Feb 17th - Warm Today

We are having some warm temps. Overnight low was 32 and the high was 50. It is supposed to stay fairly warm until next Monday, the day we are supposed to leave for the Gulf.

Last Friday evening we attended our church's Valentines Day dinner at Tammy's, the local restaurant. 39 people attended, which was a good sized group from our small church. Food was adequate, fellowship was great.

After eating there was entertainment back at the church. A former Pastor, who sings and does some comedy. came and "performed". Over 70 people attended. He was good.

Some outlets and one of the kitchen lights quit working in the lower level. I spent a hour trying to find the problem and then gave up. This morning I called an electrician, a guy who was recommended by a Contractor I know from church. I left a message. After the call I headed for Jefferson City and the YMCA. I just turned on the street where the Y is located when I received a call from George, the electrician. I turned around and headed home. I made it back to our house less than 5 minutes before he arrived. He spent  about 90 minutes tracking the problem back to a burned wire in the electrical panel. While checking things he found a fixed another couple of minor issues. I think he would have found the problem quicker if I had not given him some bad information. The outlets had quite working once before and I thought they were on the same circuit as some other outlets. As it turned out I was wrong, they were not on the circuit I thought.

We have a 3 way switch on the wall of the upstairs kitchen, and another on a downstairs wall, that are supposed to operate a downstairs ceiling light. They have never worked correctly while we have lived here. I spent an hour "playing" with them once and finally gave up. George spent almost 2 hours trying to figure out why the switches did not work correctly. He finally gave up and said he would have to bring more equipment to solve the problem. I told him I would give him a call when we get back home in late March.

George is not an amateur. He bought his Dad's electrical business in 1972, after working there for many years. He recently sold the business to his son when he retired. He still does small jobs, like ours, and also helps his son if his son gets to busy.

He was here for at over 3 hours. I think he was embarrassed that he could not figure out why the switches didn't work. He told me I owed him $60, I paid him $80 and figure I got a good deal.

I cut up a couple of cedar logs that have been laying out in the woods since we moved here. Cedar is crappy firewood but it does burn. I probably cut enough to last several days of the warmer temperatures.

Kathy spent the day cleaning the house. The next three days we have Lydia.

I hope you all had a good day. May God bless you and yours.

Feb 13th - Happy Valentines Day

Hope you all have a Happy Valentines Day, which won't be until tomorrow for me.

Not a lot exciting happening here. Today the high was 45, the warmest it has been in a long time. We still have some snow on the ground but it is melting fast. It will be good to have some warm days. We sure have burned a lot of wood this year. I know I keep saying that, but I am shocked to she how little wood I have left in the shed. Enough to finish out this heating season but sure not much for next season.

Andy & Kelsey are looking at a house outside of Russellville. It is on 40 acres and out in the country. The original house looks to be in good condition. There is a large unfinished addition that will take a LOT of work to finish. With the addition there would probably be at least 3,000 sqft of living space, which does not include an attached 2 car garage. It is at least a 25 minute drive from our house. I don't know if they will make an offer on it. Their house still hasn't sold.

I've been going to the YMCA 3 times a week, trying to get in a little better shape. So far I can't tell a lot of difference, other than it sure makes me tired.

The maintenance/repairs on our motorhome are supposed to be completed next week. We are tentatively planning on heading to the Gulf coast on Monday the 24th. The plan, but our plans always change, are to go from the coast up to Crossville for Merv's birthday party in late March.

Kathy read about a kids program that was being held today at the Runge Nature Center in Jefferson City. We had taken Lydia there once before and she had a good time. Today's "program" was about woodchucks (ground hogs). There were several activities to keep the kids interested plus a "lecture" about how woodchucks lived. We all went outside to look for our shadows, to see if we were going to have 6 more weeks of winter.

The white area at the bottom left of the photo is a tube that the kids can crawl through. The white covering simulates snow. It is supposed to show the kids that woodchucks go down "tunnels" to get to their homes. Kathy and Lydia are at the ones at the left of the photo. The people in the photo represent only about half of those who were there.

We are having some electrical issues with the downstairs wiring. Hopefully it is a bad breaker in the electrical panel. That will be my "fix-it" job for tomorrow.

May God bless you and yours.

Feb 8th - Early Morning

Got up early this morning so I'm catching up on a few odds and ends so I won't have to feel guilty when I take an afternoon nap <grin>.

It is still cold here, at least cold for central MO. Yesterday's forecast said we would get above freezing today but I just checked and the high is now forecast at 30. Starting next Wednesday we are supposed to have a string of days with highs above freezing. I just checked our heating degree days, 3675 so far. Last year it took us until March 4th to have as many as we have had this year. If I thought this was going to be the normal from now on I would seriously investigate a newer, much higher efficiency, outdoor boiler. I think the new ones would give us the same amount of heat while burning no more that 60-65% of the wood that we currently burn. (Realistically I would never buy one. I think the cost of one installed, if I installed it, would be approx. $8,000. Even if I was buying wood, and burned 5 cords less a year, it would take forever to get a "payback" on the investment."

Other than looking at the snow not a lot has been happening. I made my 8th trip to the YMCA yesterday, to exercise. There are 3 YMCA facilities in Jefferson City. I had been going to the larger one (the Knowles facility) that is about a 30 minute drive from our house, it has an indoor pool, which I don't use. Yesterday I tried the one (the West facility) that doesn't have a pool but is 15-20 minutes from our house. The West facility is somewhat larger, in terms of exercise equipment, than Knowles. It was a lot busier than what I've seen at Knowles.

Based on my one visit it appears that the West facility caters to a younger, more fit crowd. I walked 3.68 miles in 65 minutes, most of it at a 2-2.5% grade. Two young gals (late 20s?) on climbed on to treadmills to the left of mine about 10 minutes after I started. The one next to me was walking about the same speed I was but she had the treadmill inclined like she was climbing a mountain. They were still going, and still chatting away with one another, when I left.

No big plans for the next few days. I'd still like to head south for several weeks, if they every get the awning replaced on our motorhome.

Have a great day. May God bless you and yours.

 

Feb 2nd - Where is that Global Warming?

Weather here hasn't been great, but a lot better than many parts of the Midwest. We had some ice a couple of days ago and even walking in the grass was a challenge. Roads weren't bad, once we made it out of our driveway. We could only get out with the 4WD/AWD vehicles, in fact that is still the case.

Yesterday we got maybe a half inch of snow on the ice. It actually made it less slippery to walk around.

I had been confident that I have been cutting wood for next winter. I'm no longer sure that is the case. We have already had as many heating degree days as we had through Feb 24th last year. January is typically the coldest month of the year here so maybe things will ease up. The 10 day forecast says we won't have another day above freezing until the 11th. Considering that the "normal" high/low temps for this time of year are 41/21, it will be significantly colder than "normal".

Church was cancelled today. I think most people could have gotten to church but my guess is that it was cancelled because we don't have anyone salt the parking lot and walks. With the ice those areas would have been SLIPPERY.

We still don't have our motorhome back from Camping World. It is taking forever to get the new awning from Dometic. Actually there is no rush now because I've have a Doctor's appointment scheduled for Feb 7th. I would have re-scheduled it had we been able to leave a week ago but now we might as well wait until after the appointment. With the upcoming temps I wouldn't want to "de-winterize" it until the 10th. We could leave with no water on board but it would be easier if everything was ready for use when we left.

Kathy seems to be almost over her cold. Lydia is still really stuffed up, but part of it might be because she is getting more teeth. I'm claiming my congestion is just typical sinus problems. As long as I keep taking Sudafed (half doses) I'm OK, although I still have to blow my nose a lot.

The snow/cold have brought a lot of birds up to the feeders. It is fun to watch them and listen to them. Yesterday Kathy saw some turkeys on the hill up to the road.

I've managed 5 trips to the YMCA over the past 2 weeks. I hope to manage 3 trips this week. Each trip I spend about 45 minutes on weight machines and another 30-45 minutes walking on a treadmill. I can't tell much difference so far, but hopefully will start noticing some change in another week or so.

May God bless you and yours.

Jan 25th - Warming Up

Its going to be a beautiful day here today with a high in the mid 40's.

Hallelujah, a plumbing job that went well. I replaced our malfunctioning toilet yesterday and all went well. Perhaps it was because I had such excellent assistance.

I wrote the above this morning and as I was writing it our Internet service quit. It is now late afternoon. The outage covers more than just us. The service is supposed to be restored by 10 AM tomorrow. In the mean time we went to Jefferson City for lunch and Kathy bought a few groceries. It was the first time she was off our property since she came down with her cold. I am currently accessing the Internet through my phone. It is the first time I've done it since changing phones and cell service providers. The speed is slow, but at least I've got a connection.

I cut down a couple of small cedar trees 5" & 7" trunks) this morning and drug them out back next to a burn pile. I will cut them up back there. I wanted to get them out of the way before I cut down the dead oak tree that is in the middle of the "island" between the house and the shed. When it comes down it would have fallen on them.

High is supposed to hit mid 50's tomorrow and then drop all the way down to single digits for the overnight low. We even have an overnight low of below zero in the 10 day forecast. There is a propane "shortage" around here. Instead of them not wanting to make a delivery for less than 200 gallons, now you can't buy more than 200 gallons. The price is going up dramatically. The least price increase I've heard is 70 cents a gallon. A weather forecaster said that this will be the coldest winter in central Missouri in the past 30 years. Praise the Lord for our Hardy furnace. As long as the Hardy keeps plugging along we have enough propane to last us until fall, at least. Before then the price will be back to normal. Hopefully these high prices, and profits for those in the propane business, will spur some more fracking to increase the propane supply.

Hope you have/had a great day. May God bless your and yours.

Jan 24th - Still Cold

Today's high was 11 and tonight's low is supposed to be 4. At least we aren't getting blasted with snow.

Kelsey made it home safe and sound around mid-afternoon. It sounded like she had a good time.

We continue to be amazed at Lydia. I showed her a Netflix kids move on my phone a few days ago and now everything is "Movie, movie, movie." Those were the first words out of her mouth when she hit the top of the stars this morning. Andy has a Fisher-Price cartoon app on his phone. Lydia picks his phone up, turns it on, moves to the apps page, picks the cartoon app out of a full page of apps and activates the app. She does it all by herself.

She is fascinated by my hearing aids. It is a real struggle for her to keep her hands off them. I tell her it is okay to play with my ears but she can't touch the hearing aids. This afternoon I put new batteries in them. I put the old batteries in the case and left it lying on the coffee table. The case hinge is spring loaded and doesn't pop open easily. I was on my computer, at the coffee table. I looked over and she was trying to stuff one of the batteries in her ear. She had opened the case and taken the batteries out. When I asked her where the other battery was she looked down at the floor. Kathy and I searched and searched without finding it. I checked Lydia's ears to make sure she had not already stuffed on in her ear, no luck. We moved my "stuff" around on the coffee table and again, no luck. We were getting very concerned that she might have swallowed the battery. Kathy finally found it under the edge of a chair. We (me) are going to have to start being more careful about what we leave in her reach. That's a lot of area because she is a very capable climber.

I went for my first exercise session at the YMCA today. Part of it was laughable. Tom, one of the assistants, was taking me around showing me the equipment and showing me how to use the different machines. The first weight machine was one the exercised your legs. Every time I bent my legs to lift the weights I got a cramp in my thigh and had to get off the machine to work out the cramp. After 3 tries we gave up on a leg machines for the day. Things went fine with the upper body machines and I finished with a 30 minute cardio walk on a treadmill. Kathy is going to drop me off at the YMCA tomorrow and then go get groceries while I exercise. I will give the leg machines another try.

I've given up trying to figure out what is wrong with our inoperative toilet. Tomorrow I plan on buying a new one. I might break the old one apart just to see why water won't flow into it.

Hope you all had a good day. May God bless you and yours.

Jan 23rd - Brrrrh!!

Last night a little after 5 I filled up the wood boiler, the temp 32 degrees. The official overnight low was 2. At 9:15 this morning I went out and threw in some more wood, we still had heat but it was ready for more wood. The temp on our front porch was 6 degrees when I added wood this morning. Today's high is supposed 11 and the overnight low tonight is forecast to be 3. This is cold weather for central MO. Normal high/lows are 40/20.

Mel and I worked on the McCarty street house again on Tuesday. We think we are snake bit. Never have either of us had so many problems with plumbing. I've worked on the kitchen sink drains every time I've been there, trying to get the leaks to stop. Every time I leave nothing is leaking but by the time I return one, or another, of the fittings has started to drip.

In the bathroom, after reinstalling the toilet the tank/base connection leaked, and we thought the new wax seal might be leaking, but neither of us had ever had a new was seal leak. We took the tank off and replaced the "donut" gasket between the tank and base and we replaced the bolts that hold the tank on the base. That took care of that leak but by then we were more concerned that the was ring was leaking. We pulled the toilet again. We couldn't see why the was ring would have leaked but we installed another new one. After reinstalling the toilet we think it is okay. Then it was leaks at the new tub faucet. Fortunately Mel is smaller than me because, with the toilet in place, there was no way I could come close to getting to the faucet. He spent nearly 2 hours working on it. Finally, after 10 thickness of Teflon tape on one fitting and 8 thicknesses of Teflon tape on another, we had the metal to metal fitting leaks stopped. He never was able to completely stop the drip at one of the fittings on one of the flex hoses. Those fittings have rubber washers and should not leak, but ours did. Mel is still going to try resurfacing the steel tub when it warms up. It needs to be warmer so that he can put a fan in the window and exhaust the fumes from the coating materials.

I went in yesterday and had my hearing aids adjusted again. The only reason I wear them is because Kathy thinks I can hear better with them. I know I can hear some sounds better, but most of the "new" sounds aren't something I care about. I really don't need to hear her wad up a plastic bag when I am in the living room trying to listed to TV and she is in the kitchen. I haven't noticed much difference after the adjustment but we will see.

We also have plumbing problems at home. One of the upstairs toilets has quit working. It will flush OK if you dump a bucket of water in it but something is blocking the flow of water from the tank to the bowl. Water won't flow out of the bowl nearly fast enough to start the flushing action.  Even holding the "flapper" full open water only slowly drains from the tank. I talked to a plumber about it and he has never heard of such a thing. I think a new toilet is in order. I'm tired of messing with it.

We joined the YMCA but haven't been there yet. I'm going in today for an orientation on the equipment they have.