Blowed away - almost.

November 1, 2006 (12:30pm)
31º F, Cold brightness, W wind 14 mph, 30 mph gusts.

Good afternoon,

The wind, she’s back. So be the cold. The wind chill is about 16º F and really feels like it. It really was at 36º F when I got up this morning at 5:00 P.M.! The wind was up and it really felt like it inside too. Guess the cold will stick around for a few days too.

We made the supply run yesterday. The wind was really ripping from the west. The heater control was set much higher on the way over, heading into the wind, than on the return with a following wind. It really gave a shot to the van as it came out from the protection of trees along the highway too. Had to pay attention to what was going on - more than usual.

One of the things we picked up yesterday was a new "work" vest for me. The one being replaced I think I bought the first year I went deer hunting, which would have been 1967. I think I might have gotten my money’s worth from it. I bought a new one in 1983, but it was down filled and really didn’t lend itself to working. I went back to using the old one for work, after a new zipper, and used the then new one as my "dress" vest. I did use it for hunting. It is some hard to find this kind of vest now as there are so many "new" insulating materials on the market. They keep you warm, but most of the time too warm for work. These have only about ¼" of fiberfill insulation in them - works good. My favorite memory from the original vest is Dori taking off a patch I had on it and sewing it to the then new one. Still can see her sitting on the couch doing that. She was so proud that she was grown up enough to take care of Dad. I was too. The patch is still on the vest she sewed it to and probably will stay there until I start to chew daisy roots.

The major purchase of the trip was the chair I am now sitting in. We went to a different store, Office Depot, to see what they had and now they have one less. This one was on sale for about 25% off. It is much better constructed than the previous one and much more comfortable too. This is built with a lot less plastic structural members and more metal. This chair also makes me sit back more, so have some getting used to it. Of course the padding in the other was also compressed, especially at the front of the seat for some reason. Made me feel a bit downhill. The armrests on it were pretty badly broken and the back also had some problems. Anywho, I am hoping this one will last as long as my old vest did.

The gas price has also risen again. This week the price was 10¢/gallon higher than we paid last week. Since we bought some last week, we didn’t need to this time. The price went up about a nickle in the past couple of days. Makes no sense to me as the price of crude oil is down again. Or maybe we just missed the down swing. Since we stay pretty close to home most of the time, we really don’t use much gasoline anymore. Maybe the high price of gasoline is a good thing! In a backward way.

We have found some fairly good prices on chicken this week, both here and in Green Bay. I picked up some really nice bone-in breasts for 99¢/# so picked some up on Sunday. Boned them out and today I am cooking them down for soup starter in the future. Yesterday we also found a good deal on hind quarters, so picked up a mess of them at 50¢/# and I disjointed them today and the backs will be added to the soup pot shortly. I will have a pretty good batch of soup starter in the freezer. Yum! The beef soup I made a bit ago, ran out today with lunch, so not all of the starter will make it to the freezer. Plan to have oven baked chicken and rice with raisins for supper tonight. Margriet made kind of a vegetable stir-fry with Spam over noodles for supper last night. Quick and easy. Was rather tolerable to eat too!

Bible study went rather well yesterday too. We finished up the second half of the lesson in fine shape. I mentioned that we had not been to breakfast for along time - usually in the past, I would make sure we went every 4-6 weeks. It has been 9 weeks since starting this study! Of course the blame was aimed at me for bringing it up. We will not be going next week, but the week following - then it will be a potluck. One of the charter members of the church who has lived in Green Bay, died late last week. Her funeral will be on the 14th at 11:00 A.M., so we decided that we would have a potluck breakfast then set up and serve for the funeral. I will let the ladies worry about what to serve and I and the other couple of guys will probably wash the dishes. It was her wish to have her funeral at Grace, but it will take a couple of weeks to gather the family. One at least is a pretty high rank in the Air Force and the only way for her to come was to delay it. One of the local radio stations reported the funeral was yesterday, so there were people, flowers, and like that showing up at church yesterday morning. Not a good thing. The gal moved from here before we came to be with her husband who was in a nursing home there. Before he died, she also became a resident there too and was until her death.

Time to get a-going.

In Christ My Saviour,

Chris <><