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OK, I am going to see if I can catch you up on some of the latest events. As you know (from other letters) we made a trip back to Arizona at the end of May for a bicycle trip. Well while we were out there some exciting weather happened around out home. When we returned home we found this branch laying on the ground in the back yard. We have an oak tree 15 feet from our house in our back yard that is about 6 feet in diameter. Every time the wind blows hard branches fall from the tree. I say that, but I have never seen it. I have just found them laying in the back yard when I return home from trips. For some reason these branches never fall when we are home.


After inspecting the roof, I wasn't able to find any damage to the roof, but is sure looks like it may have impacted the roof either that or many small branches fell on the roof, and others fell on the back porch. It made quite a mess in the back yard. The branch was 5" in diameter and about 20 feet long. We ended up building a fire in the back yard and roasting some hot dogs. That worked to get rid of the branch, the only downfall was that no one enjoyed sitting outside in 90 degree weather with 60% humidity and sitting 2' from a roaring fire trying to cook. We were all dripping with sweat when we finally got around to eating, but the log left our yard...


Then I started work on another outage. This time I was working in the power house replacing a desuperheater and some steam piping. This involved (5) 12 hour days [14 hours with drive time] and that means going to and coming from work in the dark. This yielded me hitting a raccoon on the way home one day. It was a very large animal and I don't think that I ran it over, I just hit it and then flung it off of the road. It was impressive that it bent the plastic bumper and tore out the plastic behind it, but it was easy enough to straighten it.


While we were in Arizona I was I was given a custom made Salsa chopper. It was conceived and designed by my father. Basically it consists of about 20 stainless steel disks (think pizza cutters) all arranged about .25" apart with some pvc spacers. It has a center axle with pvc handles such that it rotates. It does have some flaws, such that it is hard to sharpen, hard to clean, and when you chop items they just get stuck in between the disks.


I think that you could put some sort of comb in between the different blades and they might serve the purpose of forcing the food out and not allowing it to be stuck. I will keep you posted on the late breaking developments in the modifications and improvements in the salsamatic chopper.


While I was involved in the outage, Terra went down to Sears and picked up some refrigerator boxes. The kids absolutely loved making and playing their forts. These boxes were in the driveway for the duration of the outage, and then when the outage was complete, we cut them up and the garbage truck hauled them away. I don't think that the kids were too upset particularly since we were leaving that day for Arizona once again.


These last two pictures are not up to the quality as the previous ones, but since Terra stole the camera and kept it in AZ, I am left with the after thought of a camera that exists on the back of the cellular phone in my possession. This picture is of what was waiting for me to come home to. It is the remains of a crayon that was left in our drive way and since we were gone (for 5 days) has melted and ran all over the concrete. Apparently it has been hot here while we were gone.


Then when I went in to the back yard, I found another blasted branch from the oak tree that had fallen. This one is slightly larger and longer than the other one. As you can see it landed in the fire pit and on top of the swing. The top part of the branch impacted the benches and broke into many pieces (not pictured) but the remaining part of the branch is ready to be burned. Last time I had to use an ax to chop it up, because I don't own a chain saw - and both of the batteries on the cordless saw were dead, and I was too lazy to string an extension cord out there to power the skill saw. Now I get to do it once more. The swing set is a standard construction with a 2" metal pipe running across the top of it. It now has a bend in the top of the swing. I have not taken care of it yet, anyone want to come over for another B-B-Q? Today when I got home from work I went out and mowed the grass, but after that I was soaking wet. While Terra is gone, I have a list of things that I need to get fixed or otherwise taken care of. Now I guess that I can add one more to that list.

In case you are wondering, you can drive out here in one day if you leave from Mia's it only takes 20 hours if you detour up to Tulsa to say hi to Mylinda and drink a gatoraid and then get back in the car. If you didn't take the detour, I don't remember how long it was, but long enough that you wouldn't want to do it every weekend.


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