Dec. 27, 2020-Jan. 2, 2021

Weather | 12/27, 26°, 51° | 12/28, 21°, 31° | 12/29, 1" snow, then freezing rain, 0.62" moisture, 20°, 33° | 12/30, 29°, 33°  | 12/31, 20°, 31° | 1/1, freezing rain, 0.61" moisture, 23°, 29° | 1/2, 14°, 27° |

• Sunday, 12/27: Katie Gets Discharged
  
  • Katie was discharged from the Harborview Burn Center and put up in the Courtyard by Marriott in downtown Seattle, just a few blocks from the hospital. She's on the 12th floor in a room with a king's size bed. The woman connected through Katie's military reserve unit helped Katie by having her son give Katie a ride to the hotel, and helped Katie haul all of her belongings into the hotel. Katie's burn wounds are healing faster than expected. She is tired of always explaining, even to the head doctor, that she has no one in the state of Washington who can help her change dressings, and arrangements are established for her to visit Harborview’s outpatient clinic daily to get that done.
  • Mary washed towels and dried them on the line outside. 
    
  • Mary made venison stroganoff for our midday meal. Bill left around 3 p.m. for his apartment in St. Charles, MO.
  • An hour after Bill left, the temperature dropped 10 degrees and we had sleet coming down. It didn't last long.
    
    
• Monday, 12/28: Cutting Firewood
  
  • Mary and I cut up and brought in 2 wagon loads of firewood from the NE area of our property, where I've been getting firewood recently. I finished cutting up the last of a downed oak tree trunk, so the pieces were about 2 foot in diameter. I chainsawed them into halves, so Mary could haul them to the trailer sitting in the field. After finishing that tree trunk, I worked on nearby downed smaller trees. We unloaded the first load, then ate a midday meal of leftover venison stroganoff, and then went back for the second load. I unloaded the second wagon load while Mary did chores.
  • Katie got her first night of uninterrupted sleep in her hotel room. She visited Harborview's Outpatient Clinic to redress her bandages. She walked around the space needle's park and went on its tram. She ate her main meal at an outdoor Irish pub down the street from her hotel.
    
    
• Tuesday, 12/29: 30th Anniversary
  
  • Mary and I were married 30 years ago, today, in Red Lake Falls, MN. We celebrated by enjoying a shrimp dinner, accompanied by a bottle of homemade blackberry wine, while watching snow and freezing rain fall outside. It's always best to watch weather like that while sipping wine in the living room next to a cozy and warm woodstove.
  • Weather forecast is for an accumulation of 0.1-0.2 inch of ice with snow on top of that for Thursday night and Friday morning. Since Katie is flying in on Friday, we let her know the forecast. If the forecast comes reality, we won't be able to pick her up at the Quincy Airport. Katie said the airline tickets can't be changed. Hopefully, the forecast is wrong.
  • Katie had the outpatient clinic help her on how she could redo her own bandages in case she gets stranded somewhere while flying. She did her own on today's visit. She said it's not done as professionally as they do it, but she accomplished the feat. Her flights on Friday are on American Airlines, leaving Seattle at 6:15 a.m., arriving into Chicago at 12:14 p.m., then Cape Air, leaving Chicago at 1:14 p.m., arriving in Quincy at 2:53 p.m.
    
    
• Wednesday, 12/30: Tracks Everywhere
  
  • We don't get as much snow here, compared to places I've lived north of Missouri. When we do, we notice how our property is full of animals. This morning, rabbit tracks were all over the snow covering the ground in the chicken yard. A walk down our lane revealed multiple deer that crossed the lane and some of the tracks in the snow were from large deer. A walk around the far garden showed several deer tracks and a couple that jumped the fence and walked across the garden. I noticed coyote tracks near the compost pile and Mary saw some outside of the chicken yard fence. Coyote tracks are long and narrow, whereas dog tracks are round. That's why I knew a neighbor dog walked from the gravel road halfway up our lane and back. Mary saw large cat tracks, probably from a bobcat. An interesting story can be read from animal tracks in the snow.
  • Mary took down ornaments from the Christmas tree, dusted them, and put them away. I helped her remove lights and take apart the tree.
  • I took several screws and secured the plaster board on the sunroom's ceiling. Nails holding several of the boards were failing and letting the boards hang down. It's all tight, now.
  • We watched 2 episodes of Downton Abbey's second season.
  • Katie lined up an appointment with the Mercy Burn Center in St. Louis on 1/7/21 at 11:45 a.m. She also has a 1 p.m. physical therapy appointment on the same day.
    
    
• Thursday, 12/31: New Year's Eve
  
  • Mary did a bunch of house cleaning.
  • I cleaned the ceiling of the sunroom, where rain leaks in through the roof, occasionally. The strong bleach/water solution I used killed any chance of mold, but it also meant we aired out the house for a few minutes.
  • I ordered a new brew bucket, since all attempts at killing garlic odor failed in my current brew bucket, which is now my garlic brew bucket. In the order was another 100 wine bottle corks.
  • We enjoyed venison General Tso for our main meal.
  • Katie had a successful final doctor's visit at the Harborview Burn Center in Seattle. They removed all of her bandages and thought she was progressing nicely. She might be able to go back to light work in a couple of weeks. She was planning on visiting a Target store to get luggage for her flight, tomorrow.
    
  • We watched the 2009 movie, The Blind Side, and the 2017 movie, Beauty and the Beast. We also enjoyed a bottle of 2020 pear wine, which only aged 5 days. Our excuse was it had a faulty cork...ha, ha, ha. It tasted great.
    
    
• Friday, 1/1: New Year's Day
  
  • I woke at 6 a.m. with something hitting the east windows. It was sleet and freezing rain. Ice covers everything outside (see photo, below). When the wind blows, tree branches clatter like thousands of castanets (see short video, below). It's a good day to stay inside.
    
  • Katie didn't sleep well in Seattle, with New Year's fireworks going off. She successfully flew from Seattle to Chicago. While she was en route, I looked online, discovering that her Chicago to Quincy flight was canceled. I looked online for hotels near O'Hare and gave her information on a call. She'll be in Chicago until Monday. Cape Air, her connection between Chicago and Quincy, didn't have an opening until Monday. Also, we aren't moving until ice thaws, which is probably Monday, at the earliest. Quincy online news sources report several accidents throughout the area. It's been raining continuously since we got up, along with a little bit of snow, and at 1:30, the temperature is only up to 29. That all equals ice. We talked to Katie after she got into her new hotel room. She was tired and looking forward to ordering some Chicago deep dish pizza.
  • I reviewed apple tree scions (pronounced sigh-ons), which are 8-inch long apple twigs that are grafted onto rootstock to make a young apple tree. After looking at all of the apple scions for sale at Fedco, a seed and fruit tree supplier in Maine, I picked out 29 varieties I liked. Then I narrowed it down to varieties that work best with the ten MM111 rootstocks that I currently own. Next, I read the descriptions off to Mary and we picked 6 varieties that give us fruit to eat and work well with apple cider production. The varieties are Ashmead's Kernel, Baldwin, Roxbury Russet, Wickson, Hewe's Virginia Crab Apple, and Porter's Perfection. We already have the following apple trees: an Esopus Spintzenburg, a Grimes Golden, a Jonathan, two Stayman Winesaps, and a very old McIntosh. The Grimes Golden is on a rootstock that doesn't like heavy clay soils, like we have, so I'm going to try to graft it onto an MM111 rootstock, which is the same rootstock under the Esopus Spintzenburg. I was going to try grafting a piece of the McIntosh onto a new rootstock, but I learned that it's a variety which is very susceptible to scab, which we notice yearly on that tree. I've decided to cut that tree down. I'll be busy grafting and nurturing different apple trees this spring.
  • We also ordered 5 packages of garden seeds from Fedco that weren't available when we ordered on the first week of December.
  • Katie called in the evening after sleeping for several hours in her Chicago hotel room. She learned that all of her stuff that was in Nuiqsut was shipped to the Anchorage office of UIC.
  • Bill texted that he spent New Year's Eve with Erin and Mike Push. Bill stayed at his friends' house, then ventured home New Year's Day, when roads were cleared.
    

  

  Ice on door window.
  

  
  
  
  
  Freezing Rain - turn on sound to hear branches clattering.
  
  
  

• Saturday, 1/2: Chipping Ice
  
  • A little bit of sun peeped out from behind clouds in the morning, but soon after, light fog filled the air and temperatures stayed below freezing. I took a metal shovel to the ice on the porch and removed it. Then, I started the Cadillac, turned on all defrost mechanisms, and got all ice off the car, except for a little on the roof and wheels. Deicing the car probably took an hour.
  • I made waffles for breakfast.
  • A large V of geese flew north to south, low over the house...probably 200 birds.
    
  • Mary made flour tortillas in a non-stick pan that Bill gave her for Christmas, then she made chimichangas for our main meal.
  • Katie slept a lot today. Her Chicago hotel is quieter than the Seattle hotel she was in a few days ago. A military friend and his wife took Katie out to a drive-through restaurant. They bought a bunch of food and ate it in the parking lot of the hotel where Katie is staying. We almost split a gut with laughter as Katie described the clothes she's wearing that she says makes her look like a homeless person. Her ensemble starts with sweatpants that are too short. She has slip-on light gray Converse shoes. Next are bright orange socks, then green sweatpants. To top it off is an oversized red plaid shirt. 
  • On game-night Saturday, Mary and I played Pachisi, or as the game company Parker Brothers calls it, Parcheesi. This Indian game dates back to 1100 BC. Mary won two games and I won one game. There are several rules that I've never played with while participating in this game, which made it interesting and fun. We look forward to playing this game, again.