Dec. 6-12, 2020

Weather | 12/6, 25°, 41° | 12/7, 31°, 35° | 12/8, 29°, 45° | 12/9, 32°, 60° | 12/10, 29°, 63° | 2/11, 0.81" rain, 36°, 41° | 12/12, 0.49" rain, 32°, 35° |

• Sunday, 12/6: Last Day of Anterless Deer Season
  
  • After today, we don't have to wear hunter orange vests and hats when we venture outside. We do it to tell any hunters trespassing on our land that we're too tough to eat. We didn't hear any shots close by today.
  • Mary washed a load of shirts. They didn't dry on the outside line, so she dried them inside with the woodstove cranked up.
  • I moved remaining split firewood from the machine shed to the woodshed. A hip-high stack is in the woodshed.
  • I also cleaned up the chainsaw and switched the chain in preparation to sharpening it.
    
  • Mary baked a large pumpkin and put 6 quarts of pumpkin pulp into the freezer.
  • My brew bucket still smells like garlic. I tried hydrogen peroxide. It didn't work.
  • I'm getting the same song and dance from FedEx...they tried delivering the RockAuto package, but nobody was home. We were home all day. FedEx is the worst pack of liars. I sent another email to RockAuto.
  • Sam Cason (was a freshman when I was a senior at Homer HS) sent renting advice that I passed on to Katie. His wife suggested Katie talk to their son, Drew, who's roughly the same age and knows the Anchorage rental market. Sam sent an email to his son and me, which I forwarded to Katie. Sam said to tell Katie to consider the Casons as a reference because, "Us old Homorons have to stick together!"
  • Mary saw a mockingbird under the forsythia bush and a sharp-shinned hawk in a walnut tree. The hawk is about the same size of a bluejay. A bluejay was inquisitively bouncing closer to look a the hawk, before the hawk flew away. We also saw a bald eagle flying over our property.
    
    
• Monday, 12/7: Katie Gets an Apartment
  • After dark, Katie sent a text with THIS LINK to an apartment she was about to look at. It's located off Boniface Parkway, just south of Russian Jack and east of Alaska Pacific University in Anchorage. After she viewed it in person, she was excited, hoping that she would get it. The landlord encouraged her to fill out the online forms today, because he said he liked her professionalism, compared to other applicants. A few minutes after filling out the information, she was accepted. So, Katie now has a place to move to in Anchorage. Her rent is slightly higher, due to her pets, but the only utility she has to cover is electricity. This apartment is tucked into some woods and only a few feet away from a trail to Russian Jack Park. Katie texted, "I'm happy! I had my heart set on this place and didn't want to look for any more places."
    
  • Mary made and canned another 13-quart batch of salsa. That's 2 down and 1 more batch of salsa to make.
  • I drove to Quincy to try to solve the FedEx delivery problem. I went to what's listed as the FedEx Ship Center in Quincy. It's for FedEx Express, not FedEx Ground, which are 2 separate entities, like my son once told us. He knows. Bill deals with shippers daily, at his job. The woman at the FedEx Ship Center gave me the address of the FedEx Ground warehouse. When I got there, the place is surrounded by a high fence and a card-coded gizmo that opens the gate. I pushed a button on the gizmo and a woman inside opened the gate after I talked with her. She called the driver who had my package and had me talk to him. He thought I lived near Highland High School, 7 miles east of us. I explained how to get to our house. I'm sure all FedEx drivers get our address wrong and try to deliver 7 miles away. Then, I asked the woman at the FedEx Ground office how to get around shippers who refuse me changing a destination of a package. She gave me their phone number in Quincy, telling me that if I called her, she would hold the package at that location, so I can pick it up there, something that they won't let happen if I called the national FedEx number, but something that they'd do locally. GREAT! I now have an answer to my FedEx shipping issues. The Quincy FedEx folks are very accommodating. The problem is it takes real work to find this information out, because nothing is available to the public.
  • After buying a few things, I drove back home in time to do chores before dark while Mary finished her salsa canning. My FedEx package arrived as I was unloading the car.
    
    
• Tuesday, 12/8: A Quiet Day
  
  • We didn't do much today.
  • A UPS truck showed up before we ate breakfast with a package. It was sent from Montreal with new moose hide moccasins inside. They're much better than the hole-in-sole moccasins I've been wearing for several months.
  • Mary washed a load of laundry. Again, not all of the laundry dried on the line, so she moved them through inside to the line above the woodstove.
  • We ate a chicken pot pie for our midday meal.
  • I sharpened both chainsaw chains with a file. These chains will last much longer sharpening them with a file versus sharpening them with a grinder. I used the light Katie gave me. It helped me well after dark while sharpening. It's great.
  • Katie texted photos from her apartment showing the trail to Russian Jack Park (see below). We asked her if she was sleeping there and she said no, she doesn't have a bed, yet.

From Katie's new apartment...
Arrow is start of trail.

Start of trail to Russian Jack Park.

• Wednesday, 12/9: BUGS!!!
  
  • Whenever it warms up after cool spells, bugs march into the house through our very penetrable windows. I vacuumed the inside of windows several times to remove flies and Asian ladybugs. 
  • Mary washed 3 loads of laundry.
  • She also cleaned out dead tomato plants, mowed grass in the far garden, and mulched half of the garlic rows with the cut grass. She watered the garlic, too.
    
  • I filled cracks and holes in the chicken coop with expandable foam and then painted outside walls of bare wood boards on the east and south walls of the coop with exterior latex white paint. It will all need at least 1 more coat of paint.
  • I also filled a crack where the living room floor meets the south wall with expandable foam. Cats had played with foam I put there a few years back and pushed some pieces through the hole into the crawlspace below the living room floor. It's sealed up, again.
    
  • Katie was asked by John Hendrix to give him a visit, so she went to his office and said hello (see photo that John texted me, below). Katie called me to tell me about it. She said his first comment was that she was taller than me. She told him that I've always said I grew some after high school and that she and I are about the same height.
  • Katie spent the morning searching Anchorage for groceries and supplies for the worksite in Nuiqsut. Since there are restrictions on purchasing amounts in Anchorage, Katie had to visit several stores to totally fill the list given to her by her supervisor. He let her drive his vehicle, so that's how she's driving around Anchorage.
    
  • Katie also found Christmas deals and purchased items for her apartment, such as a TV, rugs, and a microwave. She looked for a bed, but prices were high enough that she decided to order a bed, after talking to her landlord about how shipping to the apartment is handled.
  • We watched the 1989 movie Christmas Vacation.
  • Katie texted us that her third COVID test in 2 weeks was negative, so she's cleared to go north, which is scheduled for early Friday morning.
    

  

  John Hendrix & Katie Melvin
  

• Thursday, 12/10: A Final Warm Hurrah
  
  • This is the last warm day in awhile, according to weather forecasts, so Mary and I finished projects with that fact in mind.
  • Mary mowed more to try to get mulch for the garlic, but to no avail. Grass just isn't high enough to get much mulch. So, Mary moved old rotten mulch already in some far garden rows to finish covering planted garlic. She also raked pecan leaves to use as garlic mulch. It's all done, now. 
  • I put 2 more coats of white latex paint on what once were bare wooden boards of the chicken coop. Prior to adding the paint on wall boards, I trimmed expandable foam lumps and painted over all of that material. That job is all done, too.
  • While painting, I watched a V of snow geese fly from west to east overhead. Mary and I also heard, but didn't see, trumpeter swans. Migrating birds are telling us a white Christmas is on its way.
  • It was warm enough to have house windows open today and yesterday. I also did a thorough house vacuum to rid all windows of flies and Asian ladybugs.
  • We had smoked scrambled eggs that I cooked after dark with my new hat light. The meal was good.
    
    
• Friday, 12/11: Dark & Wet Day
  
  • We woke to rain and it rained all day and night.
  • Katie flew from Anchorage to Dead Horse. She texted just after 3 pm (noon, her time) that she arrived at Nuiqsut.
  • I'm trying straight baking soda in my brew bucket to remove the garlic odor.
  • We were done with evening chores by 4 pm, with it getting dark very early, due to a constant soaking rain.
  • We watched (4 episodes) of Downton Abbey that Katie gave Mary for Christmas. Even though everyone has seen this, we haven't. It's a soap opera, but fun to watch. 
  • The U.S. Supreme Court said Texas lacked standing to challenge votes in other states. Missouri, where I now live, was one of several states to join Texas in attempting to strip other states of their right to self govern. One hundred and 20 Republican U.S. House of Representatives, including the representative from our Northern Missouri district, joined Trump and Texas in this lawsuit. The Republican Party now stands for dictatorship. It will be a long day in hell before I vote Republican, again, and I'm ashamed I ever voted for that group of undemocratic-leaning buffoons in the past. They're detestable and they don't deserve to be near a governing body, let alone responsible for one.
    
    
• Saturday, 12/12: Saturday Game Night
  
  • For a 3rd consecutive Saturday, Mary and I played an evening game. Tonight it was the astronomy version of Monopoly. Mary won. She owned all 4 of the observatories, which are railroads in regular Monopoly. I was always paying her $200. I owned the only property to build on in this game, the cheapest on the board. With a hotel on each property, Mary regular paid me $450 or $250. It was amazing how many times she hit the taxes landing spots. We finally quit when all of the $500 and $100 bills were gone out of the bank. Mary's value at the end of the game was $9383. I was $2000 shy of her value. It was a weird, but fun game.
  • The day was quiet. Mist fell throughout the day and occasionally, a tiny snowflake or two drifted to the ground.
  • My garlic wine is calmer, occasionally shooting up a yeast residue asteroid. The pear wine is quietly sitting, waiting to be bottled at the end of the month. The brew bucket still smells garlicy. I read online that finely grated apple or potato works for ridding containers of garlic smell. I'll try it, next.