Still white woods

November 7, 2007 (4:04am)

28º F, Cloudy, NW Wind, 6 mph.

Good morning,

There is a bit of snow on the ground yet. The temperature has hung around 32-34º F all day yesterday. The sun was shining some of the day, but the wind really made it feel cold. Even had to get out my heavier chore coat to wear! Even got the winter boots out and used them too in the snow. Guess the weather is to stay pretty much the same for the next few days at least with a bit of warming, maybe to the mid-40's. Possible light snow too. Found the tracks of a couple of turkeys that wandered through the yard in the new snow.

The price of gasoline has been going wild. It has gone up 35¢/gallon this last week! Now at $3.349/gallon. The talk is it is supposed to go up even farther - soon. Someone is making big bucks off of this deal and it sure ain’t me! Seems the weak dollar has something to do with it, but bet there are other reasons, greed, more numerous. This trend sure will cut into our budget a bunch. Grumpy about that. Maybe walking isn’t such a bad option.

I realized yesterday, that I had not included any pictures of Fjord. Will change that today by adding one of Fjord coming home. She ain’t a beauty queen, but hope it will save much work around here for the duration. There is much work to do on it yet, but that too will come. As you can see, I am unfastening the tie-downs from Eli’s trailer to take it off. The ride off of the trailer was some exciting. Once it started down the ramps, the brakes would not hold it. Was real glad I hit the ramps and went straight down them, rather than slipping off to one side and going down boom!

Also including a picture of the wood splitter and the results of a couple hours work. I will have much more wood to do, so it will not get much rusty from sitting around. While I enjoy splitting wood, I just can’t do enough fast enough by hand to keep up with the needs, especially in the cold weather coming. The splitter sure has been a good investment and I really do enjoy using it too. Either by hand or using the splitter, one nice thing is that you can see you are accomplishing something as the pile of split wood grows.

Margriet built bread yesterday. It was a good day for it. Of course every day is a good day for fresh bread to me. She made three loaves. We took one to our neighbor and intended to take another to the neighbor on the other side of us, but they were not home, so took it to the gal who listed Guds Nordtre originally. When she took us through here, she talked of the smell of homemade bread that the previous gal was baking. So .... we filled that need for her too. She was more than pleased to get it and said her husband would be even more pleased. Hope she gets some.

We went into Iron River to pick up some supplies at the hardware store so stopped at Eli’s to see how Pat was doing. The surgeons didn’t find any cancer (the think, but are doing further tests) and think she has TB. Still working on that diagnosis too. TB can’t be cured, but can be managed, so that is some good from this. She will be in the hospital for about 10 days to recover before she can come home again. It was late in the afternoon when we got to Eli’s and apparently he was at work earlier in the day, but went up to see her before we got there. If she has TB, that probably will end her career as a Certified Nursing Assistant. She has been working in a senior care center for some time. That will make her some grumpy and really effect her health insurance coverage too. Eli is really worried about that - before she went for surgery.

The new furnace is working nicely. So nicely the flies decided it must be spring and came out of all the cracks and crevices! They are all over the place. Big ones too! I got the fly paper from the shop and hung some in the gathering room. Discovered that I had to warm them before they could be opened though. Tore the first one not thinking about that. Hope the fly paper will at least cut the number of them down some. Now Margriet can get back to finishing the cabinets for in here, now that it is some warm there.

Time to get the day a-going.

In Christ My Saviour,

Chris <><