September 16, 2021 - Thursday morning
55 degrees/partly cloudy/breezy
Pentoga Road

I see a setting like the one above and I think of what many who've had near death experiences mean when they say they wanted to "go to the light."

There's little doubt that God lives in that light, but then, He lives all around us all the time, doesn't he. He just gave me a small glimpse into His home at sunrise yesterday morning and for that, I'm grateful.

Indeed, yesterday's walk was a good one. With the sun peeking over the horizon, accompanied by cool temperatures, I clicked off the four miles in under an hour's time.

For those who have asked, the trail camera didn't record any critters the night before last. Whatever was robbing the burn barrel has quit, at least for now. 

Wednesday was a busy one. I spent time in and out of the shop applying multiple coats of finish to the bowls. One coat would be applied and I'd go somewhere else and do something, then once dry, add another very thin layer. With low humidity and perfect drying conditions, that was repeated several times throughout the day.

Once I turn the feet from both bowls and apply finish to the bottoms, they'll be done.

The guttering along one side of the storage shed was installed yesterday. With Sargie's help, I was able to fasten a board from above onto which the guttering would attach.

Water streams off the roof so fast during heavy snow melt or rainstorms that it splashes under the door and into the storage shed. Hopefully, the guttering will alleviate that problem.

Sargie's been gently telling me that the wash machine was taking much too long to fill. Living in Iron County, just ten miles from Iron River and forty miles from Iron Mountain, our water contains a large amount of... yep, iron. Basically, it's nails disguised as H2O.

Yesterday saw me removing the hot and cold water hoses, cleaning the screens, then screwing one end back to the washer and pouring white vinegar into the end that remained unattached. After letting the vinegar do it's thing for a few minutes, water once again freely flowed.

It took almost as long to level the machine after pulling it away from the wall. Sargie eventually was able to take the washer for a test drive and found it  performed flawlessly.

Sargie's been wanting a water softener for the past ten years and I've resisted. People have lived with hard water since the beginning of time. Why change now?  

I didn't have a water softener in the cabin or on the boat in Alaska and look how squeaky clean I turned out. 

After yesterday's wrestling match with the washer and banging my head a few hundred times on the overhead pipes and heating ducts, I think it's time to eliminate those nails from our water. There's definitely a softener in our future.

I painted a board yesterday, finished, and had just pounded the lid onto the can. Flipping it upside down to seal any small holes, I discovered it wasn't on nearly as tight as I'd thought. The lid flew off allowing big gob of paint to spill onto the shop floor.

Mama didn't have the smartest boy on the block, you know.

I've been thinking of painting the shop floor at some point in the future to make sweeping easier, although white is certainly not my color of choice.

What to do, what to do. With clean up difficult, I decided to make lemonade from lemons and simply brushed the paint as far as it would reach. 

 

At some point in the future, I'll choose a more appropriate shop color and paint the entire floor. Until then, we'll look at the white splotch as a fashion statement. I hear simply everyone's doing it.

Sargie Pants made a great batch of spaghetti for supper. The rest of the night was spent in front of the television watching America's Got Talent.

On a much more serious note, many of us in the UP are sad today as we learned that Karl the Weatherman was fired yesterday after forecasting the weather for thirty-three years for WLUC - Channel 6 in Marquette. As much as I liked to tease about Karl the Weatherman's inaccuracies, he was good, darned good. 

Seems the NBC affiliate handed down a mandate that all employees had to be vaccinated. Karl refused and rather than submit to a heavy handed government/corporate mandate, he followed his principles and for all intents and purposes, ended his long career. 

I remember when, just a few years ago, America was still the land of the free, home of the brave. Suddenly, our once strong country has become the laughing stock of the world and we are losing on both fronts.

"My body/my choice" only seems to apply to when it comes to killing babies. Who cares what Karl or anyone else thinks.

Good luck, Karl. We'll miss you and I'm sorry for teasing you throughout the years. 

You're good, Karl. No, you're darned good.

So are the tales from Pentoga Road...