Paint, Yeast and Forest Fires

Greetings! How are things where you are?  We're good, we're on hiatus from the massive painting project.  Tomorrow we'll be getting a tub of wood filler, for the bathroom door frame.  We think the divots in the door frames are from wheel chair hubs, but who really knows.  We're also getting the Jeep washed at the same car wash place.  Sunday it might snow, but the car really needs to be de-dirted and de-salted.

That's Jim standing in front of the mantel.  The object to his right is an orbital sander.  The last painters in the house not only spilled paint on the mantel (and did not clean it up), but they left brush marks deep enough that they had to be sanded as well.  That's all behind us now, we're moving on to other things.

The stand mixer arrived. Yay!  I love how they shipped this, they just slapped a label on it and put it in the mail.  It was well packed, and arrived intact.

It's good, it has 500 watts and can handle stiff dough.  We've made one batch with it;  I'm not sure what we did differently, but it was able to hold its shape coming off the dough hook.  The hand mixer definitely would have over heated.

This time we used bread flour, which I think I like better.

The sun was out today, it was glorious.

A forester came to the neighborhood today to talk about our fire load.  Fire generally flows uphill.  We're about midway up a big hill.  There is a road way down below us, and a vertical bluff behind us.  We, and the people on the bluff, are at risk from fires starting below us.  The biggest danger comes from the embers.  They float and as the fire grows hotter, the air rises faster, carrying embers which will land on roofs.  We also learned that the paths up the hill are on property owned by the HOA.  There are trees all over it.  Many are stressed, some are dead.  Dead trees are actually not as big as a hazard as live ones are.  The dead tree will catch faster, but the live tree will burn longer and hotter due to the oils in it.  The woods need to be thinned, primarily the immature trees.  They're never going to grow because there are too many trees and not enough water.  Some tall trees will have to go to keep fire from jumping from tree crown to crown.  So, the HOA is going to have to do something about this.  There are grants available, as well as money from the Infrastructure Bill, so hopefully it will not be too expensive.  Such is the downside of a small neighborhood. 

This is a dead tree.  It's not too much of a problem because the needles are off of it.

Here we are at the top of the hill. 

Now, from the department of you can't fix stupid.  Remember Sherri Tenpenny?  Previously she testified that the vaccines were magnetizing people.  Now she has an even more convoluted, more stupid theory on the subject.  The link to her speaking is here.  I don't understand how people come to these conclusions.

Play the video!  It's astounding.

Fog Snow

We had odd snow this morning.

This is from the local weather talking head.

We don't have any sort of storm moving overhead, it's just that kind of moisture in the low levels of the atmosphere. What's currently happening is those super cool little droplets are hitting one another, and as they hit each other they're freezing. And if they do that enough they run into other drops and eventually gravity wins out and pulls them down to the ground.

So, what looks like snow this morning is coming out of the fog.

A deeper explanation meteorologically is confusing, so we'll just say we got a little bit of snow coming out of the fog. So, just be ready for that.

Fog and Car Washes

Ah winter..... It lingers.  We're not having the temperatures in the teens anymore, but the fog has been pretty relentless. We are, however, taking solace in the fact that we should be rewarded with nine months where a person can go outside and not perish from the heat.  This morning we had actual ice fog.

The tree sort of mid photo is covered in ice.  It was pretty cool.

Yesterday afternoon we decided to go to the car wash in Spokane Valley.  It's touchless, and has under carriage flush.  I was expecting it to cost a lot more money than it did, we got everything except tire shine, which is when they put shiny stuff on the sidewalls of the tires.  There is no touching!  They hose you down at the entrance, then you go through the tunnel and at the end there are big blowers and they finish it off with hand drying.  We'll go back.

The Arizona Democrats have officially censured Sinema.  I truly hope that means the DNC will not give her money when she runs in 2024.  Representative Rubin Gallego (D-AZ) is being encouraged by other Democrats to primary her.  I would really like to see her only have one term.  

Meidas Touch has succeeded in getting a Biden ad placed on Fox and Friends.  You can see it if you go here.  This has to be making Carlson and Hannity nuts.  It's 30 seconds, totally worth watching.

Finally, why did this need to be said?

Glass, Food, Traitorous Senators

Greetings!  How are things in your neck of the woods?  It rained today, so Jim took the cars out into the drive way to see if it would wash away some of the salt.  Salt!  They salt the roads here.  To my knowledge the Seattle area does not do that. The car washes here have a chassis flush wherein you drive over a thing that sprays water up on to the underside of the car.  We'll probably be doing that a couple of times a winter.  We did find a touchless car wash place in Spokane Valley, and we'll be going there.  Jim can not bear the thought of car wash brushes touching his vehicles.  

As you no doubt recall we had the glass bricks taken out of the primary bathroom and replaced with a clear glass surround.  The process started at the end of November. The problems were: 1) the glass door was too large and wouldn't close,  2) instead of replacing the door they brought a fixed piece of glass which they initially thought was the wrong size and took it back, 3) more experienced guys brought it back and installed it, 4) then they noticed that the door was scratched and brought a new one out, 5) then we noticed that the fixed glass from item two was scratched, 6) we got new fixed glass yesterday.  Yesterday was the first time any of these guys in my house were masked, and they were not happy about it.  I gave one installer a three part mask, but he did not know he should fold the top up and use the metal strip to better fit his face, nor did he know about pulling the chin piece out and down.  I don't think he's ever worn a mask.  The thing that just irritates the living snot out of me is that they were planning on coming in again, unmasked.  I'm also irritated with us for letting it happen at all.  Yesterday we had the bathroom window open, the exhaust fan on, and a fan blowing down the hall they used to go in and out.  Airflow is key with an airborne pathogen.  Anyway, maybe this time we are done, I'd like to not have people in the house for awhile.

Here are the scratches in the fixed glass.  They're hard to see if you don't have a dark background.  I think they need to improve their glass handling processes.

So, the senate killed voting rights yesterday.  After the vote, the republicans lined up to shake Sinema's hand.  I hope she gets covid from that.  Emily's List, one of her largest donors, has dropped their support of her.  Her popularity in AZ among democrats is 8%.  Republicans, however, think she's great.  Mitch had this to say.

I guess "American" means white, all others must hyphenate. 

We made stoup again, this time we made mass quantities in the Le Creuset.  I don't use it much on the stove top because of the shape, the round ones are better.

We put it in the oven.  It works really well, cooks faster, doesn't require stirring to move stuff towards the middle and puts less food smell in the house.  As usual, I used too much liquid.

We've made a pact to cook big batches of food and freeze parts of them.  It's unfortunate that no one here likes to cook.

Also yesterday, the Supreme Court let a lower court decision stand that the National Archives could release documents related to January 6.  The archivist moved out with all due haste to get the documents to the January Select Committee.  The Select Committee has invited Ivanka to come and talk to them.  I don't know why they just don't subpoena the whole lot of them.  Additionally, a Civil Special Grand Jury has been empaneled in Georgia to investigate the orange ectoplasm's attempts to convince the GA Secretary of State to "find him some votes."  Raffensperger has said he would not testify unless presented with a subpoena, so now that can be arranged.  The call was recorded and released to the public.  Here we have the orange ectoplasm flailing about talking about the call.

I really want someone to put him in jail. 

Paint Day Three

Yesterday was the day of cutting in the paint around the perimeter of the living room.  Boy howdy do I hate doing that.  Much of my time was spent in this position.  Go here to see what was driving us to paint.  Scroll down a bunch, it was a long post.

Today was spent rolling the walls.  Jim does that, I'm just horrible with a roller.

So, the repainting of the living room, filling and dabbing holes in two other rooms is done.  Now we have to wait for the paint guy to get the paint base for the wood trim painting we need to do.  We need it to match the paint left in the house because I do not want to paint out all of window casings on all of the many windows.  There used to be a different style of window covering installed, and when they were removed they did not fill the holes.  So hopefully the paint match will be good enough to not do the entire casing.  Did I mention we really do not enjoy painting?  After that it's one wall in the master closet and the sewing room.  We don't have those paint codes, so we'll end up doing the entire sewing room.  Or we could do an "accent wall."  We do need to do the closet wall so we can put up hooks and be done with it. 

Here is the annual bias report on various magazines.  It's interesting.  Apparently Direct-TV is dumping OAN.  Couldn't happen to a nicer organization.  That will relieve them of about 90% of their revenue.

There was sun today, later on there was a sunset.

I'm linking to an article about the lack of water in AZ.  There is a neighborhood north of Scottsdale (which is near Phoenix) that depends on hauled water.  Some houses had wells, but many have dried up.  Scottsdale owns the water that was being delivered to the neighborhood, and they have said no mas.  The state is in drought, and they're not going to deliver water any more.  Between drought and the lunatic politicians, it's good to be gone. 

Painting

 How are things out in your world?  Things have been foggy here.  Apparently it's a thing here in winter, clouds and fog are frequent.  We have not been doing much, cases are spiking something fierce, WA is close to declaring crisis standards of care, so we're staying in more than I would like to.  Well, there were those two trips to Home Depot....

We're painting inside.  I hate painting more than I hate just about anything (except buying shoes), but it must be done.  The people who lived here before were old and infirm.  One was physically infirm, the other had dementia.  We're not sure when they left for the home.  What is interesting is that the five gallon can of paint for the bulk of the house interior is dated May 15, 2021.  We know there was a disaster involving water that resulted in all flooring in the house being replaced, and we're pretty sure most of the basement was repainted in that time frame.  How then, did all of these little holes appear in the walls, why is the paint scratched off one side of the master bathroom door; when did this damage occur?  It's a mystery.  It's all cosmetic, but it makes us wonder.

Today we did prep work, masking, removing switch plates, filling said holes in the walls.  I have decided my new favorite brand of spackle is DAP.  It spreads easily and sands nicely.  This is a settling crack over the slider in the living room.  We watched a bunch of youtubes about digging it out, using tape and hot mud, floating the mud, sanding the mud and decided just to fill it.  It it doesn't hold we'll hire someone to fix it.  It's not that deep.

I filled it.  Jim sanded it.

This is the mantel over the gas fireplace.  The horizontal line is the seam between the wall and the top of the firebox.  We suspect the previous owners were out of the house when this was painted, because they spilled a large amount of paint here and did not bother to clean it up.  Fortunately Jim still has his sander, so we'll sand it down and paint it.  It'll be fine.

It looks like a bomb went off in the parlor/sitting room/ room with no specific purpose.  All of the painting supplies were dumped in there. 

Jim is currently playing excerpts from the super spreader event being held for the orange ectoplasm in Florence, AZ.  Wendy Rogers is calling for an audit of all 50 states, she wants to do door to door canvases of all 50 states, and determine who people voted for.  Go here to watch Ms. Rogers be crazy in public.  These people are delusional, they really are out of their minds.  So is one of AZ's senators (Sinema) who will not mess with the filibuster and does not care if voting rights go down in flames.  She is convinced she'll be the Democratic presidential candidate in 2024.  Delusional!  It feels good to live in a blue state, even if I'm in a red county.

Other than painting, there is not much happening here.  Jim made another batch of dinner rolls yesterday, he had another success.  We just about burned up the hand held mixer, if we're going to keep making bread, we're going to have to have some sort of stand mixer.  I'm trying to determine how much money I have to spend on this.

Wildlife

 Friday we had a pretty good sunset, at 4:30 in the afternoon.  Dark still comes early here.

Our neighbor brought over a USB stick with photos from his game camera on it.  In addition to deer there are raccoons, coyotes (although we don't hear them), turkeys, and something small that sort of looks like a marmot, but it's not.

Here we have three deer and a turkey.

Another deer, with antlers.

Today we went snow shoeing.  The sun was out, so we had to go.  I think it's the last time until it snows again.  The street is partially bare, and up on the hill there are bare spots.  It's ok dragging the snow shoe across pine needles, but not so much on the pavement.  Here is Jim putting on his snow shoes.  Nothing makes a person appreciate the bindings on down hill skies as much as a snow shoe binding.  They are just a pain in the butt to get on.

We walked up to the big rock at the top of the hill.

On the way back we saw turkey tracks.  They have really big feet.

This is a source of some unhappiness in the neighborhood.  Snow is supposed to be deposited in the middle of the cul de sacs, leaving room for the garbage trucks, and in the common grassed areas.  It's not supposed to be in people's front yards. 

Other than this, I have nothing interesting to say.  Politics are just too depressing, the virus is too depressing,

Bad Republicans and Weather

Well, the republicans covered themselves in glory yesterday, on the one year anniversary of the attempted coup.  The House of Representatives held a remembrance for the law enforcement lives lost.  Rep. Liz Cheney and her father were the only republicans there.  The rest were elsewhere.  In the Senate, not one republican was on the floor.  Worse, some of them gave interviews attempting to frame the event as no big deal, happens all the time.  From twitter:

 

The missing republicans.  The Cheneys are on the right.  I don't like their politics, but at least they showed up.

The most disgraceful performance of the day was Ted Cruz groveling before Tucker Carlson, apologizing for ever referring to the insurrection as a "terrorist" attack.  He allowed as how it had been sloppy speech.  Someone give that guy a spine.

We had an active weather day yesterday, the map speaks to what was happening.  Blue is snow, yellow with red in it indicates raining pigs and chickens.  All of the passes were closed due to avalanche danger, downed trees and etc.  Parts of the freeway were closed west of the Cascades between Napavine and Grand Mound, with no alternate routes because of wide spread closures on the back roads.  Issaquah is flooding like crazy because the creek is out of its banks.  This is not normal, one hopes it will not become normal.

It snowed for much of the day here.  Jim was busy with the teeny tiny snow blower.  We're somewhat concerned that the snow being flung off to yard, will eventually be taller than the height of the chute of the blower.  Wet snow does not exit as well as dry snow, the neighbor told us to spray the chute with cooking spray, it does help a little.

Jim removes snow and ice from the hedge.

The blower gets the rest of it off.  We don't know if we really need to be doing this, but the weight of the snow does distort the hedge.

I shoveled the back deck.  Almost all of the snow had to be lifted over the deck railing.  It's getting tall out there on the snow piles.  Buddha does not look happy about this.

Temperatures hit a very balmy 42F(5.5C).  All of the snow on the roads has turned into ugly brown slush, which is now covering the Jeep in dirt.  We took three pairs of boots and a 1/4 zip Patagonia fleece back to REI this morning.  Their return processing is very fast, we were in and out in the twinkling of an eye.  We wanted to get back because the forecast is for 35 mph winds gusting to 50, which could result in downed branches and power outages.  Dinner got cooked early while there was power.  I do miss the gas cook top we had in Tucson, the gas oven not so much.  However, in a pinch we have the Colman two burner camp stove and a five gallon propane tank.  Anyway, I will be very surprised if there is that much wind. 

Today we learned something interesting about the neighborhood.  We're not connected to the city of Spokane storm drain system.  Instead, we have our own drainage system that carries the water off; the water goes to collection tanks under ground, and then leaches out of the tanks into the dirt.  Thus, when snow is melting, it's important that the drains be clear of debris and ice.  When they plow it piles snow up against the curb.  One wonders why the developer did this, but we'll never know.  Anyway, three of the men in the neighborhood spent significant time today shoveling snow and ice away from the drains.  These are not young men, I kept glancing out the window at them making sure no one had clutched their chest and fallen to the ground. 

So that's pretty much it, perfidy and malfeasance from the republicans, and snow.

Random Stuff

Well, here it is, the eve of one year since the insurrection.  The orange ectoplasm cancelled his planned speech for tomorrow.  He's now saying he'll cover his topics at the upcoming Arizona super spreader rally.  It never ceases to amaze me that people will go to any crowded event, much less one with the liar in chief as the main attraction.

We went to the grocery store last Sunday, and I have to say that between the trip made just before Christmas and Sunday there has been a significant increase in the price of everything.  Chuck steak, a tough cut of meat suitable only for long slow cooking, is now up to $9 a pound.  Really?  Everything is up.  The drug stores who actually have covid tests in stock are price gouging, I guess it's open season on the consumer.

It has warmed up some.  Today it was a balmy 32F.  We went up the hill on snow shoes.  It was the deepest snow to date.   Some of it had been packed by other people, but some of it was just deep.  Gaiters are our friends.  It was sort of dreary and overcast.  Tonight it snows more and into tomorrow. 

This was actually yesterday morning.  It was snowing then, as well.

I have yahoo mail.  One can create folders for various topics.  The other day I was scrolling through, thinking I should delete some of them because there are a lot, and many are no longer interesting.  What I did see was a folder of pictures.  They're from many sources and I'm not sure what triggered yahoo to extract them and put them in that folder.  Here are some of them.

This was taken in 2016 in Joseph, OR.  It's one of the most beautiful places I've seen.  Just lovely. 

My favorite photo of a trichocereus blossom.  It's hugely cropped.

My favorite church in Tucson.

A tall cactus in the RV park in Tucson where we used to winter.  It's an amazing thing.

My friend Kim took this in 2012 when they were staying in an RV park in Issaquah.  They were there all winter.  I love the lights against the gray of the environment.

Kim took this in Yellowstone in 2010.  It's one of my favorite pictures she's taken.  In addition to being an great photographer, Kim is also an excellent quilter.

 

 

I believe this is from 2013, after my third foot surgery.  It was very painful, and limited mobility within the RV park.  We bought the yellow Schwinn at Target so I could get around.  It had coaster brakes which I never mastered, I'd just slow down and jump off.  It's now my Facebook profile picture.

So that's it.  Sedition and insurrection, inflation, snow and random photos.