February 16, 2013 – Saturday morning

-12/clear/calm/cold

Pentoga Road

Though March is in our sights, it doesn’t appear winter is going to willingly relinquish its grip on our little corner of the world anytime soon. It’s beautiful outside today. The hoar’s frost that covers each tree makes everything look as though God took His time decorating the world with lace. Beautiful.

Friday was a good one on Pentoga Road. After uploading the log, I put on my hiking boots and stepped out for my daily five-mile stroll. The weather was… interesting. The sun was shining when I left, but within half a mile, I ran into heavy snowfall driven by strong winds. Five minutes later, the sun was out, the wind calm, and I unfastened my coat to let some body heat escape. A bit later, the snow and wind were back. I thought I must be in Sitka.

Sargie announced it was time to assemble and hang a silver chandelier we’d purchased last fall from Insurance Liquidators in Iron River. Originally costing hundreds of dollars, Sargie discovered the opened and broken box tucked away on a shelf. As queen of the bargain bin, she explored further and found all the glass globes to be intact with loose wires jutting everywhere, but basically, everything seemed to be there.

It had been marked down several times and in the end, we paid $14.00 for the chance to have a beautiful light hanging over our dining room table. The cashier looked at the tattered box, shook her head, and said if it didn’t work, to bring it back within thirty days and she’d give us our money back.

Sargie's hiding the cord behind the window trim

The problem is, we put the light down the basement last fall and until recently, forgot about it. Yesterday was assembly day.

I quickly found why it was marked so inexpensively. The rod that extends through the entire chandelier came from the factory with bad threads. It couldn’t be assembled because the brass nut had nothing to grip.

I know that darned bulb fits in there somehow.

I went to the barn and started sorting through my bag of tricks. Finally, armed with a hardened nut, a hacksaw blade with which to help make new threads, my heavy magnifiers, Sargie’s support, several pairs of pliers, wrenches, and vice grips, and all sorts of words that Mom would have washed out my mouth for saying, the five-light chandelier was wired, assembled, and hung.

Pretend like you don't see that exercise ball and the candles are straight, okay? Hanging the light had been a long and tedious process.

We traveled to Iron Mountain last night and visited with Mr. Milligan for a couple of hours. He was in an extraordinarily great mood and we chuckled, laughed, and talked from the time we arrived to when we left him sitting at a table ready to play Bingo. As I told Sargie while coming home, I truly hope and pray that should I live to an advanced age, I can be as loving and happy and have the same great attitude as Mr. Milligan. I walk away from our visits feeling better than I did before. He’s truly an inspiration.

We’re supposed to pick up the Kia this morning in town. There are uphill snowmobile drag races on the old ski hill in Brother Yooper Mark’s town of Caspian. I may stop by there and if there’s not too big a crowd, watch for a bit. Otherwise, it should be a quiet day.

But first, I need to get this uploaded and take my five-mile stroll. After all, a man’s work is never done.

So are the tales from Pentoga Road…