Un-well day!

January 5, 2007 (5:45am)
47º F, Hot and dark, W wind 5 mph.

Good morning,

As you can see, I wasn’t able to get this on the blog last night. The download took up too much of the "pipeline" to allow that. The download is a puzzle as it takes about 24 hours to download and the ISP will only stay on for 8 hours at a time. When I restart, the download starts from the very beginning again.

Hotter this morning than when I went to bed. Set a new high temperature record at one second after midnight this morning. Expect the temperature will drop a bit at sunrise, then rise again - close to 50º F. This is supposed to be January - isn’t it?

Time to get the day a-going.

In Christ My Saviour,

Chris <><

January 4, 2007 (4:57pm)
38º F, Record setting heat wave, S wind 3 mph.

Good afternoon,

Things have not been going well for this machine the past couple of days. Yesterday, I spilled a cup of coffee and some landed on my new keyboard. I initially didn’t think much more than a few drops landed on it, but time would prove me wrong. My coffee cup has a top on it, since I am rather prone to tipping it with these goofy hands that don’t always work the way they should. Since the top was in place, usually very little runs out - only through the drink hole and the vent. Apparently everything was lined up right (or wrong) causing the coffee to stream out. Maybe the coffee wasn’t strong enough either. Tried to dry and blow the coffee out, but with limited success. Only some of the keypads worked. I took the keyboard apart as far as I could, but there apparently was still some coffee between the plastic sandwich making up the contacts. Never did get it to work, so plugged in the old one again. Will try the new one again, but after a couple of days to hopefully dry out without any residue left behind.

If that wasn’t enough, I dug out my book on prayer to continue it’s writing. After doing a bit, I tried to save it and found the program gave me a strange error message and closed the program down. After doing the same procedure several times with the same results, I finally decided either the program on this machine was corrupted or the file on the memory stick was. I opened the WordPerfect website to run an update/repair program, but that takes about 23 hours to download. It is running at the moment, so really am not too sure if this will get into the blog or not. Time will tell. I hope it is only the file, but that still is 150 pages, single spaced, of work I really don’t want to do over again! I do have a back up and a hard copy, but almost afraid the hard copy will be the only one useable. In the meantime, I wait for the repair/update to down load to finish and will try it again. With my fingers, eyes, and toes crossed for good luck.

The miserable weather continues. Looks to be at least another week of hot weather. I don’t know how many weeks it has been now that the temperature has been at least 10º F warmer, usually 20º F, than "normal" temperatures. The lows at night are often higher than the normal highs! I notice in the paper and some of the stores, there are all kinds of sales. On things like: ice fishing gear, snow shovel, kid sleds and toys, coats, boots, and all sort of things. Snow blowers have also gone on sale, but $10.00 off of a several hundred dollar item ain’t much - yet. Expect they will also drop before too long too. There is a lot of advertising for sales on snowmobile clothing and how easy it is to buy a snowmobile or ATV. Expect they too will be coming down in price soon too. Glad I am not in the snowmobile business any more! The month of December recorded about 10% of our normal snowfall and about 400% of our normal rain fall. The average temperature also has been about 30% higher than last year. Of course the electrical and LP usage is down correspondently, but the price is up.

It really is interesting to see all of the snowmobile trails so neatly laid out across the fields and through the woods around here. The little orange diamond shaped trail markers are very visible against the bare plowed field or grown vegetation. I think they are more visible now than with the snow on the ground. The trails across the plowed fields are also neatly smoothed and really look inviting - if they weren’t mud instead of hard, frozen soil. Would make nice hiking or walking trails - almost.

I did manage to finish building a pretty good pot of chicken/vegetables with noodles today though. It really is tasty and we have lunch for the next few days at least. We bought some "used" chicken wings sometime ago, so used them as the base. They had more meat on them than I usually use and are very tasty too. Easy to make this time, rather than picking the meat from the backs I normally use.

Margriet built some awesome hamburgers for supper tonight. The local Piggly Wiggly had hamburger on sale, so we picked up a couple of packages. We bought some hamburger buns to go with too. The hamburger has been split so there is another meal, with half of the buns, for another meal. Also some packages for meatloaf or meatballs too. Leberkase was on the menu last night and that sure was good too. I think there may be one more meal still in the freezer. If not, we will going to Otto’s again before too long.

Most of the day, Margriet got our ledger up to date. It is a tedious task and I think she has decided to do it more often than not. Since we have a new year, it also means a new ledger. I thought I had a matrix set up, but didn’t and had to make a new one. Still have to get a new check file folder to keep the receipts in of the new year. So the routine goes on for another year.

Time to get a-going.

In Christ My Saviour,

Chris <><