Pressure

We bought a nice little gas-powered pressure washer at Sam’s about 4 months ago. Since then it has just sat in the garage waiting to be fired up for the first time. There always seemed to be other important things to do.

Today I finally did the final assembly, filled it with oil and gas and cranked it up. The Honda engine caught on the first pull. I worked for about an hour when it began raining. Penny came out and wanted to go to Slick Mic’s for a philly steak sandwich. I put the washer away until tomorrow.

After shedding my wet clothes and cleaning up it was off to the restaurant. It was pouring outside now. Penny stopped me at a good time.

My afternoon was spent on other tasks I have been putting off. I took down our old wireless network and set up the new one. That all went smoothly. The system is the new wireless-n format. I’m hoping to get a little better range with this setup.

Next I hooked up our cable TV line to the new computer and used the Windows Media Center to set it up. Our computer is now a DVR. It works just like T-Vo. The computer downloads channel and program info from the internet. It has a TV guide arrangement. To record a show or the whole series all you do is press the record button. You can have the TV full-screen or reduce the window as small as you like and have the TV playing while you do other computer work. The thing even has a remote to control everything easily.

The only item I had problem with was the new wireless adapter card for my laptop. I installed it. It seemed to work fine but after I turned the laptop off it wouldn’t start up again. So after about an hour and a half of uninstalling and installing and fiddling around I seem to have everything working. Although the signal is still weak back in the bedroom my laptop seems to have a solid signal. I’ll give it a few days before I claim success.

My thumbs have still been behaving. I’ve been able to get things done without ending up in extreme pain. The thumbs still hurt but they settle down instead of getting more and more inflammation. I can easily take this level of discomfort.

All in all not a bad day. Tomorrow is Target day.

By the way—HAPPY 1ST BIRTHDAY SOPHIA!

A 3-Top

I spent most of today on my second attempt to put 3 kayaks on top of the CRV. Today I was successful.

Running in the background all day yesterday and today is a woot-off. Woot is a site (www.woot.com) that offers up one great deal a day (usually on gadgets and electronics). Most of the time the deal isn’t something we are interested in. Sometimes it tempts us. Sometimes we actually buy something. Once a month or so the site has a woot-off. In a woot-off items are put on sale, one at a time, until they sell out. Then another item is put on sale. There is another site (http://www.mywoot.net/) that provides a running tally on the item for sale tracking what per-cent is left of the item and when it is sold-out. Then it announces the next item up for sale with a rooster crow to let you know it’s time to look at the new item. The reason it is important to catch the switch to a new item is the woot bag of crap. Once during the woot-off, usually at the end, the put on sale a brown paper bag of crap for $0.99. It contains anything they have lying around the warehouse from a packet of silica gel or a lollipop to nice things like printers and camcorders. The bag of crap sells out very quickly so if you don’t catch it right away you don’t have a chance at it. That’s why we monitor the site all day during woot-offs. The last woot-off was when we bought our new computer. We haven’t bought a bag of crap yet and this is the 4th woot-off we’ve monitored.

Now, back to the kayaks. My problem last time was the cross-bar on my roof rack wasn’t wide enough to carry the three kayaks. I replaced the crossbars with 6-ft lengths of ¾-inch galvanized pipe. The pipe is a hair narrower than the stock bar but it works OK. The pipe has threaded ends. That feature solved another issue as you will see later.

The 6-ft length is perfect for the job. I can get both single kayaks on the sides on the Hullraiser carriers and the big tandem kayak goes in the center on the Hulley rollers.

The only difficulty with this arrangement is putting my single kayak on the side mount carrier. I looked at all sorts of lift-assist mechanisms. I scratched out some interesting designs with ratchets and pulleys but decided first to try the simplest solution—an extension bar and a small step ladder.

The fact that the end of the pipe was threaded made for an easy way to make the extension bar. I used a ¾ to ½ inch coupler and a 4 ft ½-inch pipe to do the trick. To mount the kayak I first lift one end onto the extension bar. Then lift the other end and place it on the rack. Then it’s back to the other end to put it on the rack. Finally some adjusting and the kayak is up. This method is easier because you only have to lift one side of the kayak at a time and that is a much more manageable weight to get up that high.

The finished product

The extension bar

Birthday Weekend

Birthday Weekend

We went to Jacksonville Saturday evening for Sophie’s 1st birthday party. We drove to High Springs on Friday and stayed with C&C. Christian drove us up to J’ville for the party. We left for home on Monday.

Friday: We’ve developed a decent packing list for our trips now and it seems to work OK. The biggest problem we normally have is to find Brie and put her in her carrier. About 2 hours before we planned to leave she vanished. I’m not sure what she cues on but she usually hides before we leave and I have to find her and extract her from her hidey-hole. I tricked her this time. We had some Popeye’s chicken left over that we were eating for lunch before we hit the road. I suggested that we eat lunch back in the bedroom watching TV. I thought the aroma of the chicken might draw out the cat. Sure enough shortly after we started eating Brie appeared licking her chops. I let her sit for a while then snatched her up and put her in the carrier.

For this trip I couldn’t find Penny’s or my Bluetooth earpieces. We didn’t use them for the return trip last time and I put them away someplace real safe. We also brought our bikes along thinking maybe we would tour High Springs on Sunday with C&C as guides. The drive over was not eventful. There were patches of light rain on the drive over but nothing heavy. Christian was home when we arrived. When Christy got home we headed out to Conestoga’s Steakhouse for dinner.

Saturday: We did our Waffle House thing with C&C. They had a picnic to go to so Penny and I puttered around their house. Penny washed dishes and I fixed the screen on their back porch. We ate a small lunch at the local burger king and the waitress chuckled when the bill totaled $6.66.

I conned Christian into driving to J’ville by filling his tank. The drive up was miserable. Heavy rain and terrible drivers showed up all along the route. Christian handled it all masterfully.

When we arrived at Karen’s things were just beginning. They had a Wii set up and running—I played my first game on a Wii and got my pants beaten off me by B in a game of bowling.

We didn’t get much in the way of quality time with anyone, including the birthday girl, and it felt a little strange. It was good to see everyone and we had a good time.

Karen and Tim being the smart parents they are provided Sophie with her own little cake. She had a great time squishing it up and eating some of it. She was extremely serious in her work of demolishing that cake. We have many pictures to testify for her demolition expertise.

The drive back saw more rain.

Sunday: Sunday began with early church. The church there has an Indian (not native American Indian but Asian Indian) priest. It boggles me a little to see him. He is difficult to understand. He started his homily with a joke that no one got—so he had to explain it to get a forced laugh. We once again hit Waffle house for breakfast and the waitress remembered us and our preferences.

It then was time to go shopping at Sam’s Club to stock up C&C’s pantry and freezer. We ate lunch at hungry Howie’s and 2 guys came in. One was barefooted the other had sandals on but no shirt. The cashier explained no shirt, no shoes, no service. The guy in the sandals kicked them off and gave them to his friend, told him his order and went outside. Between the two of them they satisfied the dress code.

Penny made portabella mushroom ravioli for dinner. We didn’t get in a bike ride—the weather was too iffy.

Monday: Once again Penny and I went to Waffle House. This time the little blonde waitress told us her whole life story before we even got a cup of coffee. We loaded up the car and left by late morning.

We got home around 2:30 and found everything in order. We found out from our phone messages that Nana apparently suffered a stroke on Friday and ha pneumonia. Today she is getting better.

When we left on Friday I set out a can of soft cat food as a farewell present for the kitties. This afternoon It was still there, uneaten and rotting with the dish filled with water from the rain. It’s 7:30 now and haven’t seen any of the cats so far. I don’t know what’s up. It would be nice to see them and put my mind at ease. (UPDATE: 3 cats showed up at 9:30!)

Another Leak

I seem to be plagued with leaky issues this month. First it was the A/C. Then protecting the outside storage. Today I mowed the lawn and found it wet and squishy around the water meter. The city water guy took a look at it just before we got a rainstorm—not a fun time to be working outside. He said they would come out and fix it in the morning.

I took advantage of the thunderstorm to do something I haven’t done in a while—take an afternoon nap. I couldn’t do laundry or work on the computer because of the lightning. I’m still a little tired from my “indigestion” incident yesterday. So a nap seemed good and it was.

We finished up with our FOCCUS couple this evening. They seem to be a caring couple and we actually saw them learning and using some of the relationship skills we discussed with them. They gave us a thank you card with an Olive Garden gift card inside. They are going to go to an Engaged Encounter weekend in August, too. They seem to be taking advantage of everything that is available to them to prepare for marriage. I think that’s good. I wish them well in their life together.

KITTY UPDATE—We still have 4 cats showing up on and off each evening. Sunday it was Buzz and Meredith. Monday it was Velcro and Meredith. Tuesday only Meredith showed. Tonight Marmalade, Velcro and Meredith. Meredith seems to be the only regular. The feeder is still working fine. I haven’t seen any signs of other critters out there. I think I finally got all the raccoons and haven’t seen any possum in a while.

The big event tomorrow—haircuts.

Oops, I Did it Again!

It seems that once every 4 years or so my body decides it’s time for the old heart attack scare. Today was the day.

After breakfast I set out the heating pad on the bed and laid my sore back on it. I had today’s paper with me and set about reading it and doing the daily word jumble. I’ve had aches and pains in my chest ever since my gymnastics injury on the parallel bars in high school. It’s not unusual to have a short pain—usually right where my heart is because I separated a couple of ribs in that area. I also had been doing some lifting in the past couple of days so some aches would not be unexpected. (a strained back was not expected but again not unusual).

The first time I went to a doctor about that pain was when I lived in Baltimore in 1970. I again consulted a doctor about it when we moved here and it was diagnosed as a muscular skeletal issue.

So this morning when I got a small flash of pain in that area It didn’t concern me—until I suddenly got a sinking feeling, got very tired, broke out in a cold sweat, had my vision begin to tunnel and proceeded to tremble—especially in my hands and arms. The whole sequence lasted about a minute, maybe 2 but it left me feeling “not right”. This is similar to what has happened twice before in the last 8 years. The first time I overate at Thanksgiving and it was diagnosed as likely being indigestion. The second time it was the old wake up in bed with a pain in the chest. That’s always an interesting experience. Today I didn’t have any sharp pain, it wasn’t radiating down my arm and I wasn’t short of breath. So I waited to see how things would be.

About an hour later it happened again. Then about an hour and a half later when I lay back in the recliner to rip some stitches for Penny. In the past I went to the emergency room much more quickly but this time I waited because the symptoms were so similar to my previous 2 visits. The difference this time, however and the reason I finally went to the ER (apart from Penny insisting) was I just didn’t feel right. Even after I had no major symptoms for about 3 hours I just wasn’t right. This was different than the past. How many times have you heard or read that someone complained about not feeling well and later had a heart attack? I called my doctor’s office and told them what was up and the receptionist said and I quote, “You silly! Get yourself to the ER. We don’t take any chances with chest pain.” Penny also insisted I call the doctor because she knew what they would say.

The ER experience wasn’t bad. They take you back immediately if you have chest pain (a good thing to know—I have chest pain and oh by the way can you look at this finger I just happened to almost cut off?). The triage nurse wasn’t as prompt as he should have been but once they brought me to my curtained room they were very efficient. Of course, I was now feeling better by the minute. After I got into the mandatory rear-vented gown, the nurse hooked up to an EKG, pt on an oxygen nosepiece took my blood pressure and temperature and drew some blood for lab work. At the same time another young lady showed up with a laptop computer and took all my personal info. Penny joined me at this point and I horsed around trying to make funny patterns on the screen monitoring my vital functions while we waited for the doctor.

The doc finally showed, asked me some relevant questions, said my symptoms were low risk for a heart attack, said he would get lab work on my blood and have an x-ray taken to make sure nothing strange was occurring inside me. He was soft spoken and seemed to be a nice guy.

About 15 minutes later the x-ray tech (Joanne) showed up, took my picture and left. About a half hour later I was told I was OK and released. Total time in the ER—about 2 ½ hours. Not a fun way to spend the afternoon.

We went to the library from the ER the Publix for milk and stuff and finally back home.

Tonight I am feeling OK. My tummy is a little upset (I didn’t eat lunch because I didn’t feel like it) and I still feel a little off. I haven’t had any more pain or dizziness since 10:30 AM. I didn’t get a lot done today with my back and my trip to the ER. Hopefully tomorrow will be better. Now if I can just get through the night with no issues.

July 20

On July 20, 1969, the human race accomplished its single greatest technological achievement of all time when a human first set foot on another celestial body. Anybody alive at the time will likely be able to tell you exactly where they were when that first step was taken. I was in our apartment in Melbourne with my 3 roommates. We watched it on CBS with Walter Cronkite. Not everybody remembers that Neil Armstrong claims he said "That's one small step for a man" instead of "One small step for man". NASA even tried to make that the official version of what was said. A later analysis of the tapes by the British concluded that Armstrong did say the article "a". I didn't see any notice of this anniversary in the news today.

I’ve spent my time over the past few days redoing a little storage shelter I threw together a couple of months ago. It has things in it that can take a little weather and need minimal cover. The shelter I had them in would not withstand any sort of strong wind. So I rebuilt it so it won’t blow apart in a big wind. I finished most of that today but I ended up straining my back a little. It’s not the chronic back issue that I used to have. It’s just your normal run-of-the-mill back strain.

Another project I have going is to make it so I can carry 3 kayaks on the roof rack on the CRV. My first attempt failed because the rack wasn’t wide enough to take the kayaks in the configuration that we needed. I’m going to have the big tandem go in the center and the other two go up sideways on the hullraiser supports. That’s the way we have to do it because I can’ lift the tandem to mount it sideways. I can roll it onto the top using the hulley rollers we have. We bought longer cross pieces for the rack. Actually we bought some ¾ inch galvanized pipe that appears to be the right size to fit the holding mechanism. I haven’t had a chance to try the pipe out yet. Maybe tomorrow.

The third project I spent time on was making a 1-year morph of Sophia. I finished that today during rest periods I took. It was so hot outside I found I could only work in 30-45 minute stretches. So I’d come inside, drink a big glass of iced water and work on the morph. I learned how to use the program pretty well. I’m burning the lightscribe label on the CD now. I’m going to speed up the morph and see if I can add appropriate music for the final version.

Tomorrow’s big event—our annual termite inspection.

July 17

Yesterday after my morning bike ride I fired up Google Earth and plotted my route to see how far I went. It totaled 9.6 miles. I was out about an hour. The only trouble with a bike is you have to cover a lot of territory to get a good exercise session and the neighborhood is not as bike-friendly as I would like.

We had a session with the pre-Cana couple last night and they have made good progress. Penny made meat loaf for the meal. Next week we will have Popeye’s fried chicken.

Today (Thursday) I spent in yard work and computer work. Not much that is blogworthy. We finally have gotten away from daily thunderstorms. Instead it is just hot!

Tomorrow is Target day and another session with the married couple.

Square Jugs

Have you tried the square milk jugs yet?

We have and they are difficult to use without spilling. I bought milk at Sam’s Club this week and they have gone to these new jugs.

The difference is that the new jugs are square and made of recyclable plastics. This makes them stack-able and compact in trucks and on shelves. These jugs are less expensive because of easier shipping and the elimination of milk crates. I did some research. The jugs allow 50% more milk per cubic foot of storage. They eliminate the need for milk crates which must be returned and washed before reuse. Instead the new cartons are wrapped in shrink wrap pallets that stack. Sam’s says they can put 224 cartons in the same space as 80 of the old ones. Instead of 5 deliveries a week, the same amount of milk can be delivered in only 2.

The bottom line is that labor costs are cut, 60-70% of water use is saved, gas is saved and they claim it will knock 20 cents off the price of a gallon.

The downside of the new jugs is that it is taking consumers some time to get used to them. People are having difficulty not spilling milk during the pour since there is no spout. Sam's Club has even been offering in-store classes on how to pour from the new jugs. I think that they should have taken a little more consideration of the consumer and fixed the difficult pouring with a better spout. That would have complicated the design but it would show consideration for the people buying the product. There is an opportunity here for a smart designer.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/06/29/business/milk-jug3/index.html

This to me typifies what we will experience with the green movement. Yes there will be savings. It is for a good purpose if it conserves resources. (It's dubious if its sole purpose is to reduce CO2) but it will come at the cost of inconvenience and a lower quality of life. I’ll hold judgment whether that’s good or not.

Just a Tuesday

Today I started Penny off with banana pecan pancakes. Her teeth have been hurting and I thought relatively soft pancakes would be better than crunchy cereal.

Then I took a 40-minute bike ride down to Racetrack road and back up around Mooney pedaling back through each neighborhood I passed. I’m getting comfortable with the bike. Penny found me a good bike.

Last night I finished setting up the new computer. Today I spent some time exploring the new software to get an idea what its capabilities are. We’ve got video editing and photo editing software. The photo editing software had bonus features with it.

One is a morphing program that I played with in the previous post. It is easy to use and works nicely. I did that one morph of Sophie. The program has the capability to do a sequence of morphs through as many pictures as your system can handle. Since our computer has a terabyte of memory the machine does not limit us. I’m thinking of doing a longer morph of Sophie using 6-12 pictures in the sequence and age her from birth to 1 year. Karen, if you already have good face-on shots of Sophie from each month or 2 months send them to me and I’ll make you a 1st year morph on CD. If you don’t I’ll find what I need in what we took and what we’ve downloaded from your blog.

Another program fixes up faces in pictures and can modify them to look slimmer, happier, angry or even like a monkey.

Other programs have drawing features to make web pages and other graphics. There’s even a program consisting of 5,000 objects (pictures of everything you can think of) for inclusion in documents and other things. I don’t know if I have any use for them but they are there.

Finally I tried to put 3 kayaks on the CRV using the new hullraiser rack hardware we have. It didn’t work as I had planned so I’m going to have to play around with the rack a little before I’m successful. There is limited real estate on top of the CRV and because it is relatively high it is difficult to make the kayaks, especially the tandem go where I want it to go.
Tomorrow our only commitment is the couple coming over in the evening.

Test Video

I'm playing around with some of the new features on my computer.

Here is one result. I want to find out if this format takes too long to play.

Here goes:

Slow Sunday

I made egg in a basket this morning using some wonderful Italian bread we got at Fresh Market last week. It makes a tasty breakfast. Penny’s health wasn’t good today so biking or kayaking was out.

I still have to finish moving our old computer to Penny’s sewing room and set up the new computer in the den. I have to modify the shelf unit in Penny’s room so the monitor will fit. I originally built the shelf unit probably 20+ years ago. So that’s what I did today after a leisurely morning reading the Sunday paper and spending time with Penny.

Tonight the mod is finished. Tomorrow I’ll finish the move and set-up. Along with the new computer I’m going to set up the new wireless router we got about a month ago. I wasn’t able to get it working with all the computers then. Hopefully I will succeed tomorrow. It’s supposed to have better range than our current one has and it is the new wireless-n format. I got it so I could use my laptop in our bedroom consistently.

Since that failed attempt to set up the new router my computer has been connecting to the Internet consistently from the bedroom with the old router. Go figure.

Cool Man

We have our new A/C installed. That about describes Saturday. The workmen showed up promptly at 0730. They were polite an efficient and were done shortly after noon. Both the inside and outside units are much quieter than their predecessors. It will be interesting to see if our power bill is affected significantly. So far the A/C seems to be keeping the place comfortable. There’s no reason it shouldn’t but it is new and we have to see if it has any defects.

We also went to church this evening. We are getting another couple to do FOCCUS with. That makes us seeing 3 couples at the same time. Penny mentioned to the deacon that assigns us the couples that we can do this but if the load stays this full we could use some help. That translated into him telling the priest to give us an atta-boy from the pulpit.

Tomorrow is the first day in a while where we have the day open. No couples, no leaky A/C, no bad reactions to pizza, nothing we have to do. We would kayak or bike ride but every day we’ve had nasty thunderstorms. I know I don’t want to kayak in a thunderstorm. At least tonight I should sleep OK without worrying about a flooded carpet or the unknowns of replacing the A/C.

July 11

Not a lot of blogworthy stuff today. The high point of the day was Penny’s eggplant parmesean. We finally picked a couple eggplant fruits and Penny made a fantastic meal from them. I ate till I was ready to burst.

I spent the morning making the way straight for the A/C installation tomorrow. The workmen are supposed to show up at 7:30 AM and take 6-8 hours to complete the job. Until then our leaky unit is keeping us cool and I keep an eye on the bucket collecting water to make sure we don’t soak our floor.

We saw the married couple again today and we will see them weekly for who knows how long. They are actually making visible progress. I just wish they had better preparation before they were wed.

Bad A/C

My suspicions were correct about the A/C. I didn’t fix it. I can’t fix it. I came to that conclusion yesterday but didn’t do anything about it because we had the couple coming over for marriage prep.

The water from the A/C is leaking in a predictable manner and I’m catching the majority of the water in a bucket under the unit. I have to empty it 2 or 3 times a day. The carpet doesn’t get wet and we can run the A/C and keep the place cool while I do my homework on A/C and get 3 quotes. I was pleased at how quickly I was able to get the quotes. I started calling about 10 AM and had 3 quotes in hand by 4 PM. Home heating and cooling units are not cheap. I’ve been expecting the unit we have to die. It is 23 years old. I didn’t expect it to cost $5000 to get a new one.

It will be interesting to see how a new unit affects our electric bill. The current A/C is not efficient. The new unit goes in on Saturday.

We are having our 2nd session with the married couple we are helping tomorrow afternoon. This week is pretty much shot by air conditioner, marriage prep, and marriage help. We just got an e-mail asking if we can take on another couple. It’s going to keep us busy.

I’m about ready to take down the tomato plants from the garden. I got a lot of nice plants but not a lot of good fruit. Next year I’ll make some mods and try again. Tomorrow we pick some eggplant and have eggplant Parmesan. I did get a few good cucumbers and a couple watermelon.

I’m working on setting up my roof rack to carry 3 kayaks for our upcoming trip to Jax. We got some “Hullraiser” attachments for the roof rack to hold the kayaks on their sides. Now all I need is the time to play around with it. I don’t see that happening until Sunday or Monday.

New Computer / Old A/C

The past 2 days were filled by competing priorities. Monday was to be the normal laundry and catch up day. It was also the day the new computer monitor was to arrive. The new computer was already in the house. It arrived last Tuesday. I didn’t open the box yet figuring I would set everything up at the same time. The monitor did arrive but not until 6:30 PM. So I spent most of the day on laundry and paperwork.

The complication entered the scene when, as I was walking down the hall, I stepped in a cold wet spot on the carpet near the air conditioner. After some investigation I found that the a/c condenser unit was leaking water right where the drain comes out of the condenser. Usually this happens when the drain line cruds up and backs up. This wasn’t the problem. I’ve been doing a good job keeping that line clear. I still got the shop vac and sucked it out. The leak appeared to be coming either from or around the threaded pvc connection. It was demolition time. I used the cutting tool that I got last year to use on the sprinkler system. The pvc pipe itself was the same size that I used for the sprinkler so I had spare parts to replace what I was removing. Once I cut off the pipe to the condenser I found it to be only finger tight. I don’t know how it got lose since it was glued into position. Hopefully just putting it back in tightly would solve the problem.

Tightening didn’t work—I found out later that I didn’t tighten it enough. I was afraid of stripping the threads or worse, breaking the connector. I ended up disassembling the duct and exposing the whole connector. I dried everything off and sealed all around the connector with silicon sealant (which I then discovered was past its shelf life and wouldn’t cure properly). I continued anyway threading the drain pipe in place-using some Teflon tape on the threads and a bead of good caulking around the top of the threads. This time I screwed it in as tightly as I could. Having inspected the connector I saw it was sound and could take the torque required to hopefully seal it. Then I let everything sit for a little over an hour.

In between the a/c task I did laundry and set up the computer. Setting up the computer went smoothly. The monitor looks and works great. The computer is so quiet I can’t tell it is working. Now I see if I can load my office software on it. This computer has 64-bit windows vista home premium on it. I don’t know how compatible my old programs will be. I do have video editing and photo editing software (bought cheaply with big rebates last year) that are compatible.

The A/C was dry after running for 1 hour. I’m not convinced I fixed it yet because of the bad sealer I used. We will see how it goes overnight-that will determine my agenda for tomorrow.

Kitty Update—Marmalade has become our weekend cat. She disappears on weekdays and shows up on the weekend. Some time Buzz disappears, too. Tonight only Velcro and Meredith are there.

Rainy Sunday

We relaxed for a while on this Sunday morning. About 8 o’clock we decided to take our bikes out before the daily rains arrived. We went about 3 miles and were close to home when Penny got dizzy and had to walk the remaining distance.

For lunch we were forced to have leftovers of the pasta cruda. It’s a rough life. The afternoon rains kept us off the computers and sewing machine. I spent the afternoon rearranging some of the garage. We found a nice size storage shelf on sale at Lowe’s on Saturday and I stuck it in the corner of the garage. That’s one more step in our storage shuffle.

This is the time of year when the sweet cherry tree in our yard in Connecticut would be ripe. Everyone but my Dad would be up in that tree picking and feasting. I was light enough to get up high on the branches and get the cherries out there. We learned quickly to inspect the cherries for the little hole that meant there was a worm in them. Sometimes you wouldn’t see it and bite into the hollowed out cherry. If you were lucky the little white worm stayed on the half of cherry that wasn’t in your mouth. Many times, however the little sucker ended up in your mouth and you would spit him out as quickly as you could manage.

We got the brilliant idea to bag the cherries and sell them to the Bullard’s employee’s on their way to their parked cars. We never had any idea what to charge. I think we ended up selling them for a quarter for a lunch bag full.

Another lesson we learned was not to eat too many cherries in one sitting. If you were a little piggy you would end up doing a lot more than just one sitting.

Our yard had the sweet cherry tree, a sour cherry tree thats fruit was used by my Mom to make cherry pie. The pear tree we had was my favorite climbing tree. When I was small I used to climb up high in that tree and sing my little heart out like a bird. I never thought about anyone hearing me—I just liked to sing. One day our neighbor across the street, Mrs. Slater, told me she loved to hear me singing up there. It made me a little self-conscious.

We also had 3 gooseberry bushes in our front yard. I don’t know who was responsible for planting all the fruit trees in our yard. I do know they played a big role in my life. I liked to climb and spent a lot of time in the trees. I used my hands so much as a kid that I had calluses at the base of each finger. I had those all the way into my high school years.

KITTY UPDATE—Meredith and Velcro have been hanging around the backyard all day every day this week. Marmalade disappeared for 4 days only to show up yesterday and remain at our back door continuously since then. Both Meredith and Velcro like to lie on the roof each evening. All 4 kitties were present for feeding this evening and all were affectionate, even Marmalade. There were no indications of raccoon activity this week. Maybe my raccoon adventure has ended.

Tomorrow the computer monitor should be delivered so I expect this coming week to be occupied some by setting up the new computer, rearranging our home network and setting up the wireless-n router. Barring a lot of lightning we should have a quite a bit of computer power going by the end of the week.

July 4th

I did all the normal holiday things today. I cut down a tree. I had toast for dinner. I mowed the lawn. I fixed my mp3player. Oh, and I watched fireworks.

I started the day still a little under the weather. I slept until 8AM. That’s when Brie decided I’d slept enough. I could have slept longer easily. It was a good healing sleep.

I was going to mow the lawn, however, it kept raining on and off so I sat down with my mp3 player and tried to recover it from its frozen screen condition. I made some progress but still had the problem by lunchtime.

Penny is felling worse than I am. She still had a craving for a burger for lunch. I’m still waiting for her to feel well enough to make pasta cruda. Our 3 home-grown tomatoes are holding out ok so far. Maybe tomorrow.

After lunch I went out to cut down a popcorn tree that had grown up out of our Camellia bush on the east side of the house. The tree was now 25-30 feet tall. I found I could only work in 20 minute stretches because of the heat and my upset tummy. I eventually got the tree down. Tomorrow I will cut up the sections into smaller pieces. Then I mowed the lawn. After that I needed to rest and cool down for about half an hour.

Dinner was toast—that’s not unusual for us now.

We were invited by Kitty Page to watch fireworks from her backyard. Her house is on Choctawhatchee Bay and has a panoramic view across the water from Sandestin to Ft Walton Beach. We got to see the fireworks at a Baytown Wharf East of Destin, Destin Pass and Fort Walton. It was a very pleasant evening.

Back home again I tried once more to fix my mp3 and finally succeeded. Penny thinks I spent about 30 hours playing with the thing. She may be right. I feel like it was about 8 hours. Who knows? At least it works again and I learned a lot about the thing. Thanks to the Internet I was able to recover the thing.

I stressed my thumbs cutting down the tree and they are mildly sore tonight. This was a good test to see how they behave. If they settle down over night I will be happy.

Tomorrow is our normal Waffle House morning. If Penny feels well enough we will go. My health situation improved all day. I’m almost back to normal. The tummy is only mildly upset and I’m still tired. Maybe tomorrow will see a bike ride or at least some walking. Between weather, visitors, travel and health my exercising has been forgotten.

Still Upset

Both Penny and I still have upset tummies from Tuesday afternoon’s Papa Johns pizza. We both haven’t been able to do much. I’ve been just lying around waiting for my system to work things out.

Penny did manage to cook a great meal for the engaged couple we had over last night. She made Portobello mushroom ravioli in a butter-sage sauce. This was followed by a dessert of home-made cannoli. Even with upset tummies I managed to eat my share.

Lunch today consisted of toast. I tried the normal apple and cheese snack we do at 3 PM most days and now it is not sitting well.

Time for me to lie down again.

Third Times the Charm?

I caught the 3rd raccoon last night and he now lives at the lake with Rocky and Houdini. This guy has only black and shades of grey—no auburn coloration. I named him Sinda.

The wireless TV really worked well (except for jamming our wireless internet). I saw Sinda each time before he made any noise at the cage. I say each time because he visited the area 3 times last night beginning at 10:30.

His first pass was to check the feeder and surrounding grounds. He vacuumed up everything available and didn’t even look at the trap.

On the second pass he circled the trap, reached in and ate the chum I placed near the door to lure him in. Then he reached in and grabbed the water bowl and pulled it all the way to the front of the trap. Then he left. I went back to bed.

I then heard a cat howl over the monitor. I looked out by the trap but nothing was there. Then about 11:15, as I was dropping off to sleep, I opened my eyes enough to see the monitor and Sinda was back. I got up and got in position to spring the trap. The rope holding the trap door up was simply trapped in the closed sliding glass door. To spring the trap I just slide the door open. I watched Sinda circle the trap, walk away, return, sniff inside the trap and leave again. I thought he was gone for good but in a few minutes he returned again and tried to reach more food. On this attempt he put half his body in the trap, stretched as far as he could and scraped up some more of the chum. I thought he was too trap shy and that he would never go all the way in.


He backed out. The he stepped in with all but his rear foot and stretched out to get more food. He still could not get the big bowlful of food at the back of the trap. He backed out again and began circling the cage. This is when Meredith showed up and came toward him. Sinda charged her and chased her away. Charged up with energy and wanting all the food for himself the raccoon walked quickly into the trap—still dragging one foot out for a moment. Then he lifted the foot. I quickly opened the sliding door, the trap door fell. Sinda was quick. He managed to briefly get his front paws under the dropping door. He didn’t have the leverage to stop the door from dropping and so he pulled back to keep from pinching his little hands. The door fell in place and the latch engaged. Raccoon #3 was now caught.



I made sure the trap was secure, covered it with a sheet to keep Sinda from getting too scared and went to bed. The excitement of the catch must have caused my body to release adrenalin because it took me a while to finally fall asleep when I went to bed. This wasn’t helped by the fact that both Penny and I had upset tummies from some Papa Johns pizza we had earlier in the day. We ate that for lunch with the couple we were working with. I don’t know if they got sick also.

This morning it was time to put Sinda in the CRV and take him to hid new home. I’m getting into a regular routine here. I hope this is the last time. At least I’m getting good at catching them.



I arrived at the lake, opened the CRV tailgate, slid the trap out far enough to open the sliding door and opened the trap. Sinda just sat there.


I had to go around the side of the CRV, open the rear passenger door and show my face at the back of the cage to get him to finally move. When he reached the opening he stepped out on one paw, looked down at the ground, looked at me and again just stayed there.

He finally jumped down and took off without looking back. This was my last shot of him before he left.

Raccoon Reconnaissance

We can catch him—we have the technology!

I have beefed up the raccoon early warning system with more electronics. I’ve added a wireless video camera to the setup. That’s in addition to the baby noise monitor. Now when we are alerted by a noise we can look at the TV monitor (our little 5-inch emergency light/radio/TV like the one we gave Tim and Christian) and see if it is Rocky III or just a cat..

I’m setting the trap in the same manner I used for Rocky II. There are a few crumbs of food outside the trap. Inside, however, is an overflowing bowl of food deep enough that the critter has to commit to get it and a nice bowl of water to wash the food in. Everything Rocky III could want. Rocky picked the feed tray clean last night and it had probably 3 days worth of kitty food in it. The tray looked as if it had been vacuumed.

We spent most of our day today preparing for and talking with a married couple who are having trouble and want to work things out. The girl is the daughter of one of my work friends. They knew we did this stuff with marriage preparation and called and asked if we would talk with them.

We are not trained in marriage counseling and it is drastically different than marriage prep. This is a situation where the couples lack of relationship skills has resulted in actual problems. Marriage prep is a hopeful preventative for problems. Once the couple is wed and had problems for a number of years I’m not sure our help will be enough.

At least they both showed up and were willing to talk with each other. The situation is complicated because they just had a baby. We can use all your prayers for this couple.

Tomorrow we have the marriage prep couple in for their 2nd session. We like to think our help will make their upcoming marriage stronger.

I’m hoping tomorrow morning I’ll have a raccoon to release by the lake. This guy has not established a regular schedule so it may take a few nights to finally get him. He’s probably still full from last night’s feast. He showed up right at 10PM yesterday so that’s when I’m expecting him. Penny’s hoping it doesn’t last too long. The wireless camera transmission blocks out the wireless internet transmission and she can’t get on-line back in the bedroom.

Our new computer arrived today and the monitor was shipped by Best Buy. We may get it Friday, but that is July 4th. I don’t know if UPS delivers on the holiday.

Penny and I haven’t had a good opportunity to take a bike ride since we’ve been back. Weather and other things have gotten in the way. If I don’t have Rocky to take care of in the morning perhaps we will ride the tour de neighborhood.

Rocky III

Last night as I made the rounds checking that the house was secure I came face-to-face with another raccoon. He was standing outside the sunroom sliding door looking in as if to taunt me.

This morning the feeder tray was clean as a whistle.

Another raccoon adventure begins.