It’s December 27th, our 7th day without benefit of a functioning furnace and a fully functional kitchen stove.It’s almost 2 pm and it’s been snowing pretty much all day. Thankfully, the temperature which started out around 37 is still hovering above freezing at 34. But, it’s going down, and the snow has started to stick.

Perhaps you’re wondering what’s going on. Since you asked, I will be happy to tell you.

Last Monday, December 21st, we experienced a very exciting wind storm that nearly blew me away while attempting to secure the portable storage thing we have. Our neighbor, Scott, was helping me because he’s not sure I should be doing anything physical  by myself, as does Diane. During the securing process, which amounted to taking all 8 legs off the sides to get it as low as possible, we heard trees snapping and falling, then there was a very loud explosion nearby. My first thought was that a transformer had exploded, but investigation revealed that it was probably an arc caused when the top half of a 50 foot pine tree snapped off and was deposited neatly, upside down, on top of all the power lines directly across the street from our house. It would have dropped all the way to the ground had not one of the top branches hooked the line to our house, bending our weather head, and parting the tension cable which also serves as the neutral side of our power from the power company. Scott figured out that we didn’t have the neutral line by applying his electrician skills.

The investigation was begun because we only had 50-100+ vac at our outlets which isn’t enough to run most anything that required electricity. Oddly, however, it was enough to charge our phones, and to keep the wifi running so we weren’t totally destitute in the technology department. We were connected, and our phone worked.

When the explosion occurred outside, Diane was in the kitchen and was subjected to an explosion of her own when the electronics in our stove blew up causing the unmistakable smell of fried electronics to fill the house. Fortunately, the stove has gas burners so the fried electronics aspect simply meant we couldn’t use the oven and the little igniters for the burners didn’t function. But, we have matches so we were able to use the stove stop.

Another loss was the furnace. It didn’t work. But, we have a gas fireplace so we were warm in the living room. Freezing in the bedrooms, but warm in the living room. As of today, the fireplace has been burning pretty much non-stop for 5 days. I’m sure NW Natural Gas will be very happy about that.

Full power was finally restored Friday around 7:30 pm. They finally responded to my third call for assistance, but with the fancy new meters we have, they could tell it was still running so deemed that we had electricity so marked us as OK. Finally, after watching Facebook for restoration updates – yes, the power company was communicating with customers via Facebook – they were down to the last 10 customers a couple hours previously and asked that those still without power to call. So I called, and explained our situation, in detail, for the third time. I had also submitted photos of the damage, and an explanation about the loss of neutral which were acknowledged. Finally, on the last call, linemen were dispatched to check us out and discovered that they couldn’t do it alone. So another bucket truck was called in to assist. Between the two of them they got the tree removed from the lines without further damage, and they spliced the neutral line which provided us with full power. Finally.

Tomorrow we’ll contact the furnace people, and someone to look at the stove so we can find out what the damages are.

During this power outage I had only  one occasion where I needed to get out of my pajamas. That was Christmas Eve when we attended the candle lite service at our church. Diane and I sang in the choir, as did Jennifer and Lydia. We all wore choir robes but Diane failed to see the logic in allowing me to attend in my PJ’s even though no one would have known. So, I wore jeans. I even shaved, and everything.

Our neighbors, Scott & Whitney, helped save our refrigerator by running an extremely long extension cord from their garage to ours so that it had full power. With that exception, we managed to eke through a couple of nights watching TV on 50-117 vac which kinda amazed me. I expected that the TV would implode any minute, but i didn’t. Seems to be just fine.

Another big deal that happened is that we got Ziva back from Jeff and family. She’s been having some issues with the other dogs in his house so we thought it would be best if we took her back to see what would happen. Turns out she’s all calmed down now, and doesn’t have the wanderlust to leave the yard. That’s really good because I’m sure it would have been really cold out there chasing her in my jammies. All is well.

This afternoon around 1:30 pm Diane deserted me to go get Jennifer so they could go to Portland to see the “So You Think You Can Dance” tour. They go whenever it comes to Portland which is a good Mother Daughter event. It was OK because I was invited to go see the new Star Wars movie with Daniel, Cedric, Larry, Lydia, Jeran, and Mason at 4:00 pm in Scappoose. I as going to pick up Jeff on the way to the Walters’ home but he was still out in the forest somewhere playing in the snow with the girls. So, it was just the seven of us.

It was a terrific movie and I can’t wait to see the next one.

Now I’m back home and must wait patiently for Diane’s return. The roads are nasty, it’s snowing, it’s freezing, and they won’t be home until 10 pm or so, 2.5 hours away.  I trust Diane’s driving, but not the driving of those with whom she must share the road. Not all of them are driving with a full awareness of how to drive in inclement weather, or that they, gee, aren’t the only ones on the road. Until she safely returns all I must do is refrain from eating a bunch of stuff I really don’t need. I already did that at the movie by ingesting the lions portion of a very large popcorn.

Now I wait.

What I did today:

1. Resurrected an old battery-powered train engine for the train that runs around our Christmas tree.
2. Emptied my suitcase of all the stuff I brought back from Hawaii yesterday.
3. Paid all the bills that were waiting for us.
4. Got a virus, or two, on my Apple computer. Ran a never ending virus scan to isolate and remove them using CLAMX. I don’t know how I wound up with that but it seems to work pretty good.
5. Cleaned all the hair out of Diane’s shower drain. This is something I should put on my monthly to-do list. Considering how much hair I get out of her drain each time I can only wonder why she isn’t bald yet. It’s pretty amazing.
6. Worked on wood projects by sanding things that I’ve glued together.
7. Installed electric Christmas Penguins on and by the front porch.
8. On my handy dandy Bing home page I read the news about Ash Carter using his personal email to conduct official business, just like Hillary did.

#9 brings me to the topic noted in the title of this post. Are these people just stupid, or arrogant enough to feel they are above he law? Why would any of us tax paying citizens elect someone who chooses to make their own rules when it comes to conducting business supposedly to benefit those who elected them?

Sadly, in the case of Ash Carter, we can’t hold him to the same standards because he was appointed by the president, not elected. Therefore, I can only conclude that the Appointer must bear the burden Ash’s inability to follow some pretty simple rules.

Further more, while watching all of the on-going commotion amongst the candidates vying for the honor of being the Top Dog of this amazing country we have, I’ve decided that, since I’m too late to jump into the race this time, in 2020 I’m going to lie about my age, my military and work history, and tons my hat into the proverbial ring. I can hear all of you saying to yourselves, “where will you get the millions, and millions of dollars necessary to properly represent the country?”

Well, I’m counting on whichever candidate wins to make that easy peasy for us peons by allowing Crowd Funding to cover the charges. Maybe that’s legal already, I really don’t know. If it is, I’ve not heard of anyone using it although some may be using it and just aren’t telling anyone about it.

My qualifications speak for themselves.

1. As I’ve already mentioned, the first thing I’m going to do is lie about my age. This puts me ahead of most candidates because I’m accomplished liar who isn’t afraid to admit it and I won’t claim it was an oversight. I actually do it on purpose.
2. I already have gray hair so there’s no way that anything happening on my watch will make me look any older than the age I’m going to give on my filing papers. Those watching will perceive that I handle stress in an amazing way which will allow them to consider that I’m the ideal candidate to have in bad situations
3. My main platform will be that I will strive to eliminate all borders surrounding our country by working with the Canadian and Mexican governments to align with the US and form a new country that includes all properties of our three countries. My suggestion for the new name will is MexiCanUs. I haven’t worked out the details of what the flag will look like but feel that it would be OK if each former country continued to fly current flag. Eliminating the borders will, I know, cause a problem for all companies concerned with making chain link fences, those who are employe to protect our respective  borders, and all DMV offices.
4. I will campaign for a flat 10% tax for all residents of the new nation. No deductions will be allowed. Just straight 10% for everyone based on how much they earn during the year regardless of where they earned it or where they hide it. There will be no need to refund overpayments because there won’t be anything to refund right away.
5. The current IRS employees will be released. They will be replaced by one of the small CPA firms who wish to add their names to the pool from which a winner will be drawn at random. This new firm will be responsible for managing the budgets for all departments of the government which themselves will be cleaned up and minimized to make them more functional.
6. At the end of each year the chosen CPA firm will refund all excess funds to those who paid taxes. Each filer will receive the same amount of refund.

That’s just a little bit of what I plan to do. There will be more once I determine which one of my friends will be the vice president. I’m sure he or she will have some good ideas. I’ll probably ask all of the possible choices what they think we should do.

Hey! Since this is published to Facebook, and I have almost 300 friends there, perhaps some of you would like to chime in with ideas. Couldn’t hurt.

Now I must stop and let my brain rest.

Recently my debit card was denied at a couple of places so I thought it might be prudent to ask someone about it. I was gratified to know that my credit union was aware enough to know that I couldn’t possibly be in Oceanside, CA and Middlebury, CT at the same time and correctly locked down the card so no one could use it. I wasn’t aware of the problem for a while for two reasons … 1) I don’t use the card very often, and 2) Comcast changed my home phone number for a period of time so no one could call me.

Well, they called, but it was the number we used to have before Comcast changed it so the number rang up “Not in Service” which is why I convinced them it needed to be restored. Which they did.

Beware! This is the time of year when the scum of the earth creep out in larger droves  than normal and invest a ton of energy into stealing from unwary folks. Too bad they don’t understand that the same amount of energy expended for an honorable reason is far more rewarding.

Golfing in the fog isn’t for the lighthearted, but it’s fun. Actually, for some of us, it’s really no different from golfing on a bright sunny day. For those lucky folks it’s still a matter of hitting the ball, then finding it so they can hit it again, as many times as necessary. For normal golfers, those who can actually golf, simply go to their ball because they know where it landed and don’t need to look for it. I suspect those folks do as well in the fog as they do on any other day. I bet they aren’t as excited about finding their balls as much as those who have to find theirs.

Finding our cart was easy, as was finding the first tee box. It’s out behind the mushroom looking tree a little ways.

Here’s what it looks like from the #1 tee. Plenty of visibility to see which direction the ball heads once it’s hit.

By the time we got to #8 the air was clearing up.

This is JP warming up for a tremendous drive down #8. I believe he parred this one.

Tuesday was a good day.

Friday we went to the St. Helens High School foot ball game, a new tradition we began a couple of weeks ago. We’ll no doubt keep it up because Lydia’s boyfriend, Mason, #9 below on the near right of the photo, is also a Junior and will play again next year. Also, since the current place kicker seems to have a bit of trouble, Lydia is seriously thinking about trying out for the team as the kicker next season. As a soccer goalie she’s learned how to kick quite well. Should be an interesting year. We hope she is successful in this endeavor. Me especially because I can’t wait to get a photo of her and Mason together in their varsity football uniforms. That would be pretty awesome.

Just a selfie of some folks sitting in my vicinity in the bleachers. Actually, that’s Noydena in the back, and her mother, Sandy, below her. In case you haven’t figured out by the stuffed Lion, The St. Helens team is, well, the Lions. Go figure. 

At church on Sunday Diane discovered that she almost dressed exactly like Randy. That’s Diane on the right.

Today JP came by the house and asked if I had a vice.

Not having one, I said "no." 
He said, "well, I guess we'll have to go to Doug's, then."
"Why", I asked.
"To replace the grips on your golf clubs", he said.
"I don't have any new grips", I replied.
"Yes you do."
"I do?"
"Yes."
"Where might they be?"
"In my car."
"OK."

That ultimately resulted in the  following scene where Doug and JP went to work ripping the  old grips off, dousing everything in sight with BBQ lighter fluid, applying special tape, applying more lighter fluid, then slipping the new grip into place.

I’m truly blessed to have friends like these two guys.

For an ending I have to share with you Panzee and her new best friend, Cloud, a small rabbit living next door.

Panzee will spend hours just sitting there watching the bunny and the bunny will come to the fence for a nuzzle once in a while. Very touching. Actually, I think Panzee just wonders what it is and what it might taste like.

G’nite.

I just found out that one of the reasons my wife has let me live this long is because I can reach the back of the microwave, to clean up messes, without standing on a stool.

Other than that, I’m hanging on by a thread here …

For the past couple of years I’ve been flirting with diabetes but haven’t really taken the threat serious because the numbers were always on the verge of normal. So, why worry, right? Well, my last visit with my VA doctor brought all that frivolity crashing down on my head when she said that I’m beyond “being on the verge” and have acquired the status of a true diabetic. My A1C told her so.

Because of that, instead of making a lame attempt of counting carbs, Diane has put me on a strict weight loss program which we are both following. This one counts calories and we’re tracking everything we eat using a handy little app called “Lose It”.

My goal is to dump 20 pounds which Lose It says I can easily do by September if I just quite nibbling my way through the day. Using technology to track everything is a great way for me to avoid the snacks because it’s a pain sometimes to make all those entries so I skip the snacks so I won’t have to. It works.

In addition to losing 20 pounds, my goal is to diminish the effects of diabetes to the point where I can retain all my digits until the even of my untimely death, whenever that may be.

Regarding the latter, there’s a chainsaw in the back yard calling my name. It’s an electric one but it can still cause a lot of damage for the unwary.

Check you later.