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February 8, 2019

IT'S FRIDAY, MY FAVORITE DAY!!

Let's see, what exciting news came our way. The weather was the biggest news down here, we had snow on the beach! It wasn't much but it made it a little hazardous getting around. We had planned to go into town on Tuesday for a doctor's appointment and getting together for a late birthday celebration for our 11th year old granddaughter, Jordyn, but we ended up rescheduling. That turned out to be a unanimous decision as neither of our girls wanted us driving in that weather either.

The snow was beautiful, all one inch of it and it made the mountains so gorgeous as we looked out our windows. The temperature has been really cold, down well below freezing most nights. I ended up having to cover my Daphne bush because it was starting to look a little affected by the weather. It was just starting to bud out too. Daphne is one of my favorite flowers in the spring, but I guess Mother Nature is telling the Daphne that it's not spring yet.

I spent most of my days this week hunkered inside, baking cookies and making spaghetti sauce. I made enough sauce to put some in the freezer for the future. The rest of the time I have been reading and going to water aerobics classes. Not all that exciting.

Dave has been working on the steamboat, trying to get the burner to operate correctly. Last Saturday, I was in the house when I heard this terrific BOOM that shook the house and caused the windows to even rattle. I knew Dave was working on the boat, so I ran outside to see if he was the cause of the explosion. I asked if he was okay and all he did was yell, "Get the fire extinguisher!"! As I ran back into the house to get an extinguisher, neighbors started running from up and down the street to see what the explosion was. By that time, Dave had the fire extinguisher from the boat working and had the fire out. He said the fireball was about 6-feet in diameter, and only lasted an instant. But it was enough to singe his hair, eyebrows and his beard. It also burned his face and hands pretty good. I got some Aloe Vera gel and that helped put out the sting. It was such a blast that it blew the metal floorboards and the seat bottoms off their places (as you can see in the photo). After that scare, he decided to call it a day with a shot of Scotch! He hasn't worked on the boat since, mainly because of the weather, but also because it gave both of us quite a scare. He has been trying to figure out what caused the explosion and - without going in and actually doing some investigation, he has narrowed it down to propane leaking from the burner he has been working on. Since propane is heavier than air, it must have collected in the bilge and a drop of burning oil set it off. Dave and our friend Ray have been mulling the whole incident back and forth between them and have decided that all testing from now on will be using compressed air in place of propane! Oh, and the beard? He shaved it off. It was looking pretty bad after the big bang, so he just decided it would be easier to get rid of it than to try to make it look good again.

A while back, our accountant notified us that she wouldn't be doing taxes anymore, so we have decided to take a stab at doing them ourselves. Dave already buys TurboTax because he has to do the 1099's for the engineers he hires for the Blazer games, so he decided we might as well get our money's worth and at least see if we can muddle through too. So, here we are, paperwork all over the desk as I write this, trying to sort our way through the various tax forms we get in the mail. I gathered up all the information and Dave is putting it into the computer. So far, we owe the Feds a few bucks and we haven't even started with the State. We will see how discouraged we get before we surrender to another accountant.

I hope you are all keeping warm from this winter blast that we are getting. The weatherman says it's not over yet!