Dec. 24-31, 2023

Weather | 12/24, fog, 49°, 61° | 12/25, 0.53" rain, 63°, 33° | 12/26, 31°, 39° | 12/27, 0.14" rain, 35°, 35° | 12/28, 0.02" rain, 2" snow, 29°, 37° | 12/29, 0.48" moisture, 29°, 35° | 12/30, 22°, 43° | 12/31, 28°, 33° |

• Sunday, 12/24: Christmas Eve 2023
  • After opening the curtains this morning, we saw six deer in the two gardens. They jumped or walked over fences with ease. Of course, all electric fences are off. With live electric fences, they stay away.
    
  • I split a small portion of firewood and loaded three wheelbarrow loads into the woodshed. That job ended due to a spattering of rain.
    
  • We enjoyed a smorgasbord in the evening of a multitude of cheeses, slices from a summer sausage, several vegetables, and ranch dressing dip, plus desserts.
  • Bill, Mary, and I played Yahtzee. Bill won. He got four yahtzees in one game. I took second place and Mary was in third place.
    

• Monday, 12/25: Christmas Day 2023
  • We had rain and heavy mist all day, gaining just over a half an inch of moisture.
    
  • We unwrapped presents this morning. Highlights: Bill gave us a portable record player and two old Christmas records. We also received a 4K disc of this year's Oppenheimer movie. We gave Bill a short-handled shovel that I've owned for several years. I cleaned it up with a wire brush on an electric drill and sandpaper on the wooden handle. The metal parts got flat black paint and Mary put mineral oil on the wood. Below are before and after photos of the shovel. Mary looked up the company name revealed after I cleaned it up and this shovel dates back to prior to World War II, when it was made to be installed on the side of U.S. Army Jeeps. HERE is a website link explaining the shovel. Bill needs something for removing snow from under his car. I used it in Minnesota and Montana while shoveling snow to dig out the '84 GMC Suburban. It works well.
    
  • I called Mom. Hank is with her for Christmas. He brought the ingredients and she fixed a stuffed chicken, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, with apple pie for Christmas dinner.
    
  • Bill, Mary, and I played Azul, a unique and fun board game that Bill gave us for Christmas. It was so good, we played it for 6.5 hours.
    
  • Katie called during our game and we talked for quite some time. It was morning (12 hours ahead of us) at her base and she was in the gym, exercising "to keep up with these youngsters," as she put it. She said they're getting lots of snow in Anchorage. She and her group aren't allowed off the base, due to current circumstances. She's due back on this side of the world in April.

Old shovel before it was cleaned up.

WW II-era shovel after we removed rust & painted it.

• Tuesday, 12/26: Bill Leaves for His Home
  
  • Bill left for his St. Charles apartment at 1 p.m. He had several chores to do prior to going to work tomorrow, like grocery shopping. He said the traffic driving south was less than he expected.
    
  • Mary and I reviewed all of the books that we received as Christmas gifts.
    
  • I caught my wine diary up to date, which involved all of the winemaking activity since Oct. 28th.
    
  • We heard several Canada geese up in the sky squawking when we walked the dogs on their final outing after dark.
    

• Wednesday, 12/27: Christmas Decorations are History
  
  • We experienced light rain and mist throughout today. Snow was predicted, but never showed until well after dark set in. Because of the snow prediction, we left chickens inside the coop.
    
  • I did some planning and checked online to discover all erroneous charges were removed from our credit card.
  • Mary dusted and removed Christmas ornaments. I started helping her remove them as she got toward the end of glass ornaments, then I took down all of the lights and stored them away as she took down the artificial tree. She swept up and moved furniture back into place. We are now back to more space in the living room.
  • I discovered on Facebook that Al Tennant, the former pottery teacher at Homer High School back in the early 1970s, when I was in high school, is originally from Terry, MT. It's a very small world. He now lives in Coupeville, WA, on Whidbey Island, north of Seattle.
    

• Thursday, 12/28: Snow
  • A natural weather forecast is bird activity. Sun was out earlier today, but we noticed hardly any birds. When that happens, weather is arriving. Afternoon clouds grew darker by the hour as weather crept in from an unusual direction, from the northeast. When we finished evening chores at 3:30, we started seeing snow. By an 8:30 p.m. dog walk, about an inch of snow was on the ground. Snow was even deeper on our second dog walk at 9:30 p.m. (see photo, below). Birds knew it was coming.
    
  • We were going to do a bunch of things, both inside and outside, but we were basic bums, and didn't accomplish much more that online drivel.
  • I found out that the Quincy Herald-Whig is dropping down to printing the newspaper just two times a week for all subscribers, so I canceled our subscription. I think they're rapidly going out of business. It saves us $13.95 a month or $167.40 a year. Recently, we see most daily issues of the newspaper at 10 pages that are read in just a couple minutes, so it's not a great loss. We'll just have to light fires some other way after our stack of newspapers runs out.

  

  After 2" snowfall on near garden & nearby cedar trees.

• Friday, 12/29: 33 Years Together
  
  • We started the day with a late white Christmas, as seen in above photo. It was the second two-inch snow this winter. Our first was on Nov. 26th. A lot of the snow melted throughout the day.
    
  • Mary saw three deer out the south living room window when she opened the curtains this morning. They saw her and ran into the west woods.
    
  • Today is our 33rd anniversary. I'm 66, so half of my life has been with Mary. I must say, I've really enjoyed this second half of my life with her.
    
  • Mary picked seven cross stitch patterns and then inventoried current floss she has that fit these patterns. The ultimate goal is to buy material and floss for these seven patterns that she doesn't have while using Katie's present to Mary, which is a $100 gift card to 123stitch.com.
    
  • Mary practiced drawing from nature photos she likes.
  • I labeled the the 27 bottles of 2023 pear wine and put them away in three coolers that had available space.
  • I cleaned tape residue using Goo Gone from the surface of some bottles I bought over a year ago. I then washed the Goo Gone off with Dawn soap, then washed 20 bottles to add to the five already clean bottles to have enough for bottling blackberry wine. I also put winemaking stuff away in the west room that was all over the place.
    

• Saturday, 12/30: Goodbye "Twistie" Lights
  
  • We finally eliminated all of the CFL "twistie" bulbs. I replaced them with LEDs. Good riddance on the twisties, since they were the worst bug collectors...no more cooked-on Asian lady bugs between the coils!
    
  • I drove to Quincy to get some medications and a couple items. Mary read online that this weekend was the biggest shopping time of the year. I believe it. The people were out in droves. Several parking lots were packed with cars. Fortunately, I had no more than two items to get per store visit.
    
  • Mary fixed up a very nice chicken meal.
  • We played the Azul game that Bill gave us for Christmas in the evening. It's a very fun and interesting game.
    

• Sunday, 12/31: Bottling Blackberry Wine
  
  • We watched six deer run away to the east as we stepped out on the porch to walk the dogs this morning. First, Plato growled, which spooked the deer out of our east yard, and then they ran into the east field.
    
  • Mary drew a historic flint scraper that she once found on a creek north of our place in the 1980s. 
  • She also finishing a Halloween cross stitch ornament.
  • I researched online about adding Kmeta during winemaking and discovered my levels are generally correct. The amount required is based on pH. The lower the pH, or the more acidic the wine is means less preservative, or Kmeta, is required. A common pH for grape wine is 3.8, resulting in adding a full quarter teaspoon, or 2.3 grams of Kmeta, to a 5-6-gallon batch. My wines often measure a 3.0 pH, where one gram is more than enough.
    
  • I racked the blackberry wine for the fifth time and bottled the equivalent of 26 bottles (one was a 1.5 liter bottle). The specific gravity was 0.995, resulting in an alcohol level of 10.9 percent. The pH was 2.9, which is extremely acidic. I added two-thirds of my normal amount, or 0.6 grams of Kmeta. The clear bottles shows off a pretty deep red/purple color of this wine (see photo, below). We tasted it and this stuff is GOOD! We think blackberry flavors in dry years are more concentrated in the fruit. This wine has an unusual deep berry flavor. It's also extremely tart, due to the high acid.
    
  • We watched the 2023 movie, Oppenheimer, given to us as a Christmas present by Bill. It's a good one.
  • Mary and I finished off a bottle of 2021 pear wine and yelled "Happy New Year" at midnight. This bottle was in the fridge. Pear wine tastes better at room temperature, not chilled.

  

  Clear bottles (front) show off color of '23 blackberry wine.