Working on the Roof, But Not Me

A couple of weeks ago, David, submitted a bid for re-shingling our house.  Copy of the bid is below.

A couple of days ago, one of his workers showed up and indicated that they would start tomorrow, but tomorrow would be Tuesday which is our day to be at the temple.  Two men showed up this morning and began the job.  They began to back their trailer at the front of the garage door.  I had them wait until I got the our car out of the garage.  They then backed about a foot from the door.  There was snow on the roof and with a snow shovel they were able to scape off the snow.  A blower was use to remove the rest.   One person started peeling the singles and nails off the roof, and the other worker would pick up the shingles and drop them into the trailer.

picture of trailer.

  I wanted some pictures of the progress that they are making.  I suggested that I would get a good picture if one of them fell off the roof.  Below, one pretended that he had lost his balance.

In House Decorations

Nut Crackers

Mike came by to look at the roofing

Crystal Balls

Christmas Tree

More decroatations outsiden

Starting the Outdoor Christmas Lights

There is a Costco store in Delta.  It opened it doors Wednesday.  We received an advertisement in the mail Wednesday morning.  There are a lot of items mentioned in the ad that we might need.  We drove over this morning.  It is quite a large store with clothing, food, electronics, Christmas decorations, and others.   We wanted to buy a Christmas tree, but they didn't have what we wanted. We bought some LED Christmas lights. 

As soon as we got home I started with the decorations.  It took some time to find the right boxes in the garage.  It was much easier to get the boxes out because of the extra room in the garage.  Last year I took the boxes into the house which left some of the rooms in a clutter.  I put the lights on the front porch.  There are two rope lights.  One white and the other red.  It took a while to get it done and it looks pretty nice. 

I wrapped four trees with LED lights.  I draped the icicle lights around the lilac bush and the forsythia bush.  It is dark now and the lights are on and they look pretty good.

Thanks Giving At Eagle Mountain

We spent most of the morning preparing for Thanksgiving.  We finished the Frog eye  salad, prepared the relish plate with carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, Juliet tomatoes, and celery.  I had to dig potatoes which was pretty easy.  I picked the tomatoes yesterday afternoon. 

It snowed some during the night, but none of it stuck the road.  We loaded most in the cooler.  We had birthday presents for Payten and Hanna.  It was nearly ten when we left.  We stopped in Provo to fill up with gas.  The test of the trip to Eagle Mountain went smoothly.  Carol helped getting the dinner ready.  There was a lot of food.  Eric and Lisa and their family soon arrived.  It was a little crowded, but everyone got plenty to eat. 

Hanna and Payten Johnson opening birthday presents.

Skyler Gray and Nichols Johnson.

 Payten on my lap.

A group of us waiting out side for a family picture.

The last picture.  I snapped around twenty; this is the one that I used.

The Birthday Party

A little after twelve today we drove to Utah county.  We had some shopping to do and a birthday party to attend.  It rained all the way and all the way home.  Our first stop was at Walmart in Payson.  Stop number two was at Sam's Club in Provo.  We walked through the store, picked up a few items.  There were many sampling stations at this time.  We tried a lot of the samples.  One the way out I saw Dean Sampson, a cousin of mine whom I haven't seen for a long time.  Other than I talked to him at the same Sam's Club a couple of weeks ago.  I wanted to get a picture then but didn't think about at that time and when we left, I couldn't find him.

Below is the picture that Carol took.  I am on the left and Dean on the right.

We went to the birthday party of Patrick Lewis, our great grandson.  With some difficulty we found Emily's house.  First of all we finished our shopping with a couple of hours before the party was to start.  We were close to WinCo's so we walked through the store and bought a few things.  We stopped at Gary's house to visit while we waited for the party time.  They were not home.  We then made our way to Emily's house.  All this time it was raining.  Sometimes is was heavy rain and other time is was a sprinkle.  Using the UPS on my phone, we found her house and then parked at the nearby church and waited.  We had to wait 90 minutes.  We listened to the radio, we called Elizabeth and Lisa to help pass the time away.  At about a quarter to seven we drove in front of the home.  Knocked on the door.  A teenager came to the door, and it was not the right house.  It was dark and stormy, we couldn't see the house number,  I walked up to the door, good news.  The house number is the one that we wanted.  We went in and visited.  A little later other family members came including The Bingham's who were Emily's Grandparents.   We visited more and then were served with pizza pie. 

I bought the three sweet potatoes on the right at Sam's Club.  The lighter one on the left came from WinCo.

They had prepared a piñata and the younger children there took turns trying to smash it.  Photos below. 

 An interesting sideline: Patrick was hitting hard and some pieces of candy fell on the floor.  He would stop and pick them up and put them back in the piñata.  The he would hit again.   Patrick is the one with his back to use.  His mother, Emily, is to the left.

It turned eight and soon after that we went home.  It rained all the way home.  The lines on the road were hard to see because of the darkness and the rain.  We got home just before ten.

Garage Organization and Thickness Plainer

I was in the garage a big part of the day organizing and cleaning.  The work bench is so covered with nuts and bolts and some tools that I can't do any work there.  It seems if there is a flat surface anywhere, ie, table, bench, table saw, plainer, and radial arm saw it soon gets covered with junk.  I was able to get most off the workbench and radial saw.  Next week  I will finish up and do a little more.

I have had this Delta Thickness planer for 25 years.  I used it to most for most of the finish work on our house.  I replaced the blades once, but it never did work right.  I removed the saw dust in the table saw.  The gear that raises and lowers the blade it hard to turn.  I cleaned it up.  I would help if I lubricated the gear, but that catches the dust. There may be some way to wax it, which would make it easier to crank.  Under the extended saw table, I found the out feed support.  There was not enough room on the plainer base.  Whenever I planed a board the planer blade gouge the end.  I deliberately cut the board longer and then trim the gouged end. 

I removed the planer.  I found a 3/4 inch piece of plywood that was wide and long enough to make a larger base.  I trimmed it to the right size and with grabber screws attached firmly to the original base.   There were a lot of paper staples in the wood that I pulled out.  With my belt sander I smoothed off the top.  Before the plainer would slide to the west side.  I fixed that problem also.  There four small scraps of wood.  two on the near side and two on the other side.   Below you can see the black out-feed table on the right.  I shouldn't call it a table, because it so small.  I put several pieces of wood of different lengths.  It worked perfectly.

Carol interrupted me for a short ride around town.  On second west and about third north there are some old out building and manger for cattle.  When cattle eat, the dominant cow will push the other animal out of the way.  The manger in the picture is just like the one my dad had.  It is made out a 2 inch 2 by 12 cut diagonally from one corner to the opposite corner. 

The Garage Clean-up

Carol asked me to help with sweeping the garage.  That's no big deal.  I can do that and get back the greenhouse work that I started this morning.  There is forecast of snow tonight.  I planned to brace the greenhouse so the bows would not collapse. 

This is how the garage looked before we started.  Most of the cleaning occurred on the west front wall.  The photo below shows how it looked before we started.  The back half of the garage is were the table saw is and other wood working tools.  Most stuff between the car and the window on the right ended up in the dumpster. 

This is how it looked when we stopped.  The next project is to build shelves on the west wall to store the boxes.  Those boxes contain Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas decoration.  It was hard to throw away so many things.  I had hundreds of garden magazines, some of the fifty years old that I have looked at for many years.  There were a lot of church magazines that went to the dump.  When I can see them on line any time that I want to, there is not much need to save them.

We kept sweeping closer to the walls all the empty  boxes piled there started to slide off.  Many of them were broke down so they would lay flat.    We ended up removing most of the boxes.  We loaded them into the truck and took them to the dumpster a couple of miles north of town.  There was not much garbage in it.  We made three trips and it looks like we filled it up.  Before, we could not open all the way  the car doors.  Now we can get in the car with plenty of room to spare.

Super Hamburger Patty

At 5:30 this evening, Carol asked me to cook supper.  "There's some hambuger. cook it at six.  I finished watching the news and began to prepare the hamburger.  I don't like to do hamburgers because they get to thick.  I decided to make one big hamburger.  I added to the meat in a mixing bowel onions, garlic, and salsa to the meet and mixed it up with my hands.  I pammed the frying pan, put in the meat, and formed it into one big hamburger, turned on the heat.  I cooked the one side for eight minutes.  Can I turn it over?  No! I put a large dinner plate upside down over the pan.  I started to turn it over and it slipped out of my hand.  I saved most of it, but landed on the burner to my left and some went to the floor.

I cleaned up the mess and turned over what was left in the pan. 

It is now on the table ready to eat.  It really tasted good.  Carol had baked two large pieces of banana squash to go with it.  We had yogart for desert.