Feb 27th - Splitting Wood

Spent my energy today splitting wood. I split 6 pieces but still have 2 of the smaller pieces to go. I wore out.

While taking a break sitting on the porch in my shirt sleeves I had the thought that it isn't often you can sit out on your porch in shirt sleeves at the end of Feb. The temperature was in the mid 60's. There were some clouds and it was breezy, but it was quite nice.
We only have 1 day, in the 10 day forecast, with a low below freezing. Daytime highs range from 51-78 degrees. Last night we had an overnight low of 27. Tomorrow we are supposed to hit78.

Not much else going on. Kathy had Nolan today. That boy loves to be outside. Just saw Andy& Lydia coming down the driveway, to pick up Nolan. Better get upstairs and get my Lydia fix.

God is good. May He bless you and yours.

Feb 26th - Sunday

Church day today. Kelsey & Andy decided not to go to church today and Lydia decided she wanted to go with us. On Sunday mornings, before Sunday School, Kathy normally goes to California to visit a young man from our church. He has been in jail for several months, awaiting trial. (The young mans relatives say that his spending time in the county jail is a good thing. Once he goes to trial he will probably be convicted and sentenced to time in prison. The pre-trial time he spends at the county jail should count against his sentence.) I picked Lydia up and met Kathy at the church.

Kelsey, Andy, Lydia & Nolan were over for supper a few night ago. Lydia sure likes Ranch dressing. Note her chin.

Friday I cut up the rest of the log from the dead tree I felled last week.

I've cleaned up that tree. I have a lot of splitting to do, especially since I'm doing it by hand. I also have another dead tree to cut down on that neighbors property (the property is along the north side our driveway just before our driveway gets to the road). I also have at least one dead one to cut down on the neighbors property that borders the south side of our driveway and at least two decent size dead trees on our property.

Yesterday I spent almost 4 hours cleaning up some trash trees around our small pond. I pulled out the ones my tractor could handle and cut down several larger ones, nothing larger than a 4" trunk. I drug all the trash down below the dam and pushed in it a small ravine. In the late afternoon, when I went out to put wood in the boiler, I split a couple of the pieces in the above photos.

Lydia stayed overnight Friday night and all day Saturday. She likes staying here because she can be "Queen Bee" 😉.

The Daytona 500 is on TV. I'm listening to it but I am so disgusted with NASCAR and their continual tweaking of things that I'm about to quit watching entirely. It seems to me that NASCAR won't be happy until they have beaten any thought of innovation out of the NASCAR teams. NASCAR says it wants to cut costs for teams. After all the wrecks because of the wrecks caused by restrictor plate racing I wonder how serious they are about saving teams money, & safety.

No doubt there are a lot of things I could do that would be better than watching NASCAR, taking a nap sounds like one of them.

God is good. May He bless you and yours.

Feb 23rd - Cooler Weather On Its Way

Today was another nice day but we are heading into some cooler weather. Sure can't call it cold for February. Nothing drastic, in only 3 nights out of the next 10 will the overnight low slip just below freezing.

Yesterday's Men's Fellowship went well. As usual we enjoyed visiting during breakfast and we enjoyed our discussion during the lesson time. I was shooting the breeze with one of the guys, outside after the meeting. We were standing by his truck, Everyone else had left. We ended our discussions and he got in his truck and left as I walked over to my truck. The day took a downturn when I saw the passenger side rear tire was flat as a pancake. We have AAA road service but I thought I'd just change it myself, rather than wait on them. I popped the back seat up, where I had seen the jack previously. It was there but there was no lug wrench and the rod you have to use to lower the spare was also missing. I called AAA and told them I had a flat. Told them I had a spare but no lug wrench or tool to lower the spare. 45 minutes later the guy showed up to put the spare on. He asked where I kept the tool to lower the spare. Told him I didn't have one, neither did he. He ended up loading my truck on his and driving me over to Nathan's Tire Shop in California. No charge, AAA covered it.


He backed up to one of the overhead doors and when my truck rolled off the bed it was inside the building. The young man at Nathan's jacked it up and jerked the tire off in no time. He broke it down, they patch instead of plugging, and called me over. He said, "Looks like you have a railroad spike in your tire." I thought shoot, these are new tires that just cost me $900 and I'm going to have to pay to replace one since I didn't buy the optional road hazard warranty. When he looked inside the tire he said, "Good news, it just looks like a nail on the inside." This is what was in my tire. It is a square nut and part of a bolt. The head of the bolt is gone and the bolt itself is worn down to a point.

$10 at Nathans to have the tired taken off, patched and put back on. I gave the young guys who worked on it $5 to buy them a couple of Cokes.

I spent most of the afternoon yesterday and most of the morning today doing research for another Letter to the Editor. I enjoy it.

This afternoon I met Kathy in town for lunch and we went to Menard's. She bought some lights. We had 3 pendant lights that were part of our kitchen lighting. We had problems with the bulb socket in the center one previously and it recently quit working again. She bought 3 new ones and I installed them after we got back home. It isn't smokey in the kitchen. It's the glare from the ceiling light.

They are off in the photo above and on in the photo below. They give off a lot more light than the old ones, which is what she wanted.

The neighbors at the top of the driveway bought 2 kid goats a week ago. They are starting to wear on us with their near constant baa-hing. They were really bad the first few nights. Now they only do it when they see someone, then it is constant. They have 4-5 year old daughter. My guess is that they are going to get her in 4H.

God is good (especially when my major problem is kid goats making noise 😀) May He bless you and yours.

Feb 22nd - Early AM Foggy

Only got up to 69 yesterday. It is a foggy 53 degrees this morning. We had maybe a half inch of much needed rain a couple of days ago. It was a nice soaker rain. It would take another at least 3" of that kind of slow rain to get enough run off to fill our pond.

Nolan the climber getting a better view of what is happening. Nothing is happening, he just likes to climb up and look around.

 Gram showed him how to climb the ladder so that he can now use the slide without help.

She still has to help him with the glider. He is still learning that he can't just bail off whenever he wants.

Yesterday I "played" on the computer most of the day. I'm leading the Men's Fellowship group this AM. It took me a couple of hours to prepare for that. Also did some research for another Letter to the Editor.

Nolan will be here again today, 3rd day this week. His Grandmother Elaine has some work done on the veins in her legs so Kathy is picking up both their days for this week.

God is good. May He bless you and yours.

Feb 19th - Calm Day

The beautiful weather continues. High of 72 yesterday & 74 today. Lowest temperatures in current forecast is 31 degrees for next Fri & Sat nights.

Not a lot happening here. Our Pastor has the flu and one of the younger guys in the congregation gave the message today. He did a fine job. It was the first time since we have been attending that someone from the congregation gave the message when the Pastor was unavailable. Prior to this someone from outside was brought in to preach. There are several people in the congregation would could easily handle a Sunday morning message. This is a pleasant change in policy.

Nolan was here several days last week. He loves popsicles.
"I'm just checking out what we have in the freezer."

 "I have to dig clear to the back to check out everything."

 "Gram, look at what I found."

 "Gram, I need the top cut off so I can eat this."

He can't open the freezer door yet, but he is almost able to do it.

We went to Kelsey's for dinner this evening. We had a good time.

God is good. May He bless you and yours.

Feb 15th - After Dinner Photos

After dinner sitting around in the living room. Kathy threw a dog toy over the back of the couch thinking Copper would go get it. Copper ignored it but Nolan "fetched" it. This video shows him doing it about the 4th time. I can't get the video to upload and process. I emailed it to some of you who regularly view the blog. If anyone else wants a copy, and if your inbox can handle a large file, let me know & I will email you a copy.

Relaxing after dinner. Kelsey, Kathy, Nolan & Lydia with her nose in a screen.

Lydia & Andy. Lydia has something of a frown on her face because asked her to temporarily look at me.

She was quickly back on the screen.

Feb 15th - Not Much Happening

Not a lot going on here. The weather has been awesome for Feb. Lows the last few days have been near freezing. After tonight no lows are forecast below 41 in the 10 day forecast. I put enough wood in the boiler to provide heat through tonight and tomorrow, then it can go out. Temperatures are to warm to fool around with keeping the fire going. We will almost certainly have some more cold weather but I will refire it when that happens.

I finished splitting & stacking the wood I brought back with me. Kathy burned more leaves, in addition to watching Nolan a couple of days. I think he is coming here tomorrow. He is checking out my phone/camera in the photo below

Prior to coming over to my chair he had been pounding on the front door, wanting to go outside. He loves being outside. We got our coats on and I took him for a 20 minute stroller ride out through the woods, across the dam and around our small pond. (Kathy normally either gives him a stroller ride around the big driveway loop or walks him around the small loop, at least once a day when he is here.)

Last night was our Valentines dinner at church. Lots of folks are sick so attendance was down. I think we only had about 25  people. Kathy fixed everything. I helped carry stuff from our house to her van, and then into the church basement. A lady helped her with cleanup. Other than that she did everything, just like she wanted. There was no charge for the dinner, just a free will offering if people wanted to make a contribution. She made a little over $100 which will go to church missions.

This morning was our weekly Men's Fellowship breakfast. There were 6 of us regulars. Just as our breakfasts were being brought to us a guy ask if he could join us. He was in Centertown checking out a piece of ground he had rented, north of town. He joined right in with our discussions. I hope he comes back again. He was on my deaf ear side so I didn't hear everything he said. I'm don't know where he goes to church.

Sunday afternoon we went over to a small "hole in the wall" restaurant in Russellville, about 6 miles from us, for lunch. The place could use a good cleaning, but the food was good. We went back over today and had hamburgers for lunch. (They have great deep fried mushrooms.)

Kelsey & family are coming for supper tonight. We have lots of left overs from the Valentines day dinner.

After Men's Fellowship I drove over to California and got a haircut. While I was there I went to the feed store and bought 50# of corn for the deer feeder. Between the deer, the squirrels, and a few birds they emptied the feeder while I was in TN. I filled the feeder, then took a couple of bucket fulls of gravel up the driveway and filled potholes. After that I sharpened the chain on my chainsaw. I've got to get motivated and get several dead trees cut down and cut up before it gets hot, but not today 😊. Today I'm going to take nap right after I hit the send button on this.

God is good. May He bless you and yours.