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November 4, 2016

IT'S FRIDAY, MY FAVORITE DAY!!

punkin

Taylor

It's been another busy week around here. Between rain storms, I managed to get outside and do some yard work. The seemingly never-ending raking of leaves continues, so we know fall is in full swing, but believe it or not, I have an azalea blooming! Go figure. I also went to the garden center over the weekend and picked up a pumpkin to carve. They were on sale for half price and I couldn't resist! We did Halloween with our one goblin (Taylor Kahrs dressed as a dragon) dropping by for treats but other than that, it was a pretty quiet night.

It has been entertaining to watch the Blue Jays in the mornings when I put out my bird feeders. As you can see in this video, I have been placing a handful of peanuts on the deck rail and the birds all watch from the tree branches, ready to fly down and swoop the tasty morsels up. I can hardly get back into the house before they are all gone! They have it timed just right. The really comical thing is that half the time, one bird will try to take two peanuts at the same time and will usually lose both of them because he can't cram that many in his mouth! What a kick.

Dave had a neurologist appointment on Wednesday so we made a trip into Portland for that. He has restless legs really bad and the doctor tried 24-hour patches on him and that worked great. But the only problem with that was the insurance company so far has rejected paying for them. They are very expensive so I can understand why. So, until we can get the insurance to comply, we are back to the pills (which sort of work but not as good as the patches). After our doctor's appointment, we made a visit over to some of our favorite "shirt-tail relatives", Kay and Terri. They live in King City and we joined them for coffee and delicious cookies. It is always fun to see them and wish it could be more often. After leaving Kay and Terri's, we headed to Freddy's for groceries before we drove back home.

clock

earring thing

Dave has been keeping really busy lately, puttering around in his wood shop. He has been getting up at four or five in the morning and has a half-day in before breakfast. He has several projects he's working on but the big deal is that he actually finished a couple of them! He finished making a huge clock for Leslie which he has been working on for the past two months. He made it out of old wood taken from our church, staining and varnishing it to make it look weathered. The 70-year old siding was pretty beat up anyway, so it didn't take much to "weather" it. He put the clock mechanism in to make sure that works and it is now ready to be delivered to Leslie. She will get the numbers on and figure out how to hang it.
Dave also surprised me with a beautiful earring dish made from a wood called Purple Heart. It's a very hard wood that is actually purple. I always take my diamond earrings off and leave them loose on the bathroom counter each night and he was afraid that they were going to get knocked off and lost. He was looking for a project for the Purple Heart he has stashed away and thought he'd try to make it. It's a beautiful dish and I love it!

collage

The church project is coming along, but not without some little problems. The sub-floor is nearly complete, but instead of getting ready to install the regular flooring, we had to stop working on that when the roofer showed up early. You don't mess with roofers - they're hard to find. If he wants to be here early, that's the way it's going to be! Anyway, we had found that the roof was leaking, so we are repairing the problem areas with new roofing. Otherwise, the new floor would get ruined by the leaky roof. The roofers are fun to watch and it amazes me how agile they are climbing around on such a steep roof. They couldn't quite get finished last night but they expect to have it complete by noon today. So, what next? Well, after discovering that we had boring beetles and termites in the church, I had to call the exterminator to come and spray the place. Those nasty critters are eating the wood faster than we can put it in! Of course, when the exterminator shows up to do his thing, we have to stop working for three days before we can go back in the building. On top of all that, he wants us to remove all the drywall so he can get into the walls to treat the whole building. I guess that's what we'll be doing this weekend. So - more delays. We hope that will be all the surprises for awhile and we can get back to installing the new flooring.