Homemade Scones Attempt #2 2023 April 17

These scones were crunchy on the outside and fluffy on the inside, but they tasted terrible. I made them taste better by filling them with strawberry jam.

Homemade Scones 2023 April 7

I followed a recipe very carefully from scratch ingredients and baked these scones myself. They tasted good but were tough and shoe leather. Not that I've ever tried eating shoe leather.

Lug Nuts Over-Tightened 2023 Jan 5

Lief bought a used Subaru for Abby to drive while she's in college. It needed to have the brakes checked and in the process of removing the wheels we discovered the lug nuts were so tight they broke the lug studs on two separate wheels. I estimated that the lug nuts had been tightened to about 150 foot pounds. It took all of my strength to get them loose, and of course two of them snapped off. (The brakes turned out to be OK.)

Replacing the broken lug studs proved to be a challenge. We put the new stud in place and then tightened the wheel until the new stud had been pulled tight and reset into the axle hub. We checked the torque on all four wheels with a torque wrench and found them to be at 90 foot pounds...a bit tighter than recommended but soft enough for Abby to get loose in an emergency. A few months later she had a flat tire and had to remove those lug nuts herself. Lief talked her through it via cellphone: "Arrange the wrench so it needs to be pushed down, then shove it down with your foot." It worked!

Heat Pump Generates Ice 2022 Dec 1

After a cold December night I checked our new heat pump. Sure enough frost had formed on the heat exchanger outside. But the electric backup heater inside provided enough warmth to melt it off. The heat pump proved to be an efficient method of heating in the cold weather, in spite of needing a little help from the backup electric heater.

Milling Lumber 2022 Nov 12

James drove a pickup load of Alder planks to Lief's house where the three of us spent all day and late into the night planing it and milling it into "standard" sized lumber. This photo shows the pile of wood shavings we created with the planer.

The next morning the pickup truck became disabled and had to be towed away. James took the lumber out of his pickup and we tied it to the roof of my car and he drove it home to Amboy.

House Exterior - Peel & Paint 2022 Jun 25 to Sep 22

This is year #4 of peeling and painting the house exterior. Everything to the left had been finished in a prior year, so I started with the wall facing the street, moving to the right. The plywood surface on the 16 foot plank has dry-rot in places, so I reinforced it by laying a 2x12 board on top.

In order to avoid the need to move the ladder and scaffolding more than I had to, I peeled and painted the upper half first, then peeled and painted the lower half.

This is the northeast wall. It is so wide that I had to move the ladders & scaffolding twice but two coats of paint overlapping helped hide the start/stop points. Each of these segments took several days to peel, sand, and then paint with our opaque stain.

This is the southwest wall. I was unable to work on this wall during mid-day because of bright sunshine and heat. Finally I thought of setting up a patio umbrella and then could work on small patches at a time.

Working quickly, I was able to peel a row of paint and leave it hanging from the wall. When I finished that row the peeled paint had cooled off and was brittle. I could scrape off the entire row in a single stroke.

The bottom half of this southwest wall is finished all the way to the French doors. It will take three stages of scaffolding to complete the upper half.

This section went very fast because I had a helper. Young Ian from next door needed an excuse to climb up onto the scaffolding, but he had fun scraping the brittle paint off the wall.

This left section of the upper half is now sanded down to bare wood and ready to be painted with opaque stain.

The middle section of the upper half is sanded down to bare wood.

The French door trim took extra time since it had suffered from weather damage. I removed it, repaired, replaced and painted it with white enamel trim paint before painting the beige siding.

My scaffolding would not fit into this corner, so I had to improvise. A wooden pallet board on top of two sawhorses worked perfectly.

The upper half is finished but now the lower half is all that's left.

Finally, September 22, the entire peeling and painting task is done.

The walls done during the first three year's worth of peeling and painting do NOT have any blisters or peeling paint. This is in contrast to every prior paint job we've done (where we didn't peel first before painting). In the past it only took a month or two before the paint began to blister and peel. Notice in photos #9 and #10 above, the final corner, lower half. The beige paint there is less than ten years old and it is covered with popped and peeled blisters.

At the date of this posting (10July2023), this paint job is 1 to 4 years old and there is still no sign of blisters or peeling. My conclusion is that cedar siding must be painted with stain, not paint. Once regular paint has been applied then that paint will begin to blister and peel, even after you paint over it with newer paint. All of the old paint must be removed and stain applied instead.

White Coat Ceremony - UW School of Medicine 2022 Sep 9

James G posed here with his team of Medical students prior to the "White Coat" ceremony.

After the ceremony James gets a hug from Mom.

Lion Cub by G. Alan Wright 2022 Sep 9

While exploring Spokane on September 9, 2022 we found the Lion Cub sculpture by G. Alan Wright. It was named "Bronzo the Brave" dated July 1, 1963 and of course it was cast from bronze metal.

Emily and Boys 2022 Sep 4

Emily brought her two boys to visit us on September 4, 2022. We showed them how to explore the river with an underwater viewing box. They found fish and lots of other critters.

Fence Repair 20 June 2022

We used the cedar fascia boards from our gutter replacement project to make new pickets for our fence. We stained them brown and fastened them with stainless steel nails.

The cedar gutters made nice borders for our flowerbeds. (See the white borders in the fence photo.)

Poppies - June 2022

The poppies grew as tall as me. One was a spectacular fluffy color of pink while most were red with single petals.

We also had a nice crop of Columbine.

Roof Leak 30 Dec 2021

The heavy snowfall accumulated on our new roof, then began gradually sliding down the slope. All around the house it simply fell off the roof with a huge crash, but here in front it was held back by the chimney. The glacial action pushed a lump of snow up under the chimney flashing and began leaking down the chimney and out into the basement.

Our roof warranty provided a roofing expert to come out and analyze the situation. From now on we are required to break away accumulated snow at that chimney location so it cannot build up like this.

Christmas 2021

Finished knitting this afghan on Christmas morning, in time to wrap it as a gift.

The next morning, Christmas Day, our furnace's heat exchanger began leaking exhaust fumes into our living space. We had to turn off the furnace and the outdoor temperature was below freezing. We went to Lief & Angela's house in Auburn to stay for about four days until we could repair the furnace. It snowed on Christmas Day so we were trapped in Auburn and it was difficult to get a furnace repairman out to our house. After returning home we used four electric space heaters to keep our house warm. We ended up replacing the oil furnace with an electric backup heat system in February, and a heat pump in June.

Milling Alder Logs: October 2, 2021

Catching up on posting to my blog, these photos are from October 2, 2021

Jim Horne invited us over to help mill up some old Alder logs. He used his backhoe to pick them up and put them on the milling machine.

Two men were required to balance the log while setting on the milling machine.

Heidi acted as "quality control" to verify the correct height of each cut.

We turned the slabs on edge to trim off the bark from each side.

The day was complete after filling the pickup truck twice like this.

Howell Mountain 2021

Aug 15, 6:49 PM
First night on the trail we camped at Paradise Valley and hung our food up high, out of the reach of grizzly bears.

Aug 16, 12:59 PM
Abby and Anthony at the high point crossing the mountain.

Aug 16, 1:08 PM
Climbing down the east cliff, we could see how much the glacier had receded. For the past four years it had reached to the red line I drew on the photo. Minimal snowfall last winter, along with unusually hot weather has caused this. Lucky for us, we now had two ways of climbing up/down the steep slope. We could walk over loose and crumbling rock, or put on crampons and go across the ice. The "snow" had melted down into solid, very hard, ice, covered with sand and rock. Crampons and ice axes penetrated only one quarter of an inch.

Aug 16, 1:35 PM
Here's a view looking south over the top of the glacier. See the vertical wall that has receded down to the bottom of the glacier, and the top edge is 100 feet or so below where it was last year.

Aug 16, 3:02 PM
To deploy our hoisting equipment, I clambored down over the ice while Lief and Louis deployed the Amsteel Blue, non-stretching cord. I brought my backpack with me but had it attached to the hoisting line rather than carry it. The passage across the ice was uneventful, even with the crampons only penetrating a tiny bit.

Lief and Louis had already carried their backpacks down over the rocks and then came back up to help me, and to carry Anthorny's and Abby's packs down.

Aug 16, 4:24 PM
Here's the view of the partially melted glacier from down below. Compare it to a similar photo from last year.

Aug 16, 6:54 PM
Finally arrived at camp, set up sleeping quarters and rested while supper was heating up. The blue tent has space for four normal-sized people. Three when one guy is very tall.

Aug 16, 6:55 PM
View of camp in opposite direction. My yellow two-man tent and Louis' tarp setup behind the wind break he assembled beginning in 2015.

Aug 16, 7:12 PM
Time to wash our feet in the ice cold mountain stream.

Aug 17, 8:59 AM
Finally the "lost" airplane wing from 2016 was exposed. I dragged it over to the new hoisting spot and Louis eventually cut it in half so we could use it as a sled for hoisting unusually shaped objects over the ice. This was the day Louis focused on taking apart the engine, leaving the hoisting task to Abby, Anthony, and me.

Aug 18, 8:44 AM
The rain and fog 'n mist began incessantly.

Aug 18, 10:25 AM
Lief is carrying the first of three loads for that day in his backpack up over the rocky route while the rest of us hoisted larger chunks over the glacier.

Aug 18, 11:01 AM
I began helping Lief by carrying one load up over the rocks. This is the view looking up the slope we had to climb.

Aug 18, 11:09 AM
This is the view looking sideways, so you can see the angle of the ascent.

Aug 19, 9:03 AM
The Fireweed flowers look great even in the fog 'n mist.

Aug 19, 11:43 AM
I'm taking up another load in my backpack over the rocky route. I had to rest after climbing over that jumble of loose boulders.

Aug 19, 11:58 AM
Part of the fuselage came up over the hoisting rig. I thought it was a good idea to photograph the partial number of the airplane.

Aug 19, 12:57 PM
Here's the spot where Lief got slammed by a falling rock last year. He was standing in the gap between the cliff and the snow, possibly on top of that pink colored boulder. There weren't very many recognizable landmarks like this. Erosion had taken a serious toll on the cliffs since last year.

Aug 19, 1:19 PM
Here's an ugly mangled chunk of wreckage that came up across the ice. I tried to carry it up the cliff by myself but Lief came along and took it away from me.

Aug 19, 6:11 PM
Our wreckage hauling task was complete at about 3:00 PM, so three of us decided we could make the round-trip to the peak of Howell Mountain (and back) by 6:30 PM. It was three miles, and with the fog 'n mist we wandered a bit, consuming about four miles on the outbound leg. It turned out to include about 800 feet of elevation gain too. It was too much effort for me but I went at about 100% the entire time.

Aug 19, 6:12 PM
We spent only one minute at the cairn before heading back as fast as I could go. We arrived back at camp before dark, at about 7:30 PM. I was so exhausted I was unable to eat. Lief ate three helpings of various recipes.

Aug 20, 7:46 AM
We woke up to a half inch of snow on the ground. Everything we had was soaking wet. Abby and Anthony carried their own packs up over the rocky route. Lief and Louis and I had to finish hauling camping supplies and the last airplane wreckage up to the top. The top of the mountain was very windy with blowing snow. Abby got chilled while waiting for us so we went into emergency mode to care for her. There are no more photos but we got her over the top and down into the big trees where she was able to warm up. Lief carried her pack down over the fallen logs to Paradise Valley, then she carried her pack the rest of the six miles to the car.