Relaxing in M-F…

Note to readers: It has come to my attention that at least one reader who wished to be removed from the notification list for my blog when a new post was posted *couldn’t* get taken off the list by using the Subscribe2 app’s ‘Unsubscribe’ feature and repeatedly got an error message whenever he tried to unsubscribe. At the time the subscriber contacted me, I was unable to delete his email from the list. This was either a problem with the app or with Word Press, I was unsure. Well, months passed with no solution I could find online. I told him what he could do at his end but for whatever reason he didn’t do. And that was, because he uses gmail, to just click on the ! at the top of his incoming mail page and show the email from my site as being spam. Problem solved as that email app would automatically place any emails from my system into the spam folder. That would work for any email service.

Just recently he contacted me again mentioning he was still getting the notifications from my blog so I had reason to check online for a solution again and this time I found something! A thread about the problem and one of the code authors offering a code change to the internal program of the Subscribe2 app. I’m not much of a coder these days due to lack of practice but eventually, I did find where to insert the repair code and that did the trick. I’m now able to remove subscriber’s email addresses that the app was preventing. One thing about his address is that it was in the form *****.****@gmail.com. So it had a period between his first and last names and that seemed to trip up Subscribe2 so it wouldn’t allow me to delete it as it didn’t recognize it as a true email address. Other subscribers didn’t seem to have a problem like this.

But, to shorten this story, if you’ve tried unsuccessfully to unsubscribe from my Blog, I (probably) won’t send any ruffians to rough you up to help you change your mind, so try again if you wish. Should work now.

And now…on with the blog!

Hanging around Milton-Freewater has turned out to be fairly nice. We had a few days of 100 F weather but not as much as I feared. Even so, during this period of hot weather it was much, much hotter down south where I hang out during winter so staying here’s better.

I had a backup plan to head into the mountains either north or west or east of here but turned out I didn’t need to. My heat pump did a fine job of quietly keeping the RV cool. There was a short period where I considered re-parking the RV so my tail end faced north westerly during the brutally hot portion of sunset each day, but never really got into a sustained period here of over 100 F daily temp, so I never bothered. I have blocking screens for the front windows plus the curtains plus aluminum foil backed bubble insulation stuffed up against each front window pane and some on the drivers side where the sun hits the most during the afternoon but it does help to have the tail end pointing that way instead of the front sometimes. I’ve done it several times in the past and it’s a handy way to keep the living spaces cool in the daytime and when I go to bed it’s usually cool enough that it’s hardly noticeable that it was baking all day.

And now it’s in a cooling trend and I’m sure I’ll be here until at least the end of October this year. What with Covid-19 and the comfortable routine I’m into. I have been finding enough work here at the park that I’m not so bored. I spent a week organizing my electronic part bins and discovered I need to restock on some parts. Oh, something kinda funny…I needed some 1N5818 Schottky diodes for stock as I’m totally out so I found some on eBay, ordered them. A couple days later forgot I’d already ordered them so ordered from a different supplier, couple days after that forgot again and ordered them again. So I have 3 orders coming for the same part. I’ll end up with 100+25+10 of them. Good thing they’re cheap. Less then $25 for all 135 parts. The cost turns out to be just $0.185 each and I could sell some of them for $0.49/ea in small quantities on eBay if I want.

And then one of the parks handymen asked me to work on his radio/CD portable player. Big battery operated thing for workmen on the job site. Looks like a suitcase. Big ass speaker. Anyway, only thing wrong was the battery was dead and partially shorted so that made it work weird. Fixed it by changing the battery. Then the other handyman had a big 47″ Vizio TV given to him…black screen. Needed new backlights which I bought and installed so it’s ready for him when he comes up with the $120 I’m asking for the job. And then yesterday I got to work on the parks broken Amana dryer. Just needs an idler pulley so when that comes in I’ll have another fix racked up. FUN!

When I’m not working on projects like the above, I am looking for property to buy here in the area so I occasionally check the web for new places that have come up for sale and if they look interesting, I’ll take a drive up to check them out. Here’s a few pictures of doing just that.

This place was not to my liking but I did think the trees were pretty neat. I’d like trees that big on any property I buy. If I buy.

The place had this historical sign in the field next to the house. Dunno how old the house is but the back yard had some really giant mature trees. Anyway, here’s where Fremont camped once. 1843, imagine that. Very close to the Walla Walla river here.

This next property I looked at was after this too narrow for my RV bridge…but here’s a look at the Walla Walla river.

Note all the river rocks. Much of the valley is a thin layer of topsoil covering billions of river rocks like these as the glacier here melted it was dropping them right and left. And middle. Around 12,000 years ago this would have been a raging torrent spanning the entire valley. This is all that’s left of the river. Close to being called a creek.

Here’s the house I came out to look at, but turned out to be unacceptable because of that narrow bridge. Nice looking piece of land though. The graded land has been mostly cleared of river rocks…but it’s probably one of those places where the rocks grow out of the ground every winter/spring season. I lived with that when I was a kid growing up in the Tri-Cities Washington, a town just an hours drive from here. That’s what happened there each spring as frost heaves made the rocks travel to the surface. That was always our first harvest…freakin’ rocks.

So here’s what the valleys around here look like. This is where most of the small farmers live as the valleys aren’t very wide here. Those big wheat farms up on top of the hills usually have a giant house you seldom see driving by as they are often miles from the highways.

Note that during the last ice age, much of this was covered by an ice sheet. And the rivers were huge for thousands of years as the climate warmed, all draining into the Columbia from here and other valleys like it. So plenty of time and opportunity for river rocks to be made and deposited. If you want to be a farmer, an ancient river valley has it’s challenges.

One morning I decided to make French Toast. From France. Easy if you’re using the dual waffle iron. Nothing to it. Very little clean up. Tasted great! Guilt free as I use sugar free syrup.

Then I needed to rebuild the cigar lighter insert for my air pump as mine was in bad shape. My old one was too far gone to repair after it fell apart and so I found one in my junk box to re-purpose. Put a screw terminal set on the back for versatility.

Most days are quiet and uncrowded around town since Covid-19 keeps people home and all. But my son has been coming over like once a week and we have dinner together and just the other day my sister and BIL finally came over for a visit. With goodies she makes in her kitchen. Yum. So that’s nice.

And of course I see my daughter on occasion since I’m so close…here’s her place of work again. She makes cheese! This is the retail section of the Walla Walla Cheese Company in downtown M-F.

They got’s yer smoked cheese, yer other kinds of cheeses, and my favorite, habanero cheddar cheese or if they’re out, yer hot Pepper Jack style cheeses.

I usually have a bowl of tomato soup and a grilled cheese sammich plus I buy a brick of cheese when I come in. And I get to visit with her for a bit too. One thing I’m enjoying a lot about this town is there are two drive in places where I can go get a nice belly full of ice cream when it’s too hot for real people to survive without ice cream. Oh, and the nearby Safeway has the most delicious low salt roasted chicken. Think I’ll go get some today now that I’m thinking about it. Most places I’ve been traveling to around the country where I check out their deli chicken, it’s almost always too salty to buy. And Kelly’s has the best fish & chips dinner I’ve had in decades. Where they get their fish is a mystery but it really seems to be that old Atlantic cod we got decades ago.

I haven’t seen a good movie to go to at the local drive in unfortunately. Most all of them have been movies I’ve seen before or I’m not interested. Maybe soon I’ll have the pleasure of seeing a movie in an old fashioned drive in that’s been here since the ’60’s. It’s 60 years old this year I think. You can take your lawn chair and sit outside your car. They have a working snack bar too. Oh, hey! They are showing Bill & Ted Face the Music. Not a huge fan of the first one but might be fun way to spend a couple hours. If it’s as silly as the first one. But they’ve put the hold on it right now because of the smoke from all the forest fires. Just maybe though, it might be open for this coming weekend! It’s only Monday and the smoke level is likely to change if the smoke blows out of the area, they only open on Fridays and Saturdays. [Update: They never showed that movie and didn’t hold it over either, just changed the offering because of the smoke. Too bad, I’m not interested in the new billing]. It would just take a direction change of the wind because we don’t have any fires near us, the smoke is coming up from California and over from the valleys presently.

So that’s all for now. Next time well drive to a tiny wide spot in the road an hour east of here in the Blue Mountains just to sample what’s supposed to be an excellent burger. Featured in several of those foodie mags and writeups. Bye for now and thanks for visiting!