Yesterday afternoon Pam said she was glad to be back to normal after our month-long trip to Michigan. (OK, it was a week, but....) In this case normal means...
- As I start this post it's 6 a.m. and I've been up for three hours.
- It's raining. We've now set a record for the most days in October with measurable precipitation, at 24. We'll be extending that before we get to November, and probably get to or exceed a 10" total.
- I stacked wood yesterday, almost another cord. I'll do more of that today between the breaks in the rain they promised. I'm guessing there's another two cords in the remaining pile.
- The wood stove is cranking out the heat. In this case, too much heat, so I've got the front door open. That's the problem with stove heat; it's hard to regulate. If I let the fire go out I'll have to start another on mid-day. If I throw another log on - even with the air intake cranked all the way down - the place gets stifling. I went with stifling this morning just so I could use that word in my post.
We got home at 1:30 a.m. yesterday morning and I was too tired from the trip that included two flights and a 2-hour drive down from Portland. That explains what happened next.
I lit a fire in the stove to warm MoHo (50 degrees when we walked in) and then decided to sleep in my chair (more comfortable for my back) with a blanket throw. An hour later I woke up to the sounds of our CO2 alarm going off. In the dark it took me a minute to realize MoHo was filled with smoke.
I'd built the fire, starting with kindling and adding the wood I'd brought in from the front porch. I set one of the smaller pieces on top of the stove intending to add it once the kindling was going, but instead I put in other pieces I'd set along side the stove. In that intervening hour the top of the stove got hot enough that the piece of wood up there started to smolder.
I can move pretty quickly at 2:30 a.m. if I have to, and in this case I had to. Pitched that piece of wood over the porch railing, opened doors and windows, and turned on the throw-back fan built into the wall above the stove. A couple of hours later the smoke had cleared, but if you come to visit us you may notice that the inside of MoHo carries the scent of a campfire.
T'ank you, Fadder, for sparing us what could have been a very, very bad situation!
I got the 8ga wire for the truck, but can't find connectors the right size. I'll try NAPA today, and if that doesn't work I'll order them online. I hope to work on the truck in between rain breaks from stacking wood.
On the drive down from the airport we started listening to the LibriVox audio version of Robinson Crusoe. It's a very good story with a surprising ending...unless you've already read it twice.
They use all volunteer readers and this guy is worth every penny they paid him. Ugh. The flip side: these and hundreds of other public domain books are all available for free download from their site, so we'll deal with it.
Some, including former prosecutors, are ripping on James Comey's decision re. the email messages found on a computer shared by Huma Abedin and her estranged and disgraced husband, Anthony Wiener. In all the back-and-forth, including comments made by Clinton and Trump, a lot of things get muddled.
First, Comey has not "reopened" the investigation. He said there are some things the FBI needs to take a look at, but opening or closing an investigation is a very specific step that involves legal actions with legal consequences for all parties involved. That hasn't happened here.
The move was a-political. Comey testified under oath before Congress that the investigation was closed. That means they're not doing anything more with it. Suddenly, in the process of looking at Wiener's perverted text messages with an underage girl, they discovered more emails potentially connected with the Clinton investigation. So, in a move that was appropriate, he notified the members of both parties of Congress via a brief letter that his prior sworn testimony needed to be amended in light of these newly discovered emails.
To not notify them of this development would look like he was holding something back that related to his sworn testimony, placing him at legal jeopardy and opening him to the charge of favoring one candidate over another. But that charge is what's happened anyway.
Sometimes you just gotta do what's right and accept that it's going to be misconstrued and make some people angry. Their problem.
I read on Facebook a post from someone all excited because they've put new Christmas-themed sheets on their bed. There isn't room in this post to mention all the things wrong with this picture.
We had a 1-hour layover in Chicago and grabbed a quick bite in the C-concourse food court. The people watching was a lot better than the pizza, and any objective person has to agree that females make for much better watching than males, most of whom are nondescript or disheveled.
Some of the women are dressed and make-upped like they're headed out for a night on the town, and all of that to sit in a tin tube at 35,000' with 200 other people for hours at a time. Why?? Hey, some of them are gorgeous show stoppers, but for air travel???
I told Pam (I can say things like this to her) that they're beautiful, but when I see someone dressed like that I think, "They have at least one huge closet stuffed to the ceiling with clothes that cost a fortune." When someone is wearing spike heels that color match perfectly their knit dress and purse (at that price I think it's a handbag) you KNOW it's a tiny fraction of their total wardrobe. My reaction is high maintenance.
I also said to Pam that she's got the mix part of mix-and-match down perfectly. But we can't afford the match part, and I am very thankful for a wife who is OK with that.
It's the same kind of wife who's content to live in a 70's white trash mobile home in the woods of western Oregon. A place that smells like a campfire.
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