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We had several members of the family over for Thanksgiving dinner, and most of these images are from that event. Barbara took charge this year, and parceled out the food assignments. |
| All I was asked to do was make a few rolls. I'm wondering if that could that have been an editorial comment about my culinary prowess... |
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We had our first snowstorm December 2nd and 3rd. I was sick for about a week, but am not totally convinced the two were related. I think my malady was just a cold, but it had an unusual progression. |
| It took about three days for the initial "throat tickle" to morph into the typical dripping, coughing, choking, sneezing symptoms. |
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To placate Barbara and attenuate her entreaties, about day four I started taking a zinc supplement. To my surprise and her satisfaction, that seemed to help significantly. Maybe there is something to those old wives tales. (He was such a dear to be around. Think of a bear with a sore paw.) |
| I missed three hours of work over the course of that illness, and the week after afterwards, my co-worker was off sick all week. |
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I had help most of the time, but the experience served to congeal my tentative decision to not work alone in the lab again. It is a bit empowering to know that you are just one bad morning away from retirement. |
| Again yielding to Barbara's entreaties, with the help of Craigslist, we procured a Kitchen-aid food processor. (Gonga Deal!) (Alan surprised me again and also bought me a really nice camera off E-bay. I get frustrated using E-bay, because it gets down to the last couple of minutes and someone outbids me literally at the last minute. I HATE THAT!!) |
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I have used it to make bread twice now, and again to my surprise, it actually does a reasonable job. |
| Still, if you take into account both preparation and cleanup, my impression is that it is definitely faster and probably easier to make make by hand. (For him that is.) |
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Sabrina, Braxton, and children came down and we visited them (along with the families of Nathen and AJ) at Karren's house. I finally got acquainted with Bennett. I am continually fascinated by interactions between children. Perhaps it is because they do little to hide their emotions. Can you imagine what it would be like if adult acted the same way? |
| Barbara occasionally complains that I don't take her out often enough. The other night, I took her out and gave her carte blanche to choose our destination. After some reflection, she made her decision and we spent a lovely four hours at the ER. It was nothing that was taken care of by a bottle of antibiotics, but we were worried for a while... |
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Parties rank near the bottom on my list of favorite activities (about two slots below a root canal), but in the interest of domestic tranquility I attended a Christmas party with Barbara at Dorothy and Cliff Stagg's home. They have a favorite game/activity/diversion they like to play at parties they host. Each person brings a wrapped gift (serious, gag, or white elephant) supposedly under $10.00. Everyone is assigned a number, and person #1 selects a gift and opens it. Person # 2 then selects a gift and either opens it, or trades it for a gift already opened. Towards the end, when there are many opened gifts to choose from, things can get a bit boisterous with people trading back and forth. I ended up with a 50 pound bag of popcorn. Given the fact that the last two times I ate popcorn, pieces of hull became wedged between my teeth and gum and caused an infection... that bag may represent close to a 100 year supply. |
| In addition to the snow, we also had a week of rain. It wasn't the thundershower type rain typical of our summers, but a slow steady drizzle that didn't know when to quit. Against that onslaught, the skylight in the kitchen developed a leak. When I finally got time away from work with sunshine and without rain, I applied another coating of latex roof sealant. With skylights, one can never be truly sure a leak is fixed, but we have noted no further precipitation inside the kitchen since effecting the repairs.(I was a little excited about it as it had NEVER leaked since it was put in.) |
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With the bucket of latex roof sealant now open, I applied a layer to the carport roof and later Barbara supplied further touch-up. The combination of roof extensions and sealant seems to have done a reasonable job in stopping water ingress there too. |
| I also welded bracing to the pipes above the roof on the side nearest the house, and that augmented roof stability appreciably. In the process, I managed to start quite a conflagration. It was a bit exciting, until Barbara arrived with a fire extinguisher and I arrived with a hose. Prior to running for the hose, I had attempted to beat the flames down using my welding gloves. That had worked previously on smaller fires, but this one was too vigorous, and I ended up singing about 10% of what little fur remains on my pate. Somehow the electrical supply survived intact. (This activity had BOTH of our hearts thumping REALLY fast.) |
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And now we are down to the perennial subject of car repairs. A few episodes ago I concluded that I would rather freeze in the dark than take the heater in the Geo apart. Well, we have arrived at the point where the rubber meets the road, and I find I'm having second thoughts... |
| After pondering the subject for six months (I'm not as quick at I used to be) I decided that the thermostat wasn't functioning as designed, and decided to rectify that. Only two bolts hold it in place--how hard could that be? |
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Well... one bolt came out easily, but the other seized. So... I got a bigger wrench. The bolt broke. No problem! I just welded a nut onto it... It broke a second time. OK... time for a pipe-wrench. The bolt broke a third time. Fortunately, the broken bolt was in a housing and not the engine block or head. So, I removed the housing. ground the bolt off flat, and introduced it to my drill press, followed by a bolt extractor. Then the housing broke... Ok, time to panic... I am fully cogniscent that eventually some event will render the car unserviceable, and precipitate acquisition of a replacement. But problems removing a thermostat seemed like such an ignominious end to such a valiant vehicle... |
| This was on a Saturday about 2 p.m. For some reason, auto salvage companies (AKA junk yards) in the Tucson area are quite unfriendly, and close their doors about noon on Saturdays. I called Wyatt and by some minor miracle, he was able to locate my part in Eagar. I drove up Sunday and retrieved it, hoping to make the car run by that evening. But, for some reason (unfathomable to me) engineers who design cars always tweak the designs from year to year, just enough to cause problems. In this case, they combined the sensor units for the temperature gauge and the engine fan into one piece, which of course, didn't come with the used part. So, I changed the battery in the white truck, and drove it for a week (and just for the record, it's heater works well). |
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Wyatt mailed the electrical connector and after I installed it, things looked copacetic. Two days later I started toward Benson and a hike with Nathen and Karren, only to have the car overheat near Biosphere II. I noted a small leak in a hose connection, and after limping home, repaired it thinking, "problem solved..." The car ran just fine for three and a half trips to work, when it again over heated. Everything I had worked on previously was located on the drivers side of the engine, but when I finally located the leak, water was dripping from the passengers side of the engine. The only thing over there that could possibly leak is the water pump... So (with Nathen's help), I replaced the water pump and to this point (three days later) everything is still functional. Obviously, I am one of those people who put the "re" in repair. Keep your fingers crossed... (He keeps wondering if he should get a "new" car. I said, "I don't know why, as it only has over 359,000 miles on the same engine that came with it.) |