Jan 31st - Kathy's Home

Kathy made it home from Indiana. Good to have her home. I think she had a good time back with the girls from Teen Challenge, of course none of the girls who were there when she left are still there. She got to spend a week whipping a whole new batch in to shape <grin>.

Kelsey and Lydia came over and then Andy came over after he got off work. We had a nice evening.

We had record highs for two days but now normal winter temperatures are back. Tonight's low is forecast to be 7 degrees. If that happens it will be the coldest night of the winter. So far single digit lows have been forecast several times but about the lowest I've noticed is low teens.

After the rain our pond is as high as I've ever seen it. The 1.5-2 inches of rain caused the level to go up by around a foot. It still needs to raise by another 18" before it is close to being full.

Not much going on, just lazing about.

Hope you all have a great day. May God bless you and yours.

Jan 28th - WARM!!

According to the thermometer on our front porch today's high was at least 78. It isn't to often that I wear shorts in January. This afternoon I set out on the porch in shorts and a tee shirt. I even took the tee shirt off for some of  the time, just to warm.

Temps are falling. It is still going to be warm tomorrow but temps are supposed to continue to drop until we reach a low 11 degrees Thursday night.

The normal average heating degree days through the end of January is 3162 for our area. So far this heating season we have only had 2627.

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

Jan 27th - Some Needed Rain (Drizzle)

We got slightly over a tenth of an inch of rain during the night and morning. It sure would be nice to get more.

Kelsey, Andy & Lydia came over yesterday evening. When they came in they mentioned something about my fire. I thought the boiler must be firing and that they were commenting on the smoke from it. As we started eating Andy asked me what I had been burning during the day. I had not been burning anything. We all looked out the front windows and saw 3' flames on the side on one of our buildings. YIKES!!!

I connected the hose to one the frost proof hydrants and turned it on. Fortunately it was warm enough that if there had been ice in the hose it had melted during the day. (A good reason to make sure the hoses are properly drained before putting them away again.) Andy dragged some boards that were on fire away from the building and I sprayed water on the fire. The flames were gone pretty quick but getting the coals put out was more difficult. I sprayed the heck out of everything and yet when I went back out to check an hour later there were still a few hot coals in one area. I sprayed them again. An hour later, when I checked again, I didn't see any hot spots.

The problem was caused by my dumping some hot ashes on the ash pile. Usually there aren't many hot coals in the ashes but when I cleaned out the ashes during the afternoon there were a lot of them. I thought that maybe the combustion blower had just run so everything was still "hot." I tried to be careful and dump the buckets of ashes directly on top of the pile of old ashes. Apparently enough of the hot coals came in contact with some leaves and set the leaves on fire. The fire tracked up to some boards that were piled along side the building and set the boards on fire. It is amazing that the old wood siding on the building didn't catch fire. The only damage to it appears to be a little scorching.

 This was a huge Praise the Lord event. If Kelsey and Andy had not decided to come over for the evening I would never have noticed the fire until it was much worse. As it ended up it was just a learning experience. One of the other times emptied the ashes I left them in a metal bucket overnight. The next morning the ashes had drawn enough moisture so that they stuck to the bottom of the bucket and were a little difficult to get out of the bucket. That was one of the reasons I didn't do the same with yesterday's ashes. In the future I won't mind having to knock some stuck ashes out of the bucket.

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

Jan 26th - Feeling Better

I got out this morning and went to Dudley's, a Mom & Pop restaurant on the way to Jefferson City, for breakfast. It was great feeling good enough to want to get out and do something. I also picked up a couple of prescription renewals while I was out.

Came home, washed some dirty pots and pans (didn't have many), and have a second load of laundry in the washer.

Doing some Net surfing now, digging up some data for posts to my political blog.
http://bertdspoliticalcommentary.blogspot.com/

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

Jan 25th - Not Much to Report

Nothing much happening here. Kathy is still in Lebanon, volunteering at Teen Challenge. She plans on being home by next Wednesday.

I've been "puny" since Saturday afternoon. Hopefully I'm on the mend. All I did the past two days was go out and add wood to the boiler in the morning and again in the afternoon. Not sure what is wrong with me. Originally I thought I might have a touch of food poisoning but it has lasted to long for that. Perhaps it is a touch of the flu. In any case I think I am on the mend.

Weather looks beautiful today. We are supposed to have two days in the 60's next week. That will be nice.

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

Jan 22nd - I Could Just Puke!

I am so sick and tired of all the inauguration coverage that I could just about puke. I can't stand to watch the laying scum we have for a president, nor the dope we have for a vice-president.

These two pieces of crap get up on national TV, at least I assume they did, I couldn't stand to watch; and take an oath of office to uphold the Constitution while they both know they aren't going to do it. Their refusal to enforce immigration laws proves them to be liars who are without a shred of integrity.

Oath of Office
"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Jan 19th - Sunrise

Sunrise Saturday morning.

The sun is just peeking over the hilltop in this photo. Our main floor level is probably about 50 feet down from the top of the hill, and at least 100 feet above the "valley" behind us. Our sunrise is about 10 minutes late while we wait for the sun to get high enough to get over the hill top.

Our weather has been mild enough that we have went through two days and two nights burning only trash wood that I found, and split, out back. Some of the stuff I've been burning is worse that the stuff I burned on the burn pile during the summer, but there is still plenty to get rid of. I've split up another 3-4 buckets full. I left it where I split it still have to move it from the back up to the boiler. (I love my tractor <grin>)

Today's high is supposed to be 58 and then the weather turns colder, down to a low of 8 forecast for Monday night. If we get into single digits it will be the coldest night of this winter. I won't be burning much trash wood that night.

Yesterday was our volunteer afternoon at the Habitat Re-Store. Nothing to exciting. We, those of us on the "loading dock" were reasonably busy, but not as busy as we had been the past two weeks. After taking some things back to the scrap metal pile, and having to walk across a section of ice covered concrete to get to the pile, I spent about an hour chipping away ice. The area is all concrete but the sun only hits the "working" side of the building briefly. There was over an inch of ice where one of the corner downspouts weeps water onto the concrete. The ice extended for about 40' away from the building. A lot of it was "rotten" and wasn't to hard to break up, some of it was still pretty solid. With the warm temps today everything should dry out until we get more precipitation. Last week the transmission went out the Habitat truck, $1,700. I saw there electric bill, for the Re-Store complex, $700 for last month (electric heat). They do have expenses to keep the place going even though almost all the labor is volunteer.

Today Kathy leaves for Lebanon. She is going back to volunteer at Teen Challenge for a week or so. They are short on staff right now so she volunteered to go there and help them out.

I plan on going to the pro 2nd Amendment rally at the capital today. Over 600 people have said they were going to attend and another 400 said they might attend. Not to bad since there has been virtually no publicity. I found out from my brother in Michigan.

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