will have Becky here and visits from Toby and Caitlin will have punctuated the season with more family visits than has been our norm. One of the reasons we moved back to the Midwest was to have closer proximity to family and friends and this is reflected in our expanded social calendar.

Photo Archive

Family photos are the theme for this week’s post. These were taken in the late ’80s.

I have a few other photos I would like to include here. The first is our good friend Hank Tourtillott using his metal detector near Waldorf, Colorado. The others are of my 1953 Willys truck on the Savage Basin Road near Telluride, Colorado.

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

Pam’s Penny

When did tornadic activity get a “Category 0” rating? Did I miss something? I’m assuming a Category 0 means some wind rotation but no funnel cloud. Didn’t we use to call this just a strong storm? In any case, in December in the Midwest, who was expecting a “Category Anything.”

With vaccinations and boosters for visitors to Heart House, isn’t it something to be able to gather together in small groups again?

Happy Trails.

Last night and into this morning we had our first measurable snow for the season. It was not a heavy snow, only about 2 – 3 inches, but it covered the lawn and sidewalks. I was out shoveling and running the snow blower to clear our walks in hopes that they will melt off under the sunny sky.

Normally I would shovel this amount of snow but my shoulder is still bothering me and I could do only a limited amount of of shoveling, hence the blower.

On Wednesday we drove out to the same tree farm we had visited last year and cut our tree. It is in my bedroom this year as the Media Room is full of Becky’s plants. This is OK by me as I like waking up to the fresh pine scent. The tree is in the stand and full of water; decorating will come over the next few days. Photos will be in my next post.

Pam finished our cards and everything was mailed. We have started to receive cards and it is a great pleasure to open and read the included notes. We don’t have much planned for the holiday season; it is just nice to wake up and know there is nothing critical that needs to be done that day. This is not to say we are not working on projects, we are. Pam has started an embroidery project and I have been editing my transparency (slide) collection. It is just the pace of work is not as frantic as it had been over the good weather months.

I have discovered my slide collection is not well organized. Family photos are mixed in with trip and event photos, and I have a large collection of Colorado fall colors and back road trips. Other topics include old machinery, flowers, waterfalls, mine sites, and landscapes. These are all mixed in the sequence I took them which means they are not grouped by topic. Probably OK when the collection was small, but now I would rather they be in related groups so I have undertaken reorganizing them. That will be a long project!

In summary, we are slowing down a bit as the cold weather and snow build in, but continue work on more sedentary projects. Pam’s sister Becky’s home sale has not yet been finalized so she is not yet with us, but arrangements are moving ahead and we hope to have her at our place within the next week.

The other upcoming event is a planned visit from our son, Toby. It has been a while since we saw him at his South Bend, Indiana, home and we are looking forward to seeing him again.

Photo Archive

Normally I don’t say much about these photos, instead depending on a short intro and captions to describe them. This time will be a bit different; some of these photos require an extended description.

These first two photos are an example of that. These were taken in the late ’70s at the Colorado Yule marble quarry in Marble, Colorado. At that time the quarry was deserted and one could walk up and look into the vast chambers where marble had been quarried. The Tomb of the Unknowns, in Washington , D.C., was a 60-ton solid block of marble from this quarry. Several buildings in Denver, and many more across the country, were built using material from this quarry.

The following photos were taken near the Colorado town of Telluride in the late ’70s and early ’80’s and feature old mine sites. Quite a few were taken from the Savage Basin Road, not as well known as the Black Bear Road, but Savage Basin delivers great vistas and includes a vast amount of mining history.

I will have many more such photos in future posts; I hope you enjoy them.

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

Pam’s Penny

As a result of a random comment by daughter Felicity, I’ve been researching the differences between Victorian architectural styles. It appears Heart House is what is known as Folk Victorian, with elements of Queen Anne and Italianate. The Folk Victorian period in the Midwest spanned approximately 1880-1910, exactly the time period Heart House was constructed (1894) and the early years of the Tierney family’s residence (starting in 1907).

Folk Victorian house plans were fairly basic and usually symmetrical. Details were added with available local millwork – usually spindles (below porch rails) and spandrels (upper edges of porches), corbels (in assorted corners high and low), and ginger breading (in the eaves). Heart House has all of these. I characterize it in my mind as ostentatious East Coast Queen Anne meets practical Midwest farmhouse.

I have plans [at some point] to remove one level of our (flat, pseudo Italianate) tower. The tower actually needs a peaked roof for drainage and probably mitigation for bats – yet again. Since the house is a Folk Victorian, I feel we’re free to make tower changes and not ruin the architectural character of the place. Because – no two Folk Victorians look quite the same. Gotta love individuality and creativity.

Final Solstice cards are now beginning their voyages through the USPS; I look to my next project. (I have many projects on my list.)

Happy Trails.

There were a few notable events this week: Becky’s household goods arrived, we finished putting up our outside and inside Christmas lights, and I took a fall.

Becky’s household goods, which we are storing until she finds a new apartment, arrived on Monday. While most of her gear ended up in our garage, many items were taken upstairs to the guest bedroom. Unfortunately, Becky’s home sale ran into a snag and may not go through with this particular buyer. We will know more this upcoming Monday and hope for the best.

Here are a few photos of this event.

Becky has an interesting collection of houseplants which made the move OK due to mild weather. We have unpacked them and put some in the Media Room and in the Guest Bedroom. Here is a shot of one of the plant stands in the Media Room:

We hope Becky can sell her place and join us in the next few days.

This past week saw us pretty much completing our Christmas decorations for the year, with the exception of getting our tree. The place looks pretty good in daylight and when lit up at night. New this year is a large heart, made from rope lights, that we put up on the garden fence. Here are several photos of our decorating:

(Note: I added another string of white lights to the lower porch railings after this photo was taken as both Pam and I felt it was needed.)

All the outside lights are now on timers which eliminates the need to plug them in at dusk and unplug them when we go to bed. The inside “window” decorations are now powered up and down with little switch modules that plug into the outlets. This eliminates the need to plug and unplug their cords and is a quite handy addition this year.

The only drawback to the week was a fall I suffered when filling the bird feeder. The two-step ladder I had been using collapsed under me and I landed hard on my right shoulder. Using a combination of ice packs, my TENS machine, and Aleve capsules I have regained some movement in the right shoulder but it will be weeks before I have full use of it again. I had injured the same shoulder a couple years ago and this fall certainly didn’t help matters. Good thing our outside activities have pretty much ended!

General activities: I was able to do a final leaf clean-up but still need to take the trailer to the dump and unload it. That may not happen for a few days but is not really critical. I have been working on inside stuff such as scanning a few more slides and reading. A couple galleries have been upgraded and another dozen photos have been added to the Heart House Gallery. When I decide to sit a spell, Elmo The Cat has approved of my reading location, landing on my lap as I read.

Pam is nearing the end of her greeting card project and plans to finish this coming week. We scan the weather report for a good day to travel to the tree farm and fresh cut our holiday tree. I will continue to work on scanning some of my slides and negatives and weeding out many that are not worth keeping.

Photo Archive

Ranging from the late ’70s to the ’90s, here are some family photos.

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

Pam’s Penny

Solstice cards are taking a wee bit more time than initially planned. Cards being sent outside the Midwest are ready to go. Midwest cards still in process.

Happy Trails.

We had a quiet Thanksgiving this year. Pam cooked a turkey roast in the crock pot and baked a fabulous rhubarb and strawberry pie. (Pie was served warm with vanilla Haagen-Dazs ice cream.) Several other “fixins” were prepared as well including mashed potatoes and gravy, vegetables, and various fruit dishes. It was a good day for eating (and football games)!

The rest of the week’s activities were pretty low-key. We continue to put up Christmas decorations and have almost all the outside items put up. A few inside “window” lights have been put up and the place is starting to look good when evening falls and all the lights come on. There are still a few more “window” decorations to go.

A larger shopping trip was in order so we headed for the Walmart in Decorah. Over time we keep a list of items not available locally, both hardware and food items. For example, I use agave liquid as a sweetener as it has fewer calories than sugar and is better for my Type-2 diabetes. It is not locally available. Another food item we like is McVities Digestive Biscuits, another hard-to-find item that the Decorah Walmart stocks. A number of smaller items also made it to the list, so it was a good time to go shopping and stock up.

Although we found the items we were looking for, many empty shelves were observed. Supply chain issues affect even Walmart, it seems. The same is true for online-items. I ordered a pair of winter “Bean Boots” and some lined jeans. The boots may not be available until first week in January. (The jeans will be here before Christmas.) LL Bean said there was a chance the boots would arrive earlier — I just hope I have them on my feet before the worst storms of the winter hit NE Iowa.

The week’s other activities were pretty minor. Now that all the boxes have been removed, Pam is swabbing down the storage room in preparation for Becky’s visit. I continue to go through some of my slides and negatives — to take a journey down memory lane and re-acquaint myself with what I have and where things are. Pam’s work on the Solstice (Christmas) cards continues. A bit of frustration arose when I tried to use an Avery Label return address template on the computer; the template did not match the labels even though it was downloaded from the Avery site. A couple hours of “tweaking” was needed to produce acceptable results.

Today will be another lawn clean-up day as the City of Elma will be hosting a Christmas Parade tomorrow (Sunday) and I want the place to look its best. This should be about the end of leaf season, or at least I hope so. Normally this part of Iowa has snow by now but we are looking forward to a week of mild weather – for December – with high temps in the low 40s for several days. OK by me as this will help out with the cost of propane which we use for heating. (The price of propane is up almost 30 percent this year over last.) The rest of the week should be pretty quiet for me, with no major projects planned.

Photo Archive

From the fall of 1991:

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

Pam’s Penny

We take our time with exterior holiday decor, aiming for tasteful. Admittedly, Heart House has the perfect mix of porch spindles and flower bed fencing to stage lights. Others in town use the Midwest standard of “decorating” by lining up every garish lawn ornament in a row and flipping the switch. To each his own, I guess.

Hoping the “warmer” temps stick around for weeks and weeks.

Happy Trails.

This week was punctuated with a number of small events and work on smaller projects. Most of these fall into the “just living” category, but take up time and energy. One such event was COVID-19 related; we went in for our Moderna booster shots this past Thursday.

A notable event: Our oldest cat, Velvet, became quite ill. She had not been feeling well this last week, so we took her to the vet for a check-up. This revealed kidney failure. After a few days of treatment at the vet with no response, the decision was made for “V” to be euthanized, not an easy thing. We will bury Velvet in the garden when we bring her home tomorrow (Monday.)

Velvet was, as are all of our pets, a rescue animal. She had a genetic problem with her right rear hip, requiring specialized surgery during her kitten period, leaving her with a permanent limp. Vets along the way gave her little in the way of long-term survival chances. V lived to 14, a ripe old age for a cat, and had a good life with us. V never knew she was “handicapped” and required few accommodations. She was a feisty cat (just a few weeks ago giving Elmo a lesson in manners); we’ll miss her rough-and-ready purr and upturned tummy to rub.

One project completed was the laundry room wall. Pam finished putting up the wallpaper and trimmed it with decorative red ribbon. While we are still waiting on the plumbers to return and finish the drain and job sink installation, the wall looks pretty good!

Other routine tasks took up our time. Pam is moving ahead on the holiday cards, but is at a phase that requires hand-coloring of some elements. She works on batches in the evenings. Due to the NE Iowa USPS sorting machine being destroyed in Waterloo last November by the Postmaster General, Pam knows she needs to have solstice cards in the mail around the first week in December if there’s any hope of them being received in December.

The end of leaf season is approaching. I did a couple clean-ups this past week and the volume collected is gradually reducing. Most of what I get now is blowing in from neighbors’ yards. I anticipate a few more sessions will be needed before the snow flies as I like to keep the fence lines around the dog run and garden clean of leaves that blow up against them. These days lawn work is my major outside task, along with filling the bird feeder every other day.

Holiday preparations began this week. A shopping trip procured goodies for our Thanksgiving meal, including a boneless turkey breast that will be the main course. Pam says a pie will be baked for dessert. (Pie is a special treat for me.) The weather promises to be cold, with a high of below freezing, but we will enjoy the day.

One of the reasons this post is being produced on Sunday rather than my usual Saturday is we began putting up Christmas decorations yesterday. Saturday was a nice day — for November — with temps in the upper 40 degree range and very little wind, making it an ideal time to start our preparations. Decorating before Thanksgiving is a break from our tradition of putting up decorations the weekend after the holiday. Here in Elma, there’s a holiday parade down Main Street the last weekend in November. Since Heart House is in a prominent location on Main Street, we make an effort to have our lights and outside decor in place for the parade.

We concentrated on the front porch; the east and south sides will be addressed later this week. Here is a photo of the front porch as a work-in-progress.

I spent some time going through my collection of old negatives and more slides, coming to the conclusion that I am missing a box somewhere. I have a gap in coverage from 2001 to 2003, more or less. This will require me to get up in the attic of the garage and going through some boxes in storage there. I thought I had grouped all my photo stuff in one place, but I must have missed a box somewhere. I hope I can find it.

A memory upgrade for my Mac was ordered and arrived. I had been working on the original factory 16gb and decided to move up to 64gb. This has resulted in a much-appreciated faster processing of photos and video clips. A few winter clothing items will soon be ordered, such as a good pair of boots for me, and a couple of holiday gifts (which we hope will arrive as scheduled). The rear brake pads for the truck finally showed up so I will set aside some time to get those installed.

Pam’s sister Becky has a moving day scheduled for November 29 so she will be joining us by the end of the month. Most of her home goods will be kept in storage except for the items she needs to use on a daily basis. We’re thinking it should be fairly seamless to integrate Becky and her cat, Vanna, into our home. We are looking forward to having both of them here. (Pam has several indoor winter projects and could use another helper!)

The upcoming week will be busy. We’ll be putting up more decorations, preparing for Thanksgiving and hoping the plumber shows up to finish the job sink and washer line drain. I plugged in the heating tapes for the washer; we had hoped to have the move done before cold weather set in — making the heat tapes unnecessary. Always a Plan B…

Photo Archive

From a trip to the Pacific Northwest in 1989.

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

Pam’s Penny

For about the 20th time in the last few decades, this weekend I once again had the euthanization discussion with a vet. V will be the third cat buried in four months here at Heart House. We moved to NE Iowa with 8 indoor cats, and now have 3 indoors. My feline friends are rapidly aging out — of them all, V will be remembered as one of my favorites. Feisty and stoic were good traits for her; she did not let genetics stop her from having a full life with us.

Holiday preparations: I have learned to secure the outside holiday decorations at 2-3 points right from the start, so as not to be standing on a porch in a December wind chill trying to tie down flapping decor. The wind, it does blow in NE Iowa. Similarly, cards need to go out sooner rather than later under the current USPS regime. This year I have designed quite an intricate card, requiring many hours of cut-and-paste.

Happy Trails.

With cold weather ending outside activities, our focus moves to a couple of major indoor projects. Work progressed on the laundry room wall and the upstairs guest bedroom. A few other tasks occupied some time as well.

I had completed the patching of the laundry room wall and Pam decided to move ahead with installing wallpaper on it. (Wallpaper is easier to apply before the installation of the job sink and relocation of the washing machine.) This is work still in progress; here is a photo of the wallpaper taped in place to check alignment and cut openings for the outlet and plumbing features.

Pam plans to complete the initial fitting and then install the paper permanently in a few days.

The papering job, while large, was not the only indoor project we took on. The wire shelving Pam had ordered for the guest bedroom arrived so we moved ahead on that project. The shelving (2 sections) was assembled and items arranged on them. That really opened up the room by getting boxes and other items off the floor.

The timing was good as we received word Pam’s sister Becky has accepted an offer on her current place and may be joining us later this month. We are looking forward to her stay. However, clearing up this room revealed another renovation project we had hoped to avoid: window replacement for that room is now on the “To Do” list. As we found in the snug on the first floor, when the previous owner installed a large window air conditioner in the second floor window, it really messed up the window framing and trim. Nothing is salvageable. We’d hoped to simply remove the old A/C unit but now it’s time to talk to Bob the Builder about replacing the entire window. It’s the route we took in the snug and it turned out very well.

On a more mundane level, I put new front brake pads in the F-150 truck. During this job I discovered the insides of the front tires were wearing faster than the rest of the tires, indicating an alignment was in order. An appointment was made with the alignment shop and the truck is now correctly aligned. A new pair of tires is scheduled to be installed this coming Tuesday. The current front tires were put on 6 years ago, well before we began moving, and were due for replacement even before I found the alignment problem.

Along with doing another leaf pickup, outside activities included putting up our winter bird feeder. An amazing number of birds have shown up to take advantage of the free food. As many as three blue jays have been on or around the feeder at the same time, a red-headed woodpecker is a frequent visitor, and literally dozens of smaller birds are at the feeder at any given time. I was not expecting this quantity of birds so early in the season.

A recent trip to the local farm supply store secured more black oil sunflower seeds and a bag of seed mix so I can keep the feeder stocked. At this point I am refilling the feeder every other day.

Moving back inside, I finished re-wicking and cleaning a couple of my old kerosene lamps. My lamp fuel arrived and soon I will fill one of the lamps and light it up to see how it works. I don’t want to have fuel in more than one lamp as the wicks can get crusty from the evaporation of the fuel. One lamp for occasional or emergency use will be fine.

I took the following photo of our three dogs, along with Velvet, one of our cats, sleeping in the corner of the library. Velvet took over one of the beds so JoJo had to sleep on a blanket on the floor. Such ignominy.

Photo Archive

I have a few family photos to post this week along with a photo of Thor, our first dog.

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

Pam’s Penny

Cold winds blow across NE Iowa. I’m slowly making the transitions — keeping drinking water unfrozen + monitoring heat in the catio for the feral cats. It’s a bummer putting a coat on Blondie when she goes outside. Ugh.

Happy Trails.

With the advent of colder weather we’ve moved to working on inside projects. These are not as broad in scope as our summer activities but are things requiring attention.

One of these projects is the repair of the laundry room wall where the new washer and job sink lines were run. (These are not yet functional, we are still waiting for the plumber to return with the correct drain connections.) The job is a bit frustrating as I am trying to fit a sheetrock panel into a lathe-and-plaster wall that was not straight to begin with. Once I am done Pam plans to install wallpaper on that wall to cover the patch and other imperfections.

I have found I can put on only one layer of “mud” each day as each layer takes a full 24 hours to dry. Another layer or two, followed by a final sanding, and Pam will be ready to wallpaper.

Pam’s sister Becky may be staying with us into the winter months, as she is selling her place and looking for an apartment. We have offered our place as an interim place to stay while all this comes to pass. Preparations include going through the storage room closet with the aim of relocating “stuff” to make that room a functional bedroom. A few items were tossed (“why did we move that”) and other things (cat and dog supplies) were moved to the basement. Pam has ordered several wire rack shelving units, on wheels, to get other boxes off the floor and make room for small pieces of furniture such as a floor lamp, small desk, and twin bed. That work will continue for a few days yet.

No other work has been done on the plumbing project, and it may be delayed even further in light of some bad news we received a few days ago. Scott O’Brien is the owner of O’Brien Plumbing and Heating, the local company who has done much work for us. They installed our central air, new water heater, garbage disposal, repaired some other water lines, and are scheduled to install the shower in the upstairs bath. Scott’s wife was killed in an auto accident this past week, leaving him alone to raise his 3 children. The news is a blow to the community as both Scott and his family are well known and respected. Scott is active in the local fire department and did snow plowing in the winter months when other plumbing projects slowed down. While we don’t have all the details, we know Mrs. O’Brien was killed in a head-on accident that occurred on a gravel road near Elma. Our hearts go out to the entire family.

Other activities during the week were low key. Another lawn clean up, maintenance on the truck, cutting back the remaining flower beds, putting temporary patches in the upstairs bathroom floor, Installing window inserts in our smaller windows, and a general catching of our breaths were all on the agenda. It is good to have a patch of down time.

Pam continues to work on our holiday cards. Given the slowness of the mail these days she will need to get them mailed in early December — a bit earlier-than-normal deadline.

One point of interest: We have been receiving many positive comments on the progress of our house painting. From the teller at the bank, people at the lumber yard, and a couple of our neighbors, many people who came into town for Trick-or-Treating saw our house and made positive comments about the updated look. Good to know and helps renew our resolve to continue on.

I have a couple old kerosene lamps that I have decided to re-wick and get into working condition. I decided to go with a lamp oil for fuel (to reduce or eliminate the oder normally associated with kerosene). Shopping on-line, I was taken aback with the shipping charges. Fuel cannot be shipped by air so ground shipping is the only option. Charges for the same 64 oz Aladdin Lamp Oil range from almost $10.00 (the fuel itself is about $15.00) to $21.00. Adding a second container added only a couple dollars to shipping so I ended up ordering two containers from the company with the lowest shipping. That should take care of my “fuel needs” for a long time.

We are in the process of setting up a streaming TV service. The cable Pam subscribed to when we first moved to Iowa has gone up in price and down in channel offerings so we are looking at alternatives. I am experimenting with Fubo TV running on a Roku Ultra device. It takes some getting used to. The biggest drawback is no “Back” or “Previous” button on the remote. Both Pam and I use this feature frequently. You can go back, but it takes several clicks on the remote to do so. Still, for half the cost of regular cable, (now up to almost $120.00 per month) we may learn to live with this inconvenience. I have been learning on my TV and will set up Pam’s TV a bit later. We are currently in the free trial period and will have to make a decision shortly.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I have scanned many of my 35mm slides and posted the photos here. This week I decided to expand my scanning to cover 35mm color negatives. (A few are included below.) As my collection of negatives is quite a bit larger than slides, I will need to develop the skill to “read” a negative and scan the most interesting ones. That may take some time but I plan to make the effort as winter weather arrives.

Projects for the upcoming week include putting new brake pads in the truck, getting the snow blower up and running after summer storage, finishing the laundry room wall patch, and numerous smaller tasks. While the scope of projects has narrowed there are still plenty of projects to keep us busy.

Photo Archive

The first two photos are from 1991 and are of upgrades we were making to our home in Daleyville, Wisconsin. These are the first scans from color negatives that I have made.

These next two photos were scanned from 35mm transparencies (slides)

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

Pam’s Penny

For about a day or so this week, I actually felt as if I was retired. Didn’t do much, slept late, fooled around on the computer. So that’s what retirement could be like!

By all indications, it will be a full house for the holiday period here at Heart House. We’ll see what this old house can accommodate.

Happy Trails.

It was an eventful week. In addition to finishing a bit of painting and doing yard work, our contractors started our bathroom and laundry room remodel. Problems were encountered (surprise! – not) and the job isn’t yet completed.

Our remodel plan had four goals: 1) install a job sink in the laundry room, 2) relocate the washer’s water and drain lines, 3) install a garbage disposal under the kitchen sink, and 4) relocate the upstairs bathroom toilet and water supply lines.

This project was mainly undertaken as the washer and bathroom water lines (run along exterior walls – stupid) tend to freeze in winter (duh). The washer lines had heat tapes on them which kept water running, but the upstairs lines did not.

Beginning in the kitchen, the garbage disposal install required a complete rebuild of the sink’s drain system, but was accomplished without much fuss.

In the laundry room, moving the washer lines and drain, plus adding lines and a drain for the new job sink, was a bit more of a problem. The plumbers were able to complete most of the work but didn’t have the correct fitting to add the new drain lines to the existing drain pipe. A return visit will take care of that, but it may take a couple days/weeks? to get back on the [very busy] plumbing schedule. Until then the washer is still functioning on the original lines.

One of my “indoor” projects will be to repair the sheet rock around the install. I plan to make a cardboard template so I can accurately make the needed cutouts. Pam already has plans to put wallpaper over the entire wall (which will help cover any mistakes I might make). The plumbers found a stash of acorns and vintage linoleum in the wall as they worked. The acorns were maybe a rodent stash, but linoleum in the wall? A mystery.

Related to the washer relocation is the install of our new job sink in the laundry room. This is also on “hold” pending the drain connection, but I did get the faucet mounting and backsplash finished. Pam painted some hearts on the wood and I followed up with 3 coats of spar-quality polyurethane.

Where we really ran into PROBLEMS was in the upstairs bathroom. The original plan was to simply relocate/replace the outside wall water lines (the ones prone to freezing) to an inside wall and replace the old stool with a new one. That plan did not survive long!

When some floorboards were pulled up a real mess of lines and drain piping was found. Obviously, someone who was trying to do work on the cheap used whatever was at hand, not bothering to get the correct parts to do the job correctly. Lines were a combination of cast iron, galvanized pipe, and copper pipe. There were no clean-out ports and the traps were not accessible should they need to be cleaned or replaced.

However, the worst problem was structural. The floor had sagged over the years, dropping as much as 1 1/2 inches from level in the middle of the room. This meant that the new stool would not sit level.

Now we needed to make a decision: Fix the floor correctly, or just patch the floor and leave everything ‘as is.’ We called in Bob the Builder who gave us a plan to level the floor. He will cut “tapers” to lay on top of the existing floor and install a new floor over the top of the old one. Material will not be that expensive (cost of wood is coming down after the pandemic high), but the labor to do the job will be substantial, requiring at least a couple days work by two carpenters.

So there we were: Bob the Builder, the master plumber Zach, Pam and I, standing in the upstairs bath debating the future of that room. Given that the floor was already open (in several places) and required reworking of the existing water and drain lines, we decided to go ahead with the floor fix and add a shower install (an upstairs shower is an item I have been lobbying Pam for). Bob will get us on his schedule and the shower stall has been ordered through the plumbing company. Short term, the new stool was installed on a level patch installed in the existing floor. The sink was not disconnected so is still functional. (The new plan calls for it to be relocated to an inside wall near the stool.)

We have watched enough “old home renovation” shows to know problems such as this are not uncommon. Old homes have settled and there are no level surfaces or straight lines. What we hoped not to find was “kludge jobs” done by previous owners. Silly us.

Zach the Plumber was able to do a substantial amount of work in the bathroom, relocating the water lines as we had originally planned, and replacing much of the existing drain system with PVC piping. Here are a couple photos of this work in progress:

Current project status: We are waiting on correct fittings for laundry room and job sink drains, waiting for Bob the Builder to get the new floor installed, the shower stall is on order, and sheet rock work needs to be done. A return by Zach the Plumber to install the shower on the new bathroom floor and complete the plumbing will be required. After that Pam and I will need to put some type of floor covering down to complete the bathroom. There is a long way to go, but at least we no longer have to worry about water lines freezing!

Not all activity this past week was indoors. Pam finished some small paint jobs early in the week, including the ginger bread over the front porch steps. She really wanted to get this section done as it adds character to the front porch entrance and shows passers-by what the rest of the ginger bread (high in the eaves) will look like once painted in shades of blue. Additionally, I painted the white trim on one of the second floor bedroom windows, which required a trip out on the front porch roof. Both projects are visible in the photo below.

Other chores including getting a 4-wheel alignment done on the RAV4, lawn clean-up, the dogs were taken to a new vet for a quick appointment. The colder weather has not slowed our schedule by much. More projects will be of the indoor variety as colder-than-average weather sets in for the next week.

I include this photo of Felicity and Peter; they are dressed in their Halloween costumes to volunteer at the Tulsa Botanic Gardens. Felicity is in her Jane Austen dress and Peter is a western gambler.

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

Pam’s Penny

This week seemed about ten days long; by Wednesday I felt it was already Saturday. We moved a quantity of boxes out of storage areas where the plumbers would be routing lines — boxes of “stuff” therefore being stacked around the house. (Reminded me of the move-in two years ago, and not in a good way.) Drilling noise, keeping track of animals while workmen were moving through the house, making sure Elmo didn’t escape into an open hole in the floor. Exhausting.

And that second floor bathroom, what a mess under the floor boards. Why has virtually every repair in/on this house been done cheap-cheap-cheap and poorly? It grows tedious. I mean, what sane person would put a 2 x 2 for support under a 700+ pound clawfoot bathtub? I guess we’re lucky the tub didn’t drop through the kitchen ceiling below. (Maybe it would have if one of us had actually taken a bath in the thing. Weight of tub + weight of water + human weight = wild ride to the first floor.) I’m currently quite angry with previous owners.

Oh well, time to plant spring-blooming bulbs and finish cleaning dead hostas from the flowerbeds. I’m planning to live dangerously and overwinter a Boston Fern indoors, within Elmo reach. The internet tells me the plant will not be lethal to the cat, but the cat may be lethal to the plant. (Trying to factor how many cat pukes I’ll be cleaning vs. if the fern will survive…)

Happy Trails.

You would think that with the weather getting colder, our lives would slow down. Not so. With more painting, a visit from a long-time friend, leaf clean up, and various other projects we are as busy as ever.

Last Monday we entertained one of Pam’s long-time friends, Sally Eglinton. Sally was a brand-new librarian when Pam was in high school. (Sally’s husband Ken [now deceased] was a shop teacher at the same time.) Pam struck up a friendship with Sally that still endures. I first met Sally when she attended our wedding in 1974.

Since 2020’s face-to-face visit opportunities were COVID-limited, we had not had a chance to see Sally, who lives in Minnesota, and she had not had the opportunity to visit us. This year we set a date and Sally drove to NE Iowa on a beautiful fall day to get a tour of Heart House.

Here is a photo of us on our front porch.

The “Welcome Fall” plaque, seen between Sally and Pam, is a much-appreciated housewarming gift from Sally and will be on display until the snow falls. We really enjoyed having Sally here — catching up with the news/events in our lives since the last time we saw each other.

A limited amount of work did continue on the house. I replaced two rotten pieces of trim with newly painted wood. I put a second coat of red paint on the west wall and scraped and painted some of the vertical white trim, which improved the appearance of the corners and really makes the red walls ‘pop’ with the contrast. With below freezing temperatures arriving late in the week, I drained and removed the hoses, pulled the last of the vines out of the garden, and made a couple passes over the yard with my leaf muncher and riding lawn mower to remove fallen leaves. Pam put away yard art for the season, then cut back a number of plants, including a few hostas and morning glories (saving quite a few seeds from the Grandpa Ott morning glories).

We are preparing for the plumber’s visit, scheduled to start next Tuesday. This project will relocate the laundry room water and drain lines away from an outside wall, where they are prone to freezing unless we plug in their heating tapes.

The upstairs bathroom will also get similar attention, moving water lines away from the south outside wall. We’ve had to aim a milk house heater at these lines where they made the curve from horizontal (in the basement) to the vertical where they ran up the wall to keep them from freezing. Finally, new water supply and drain lines need to be run for the job sink we plan to add to the laundry room. The plumbers have let us know that they will not do any repair on the walls and bathroom floor so after they leave we will have new projects to repair those areas. Photos will be forthcoming in my next post!

So ends another busy week. Items still on the list: detail painting we would like to get done, but that is weather dependent. Looking forward, the big event will be the plumbing project of course, which necessitates relocation of stored boxes out of two different areas. Other projects on the horizon include changing oil and filter in the truck and installing a new drive belt on the John Deere riding mower. I need to check the snow blower and make sure it is in running condition after not using it since last spring.

Pam has begun working on our 2021 holiday/Winter Solstice cards. These hand-made cards will take quite a bit of work to complete. I help where I can, primarily on the computer-printed art work, but Pam handles the hand work required to design and assemble the cards. It is a time-intensive project.

Finally, I have a short clip of Elmo the cat playing around the legs of the kitchen table. The clip is 46 seconds long and has no sound. You can find it on my Cats Videos page or go directly to Elmo at play.

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

Pam’s Penny

I have it in my mind I want to paint the portico over the front porch before all is said and done re: outside painting this year. It is not an easy reach for me on the ten foot ladder, and all of the component parts of the (small) project involve detail painting. Standing by for 50 degree temps.

In many ways it will be a relief to wrap up exterior painting; both Himself and I are very, very tired of exterior painting. There will be interior painting for me over the winter, but my “break” between paint jobs is the cut-and-paste holiday cards.

Happy Trails.