What sun?

September 13, 2006 (12:33pm)
61º F, Cloudy, N wind 5 mph.

Good afternoon,

So the promised sunshine has not yet arrived. Sounds like the sun/cloud line is about mid-state, somewhere near Wausau. The rains at least have stopped. So far this month we have received about 50% more rain than a normal month of September. Last month we received about half of a normal month’s rain! Go figure. There are a lot of crops suffering and a lot of high prices at the stores. Wonder what the winter will bring.

The rain has pretty much ended work outside for the last few days. As a result, while we were on our supply run yesterday, I picked up a new kitchen sink faucet. The old one I put in when everything froze up here in 1997 and was showing signs of problems coming in the near future. As long as I can’t work outside, because of the wet, I decided to work under the sink and get wet. The new faucet is made in Taiwan and the old one in China. We will see if the Taiwanese are better at faucet building than the Chinese!

I started this while Margriet did some cleanup of the sink where the faucet mounted, and now, later, the faucet is in and working. Much to my surprise, no leaks - so far. This one has only one handle and a longer spout. Wonder how long the single handle will work, but happier for the longer spout. Not sure yet if it is higher from the bottom of the sink - hope so. Our old hands were also starting to have problems turning the knobs, so the reason for the single lever. At least it looks clean now. (Margriet just found a storage place for our resident mouse - she grumpy! It gone! We hope.) Sure am glad I picked up the faucet - Margriet is finding all kinds of things she didn’t know she had and most are to be thrown away.

We are under a road closed situation again for Winding Road. Only this time the reason is almost in front of us. To the east a few hundred yards they are putting in a new culvert under the road. They are not messing around either. I went over there to see if I could commandeer the old culvert to put in a driveway closer to the house, but it was rusted into small pieces. Chatting with one of the workers, he said the new one was $60.00/foot! It is 30" in diameter, but I really expected to see it more expensive than that. They should finish in a couple of hours and then plan to re-blacktop the spot before winter sets in. That would be nice. There has been a "down-bump" there for the past year or so. It appeared just after they resurfaced the last time. The rest of Winding Road is actually in pretty good shape.

Bible study is really a struggle for the group. Not only because they have very limited experience reading it in the past (me too), but it is a difficult book to understand without some insight as to how and why it was written. The research I had done last week really came in handy. I finally did understand it, at least the part we were covering, and was able to help the others. The person who is leading the study now was not there and another gal filled in for her. She was swamped, but did do some work on trying to understand it. Really the study was a good one in that it opened some eyes to a different way of writing and reading a story. We only covered the first 20 verses of the book yesterday.

The cookies that Margriet brought were a hit at Bible study too. DARN! A couple of folks took some home too. DOUBLE DARN! They really are good. We did bring some home too, so I will not starve too much. It is a defiant do-again recipe. Soon I hope.

After Bible study we ran into Kewaunee to pick up my medications for the month, the out to the town hall to vote. The ballot is one requiring us to vote a single party, to eliminate multiple folks running from the same party for the same office. We really had a larger vote than usual for a primary. Don’t know how it was in the rest of the state, but the northeast had a good turnout. I was pretty well satisfied with the results. The people I really didn’t want to run, aren’t. We have a couple of incumbents who were defeated and they should have been. The real election occurs in November, and that should be interesting. I normally will only vote for the person - not the party. It really seems weird though to have computer readouts for ballots and registration in a building that looks and feels to be in a different century - one back!

Our larder is now full again for the most part. We can’t afford to buy some of the food products now. Maybe I should say we don’t choose to at the present prices. Produce is wild! Prices probably are out of reach thanx to the high fuel cost and the weird growing season this year. Even the crops which are locally grown are high. The produce departments in the grocery stores are getting smaller, I think for that reason.

We did pick up a BP cuff, but some of the things I need for working around here were not available at Fleet Farm. Next time we are in Green Bay we will need to make a trip to Woodworker’s Depot. It probably is a good thing that it is on the other side of town than we normally shop on. It would be too convenient to stop there and leave money. It sure is a tempting store to wander around in, but probably better to leave the wallet in the van while there.

We also stopped at Gander Mountain. That store is next to our primary grocery store, but exercise some extreme self control by not going there often. The excuse was to find a combination salt and pepper shaker that didn’t leak, as the one we now use for traveling. We found it. Of course we had to nose around through the store while there. I found the new model of my deer rifle costs almost $1,000.00, bare, and the dad-gum thing is made of a lot of plastic! I got mine for $349.00 with a mounted scope, case, sighted in, box of shells, and tax! I thought it was an outrageous price at the time, but Uncle Dori said that is the one to get. He was right! It is the only one I have needed or used. I also looked for a slug barrel for my shotgun and found it would cost nearly twice what the original price was! Thought about possibly poking a hole in a deer in this neighborhood, but that would be some pretty expensive venison! Maybe I will just dig out my old .22 rifle and be satisfied with rabbits and squirrels!

Time to get a-going.

In Christ My Saviour,

Chris <><