Play Doh

After Vera's walk, we headed to Kaiser for my Pro Time blood test.  The first stop was at the Shell station, the Blazer was reading empty and from past experiences we know it is accurate.  There was a big line at Kaiser and we ended up waiting 30 minutes or so there.  Having only put $10 worth of gas in at Castle Rock, we went to Fred Meyer to fill up as it is .25 a gallon cheaper.  We had a couple of things to get there and spent about an hour wandering around.  We made a couple more stops on the way home, the highlight was at Blossoms and Sweets for a Chocolate Peanut Butter milkshake and a couple of Truffles.  My next stop was to see the twins, they were playing with Play Doh when I got there.  Here is a link to the video of that, http://vimeo.com/24493397 , there is a link at Vimeo where you can download this video if you want.  They sure seemed to be talking a lot more than last week.  Later, they went outside and headed straight to the sandbox.

Harper picked up a bucket of water and dumped it right on her boots.

When James was in Kindergarten, he planted a potato plant in our flower bed and it has come up every year since.  I got about half the bottom of the B-36's wing covered tonight.

Memorial Day

James, Parker and I went over this morning to see the F-15 flyover at the Cemetery.  Not much to see, James got the only picture and it was just two dark forms in the clouds.  They were supposed to be flying at 1000 feet and 400 mph, I would guess the base of the overcast was 2000 feet and they stayed in or above the cloud layer.

After we got home, the boys played Xbox for quite a while.  I went out to the shop and finished covering the B-36's fuselage.   It started to warm up in the afternoon and they went for a 4 wheeler ride.  I decided to mow, when I went to start the mower, it would not stay running.  I finally tracked it down to the  seat switch.  I put a jumper in and started mowing, James stopped me and asked if I wanted him to do it.   It sounded good to me so I let him have at it.

 I can tell he is growing up, he did a great job.  He could see spots that needed to be gone over twice without me telling him.  He is also stronger, as he can maneuver the mower better than last year.  A year ago there were areas he never did because it steered too hard.  They picked up James at 5 on the way back from Olympia.  Mik's brother was doing fine after getting the stint.

As I was going out to the shop this evening, I noticed the sunset, so I went back in and got the camera.  This is looking toward the East, the prettiest sunsets are some times behind you. 

Sunday the 29th.

Sunday morning James and I went flying at Toledo.

James got out my new camera and took this picture of Dennis and I.  Dennis flew with me years ago before he retired from the State Patrol.  He had come up for some help programming a new radio.  When we were done, I test flew his new plane.

James did a great  job flying even though he had not flown for almost a year.  Since he learned to fly so young, I don't think he will ever forget how.  By playing video games, he does not get rusty like us old timers.

In addition to flying, we threw the football around in the parking lot.  We will see how my arm feels tomorrow, I may be typing this blog one handed!

One of the club members had a radar gun out and several of us made passes for it.  I got a reading of 84 mph with my F-4.

I can tell James is growing up, he changed his own batteries and when grass got in the prop shaft, he cleared it by himself and kept on flying.

Saturday the 28th.

We started out the day heading to three garage sales that were not open on Friday.  We got home 3 hours later, after 8 garage sales, picking up the mail and a stop at BK for lunch.  We had a great time, I found 6 tools and I lost count of what all Vera got.  After we had cleaned up our treasures, we went for a walk and I tried out the new camera on some flowers.  My favorite Rhododendron is in bloom so that is the first place I headed.

Years ago, one of the guys I worked with bought a place that used to be a nursery.  He did not want any of the plants and offered them to people he worked with.  Vera and I went up and got a big bunch of them, quite a few are still with us after 3 moves.

James came and spent the night with us after Mik's brother had a heart attack.

James and I played Madden Football until 1:00.  I really had James concerned that I might win after I got ahead by 10 points.  He made a comeback and ended up winning by 3 points.

New Camera

After Vera's walk, we headed out to the garage sales listed in the Daily News.  Most of then in our area were up towards Silver Lake.  Vera found a few things at each one, I did not find anything until we got to one in Castle Rock.

I found this Astron power supply and promptly dropped it while taking it up to see how much it was.  It was $10, so I got it to use in the shop for charging my Lipoly batteries.  I just looked it up and they cost $89.95, not a bad bargain!  Every time we went past the house, I pulled in to see if UPS had brought the camera.  Finally there was a box on the porch, I picked it up and took it along with us to the last garage sale.  After we got home, Vera discovered the silver ware holder she had gotten at a sale would not fit our drawer.  I took the drawer to the shop and made a new longer drawer with the old front on it.  After dinner, I went out and cleaned up the shop and finished the cockpit area of the Eurofighter.

I came in and played with the new camera after that.

That manual is a half inch thick!

This is why, there are buttons and dials all over it.  The pictures I have taken so far look great!  I took some in low light and the results were the best I have ever gotten.  I am looking forward to taking it to some kind of event.

I thought it was supposed to be April Showers!

Another wet day, which meant I had plenty of time to work in the shop.  I got a couple of projects for Mik done.  I sanded and filled on the Eurofighter's nose all day.  This evening I got the little compressor out and hooked up the air brush.

Mixing the paint took quite a while, but I finally got a close enough color match.  The spraying only took about 15 minutes and it turned out looking pretty good considering the nose was broke clear off.  My new camera did not show up today, it came clear across the country and then sat in Portland for the last 27 hours.  When you get 3 day delivery, they are not going to get it to you in two days.  I ordered another new nose gear for the Eurofighter today, this is about the 5th or 6th change on it.  Not too much else went on here today.  Vera helped Cheryl finish some memory books for the Girls Club this morning after her walk.  There was an extra so she got to bring it home.  Kind of nice seeing the girls she taught to knit.

Tracking!

Our Rhododendron's are finally starting to bloom, it has been so cold everything seems to be later this year.

The Lilac's smell is so strong even I can smell it every time I walk by them.

Surprisingly the apple trees have lots of blooms after the strange spring.

Vera went to bible study today, and then they went to lunch at 19 mile for a birthday celebration for some of the ladies.  On the way back to town they wanted to know where Vera lives, so she gave them a tour of Wisteria Road.  I worked on the planes until I had to wait for things to dry, then I made a mail run.  After I got home, I made lunch and sat down at the computer to eat and check emails.  Then I spent several hours editing some video I took yesterday with my GoPro camera in the plane.  Some of the steps take a long time, so I went to the shop and worked on the Eurofighter and did some clean up while they were running.  The upload to Vimeo took 90 minutes after the editing was done.  Once while I was out in the shop I had a couple of little visitors, they are spending the night with Grandma.  Every couple of hours I would check the UPS tracking on my new camera.  It was in Portland the last time I looked, I have high hopes it will show up tomorrow.

Here is a link to the video, one modeler who watched it said he almost got airsick.

http://www.vimeo.com/24239420

  The air was bumpy all day.  I will be glad when we get a calm day so I can shoot some nice steady shots.  The weather here today was sure changeable, once we had hail coming down like crazy.

Flying and Spraying at Toledo

I was up bright and early this morning getting everything loaded up for a day of flying and spraying at Toledo.

The weather was great all day, there was one other flyer there when I arrived.  He left early when his tail wheel broke.

This is the first time I got to try out my new charging setup.  I have 30 feet of heavy duty cord that plugs into two 76 Amp Hour batteries in the motor home.  It worked great!

I got in three flights with the camera plane today.  I also got several flights each  on the Sukhoi, Helicopter and the J-3 Cub.

Mt St Helens is in the distance, the house to the lower right is Mrs Herren's whom we rent the flying field from.

I ended up spraying 3 tanks, about 40 gallons of weed killer on the runway.  Nice to finally have some good weather so I could fly and get this done.

47 Years

We celebrated our 47th Wedding Anniversary today.  It has been a great marriage, it is the best thing that ever happened to me.  We decided to have a nice laid back day.  We went to town and did a little shopping.  We discussed lunch and took a ride over to Rainier to see if anything looked good over there.  Not finding any place that was calling our name, we decided on Applebee's.  After eating we stopped by a new bakery called Lucy's that makes Mexican pastries.

  

Since we were pretty full, we took our selection home to try later.  The narrow stick type one is gone already and it tasted pretty good.  I may have to go sample another when I finish here.

After we got home, I made a trip over to visit at Dianne's.  They were easy to tell apart today, Harper had a little road rash on her forehead from a fall at a ball game.   I had a good time playing with them, Ava brought some books over and sat on my lap while we read them.  Harper would bring another book over once in a while and check on what we were reading.  Dianne had been heating up Tater Totes for them while we played.  When they were ready, they headed right for their highchairs.   I stuck the nose back on the Eurofighter this afternoon, then came in here to check a price online and have been here ever since.

Bike day

We went from 5 bikes here Friday to two today.  Vera and I decided we wouldn't be riding bikes any more and if anyone wanted them they could have them.  Dianne took my mountain bike and I gave Auna one yesterday.  Vera is offering hers to any girl in the Church's Girls Club that needs one.  I had seen someone from Castle Rock looking for a tandem on Longview Freecycle.  It was Michelle's tandem, so I checked with her and she said "Do It".  I emailed them last night and they picked it up this morning.  While I was waiting, I put on some outlet covers in the shop.  Then I put up my Digital Picture Frame on the North wall, decided I did not like it there and took it down again.  After I put things back like they were before, I tried it on the West wall and I could see it better so I made it permanent.   Then I started putting up a shelf for the Caller ID unit I got at a garage sale.  We had to make a run to the store for a 25 foot extension to reach where I wanted it.  I finally finished up at 8:00.

This is the CID, it shows the time, date, caller ID and messages that can be programmed in.  It also can be programmed to turn it's self on and off.  I programmed it and the new picture frame to turn off at 10 PM and back on at 10 AM.  Now I don't have to find a phone to see if the call is for Vera or I.  The evening is ending on a good note, Vera's cookies just came out of the over and they taste great!

Garage Sale Day (Friday's)

We started out only planning on hitting two garage sales and ended going to five.  It was sure a nice day for it.  I ran into two retired Fibre employees one shopping and one running a garage sale.  The guy shopping I ran into last week at one, funny you don't see someone for 12 years and then see them twice in a week or so.  The guy running a sale I had not see for about 12 years either and I remembered his name.  That is a first!  After we got home, I decided not to go flying and went to the shop, I was going to work on the B-36, but spotted the twins playing in the sandbox.  By the time I got back to the shop, I decided to work on the Eurofighter's nose.   I got it glassed and then finished up scanning Marie's pictures.  I transferred them to the house computer and loaded them onto the picture frame.   After dinner, we decided to run up and deliver it to Marie.

We got there just before she got back to her room after her dinner, so Vera went looking for her and surprised her at the corner of the hall.  We set up the new picture frame and then visited for a couple of hours before heading home.   It was another busy but fun day.

Twins, Track and Baseball

What a nice day!  I had a visit from the twins first thing today.  They checked out some airplane pictures on my computer.  It took a bunch of coaxing to get them back outside.  Then they gathered up rocks and gave to me until I had a big hand full.  Then they went up and down the steps next to the shop a bunch of times, but there was a little ownership issue there.  Next it was the cars, fun to watch one facing each way.  They were getting a little tired and did not argue too much about going in.

After I got tired of scanning pictures, we got all the deck furniture out and cleaned it up.  I sat down in my recliner to eat lunch and that was a big mistake.  It was time to head for James' track meet before I woke up again.

This is James and Joey after throwing the javelin, James threw 86 feet today.  I forgot to mention here that he threw 92 feet and got 1st. place at the sub districts last week. We watched a few other events before leaving for James' baseball game.

James made some awesome catches at first tonight.  They started out really slow and were down 11 to nothing going into the 5th inning.  They had a good inning and got back in the game, but ended up losing.  James had an RBI single to start off their scoring.  The wind along the river made it pretty cool by the time the game was over.  I borrowed Michelle's stadium blanket for the last couple of innings.

31 Years!

31 years ago, I was loading my planes into the van for a day of  flying.  Vera was washing the breakfast dishes, and called me in to look at the strange cloud with lightening coming out of it.  As I came into the kitchen, I saw our neighbor clear the fence by about 3 feet waving his arms over his head shouting "The Mountain Blew!"  We headed up to Schaffran Rd, we watched and took pictures for a long time and went back several times during the day.

After Vera's bible study today, we headed for Mt. St. Helens for the 31st Anniversary.  Our first stop was at 19 Mile for lunch at Pattie's Place.  We both had Elk Burgers and fries.  Today they were providing free desserts, so Vera had Peach Cobbler and I had Strawberry Rhubarb Cobbler.  They have great fries there.

 We stopped at the Weyerhauser Visitor Center to take some pictures and found Elk grazing on the mud flows.

We stopped for another photo session at Elk Rock and Vera took this picture.

There was a little steam coming out of the dome today.

There were quite a few people and we had a good time people watching, seeing every thing from a cowboy to a tattooed lady.  There was enough snow that the path up to the compass rose viewpoint looked pretty hazardous.  They had a sign up to that effect so we passed on it.

 This what the snow looked like on the way back to the parking lot.  It was a great day, most of the time we went without the windbreakers.  After sitting and driving for a couple of hours, I had an ambitious streak when we got home and cleaned the pond.

Vera's big shock!

I bet it was a big shock for Vera, I moped the shop floor today. They picked up the old freezer today, since I had to move a bunch of stuff to make room for two, I had a fairly big area clear.  I moped one half of the front room and let it dry, then moved the stacked stuff to the dry area and moped it.  This is what it looked like when I finished up tonight.

I figured they would send a couple of people to pick up the freezer.  It was a big surprise when there was only one.  He wrestled it around without much help from me, something I could not do.  It was all I could do to slide it around the floor with the furniture slides under it.  Not a job a 70 year old would want to try for!

Vera has been cleaning up the flower beds North of the house.  With flowers starting to come into bloom it is looking good.  Lots of sun today, hope you got to enjoy some of it.

Monday Monday

I slept in this morning, it sure felt good.  I did some more cleaning to get ready for the freezer pickup tomorrow.  I saw the twins outside and they came over and put some more rocks on my porch and went up and down the steps a few times.  They sure don't want any help when they are doing that.  It started raining so everyone headed in.  I had a good time hearing about Steve's run in the Ash Kicker.

Later they were outside playing in the rebuilt sandbox.  Ava was really shoveling sand into the bucket, she got it about half full and dumped it out.  Later she had help from Auna, Rielee and Harper filling it clear up.  James had a game at Kelso this evening so we headed down to it about 4:30.  It was nice and sunny, but the wind was still cool.

Once I was settled into my chair, I did not want to get up so I took a few pictures through the screen.  James played good and made some awesome stops of throws to first that were high or off to the side.  I believe they ended up losing 9 to 6 .  The strike zone seemed to be from the shoelaces to the bill of the hat.  We could not tell how inside or outside was from where we sitting.  The team played hard, but it just did not happen 

Rain Out!

The picnic I have been planning on all week was rained out today.  I headed up about 7:30 this morning, if I had not had the food, I would have stayed home.  I took some magazines with me, started the furnace and settled in to see if anyone would show up.  A little before 9 Dick, the president showed up, followed by Rob, the secretary.  After a little discussion we decided to reschedule the picnic for June 5th, with any luck the weather will be a little better.  Leonard and Audrey showed up next and were told about the change in plans.  Leonard had made potato salad for the picnic and when I asked about it, they offered me some.  I had it for lunch when I got home and it was great!  I volunteered to stay for awhile in case anyone else showed up.  I sat and read until 10:30 and only Bill showed up.  I posted a notice on the bulletin board and headed home. 

I want to thank Rob for taking this picture that he posted on the club website.  It really shows what it was like.  After lunch and visiting with Vera, I spent most of the day working on pictures for Marie's new digital picture frame.

The potato salad sounds so good, we are going have another helping right after we publish this.

It was a nice day for Baseball!

We just took it easy until it was time to leave for James' baseball game.  After a stop for gas, we went to Roy Morse and got settled in by Michelle.  It was a good game, they were down 0 to 2 in the top of the first inning, but came back to take a 4 to 2 lead in the bottom of the inning.

James on first after getting hit by a pitch, Mik is the first base coach.  They were up 5 to 4 for a long time, then the other team had a good inning and were ahead 5 to 8.  They scored 1 run in the 6th inning to make it 6 to 8, then scored 3 runs in the bottom of the 7th to win 9 to 8.  We had burgers during the game, so we headed home and managed to find one garage sale with lots of stuff left.  It was a fun day!

Garage Sales and Mowing

After Vera's walk, we headed out to a couple of garage sales.  The first one was a bust, it was an Estate Sale, but it looked more like vendors selling jewelry and collectibles.   The second one did not have anything we were interested in.  It is my week to mow at the Toledo field, so I loaded up the mower and headed up there.  On the Jackson Hwy. we found another garage sale, a good one, I got a clamp and Vera got some purple iris.

We saw another sign in Toledo for Antiques and Collectibles, not anything there we wanted and the prices were pretty high.  We headed on to the field and I started mowing and finished 5 hours later.

On one pass I noticed a C-17 on the horizon coming our way.  Being on the mower I did not have a camera, so I watched it pass right over us at about a thousand feet.  The mower drive belt came off twice, I think I put one pulley on upside down.  I ended up finishing the job with the club mower.  We were both not up to James' baseball game tonight, but Michelle kept us updated by texting the scores to us.  They ended up winning  16 to 8.

5 12 2011 Cookies and Kreme

Vera had an eye appointment in Vancouver today, so we headed South right after her walk.  Traffic seems a little lighter with the gas price being so high.  People seem to be driving a little slower also.  After the appointment we went to Costco and did a little shopping.  I had to get some things for the club picnic this weekend (It may be a wet one!) and we were out of some of our favorites at home.  We had lunch at Wendy's, their hamburgers are sure good!  Then I decided I needed dessert and it was off to Krispy Kreme.  I ended up with two filled treats, one Cookies and Kreme barely made it out of the parking lot.  It is great!  I had a couple of bites and headed home.  About Woodland I couldn't stand it and ate the rest of it.  The other one, pictured below, a filled cake made it home and was my evening snack.

I got to have a short visit with the twins after we got home, they were outside playing.  Earlier they had left more rocks on my steps.  Ava ran right over and picked up some gravel and gave it to me.  She kept bringing it until I had a pretty good hand full.   I did some work on the motor home hooking up gel cells that I use to charge my planes.  I came in early to do my blog, but the blogger was not working, so I watched Wipeout and Mythbusters.  I fell asleep during Mythbusters so I am watching again now.

Pizza for lunch and dinner, it doesn't get much better!

I headed North for lunch with Barry this morning.  The further North I got the more it rained.  I stopped by and had a nice visit with Vera's sister, Marie, until it was time to meet Barry at the new Centralia Papa Pete's.  We get together twice a year for birthday lunches.  Since he was gone last year, we had to wait until now.

Barry wanted to try a custom pizza by adding Pepperoni and sausage to an Islander Pizza.  It was good and he did not end up with too much to take home.  We spent a long time talking after we were done eating, I really enjoyed it.  On the way home it was still raining and it got worse as I headed South.  By the time I got to the rest areas North of Castle Rock the traffic was down to 55 mph in a downpour.  I saw one wreck just at the bottom of the hill where a pickup was into the center barrier with the fender and hood all wrinkled up and steam coming from the radiator.  It felt good to get home after that drive.  The extra Rocket pizza I got will be great for dinner tonight.

Flying, Baseball and the Moon

We were up early and off to Toledo for some flying today.  The sun waited quite a while before it came out.  It was kind of cool until about 1:00, but we had a good time flying.

I noticed the moon was out and asked Leonard to fly in front of it.  It worked great and I got several pictures.

James is making an out at first that ended that inning.  He made several outs, but in the early innings the team's throws were off and they missed several outs that normally would have been easy.

James batted good tonight, I think he either got a hit or was walked every time at bat.

The moon was still out and I got the best pictures of it I have ever taken.

James' team lost 15 to 9 but they made up a lot of ground in the last innings.