Year 19, Week 33, Day One (week 1033)

Year 19, Week 33, Day One (week 1033)
(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
08-31-19 Saturday

I stopped at the nearest gas station and gassed up, then went to Mom’s for breakfast.
The Labor Day BBQ was cancelled. We have to get ready for the storm instead. I started some multi grain bread. I had taken the dough out of the freezer and set it out to thaw. I had also ran some grain through my coffee grinder and then cooked it up. When we got back from breakfast, I mixed the grain into the bread and kneaded it quite a bit, and set it to rise. 
I worked outside for a bit and then came back in and punched it down, folded the corners in and flipped it over. Later I came back and it had risen nicely and I cut it in four pieces, then put the pairs of pieces back together as that was not enough in the larger pans. I then spread cooked grain bits on top of them and let them rise. 
When I got back, they rose really high and I stuck them in the oven with the lasagna. I took them out, had to fight them out of the pan, then put them back in the over for ten more minutes. 
I cut one up after it cooled a tiny bit. I tasted it as I was cutting it and it was good. I did not need to add grain on top. The dough had over rose as I did not get in soon enough so the top slumped. I don’t care. It came out good. Mom ended up what was left of one I had cut up. I have the other one still whole. I also have the small still whole loaf I had made last week. 
The place smelled so good for most of the day. The previous times I made bread, I never seemed to get the good scent. Today It really smelled good. 


We determined that the storm was coming here and decided now was a good time to start getting the houses ready. An agreement with mom’s neighbor is that we can store our stuff in his garage in exchange that we ready his house for the storm.
I then started on wooden feet for my big cane. I drilled the holes for the legs and cut the corners off the pieces. A bit later in the day, I sat down and tried to fit them using the dremmel and found they have to be a lot deeper. The legs on this cane has a lot of straight, not bending for quite a while. On the small four footed canes, they can be shallow as the bend stops them and helps hold them in place. I will drill these deeper and then try to fit them. I will have to shape them properly later. I am just fitting them for now. 

My brother and nephew arrived to take down the awning and do some other work. My brother and I got the equipment into the garage and my nephew made a shutter for mom’s  back door. We picked up most of the tools. We then decided to wait till tomorrow to do more. The storm, even now is in question how bad it will be here. Farther away from the coast the storm is, the weaker the winds will be here. Our awning can handle up to 40 mph winds, which we get sometimes from thunderstorm down bursts, but don’t want to chance higher speed winds the storm could give us. 

Later in the day, I mowed the neighbor’s back lawn where I had mowed it before, and then got into the stuff I missed last time. The grass was wet and did not want to cut. I stopped on the long stuff when an elephant came out of the jungle and nearly stepped on the mower. I will try to do more next time.

Tomorrow I will likely start putting up shutters and bringing the rest of the stuff inside or put where they won’t become missiles.  My brother is supposed to come tomorrow for Lunch (steaks I supply) and we will decide whether the awning comes down or stays up.

Last night after work, I had dropped by and moved all mom’s neighbor’s potted plants into the planter next to the front door so they are protected from falling over. It also holds the garbage cans in place. He put the garbage cans there as workers who were on the place kept filling the recycling can with garbage and the recyclers won’t take that type of stuff. He put the recycling bin up against the wall so it was hard to get garbage into it.




Year 19, Week 33, Day One (week 1033)
(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
09-01-19 Sunday


I started the morning putting up shutters. I first put them up on the far side of the neighbor’s house and down the back. I took a long break, then started moving more stuff from under the awning. I did more shutters. 
My brother and niece came and after a steak lunch, we removed the awning panels where I did the woodworking. I put up more shutter panels and found I did not have enough panels, nor enough wing-nuts. I did not know that. I was never involved with the panels before as I had never put them up before today. Had I known this, I would have tried to get more panels and wing nuts. Of course some screws needed to be super-glued in place. I did some but my packet of super glue disappeared mid day. 
I put stuff away and packed stuff up. I had to take many rest periods. Other than a few minor things, we basically got everything done. 

The feet for my cane was too shallow. I dug out the drill press which is a hand-held power drill in a frame, and drilled them much deeper. I drove the legs in. They look stupid right now as they are angular and not round. I have to do a lot of shaping and sanding on them. These legs are on an angle so only an edge of the blocks are on the ground. I had forgotten about that. What I need to do is round them, then let scraping from use to flatten them. Either that, get some new rubber feet for it.... The lathe is deep in the garage, the disk sander needs a new sanding disk and I am not quite sure where the extra disks are right now. It could be something I do tomorrow when I get a break. 

We had the eye of loin steaks I got last week and it was pretty good. Mom liked them. They are more tender than a chuck steak. It is not the higher quality cuts but it was good. We don’t have beef steaks too often. Mom had her mixed veggies and a salad with it. Nice lunch. I came home with some cooked steaks. 

As for the storm, we will get some very strong squalls with strong winds, but not the eye. It is suggested that at three tonight will be some squalls, but at six tomorrow is when it will be at its worst. 
Even without the eye there could be some tree damage and things blown around.  70 mph squall is a tropical storm wind. Hurricane winds are anything above 75mph. The question is whether the power or water will go out. The weather people are still waiting for things to fall into place, a slight bit off can make a big difference in what damage the storm does. I’ve seen vids from the Bahamas. Ouch!!!!
We were blessed with having several days to prepare. We’ve done it before with just a day or so warning. Because of how we are arranged, that ends up being a lot of work. Today, the hard part was putting up the shutters. The project is not really hard, but there is a lot of pieces and a lot of standing and walking and bending over. 

Year 19, Week 33, Day One (week 1033)
(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
09-02-19 Monday (labor day, storm day)

I accomplished very little today. After breakfast, I went out and moved the panels on mom’s neighbor’s house from the front bathroom window and put them on the master bathroom window. That is in an Ell in back and things have a lot more room to fly. 

I spent most of my time at Mom’s house, talking, watching different programs, playing on my tablet. I had brought the leftovers from yesterday and we had that for dinner. I had sliced up the two loaves of bread I made and we each ate a couple slices of that. 
I did go out to the corner and took pictures down each of the streets from different angles. I figured that if there was any damage, it would be nice to have before and after pictures. 

The storm is stalled, not able to make a decision so everything is waiting. I could well go to work tomorrow but I likely  won’t. I figure it likely will be much like today.

At about one I napped for a couple hours. Last night, I had a hard time getting to sleep. My legs were filled with “bothersomes” caused by the work I did yesterday and it took a while to get them worked out so I could go to sleep. After I got to sleep, I basically slept the whole night. 
This morning and today has been pretty good. 

We are getting slapped by the wires of the storm like a weed eater. They whip around, shower on us as they rush by, blast a little bit of wind and then go. There is a good breeze all day long. The tropical storm area is just off the coast. It would not take much for the storm to “wobble” and get us under it. 
At the time of this writing, this is the second time the eye has been replaced. The feeder bands sometimes wrap all the way around the eye. That becomes the wall of the new eye and the old one fades out. The storm loses strength for a while (spreads out also). Before today, the storm was drawing up warm water to feed it. Now it is drawing up cold water, its food is used up so it has weakened a bit. A trough is working its way across the states and when it reaches the right point, the storm will start moving north and east. For now it is absolutely stationary. I had never heard of a storm doing that. 

Year 19, Week 33, Day One (week 1033)
(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
09-03-19 Tuesday


I accomplished next to nothing today. Early morning it looked like things would be bad. Later in the day, things looked a lot better.  Mom decided to get a small TV. When they changed out the dish system electronics, and she lost use of one of her cd/dvd players. We went to Best Buy and picked up a small TV and I helped her getting it working. I was able to get the HD channels over the air. 
I had forgotten that one of my favorite channels was CREATE (pbs channel). It is craft /travel /remodeling /cooking channel. There are a bunch of other channels. She found that changing the antenna (rabbit ears) effects the station she gets. She wanted 7 and 10 for the news so she set the antenna so Create does not come in well.

After a nap, I talked with mom before leaving and she thanked me several times for being with her and helping her. I actually got a hug, which I don’t get a lot of. She liked having me around and her not being alone. 

The storm is almost all gone, except for some feeder bands sweeping by. The tail feeder band might come over us for a bit while it leaves. I really need to mow the lawns before I put my neighbor’s plants out again. It is good to mow the grass where the potted plants stand as it is hard to get to the grass with the pots in place.
The house across the street had a canvas roof up and the wind tore it up a bit. They never took it down. That is the only damage I’ve seen around here. I once considered getting one of those canvas car awning/roof things. Considering the work it took to get ready for this storm, and we had several days, I can see that might be more work than I could handle if we only had a day warning. 

I will be going to work tomorrow. It will be interesting to see how long it will take for them to retrain me to do my work...  I will say that it feels like I was off a week already. I will say that I did a year’s worth of work this weekend. 
Since I stayed at Mom’s all weekend, I used no gas this weekend.

Will see what happens next weekend.
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