Tag Archives: open house warming

2013_10_06 (N) The House Is Open

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The weather was not what we had hoped for, but it was not as bad as forecast with the really heavy rain slipping just off to our east.  We tried to finish our preparations the night before, but inevitably ended up working most of the morning to finish getting ready.  But by noon we were relaxing, catching our breath, and waiting for visitors.

Our son, daughter-in-law, and grand-daughter were the first to arrive, so we got to spend a little quality time with “schmoo.”  With the comfort of her parents nearby she decided I was not as scary as previously thought.  She also discovered that she could crawl quite well on the carpet in the basement.  Our daughter, her husband, and his daughter (our 16 year old step-grand-daughter) showed up next, so we had just the locally-based family for a while.

Other visitors eventually came and went throughout the afternoon, and we had a quite a crowd between 2 and 5 PM.  A few people called to say they couldn’t make it due to illness, a few others who said they were coming didn’t show up, and a few who didn’t RSVP showed up anyway, so it all balanced out in the end.  Everyone seemed to like the new house and many of them also enjoyed finally seeing the bus for the first time.  One person noted that the bus was “a big commitment.”  I hadn’t thought about it in those terms, but it is an appropriate description on so many levels.

The conversation was brisk, and folks who had never met seemed to make quick friends.  The one downside to the open house was that Linda and I did not get to visit very long with anyone as we were continuously busy greeting new arrivals, giving “tours” of the house and the bus, and saying “farewell” as folks left.  Keeping up with the food and beverages would have been an added challenge, but our daughter was gracious enough to help with all of that.

The food seemed to be a big hit.  Everyone who knows us knows by now that we are following a whole-food, plant-based (vegan) way of eating.  I think some of them are unsure (concerned?) about what they will be fed if they come to our house.  The fact is that if they didn’t know how we eat, and we hadn’t said anything about the food, no one would have known that it did not involve the use of any animal products.  Linda has gotten that good at cooking this way.

The last guests were gone by 6 PM and we spent a couple of hours putting food away and cleaning up dishes.  A lot of folks brought a card and/or housing warming gift, which was very thoughtful and quite unexpected, so we spent a quiet hour opening them and making careful note of who brought what.  Most of the gifts were consumable, so we will enjoy them without having to find a permanent place for them.  The few gifts that were objects were equally appreciated and will find their place somewhere in the house and/or bus.

We were glad to see those who could come, and sorry not to see those who couldn’t, and apologize to those we didn’t invite.  There was certainly no slight intended.  We will have folks back individually, but the open house allowed a lot of people to form a clear image of where we now live and that should make it easier for them to find their way back here at some point in the future.  The open house also provided a hard deadline for us to get sufficiently moved in, without which we would very likely still have had boxes piled in rooms and artwork stacked in the library a year from now.

 

2013_10_04 (F) Craftsmen & Gamesmen

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I read a book years ago titled “The Gamesman.”  It was one of those pop social/psychology works that probably isn’t particularly scientific but none-the-less provides an interesting and even useful framework for looking at and possibly understanding the world, especially the world of work.  My take away from that book, which still rings true 30+ years later, was that I am a craftsman at heart who kept finding myself drawn into the gamesmanship of the workplace for which, in spite of not liking it, I seemed to have some aptitude.  Today was one of those days were a lot actually got done but I didn’t seem to be the one doing it, i.e., not a craftsman kind of day.  At least I made a partial recovery when we got home from Lowe’s and I had things I could install: light bulbs, a curtain rod, and salt for the water softener.  Such days leave me tired but not in a satisfied way.  Some days are like that, but so far I haven’t had very many of them in retirement.

I fixed two of our toilets on Thursday, but one of them apparently isn’t completely fixed yet.  I awoke this morning to sound of water running.  The flap had not sealed, causing the tank to not fill and the water to continue to run.  I have no idea how much water ran into the septic tank, but it was more than should have.  To make matters worse, I wanted to start a load of laundry early this morning only to discover that we had zero (0) gallons of water softener capacity remaining.  The softener indicated that it was going to recharge today, which meant around midnight based on how it is programmed, so I decided to start the regeneration cycle manually.  That was at 7:45 AM.  The cycle finished around 12:45 PM.  Yup, 5 hours during which I could not do the laundry, or dishes, or much else other than flush the toilets.  That’s why it’s set to run at night.  More thumb twiddling.

I checked my e-mail to see what the latest chatter was regarding the RV rally / photo workshop we are scheduled to attend.  With the federal government shut down we won’t have access to Smoky Mountain National Park (or any other federal facilities) and there was some thought of cancelling the workshop.  The problem is that the RV park where all of us are staying doesn’t give refunds and our deposit is 50% of the total camping fee for the week.  Since SMNP is closed the RV park was willing to let us re-book for any time during the next 12 months (that they had openings) for only an additional $25.  I wish I had to way to make money for doing nothing.

Our specific interest in this workshop is to learn to more fully use our digital camera (Sony Alpha 100) and to learn something about digital image post-processing software.  From that point of view, being in the Smoky Mountains in the fall was simply a bonus.  While we like nature, and I have always liked doing nature photography, our objectives for the workshop don’t require any specific subject matter in front of the lens.

We also made plans (and reservations) to meet up with Linda’s sister, brother, and his wife after the rally/workshop for a few days of camping, so we were committed to going whether there was a workshop or not.  It turned out that some of the other participants had done the same thing, and the final consensus was that the rally/workshop would go on as scheduled, national park or no national park.  That was a relief, but everything was up in the air for about 48 hours while this got sorted out.

Keith came by today to cut/trim the lawn.  He usually comes every other Tuesday, and normally would have come next week, but we asked him to pull ahead to the end of this week so the yard would look nice for the open house /warming.  He saves Fridays for “make up” work in case he gets rained out during the week.  That’s happened to him a lot this summer, but he was here as promised and in spite of the threat of rain.  It spritzed a little right after he arrived around 11 AM and then stopped, allowing him to get the whole yard done.  He always does a good job, and took the extra time today to get his blower out and blow off the driveways and the deck; a nice touch, and much appreciated.  But this was work Keith did, not me, so it was his craftsmanship, not mine.

Keith was done about the same time the water softener finished regenerating, so I finally got my load of laundry in the machine and we headed for Lowe’s and Meijer’s for last minute household items and food.  We are trying to prep this event so that the only thing we have to get on Sunday morning is ice for beverages.  We stopped at Teeko’s coffee shop before heading home.  (At Latson Road and Grand River Avenue, between Brighton and Howell, we have a Lowe’s, Walmart, Staples, Meijer’s, O’Reilly’s Auto, Teeko’s, and lots of other small stores.)  Teeko’s has become one of our favorite places to get coffee.  They stock “green” (dried but unroasted) beans and roast them at time of purchase.  They have a very nifty air-roaster that can produce anything from a very light to a very dark roast, but never burns the beans.  They have a nice variety of beans from Africa, Central/South America, and islands like Sumatra and Hawaii.  They even keep some 100% Kona on hand (we have some at home).  This time we picked up a pound each of a Costa Rica Decaf and Organic Guatemalan Nueva.

Linda made a really nice dish for dinner:  Fresh beets roasted with balsamic vinegar, grape seed oil, and a touch of sugar and served over fresh kale, wilted and mixed with couscous.  I’m sure there were some other seasonings in there, but those were the main ingredients.  Roasted beets are a real treat.

Linda has been monitoring the weather forecast leading up to/through Sunday.  The rain never materialized today, but it was very cloudy and humid and the high hit 81.  Not Michigan’s October best, but nothing to be done about it other than turn on the air conditioning.  Thunderstorms are forecast for overnight, and based on the radar it looks like we will finally get the promised rain.  Tomorrow will be a big day, with final house cleaning and lots of food preparation.  She has some tasty things planned for Sunday.

 

2013_10_02 (W) Decks, Maps, & TV

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Linda and I both worked around the house today and by dinner time we finally felt confident that the house would be presentable for the open house / house warming on Sunday.  Another half day and my office will be ready for visitors.  While Linda vacuumed, I installed new flappers in the two upstairs toilets and a new handle mechanism in one of them.  They now flush and shut off correctly without having to do anything special with the handles or take the top off the tanks to seat the flappers by hand.  Although we figured company would appreciate that, the real motivation was to make sure they did not draw water continuously through our water softening and purification system.

Jim Pipoly was back to finish the deck and had Adam to help him.  A much younger guy by comparison to us, it was nice to watch the two of them work.  Experience and attitude count for a lot, and quality paint work requires a careful yet efficient approach; you have to keep moving without ever rushing or letting your attention drift.  They started around 9:30 AM in order to let the dew evaporate and worked until about 7 PM, but they got all of the painting done, and it looks very nice.

By late morning it was sunny but not hot.  We opened all of the awnings on the motorcoach to let them dry.  A couple of weeks ago at the RV rally in Goshen we had to roll them up wet and had not had a chance to unroll them since then.  Not good, but not much we could do about it until today.

Linda needed some things from the grocery store, so I decided to try updating the maps in our Rand-McNally GPS again.  The last time I tried this it said it was going to take 14+ hours to download the updates.  It did, in fact, take that long and it hung up before it finished.  Today, however, things went much better.  The map and device update combined took about 2 hours and completed successfully.  Yea!  She brought home two Sam Adams seasonal variety 12-packs and I put them in the bus fridge to chill them down and add some mass to the refrigerator compartment.  Refrigerators and freezers work much better when they are full, as long as they are overstuffed to the point where air cannot circulate.

While I was working with the GPS, Linda decided to play with the TV sets in our bus.  We had never tried tuning in any local, over-the-air (OTA) stations.  When Ed and Betty Burns were here in their RV in late August, they were only able to tune in one station, and that was FOX, so we figured we were out of luck.  To our surprise, the front TV set found 27 digital channels, including sub-channels of the main channels.  She even picked up PBS from two different sources!  Yippee.  And this was without aiming the antenna.  Once we have a better idea of which direction to point it for each station, or cluster of stations, we may be able to pick up even more signals.

I decided to try the rear TV, which is the one with the defective rotor mechanism.  It did not find as many channels on the first try, so I rotated it to the right (I think) about five positions (maybe) and tried again.  This time we got 25 channels.  Not bad.  So much for needing satellite TV at our house!  I am sufficiently impressed with the performance of these antennas that I may get two more for the house.  Ideally I will mount them on the tower (existing or new).  The problem will be running the co-ax and control cables (it always is).

So why the sudden interest in TV?  Well…the open house is Sunday, and Sunday is professional sports day, and some of our guests are making a huge sacrifice coming to visit instead of watching their favorite sports, so….we thought making some sports broadcasts available would be a nice gesture.  Of course, that means we will have to make popcorn too.

After dinner we loaded some leftover wood from the ham shack/office remodeling project into the back of the Element and got it off the lower walkout deck.  We also moved the leftover suspended ceiling tiles and the shop vac back to the garage.  The only projects I have left in the basement are hanging a wine glass rack over the bar and reassembling the corner of the room where I removed the knotty pine wall boards to facilitate the installation of the 240V, 100A cable to the subpanel that powers the RV outlet, ham shack, and office computer outlets.  But those are tasks for another day.

Having had a reasonably productive day, I made the classic mistake of thinking I could get one more thing accomplished starting at 9 PM.  I wanted to update our Garmin nuvi 465T GPS unit that we use in the Honda Element.  The last time I tried to do this the Garmin Express client couldn’t connect to the Garmin servers.  And so it was again tonight.  Fiddle with USB cables and ports, but no success.  I finally Googled Garmin Express server problems and got a lot of hits.  After reading through a few knowledge base Q&As and trying to update some drivers (I had the Gamin website instead of the Garmin website and they wanted $$) I decided to just reinstall Garmin Express.  I downloaded it, saved, ran the installation .exe file, and voila! it finally worked again.  And my maps and other date were still there and it even recognized our specific device.  It updated the device software successfully and 10:30 told me it was “Safe to Walk Away”.  Really; that’s the message it gave me.  Apparently the map update was going to take approximately 3 hours.  The software must have known what time it was and figured I wanted to go to bed.  And so I did; right after I uploaded and edited this post.  Night, night.