The Milligan gathering Saturday afternoon

January 12, 2020 - Sunday morning

-9 degrees/clear skies/calm winds

Pentoga Road

Whew, it's a bit nippy this morning.

It was a wonderful post New Years get together that Sargie's younger brother, Steve, and his wife, Bonnie, hosted on Saturday. There was food galore with plenty of laughing and talking. The frosting on the cake was being able to watch the NFL playoffs at the same time.

Perfect.

I mostly sat at the periphery of the crowd yesterday and watched the football games. With all the background talking, I couldn't understand a thing. When someone talked to me, I could only smile, nod my head, and every once in a while, I'd point to an ear and shrug my shoulders.

My hearing is bad and rapidly getting worse. I've put off going to an audiologist as I don't want to mess around with expensive hearing aides. My grandparents wore them as well as Mom. It's a heredity thing worsened by years of directing loud marching bands in my former life. Throw in a few decades of chain saws, driving a loud snowmobile for hours each day, and operating power tools and it's pretty much a hopeless case.

I know Sargie often gets exasperated with me as her voice is very soft. Combine that with possessing the hearing of a cement block and we often have a difficult time communicating. 

I think come spring, it'll be time to take the hearing aid plunge. 

I took Sargie to her sister, Trish's, Saturday morning in Felch. Sister, Jeanne, drove up from Iron Mountain and the ladies rode together to the funeral. After, Sargie rode with Steve to their house where she helped Bonnie prepare for yesterday's get together.

I arrived back home and donned my heavy clothes in preparation of running the cable for the cell booster around the outside of the house and eventually, through the wall into the living room.

Affixing cable in temperatures ranging in the low teens with a gusty north wind presents some particular challenges. There were times yesterday that I felt I was back working on Hilltop Camp in the arctic.

It all went very well until I found I didn't have a drill bit long enough to go completely through the wall of the living room. The only thing to do was to pound a homemade nail of some kind through the interior hole so I'd know where to drill from the outside.

I ended up in the shop, cutting a piece of rebar and sharpening one end. It worked like a charm.

How to thread the stiff, cold, cable through an eight inch wall? A wire solved that problem. 

I simply hooked the cable end onto the wire and pulled it through from the inside. The cable, receiver, and almost everything associated with it is hidden behind the couch.

Caulking, insulation, and no small amount of sweeping sawdust followed. In the end, all that shows is the small indoors transmitter sitting on an end table that allows us to receive a full cell signal in the house.

Pardon the fuzzy picture, but we're now receiving four bars of LTE cell signal. In fact, when using data, it's much faster than our satellite internet connection. 

Another project checked off the list of things to do.

Andy and I texted yesterday. He's on his boat off the coast of Melbourne, Australia, and is liking his new home and country. He says the people are really friendly, he has his own berth, satellite tv, a decent internet connection, and he says the food is outstanding. 

After his scare with pirates off the coast of Africa, my little guy seems to be very happy working in the waters of Australia.

Other than go for my walk, I'm not sure what Sargie and I will be doing today. We're heading over to Yooper Brother Mark and Sheri's to watch the Packers playoff game late this afternoon. Otherwise, I'll let Sargie call the shots.

Time to take a walk.

After all, a man's work is never done.

So are the tales from Pentoga Road...

Sargie sent this to me. I thought it was a joke until I actually went to the web page and discovered there is such a thing.
No doubt, it's recommended somewhere in the Manual of Safe Driving.