January 26-February 1, 2020

Weather | 1/26, 14°, 29° | 1/27, 25°, 33° | 1/28, 25°, 31° | 1/29, 19°, 29° | 1/30, 24°, 38° | 1/31, 0.04" rain, 25°, 39° | 2/1, 30°, 39° |

• Sunday, 1/26: Started with fog outside. Was a gray day, so we stayed inside. Using this blog, I updated my handwritten wine making journal. When I bottled the pear wine, it was 2.5 months old. Mom texted that she visited Boulder City, Lake Meade and Hoover Dam today while visiting with Pam. We watched 2 movies, Bridget Jones Baby, and Notting Hill.
• Monday, 1/27: Mary figured our February meal menu and worked up a shopping list for tomorrow. She also bagged up donations that we'll drop off at the Salvation Army in Quincy. I took the chainsaw apart. Found pieces of the sprocket inside that area. Dismantled parts and worked up a list of chainsaw parts that I want to buy. We plugged in the old landline phone and after an hour of charging, I removed saved phone numbers from it, then packaged it up for donation. Packed up 7 more computer cords to drop off for reycling at Staples, tomorrow. Mom flew into Billings today.
• Tuesday, 1/28: Had a little bit of fog overnight and into the morning. We shopped in Quincy. Didn't get some items that were on my chainsaw list, due to high prices vs. the parts' existing quality. For instance, an air filter costs $45, whereas the guy said I can wash it with Dawn and water forever...good idea...I'll just wash it. A brake drum assembly was $28, plus $12 shipping, and the present one is good enough. Oil filter was good, too. Did get a new grinding wheel for the chainsaw sharpener. Farm & Home had 10% off chains and bars, which I got. All of the chainsaw parts equaled $189. But, this will last 2-3 years and, with the addition of gas, oil, and our own time, it's our heating cost. Got home after dark, did chores, unloaded, made up nachos and watched The Kid Who Would be King movie. Mom made it home to Circle MT during the late afternoon.
• Wednesday, 1/29: Again, fog overnight, which put white frost on all of the tree branches. Snow started falling around 11 am. It ended around 3 pm. I bought a big bag of pink Texas grapefruit yesterday that I plan to make into wine. Investigated grapefruit wine recipes online and corresponding yeast varieties, then ordered yeast, a pound each of acid blend, yeast nutrient, and wine tannin, 4 one-gallon glass jugs, a 1.4-gallon wide-mouth carboy (the jugs and carboy for making small 1-gallon wine batches), 4 stoppers, and another nylon straining bag from Midwest Supplies, in the Twin Cities. These are early birthday gifts for me, along with 3 Patrick O'Brian Aubrey/Maturin novels ordered from Thrift Books. Mary washed towels and dried them over the woodstove, and swept. We had an immature red-tailed hawk sitting in trees around the house at midday. Chickens were inside, so no problem with the hawk. The garbage truck came after a 2-week absence...took 2 trips with the plastic toboggan to move the garbage cans from the end of the lane, back to the machine shed. A lone coyote was howling to the east at dusk, less than yesterday, when a pack howled just down the hill from the house. They're really noisy canines! 
• Thursday, 1/30: Another gray day...we've had several in a row. The last time we saw the sun was on the 16th, a partly cloudy day. Mary washed some clothes that dried inside and did some cross-stitching. Saw another red-tailed hawk surveying our yard this morning. We had super omelets for our main meal...with gobs of veggies in them. I overhauled the chainsaw. Tore it apart as far as I dared go. Cleaned a lot of oil and fine sawdust. Spark plug gap on old plug was quite large. Dawn and hot water cleans air filter very well. Comparing old to new sprocket, the old one was extremely worn. The same with the teeth between new and old chains. Had a substantial amount of oil coming out from inside oiling mechanism. I'm hoping it's just due to using lighter viscosity "below freezing" chain oil recently and not because I have a leak inside the saw. It took several hours to clean, sometimes resorting to Q-tips. Katie said she got a 100% on a calculus test. She said her professor makes the material easy to learn.
• Friday, 1/31: Mary worked on about a third of a mound of branches in the machine shed and made them into kindling. It was another gray day, but this time with rain when Mary was doing kindling. I worked on the taxes and e-filed them. Our refund is more than we expected, which is nice. All were accepted except for the Illinois state tax. They're such bastards about things, but this is the last time I have to worry about it, since I'm now not working in Quincy, IL. I have to get back in and redo the electronic signature for Mary on the Illinois tax form. Updated checkbook. Researched purchasing a new power strip for the microwave and on pole barn buildings. John Hendrix left a voice mail and Dave Parmeter (both former Homer Alaska High classmates) left a Facebook message asking about this summer's reunion. Seems like everyone is ape about the reunion but me.
• Saturday, 2/1: A lot of snow melting today to where most of the ground is starting to be bare. We saw sun for the first time in many days in the afternoon. Mary did a load of laundry, made 38 flour tortillas, and made taco salad for our main meal. I assessed vitamins and minerals that I take vs. what I need. Mom said she got a humidifier for her place, since it's so dry in her house. She's ordering garden seeds. There's no snow on the ground and in the 50s in Circle, MT. One of the amaryllis plants that I got for Christmas is starting to show color in it's tallest bud (see below). That bulb has 2 more buds and the other bulb is showing 2 buds. It's going to get colorful in the sunroom, soon. We watched 3 episodes of Neal deGrasse Tyson's Cosmos. When we walked the dogs, we saw a rainbow, or more like a moon dog, next to the moon.

The first amaryllis bud.