respublica

What a morning

Yesterday Dale went out and bought a new secondary monitor after his original one died. He needs two for the work he's doing and especially for all the zoom/adobe connect online virtual meetings he is a part of. Well, he could not get the new monitor to connect to the computer. Nothing like a tech problem in the early morning when he has a virtual meeting at 10. I went down to his basement office and tried my best to see if I could connect them, but no.

So I called my sister (a tech expert) and between the two of us doing Facetime on our phones, we were able to finally (45 minutes) get them set up. At first we got the two monitors communicating but the windows page was on the new monitor not the computer. It took some doing to finally get them where they were supposed to be thanks to some British tech guy on the internet.

Dale was so relieved and happy he cleaned out a closet full of his coats and hats which he knew I was frustrated with. It was pay back. 

But then....he came to find me to tell me his keyboard had stopped working, the main space bar was stuck in the down position and wouldn't pop up. What next? He thankfully decided to run out and get a new one.

Tech stuff is a miracle actually, but when it breaks down, it makes life a pain. Maybe later today one of the TV's will go out. Things go in 3s right?

Christian's time machine

On Wednesday our oldest grandson, Christian, went with Dale to pull the tiny town buildings out of our storage unit and set them on the driveway. Christian is 14 and as it happened, exactly ten years ago to the day, November 25, 2010, he and his family were visiting us from their then home in Washington DC. He was 4 and helping paint the first house that would sit next to the church in Tiny Town. I had pictures from that day and took some Wednesday as a comparison.

Christian was wearing the Hawk shirt and just painting away. Later that night he sat with Dale quite happily after a job well done.

Now, ten years later he is almost taller than Dale and carried out of the truck the exact same house he painted.

Time truly marches on. As it happened I found a short video from that day with Christian and his brother talking away with Dale.

 

Tiny Town coming our way today

I'm pretty excited. Dale and our oldest grandson are on the way to our Collinsville storage unit to pull out the buildings that make up our Christmas Tiny Town. For at least ten years the town has been placed in the side yard of our seminary house. We added lighted trees around them and it was such fun. Kids came by to play with the farm toys we put into the barn, adults just walked through for the novelty of it.

I have no idea how this is going to work in a much smaller space that is our front yard now, but we are going to give it try. Our neighbors have no idea about this as yet and I hope they won't be horrified. What makes me happy is seeing some of our other neighbors already having put up outside decorations. This is new for our street and I believe it is because there are newer families with kids. The neighbor across the street had a professional service come out and hang light across the roof line. Next to that is a family who placed big inflatable Santa and snowman along with lights.

Christmas on Tillotson will be different this year and I'm happy.

A Covid retrospectrive

With all the news reporting nothing but a new onset of the Coronavirus, I got to thinking back on the beginning of all this from a personal level. It was March 8th, a Sunday, and after we had come home from church Dale was hurrying to pack for his annual trip to Arizona for 5 days of Spring Training games. He and a number of other baseball fan pastors from around the country had been meeting up for this for several years.

He was in a hurry, running somewhat late as usual. I took him to the airport and on the way back to the seminary I stopped at Walmart for, I hate to say it, toilet paper. We were about out and I had no idea this would soon become subject number one among all Americans. When I got back to the car after checking out I saw a text from Dale on my phone from a number I did not recognize which said Dale forgot his phone and could I quickly bring it out to the airport. I called that number which belonged to an airport employee, got Dale and told him I had no idea how I could get that phone to him before he boarded.

He was frustrated and I felt panicked thinking of him being gone all week with no communication. When he got to Phoenix he called from another pastor's phone and we talked about what to do. Maybe get a disposable phone there at the Phoenix airport. That did not work out and he had to get going to the retreat center where they were staying. Meanwhile I kept thinking about this and decided to see if UPS could overnight his phone to the retreat center. And, yes they could! So I hurriedly boxed it up really well and zipped over the the UPS store. I called the other pastor's phone to have him tell Dale his phone should be coming next day.

And it did! It even got there before they all left for the first spring training game.

But, in the end, when his trip ended and he got back to St. Louis on the 12th, we realized how fortunate he was to be home because the next day all the virus shutdowns, flight cancellations were beginning or about to begin. One more day out there he may well have not gotten home for some time.

From toilet paper to shutdowns I'll never forget that week and things did not get better and still no end in sight.

Our garage is a mighty fine shed

Since we moved back to Collinsville we have been continuing inside work, Dale in the basement and me on the upper two floors. Most of the renovation work was before we moved and done by experts. But there are always things. The yard has been a major focus for both of us as well as getting the front porch and steps painted. However the one elephant in the room, so to speak, has been the exterior condition of the garage. Truth be known we do not use it as a garage, Dale uses it as a work shop. But the outside has nagged at me for some time, the curb appeal of that thing was wanting big time.

So Sunday I began the painting and finished the worst of it yesterday. Still part of the painting to go, but it can wait til spring as it isn't in too bad a shape.

Here is the before, the part that embarrassed me the most.

I look at this and think, why did we wait so long.

Now it's better.

I was thankful for the Troy Ace Hardware which had our house color brand. And happy to know Collinsville will be getting an Ace in the near future.

Back to normal life

The never ending election is over and we are getting back to normal life without obsessing over what will happen on November 3. Not everyone will be able to do this, the media, the winners and losers, campaign staff, will have a lot of things to clear up. But as for most of us, we move on. What will be will be.

I've spent a good part of this week painting two coats of paint on our front porch and steps. Dale has been tearing out old plants and bushes. All the while the election was on our minds. Today I am going to run the lawnmower over all the oak leaves as opposed to the terrible job of raking. I will do this with nothing on my mind but the nice weather and how good things are looking.

Yesterday while painting I was listening to some neighborhood kids playing. There must have been no school or just a half day. What I took a lot of joy in was the sound of their voices, laughing and shouting and running and racing bikes all over. They played one thing or another all afternoon. One of their dogs was barking with frustration at not being able to join in. Kids being kids as it should be, not kids sitting in front of a screen.

Flexible drain snake update

Last week I posted on a slow draining bathroom sink and my decision to order a set of plastic drain snakes to try and loosen up whatever was blocking the water. A friend of mine called after she read the post and told me she had the same problem some time back, ordered the flexible drain snake from Amazon, and it worked great. My package came yesterday and I tried it out immediately. The plastic snake is very very thin, surprisingly thin.

BUT IT WORKED!

I was fairly shocked, having been sort of skeptical, but it took no time at all and that darn sink is draining great again. I love it when a small, ordinary, thing actually works.

A slow drain is making me crazy

For some time our main floor bathroom sink has been slow to drain. This has bothered me for some time and puzzled me at the same time since we really did not spent all that much time here for 15 years. At one time one of us got the bright idea to disconnect the stopper from the up and down lever under the sink and we haven't been able to hook it back up. Frankly the contortion needed to do this is a bit much for both our backs. I've tried the liquid plumber and a couple other products over the years which helps for about a week. While I know we need to get a plumber here to re-connect the lever, right now I just want to get the water going down more smoothly and quickly. The sink doesn't fill up with water too badly, it just drains really slowly and as often as we wash our hands these days, it gets on my nerves.

So today I was reading an article about things to help around the house and this popped up. Flexible drain snakes! I went right to the link and gave a lot of thought to it. It seemed like a perfect solution. The plastic snakes are thin enough to get into the drain without pulling the whole stopper cap off unlike that metal whirling thing we have. But, I decided to do a little research first and the snakes in the link seemed a bit to flimsy. I looked for others and read reviews, all which had both good and bad.

 I finally decided on this one and it comes tomorrow.

Hopefully it will help and part of it won't break off in the drain.

Our house

We've had months of almost non-stop work being done on our house, work by professionals and work by us. Dale has centered his attention on the darn basement while I've been doing more outdoor work and some organization. Last Saturday I began painting our front porch which really needed refreshing. I started with the steps, got the actual steps done but not the risers because it looked like rain was coming for a few days. And the rain did come. The reason I didn't do the risers was I wanted them to be the same color as the house. Finally, yesterday the weather got quite warm and sunny so I buckled down and got the risers painted. We're really happy with this look.

It looks much better and should make climbing up them safer in the dark. Also the stair paint color mirrors the cedar dormer up top.

On the search for paint

Last weekend I began a job we've put off and that is painting the front steps and porch. We've had almost everything else redone since we moved back except the front curb appeal. It was a debate on where to start so I ended that by painting the actual steps a brown color to mirror the cedar siding on the upper dormer. The steps were in worse condition than the actual porch floor. Then I scrubbed down the porch and hoped to get that done the next day, but then came rain.

We decided to paint the stair risers the same color as the house (I watch too much HGTV). We do like that look, though, and it's less tricky walking up them in the dark. I had to find a Benjamin Moore paint store since the color of our house has been the same for decades, Kennebunkport Green. It was that color when we bought it and it has been re-painted at least 3 times over the years.

I found the Troy Ace Hardware sold this paint so off I went. It's been a long time since I've been in Troy and it has really built up. And the Ace was just such a great find. I could have spent half the day in that store. It has so many interesting things to look at and I did a lot of that while the paint was being mixed. The paint guy was super nice. It took a bit of time to spell out Kennebunkport green for him to type into his paint machine computer but his mix was perfect.

I'd recommend them.