Jan. 9-15, 2022

Weather | 1/9, 13°, 21° | 1/10, 15°, 23° | 1/11, 9°, 49° | 1/12, 31°, 49° | 1/13, 0.01" rain, 31°, 48° | 1/14, 27°, 37° | 1/15, 3" snow, or 0.62" moisture, 20°, 23° |

• Sunday, 1/9: Auto Stuff, Cooking, & House Planning
  
  • A strong NW wind blew in the morning, but by sunset, the outside air was calm.
    
  • I brought the tire pressures up on the pickup and the Buick. Everything, including the spare tire of the pickup, was low. The driver's side front Buick tire was flat. It's been over a year since we've moved the Buick. With the Cadillac gone, it's time to get the Buick back on the road. I also took steel wool to a bit of rust on the pickup's jack, and put it and the jack handle away behind the seat. A suitcase tool kit and the air pump went behind the pickup seat, too. It's amazing how much room exists, there.
    
  • Mary made an apple pie, flour tortillas, and venison fajitas for our main meal. For some unknown reason, Mary wanted off her feet in the evening.
  • I went into floorplanner.com, a program I used 10 years ago to work up a house plan, deleted that old stuff, and added the house plan I taped together from graph paper last month.
  • Mary and I both read a bunch in the evening.
  • Mocha nailed 2 mice...one in the late evening, and another after we went to bed. At 2 a.m., after a trip to the bathroom and while checking the thermometer, there was Mocha with a light gray mouse in her mouth. She's an effective mouse killer.
  • Katie made it back to Gulfport from her Air National Guard drill in Florida. She has veterinarian appointments for her 2 dogs and 2 cats during the next couple of days, in preparation for flying them north next weekend.
    
    
• Monday, 1/10: Mask Fix & Pickup Oil Change
  
  • Mary did a load of laundry and dried it on racks inside.
  • Mary took old elastic out of my mask and sewed in new elastic, adjusted it so the mask fits snugly to my face.
  • I changed oil and the oil filter on the pickup. King Kong put the oil drain plug in when oil was last changed at some oil changing joint in Quincy before we bought the truck. I tried adding a pipe to my socket wrench, but the ground prevented me from turning the wrench. I moved the pickup to a location whereby adding blocks under the front tires elevated the front of the truck, yet kept it level, to give the wrench with a cheater bar enough room to turn off the oil drain plug. Once I got the drain plug off, the oil change went fine. The engine sounds better while running, after the oil change. There are only 91,557 miles on this vehicle.
  • Mary did housecleaning.
  • I cleaned up 4 wine bottles and a beer bottle, which contained mold inside the bottle. I added an OxyClean solution to these bottles on 12/29/21. They rinsed out perfectly clean after a 12-day soak. I also removed labels and cleaned 10 wine bottles that soaked in soda water since 12/18/21. I tossed the brown-colored soda water. After adding used corks to keep dust out, I put dried wine bottles into my wine closet. I have over 50 clean wine bottles ready for filling and dozens more to clean.
  • While reading in the evening, Mary and I enjoyed a bottle of 2020 pear wine. It really has a good, strong pear flavor and it's very smooth after over a year of aging.
    
    
• Tuesday, 1/11: Spitting Firewood
  
  • Temperatures raised above freezing and the snow and ice laying on the ground and our roof is thawing.
  • Mary and I split firewood logs that were left next to the splitter, making 2 nice piles. A larger pile is dry wood, with a smaller one that's slightly wet wood.
    
  • Mary did a load of laundry and dried it outside on the line.
    
  • I tried finding a receipt for 5W30 oil I bought. I couldn't find it.
  • Katie called. Her procedure is still on at Harborview Burn Center in Seattle. Her veterinarian tested positive for COVID, so she had to scramble to find another vet to get health certificates, etc., for her pets, which she accomplished. She flies out for Quincy in the morning, via Charlotte, NC, and St. Louis. I pick her up at 2:03 p.m. at the Quincy Airport, if all goes well.
    
    
• Wednesday, 1/12: Katie's Procedure is Canceled, She Flies Back to Gulfport
  
  • Katie left Gulfport around 7 a.m. There were plane problems in Charlotte, NC, so she was ushered off one plane and onto another. While in the air to St. Louis and just before I left for Quincy, a voicemail was left on Mary's phone that Katie's procedure was canceled, due to a COVID surge, and the woman at Harborview in Seattle couldn't get in touch with Katie (probably because Kate was in the air at the time). We forwarded the voicemail to Katie via a text. 
  • I went ahead and drove to Quincy, in case Katie eventually flew there. As I walked into Walmart, Katie texted the news I already knew...that her appointment in Seattle was canceled. I asked if she could catch a flight back to Gulfport. Her answer was, "I still need to get off of this plane and find out."
  • Back home, Mary was talking to Katie on the phone. Mary suggested Katie try to fly from St. Louis to Gulfport, and not come north to Quincy, because our weather forecast calls for 3-7 inches of snow Friday afternoon and night. Chances are high that Cape Air might not fly in or out of Quincy in a couple days. Katie was put in line for surgery in the future at Harborview. She told Mary to heck with that. She'll just stay itchy instead of the nonsense of flying around the country in one day. Katie secured a flight from St. Louis back to Gulfport via a layover in Atlanta. She is due to get into Gulfport at midnight. Katie said she gets reimbursed for the COVID test she had to take, plus her return flight to Gulfport. Katie texted me, "Luckily, I just ate a free hot dog at the St. Louis USO to make up for some of the costs. Or, you could view it as one of the most expensive hot dogs, ever."
  • I got a few items in Quincy and returned home. And, home, I'll stay, without worrying about getting COVID after a trip to Seattle and back.
  • Mary washed 2 loads of clothes and dried them on the line outside.
  • Robins and cardinals are thick in our yard, today. Mary said she's never seen so my yellow-rumped warblers. One hopped onto the outside edge of the east-facing bedroom window and looked in with a fly hanging out of the edge of its beak.
    
  • We ate nachos and rewatched 3 episodes of Keeping Up Appearances that I slept through last time.
    
    
• Thursday, 1/13: Warmth Before Expected Snow
  
  • The temperature rose to just below 50 today, so almost all snow and ice melted. The U.S. Weather Service predicts we'll get 5-9 inches of snow Friday night.
    
  • Due to a NW breeze and warm conditions, Mary did 3 loads of laundry. It all dried halfway outside. We brought the laundry inside to finish drying on racks and over the woodstove.
    
  • I cleaned under the work bench in the machine shed in preparations of putting strawberry plants in that location until spring. It's an area neglected since before we moved here in 2009, so the detritus is deep. The definition on Wikipedia..."Detritus typically includes the bodies or fragments of bodies of dead organisms, and fecal material," describes pretty well what I removed. I only cleaned about 6 feet, with several more feet to shovel and sweep.
    
  • Katie texted that she slept in until 10 a.m., a rare event for her, since she's an early riser. She had a long day, yesterday.
    
    
• Friday, 1/14: Strawberry Prep, Cinnamon Rolls, Snow
  
  • Fog filled the air to start the day. Mist started falling mid-afternoon. By nightfall, rain fell. Around 8 p.m., rain turned to wet, heavy snow that thoroughly covered everything by the following morning (see photos, below).
    
  • We heard the telltale sounds of coyote hunters through the morning fog...dogs baying, a group of coyotes howling south of us, followed by gun shots to the east.
  • While doing morning chores, we heard several crows mobbing a young red-tailed hawk that was making a call in the woods east of the house.
    
  • Mary moved 2 wheelbarrow loads of hay into the chicken coop.
  • I helped Mary move firewood that was left just inside of the west entrance to the machine shed. Water from future snow melting was sure to run under that wood, so I helped Mary stack wetter wood in a criss-cross pattern on the north side, inside the machine shed. Mary stacked dry wood into the woodshed.
  • I shoveled and swept the rest of the area under machine shed bench. One item under there was an old electric fencer that looked similar to what I remember as the electric fencer unit to keep dairy steers in the barnyard, when we lived in Carlyle, Minn., in 1965.
  • I broke the 4 plastic tubs containing strawberry plants loose from the frozen ground in the far garden and moved them to under the machine shed bench. Then I filled the area above the potting soil in the tubs with grass we had stored in a plastic barrel in the machine shed. Finally, I covered all tubs with a piece of 1/2-inch hardware cloth and weighed it down with several bricks. This should keep rabbits away from the strawberry plant crowns.
    
  • The 4-gallon buckets containing strawberry plants in the near garden are too deep into the ground, so I couldn't break them loose from the frozen soil. Consequently, I simply added a layer of grass clippings to the top of all 36 buckets, thereby emptying the blue plastic barrel of grass. A covering of freezing rain, followed by snow, will give these plants a natural blanket of insulation. Our chicken wire fence keeps rabbits from this area.
    
  • Mary made fridge dough, then cinnamon rolls,  for evening pleasure. She also did some cross stitching.
  • I cut the 21-foot long by 2-inch diameter pipe in half with a hacksaw. This pipe once held the TV antenna for Mary's Uncle Herman. It's been laying outside the machine shed since the roofing job and I wanted to get it put away before the next snow. The 2 newly cut pieces were stowed away inside the machine shed.
  • I hooked up the small DVD player that Bill gave Mary for Christmas, which plays all region DVDs, not just North American disks. Then, we enjoyed 2 pots, each, of China Yunnan loose leaf tea and freshly baked cinnamon rolls while watching 4 episodes of BBC's The Great War and The Shaping of the 21st Century. In Great Britain, where this set of DVDs came from, it was called 1914-1918.
  • Bill texted us. He said his employer started weekly testing of non-vaccinated employees and he is missing half of the people in his department.
  • On the last dog walk, we crunched through heavy, wet snow that covered our black winter coats with big, white, melting snowflakes.

Snow scene out our east storm door. The near garden
is left of big cedar trees. Virginia Creeper twigs in foreground.

Snow fills in chain link fence at the chicken yard.

• Saturday, 1/15: Winter Wonderland
  
  • Evidence of winter is stuck to east sides of everything this morning. Wet snow and an east wind put a wall of white onto trees, bushes, and buildings. Winter white is pretty when you sit back and look at it, instead of trying to drive through it.
    
  • Mary made flour tortillas, followed by chimichangas.
  • I took the shop vacuum and a small brush to the back of the fridge that was full of dusty dog and cat fuzz. After removing the back cardboard vent, I cleaned in and around the fan.
    
  • Mary made a second batch of cinnamon rolls from half of the fridge dough that she whipped up yesterday. We enjoyed freshly baked cinnamon rolls, 2 pots, each, of China Keemun loose leaf tea, and watched the last 4 episodes of The Great War and The Shaping of the 21st Century.
  • Karen mentioned that they didn't have snow, yet, in NE Georgia, where she and Lynn live, but they should see something overnight.
  • Katie sent photos of her pets' crates that she's preparing for their flight from New Orleans to Anchorage, tomorrow. They depart on an Alaska Airlines flight at 4:48 p.m. There's an hour layover in Seattle. They get into Anchorage around midnight. The entire way north, Katie's pets are in heated cargo hold of a 747 airplane. She rented a vehicle today to drive from Gulfport, MS, to New Orleans, LA, tomorrow, with her pets.
  • On the last dog walk, Plato roared down the driveway a little ways, barked, then wagged his tail. It probably was a deer, since that's all we saw for tracks in the snow the next morning.