Fresh Hot Biscuits!

I started working on the B-36 early today. I wanted to see how the nacelle I molded last night turned out. It looks pretty good so I made up a second one right away. Vera was making biscuits when I went in so 12 minutes later I proceeded to eat 5 of them with butter and honey. Nothing better than biscuits fresh out of the oven. There is one left that will go in the microwave this evening for my treat. I struck gold at the post office, 4 packages of stuff for the Xbox and B-36. After we got home I had a friend stop by to trade some servo extensions for shorter ones. It works for me because I need some long ones for the B-36. After he left I went back to work on it, while I was working, Ava, Harper and Dianne came for a visit. It seems every time they take a walk part of it now includes a trip through the shop.

After I finished it was off to visit them. They are getting big, I lifted up Ava a couple of times and if I had to do it very often I would have a lot stronger arms. Then it was back to the B-36. I got the nose gear strut installed, all of the wing mounting blocks glued in, sanded out the nose and banged that darn long wing into the cabinets and tool chest several times. I think it is time to lock up and settle in for a little TV now.

What I made today!

Well here is what I made today!

Lots of shavings from shaping the leading edges on the B-36 wings.

The wing is getting seriously big, every time I move it I seem to bump into something.

Today was our daughter Bev's birthday so we took her and the rest of the family to dinner at the Masthead.

Lots of good food tonight. Bev was really tickled when she got a call from Barry and Mona. It was a good ending to a nice day.

Pizza Night and the Black Knight

I picked up James after school and he decided pizza sounded good. So he called Papa Pete's and ordered on the way home. After eating we went to Aunt's for a visit and then he went to play with Parker for awhile.

After he came home and had another pizza snack he found the Batman movie Black Knight on TV and we watched it the rest of the evening.

It is pretty intense, but he loves it and has watched it 8 or 9 times. I finally got the Xbox hooked up, but he was happy to watch the movie. After his mom picked him up I played on the Xbox for an hour or so. I found I can reverse the controls and make it more like my radio control transmitters. Things went a little better after that but any of the kids are still way better than I am.

NO TWINS!!!

Yep, no twins today at the Robinson's but I had a nice visit with Steve and Dianne. I finally remembered to put the new plates on the van since I was using it today. Then I cleaned the pellet stove and filled it. I got the rest of the motor mounts for the B-36 cut out before it was time to leave for James' basketball game. Vera was teaching a knitting class today for the Girls Club at the church so it was the van for me. It ran lousy for a while because it does not get used much. I wasn't too sure I was going to make it up one hill. I will be parking it out where it should get some sunshine and we will see if that helps.

James shooting and making a foul shoot.

He played great tonight, made quite a few points and a couple of awesome passes.

He got to play about half the game tonight.

Trying to get the charging foul but it did not work. They won 46 to 12 tonight.

Steve and Dianne came down and watched the game which made it more fun, I had them on one side and Michelle and Mik on the other.

Finally Done!

I got the roof done today! Funny how my couple of hours turned into five! The twins came over again today and saw me on the roof, Boy do they get excited. It is such great fun to see them marching around. After I finished and got things put away we went to James' game at Huntington. His friend Jarad plays for Huntington and they had a good time out there.

They lost the game after getting behind in the first quarter. After the game James, Mik, Vera and I went to dinner at the Masthead and had a nice visit.

I would rather be Flying!

I got started on the leak in the roof today! First I blew off the roof, which meant I had to blow off the decks after everything fell on them. It was Noon before I got started on the actual repair.

It is going good, I am about two thirds done now and it should only take a couple of hours to finish up tomorrow (If I am Lucky!). The twins came by and were they excited to see me on the roof. I had to climb down and watch them play on their stump.

After a shower, dinner, some time on the heat pad, a nap and a couple of Tylenol I feel pretty good. The Tylenol was for my back, the knee held up fine!

Finally some Flying!!

It was cold, but good flying today. There were 8 of us there and two brand new planes. Joel had me put the first flight on his new Texan.

It is a great flying plane. Here is a link to the video Joel took of the flight.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqidOePBxwg&feature=feedu

This is the second new plane out there today, Rob's Seamaster twin. The right engine kept quitting which made the landings interesting. After I got things put away from flying I watched my recordings of today's football games. Both teams I like won so it will be an interesting Super Bowl.

The Suns Back

This was a sunny and busy day. After breakfast and emails I installed Photoshop CS5 and tried it out. Then it was off to town for a mail run. The six speed controls for the B-36 were there. I lucked out when I ordered them, they were having an overstock sale.

I did a little work on the B-36 until Michelle and James showed up. After a short visit we all headed up for Cale and Will's birthday party.

As usual Laury had made a great cake, it with chocolate peanut butter ice cream was delicious. It was a nice party, everyone was in a great mood and there was lots of talking and laughter.

This evening I worked on the B-36 some more and got the first motor mounted. While that was drying I did some research on the cooling duct shapes in my B-36 book.

Hooray! The computer is back up!

The new hard drive showed up today while we were in town. We also got the six motors for the B-36 at the Post Office. I had decided to get the materials to repair the roof today so we headed to town about 11. Just after we filled up with gas at Fred Meyer we heard the ambulance dispatched to our daughters house for a fall victim. We headed right over there to see how bad it was. We beat the responders there and found out she had fainted and fallen down the stairs. She was taken to ER, but the Cat scan and Xrays showed no broken bones, but lots of bruises and some sprained muscles. She is going to be sore for awhile, but it could have been much worse. After we finished up our errands and got home Vera said the twins were outside so I went out to visit with them.

Ava with a fir branch. I think she got pitch or something on her hands because she had to wipe them on Papa's (Steve) pants.

Harper jumping off the stump.

Where I spent the rest of the day. I cloned the new 1TB hard drive and installed it along with a hard drive cooling fan. I put it all back together and everything is working great again.

Basketball Season Starts!

The first order of business today was make sure the shop stove had pellets left after the cold night. It did, but not many. After I took care of that I filled the bird feeders and then came in for my breakfast. When Vera got ready to leave for bible study I realized we had not started the Blazer to warm it up. I went out and scraped the windows for her and she noticed the pattern on the wind shield was quite unusual so I took a quick picture with the cell phone.

I spent the rest of the morning ordering the six motors and speed controls for the B-36. I did a little work on the B-36 and some knitting needles for a class Vera is going to teach. Then it was time to head to town for James' basketball game and to renew my drivers license. Amazing thing happened at the Licensing Dept. I took a number from their machine and before I could find a seat they announced "Now serving number 42 at window 5". I was in and out of there in about 5 minutes. That left us with an hour to kill so we went and looked at the new Kelso Library.

It took me a couple of minutes to see James with his new haircut. James played good tonight, scored some points and made some awesome passes. They won by about 30 points.

On the way home from the game we went over South Nevada Drive and the moon was just coming up. I had to try a picture, it is kind of grainy because the ISO is set to 1600. Sounds like it is going to be cold again tonight. Hope you stay warm!

Tuesday

Slept great last night, I think it was about 9 before I finally got up. After my normal morning routine we made a recycling, banking, mail and grocery run.

I made a trip over to see what the twins were doing after lunch. They were eating theirs when I got there. As soon as Ava got done, she noticed I had the Easyshare in my pocket and wanted to look at it. Now they seem to look at the pictures and recognize some people.

Harper headed right for the coloring supplies after lunch. She likes to hold as many as she can. I did some more work on the B-36 in the afternoon and got the rudder servo and linkage hooked up and tested before I went in for the day.

The Third thing!

First the computer, then the roof leaking, I was wondering what the third thing would be. It was my phone, it wouldn't charge. I forgot to mention it yesterday. We got up this morning and headed to our favorite Verizon store in Vancouver. It turns out the charger was bad, which they replaced under warranty. Right next to Verizon is a Harbor Freight store. I ended up wandering around there for an hour. My hand started going to sleep from holding stuff so I hunted up a cart. I found a whole bunch of little items that I could use. When I finished there we went to a Barnes & Noble bookstore. We both found a couple of things in there. I started looking for somewhere to have lunch after that. I finally decided a Papa Pete's Taco Pizza sounded good so we headed to the Ridgefield one. It was great and we had a nice leisurely lunch.

Most of the way down it had rained like crazy. Once we got around the Vancouver Mall it cleared off and was pretty nice. After our pizza it was really nice for the drive home. Once we got home I did some work on the B-36 and ordered the covering. Vera read her new mystery and knitting book.

Saturday and Sunday

Not much happened here Saturday. I puttered on the computer in the morning until it started making strange noises. I decided to not use it until I get a new hard drive so I got the laptop out. The last time it made noises and slowed down I did not do anything right away. Big mistake, it crashed big time and I lost a bunch of scanned pictures. This time I am going to clone the drive before that happens. Then just as we were getting ready for bed, Vera felt a drop of water. There is a small leak by the door. I sweep the roof off at midnight as there was lots of debris up there. It has slowed down this evening, but I will look into it further Monday. I did get the servo mounts installed in the B-36 and some of the linkage installed. Both football games today went the way I wanted.





Sunday, James had a 9:00 game at Toutle which I missed by sleeping in. They won and then came down here to watch the Seahawks until their next game.

James is shooting a free throw during the second game. He played great and scored quite a few points. The camp he went to over Christmas vacation sure helped his ball handling skills. They lost it, but made a heck of a run at the end to get close after being down 11 to 4 at the start.

With all the rain I wanted to see what Salmon Creek looked like so I got the Quad out after James' games and made a run down there.

This is James' favorite agate hunting spot. Normally we can walk across here without getting our feet wet.


This is the spot where Auna found her big Agate. After my run to the creek I hauled a load of wood pellets to the shop, had dinner and settled in for the evening.

Hope you stayed dry today!

Friday

We were up early today as Vera had a 9:00 appointment in Vancouver. I entered the address into my phones mapping program and it started giving us instructions. When I got to the driveway it told me to turn "Right". I got parked and looked down at the phone and there was a picture of the building on the screen. The phone uses Google Maps so I went and got this picture which I think is the same one the phone gave me.

We went up to the office 15 minutes early and Vera got right in and we were on our way at 9:05. After a stop for breakfast and to kill a little time until Costco opened we did some shopping and headed home. It was a good trip, the rain stopped on the other side of Woodland and started again just as we headed home. We were home by Noon and able to relax the rest of the day.

Stay at home day.

Nothing on the calendar for Thursday so we decided to stick around home. After breakfast and emails I headed over to see what was new at Dianne's. The twins were just finishing breakfast which is fun to watch. I was talking to Dianne and Steve called us "to come see this". The girls were in his chair reading. They loved the attention and did lots of posing for pictures. I took 30 today before I left.

I thought this picture of Ava playing with the dog was cute. Maybe I can start them on radio control cars next summer.

Coloring was next on the list, they decided they needed more books so they raided the game cabinet.

Not sure what Ava was doing, but the picture turned out.

The rest of the day was spent puttering in the shop.

I got the tail cone fitted today and hinged the rudder on the B-36.

Off to the dentist I go!

Boy did it rain here today, we have had 1.57 inches since midnight last night.
I went over to see the twins early since I had an afternoon dental appointment. No twins today icy down South. Steve and Dianne were looking a little lost. We had a nice visit and then I headed home to work on the B-36 until Vera got home from bible study.

I got the vertical fin mounted today. I am using the laser level to line it up in the picture. I had never had ultrasonic cleaning before. After my appointment we did a little shopping and did a walk around the mall for a little exercise. Then it was home for dinner and a quiet evening.

I hope you stayed dry today!

Tuesday, my timing was off today.

After I did my blog this morning I started working on Marie's Digital Picture Frame problem. It appears that if the pictures are large files, it will freeze up the slideshow. I spent most of the day resizing pictures. My timing was off today, every time I checked the "Quiet Babies and Adults sleeping" sign was up. When we finally got the pictures to run on our frame we headed up to Marie's to see if her's would run with the new pictures. Marie was in a great mood and we had a nice, but short visit before she went to dinner. Her picture frame did seem to be working OK. It was my turn to pick where we eat, so I chose Applebee's. We did the 2 for $20 and it was great! Big surprise when we came out. It was snowing and by the time we got to the Napavine area it was snowing like mad! Everything out there was down to about 50 mph so it was not too bad.

Vera took this as we came up to the rest areas North of Castle Rock.

This what it looked like at home when we got there.

Monday Monday

I had a good Monday. We had set the alarm to get up early as Vera had an eye appointment. I was dozing and the phone rang, the doctor was sick so no appointment. I headed over early to see the twins and they were just finishing breakfast. Lots of fun watching them eat. Then they started playing, going from one thing to another about every 5 minutes.

After I went home, I worked on the B-36 until I had the rudder ready to mount and stuck it on temporarily to see how it looked.

I had a club meeting in Centralia tonight so we left early to see Marie and take a new memory card for her digital picture frame.

I have been looking at this barn on the way to Centralia for a long time wanting to take a picture of it. Today I remembered to get the camera out and the window down before we got there. After we got to Marie's I was showing her the new pictures when the new card caused the slideshow to lock up. I pulled it out and put the old one back in. After a quick dinner we stopped and got a new memory card before the club meeting. It was a good meeting, just not many people there, maybe they were watching the National Championship game. We had a nice drive home, and spent the rest of the evening trying to figure out why the slideshow stopped.

Seahawks Win

The Seahawks winning made my Saturday. I watched football and messed around on the computer for most of the day. I did figure out how to capture some frames from the HD video I shot New Years day.

The Toledo flying field from the East.

Here I am making a pass down the runway to get a picture of myself. I am wearing the green coat.

Sunday

More football today, I recorded both games and watched them later, nice skipping those commercials! I also loaded the HD flying video on the laptop so I could show it at the club meeting. Of course it would not work. I had to find and download a player that would work.

After the games were over I went out and sheeted one side of the rudder for the B-36. These pins sure work good, sharp and easy to take out.

Tomorrow if I get a chance I will sheet the other side.

I can't believe we got everything on the list done!

Since we had an appointment in town today I decided to visit the twins early. They must have remembered coloring yesterday because they headed right for the cabinet and raised a heck of a fuss until Dianne got the crayons and books out.

I got down on the floor and joined in, plus it is a good spot to take pictures.

Ava gets right down close to her work.

Laury came over also and they got real excited and ran right to the slider to see Max.

Now I see where they got holding the crayon so precisely.

After that I went out and worked on my rudder until it was time to leave. I got it all framed up and it will be ready to shape tomorrow. Our first stop was USPS for mail and then it was off to Longview. After Vera's appointment we went to Bev's and delivered a new DVD drive to Debbie and visited for a while. We went over to Fred Meyer and did our shopping then went to the Masthead to have salads for dinner. Vera had their Chef's Salad and I had a Shrimp Louie. Both were great! After a nice slow ride home via Pleasant Hill road we settled in for the evening. Boy, this day went by fast!