July 2014 ......

July 2014

Happy July to us all!  

Okay. I think this is working. I will change the logo photo when I can.

ARK: OMG talk about strange things happening. 2 trucks in less than a week crashing into your place. That is amazing. Thank God, you, Donnie and none of the animals were injured. Your poor house. YIKES...What a shocker that had to be. What a nightmare..

Someday I will teach myself how to post the photos myself. LOL LOL When I have a few spare hours to sit around and swear at my computer. Of course, it is never my fault when it doesn't work.

We have been picking veggies. Cauliflower, lettuce, cabbage, peas & onions so far. The garden is producing nicely, after a very slow start. Nothing like home grown veggies to make a meal extra special.

The parade was SUPER..2 1/2 hours of entries. We were number 98 out of 247. The newspaper said there were over 25,000 people there to watch the parade. I think they exaggerated the number a tad. Maybe by 10,000 or so, there were a of people jammed into the little town of Lewisburg. Murray our oldest Purple Heart member was brought to the parade by his daughter, right out of the nursing home. He rode in our truck, he is 91 years old, this will probably be his last parade. It was wonderful that she brought him. We had 2 trucks & 14 people in the parade this year, every year we get more participation.

Happy July to everyone. Enjoy the summer. Don't forget to fly your flags on July 4th.

Love & prayers for all..

Well hurricane season has started and we are watching the first named storm form off our coast as I type they are saying that it will be a category 1 by later this week and it is heading right up the east coast please be careful and be prepared for anything it is not going to impact us inland just along the coast
I am glad that neither you or Donnie or your animals were hurt I hope that guy has insurance and you can get your house repaired fast maybe you should think about putting a concrete barrier along the road it sounds like your neighbor has a problem everyone take care and be careful

Dear Lord, ARK.  Praying from here those people have plenty of insurance.  How in the world?
Let's see:  3 trucks, 1 totaled maybe 40K………1 house maybe 5-7 K?  I'm guessing they won't ever get coverage under a national debt fee……………….by any chance did the same police show up on scene?
You can top any bad neighbor story ever written or told…………post pics when you can.

I'm sitting here shaking my head.  Maybe with any luck at all they're out of vehicles reducing your risk.
My praise for the day is that I'm not their insurance agent.

TRUDY, your parade sounds great.  Up here in the mtns we have our celebration on Friday with services, food and all Americana……….

SUNNY, batten down the latches……………

Prayers for ALL.

My word......I am rendered speechlesssss....it takes a lot to get me thereee, but that did it. I am soooooo happy the 3 of you r alright....yep I think their insurance should pay for a cement barrier for ur safety...they sound like a family of dumbshits...they need to be raked across the coals moneywise! get a good lawyer, sue them and take their house....u deserve it for the mental anxiety.

R u out of shock yet?

Well our taxes have increased and hay prices have gone up...we r saying goodbye to texas. listed it today.....

Hope everyone has a safe happy 4th!

I wish I could post pix. The damage is unreal. The part that scared me the most after finding out Annie was okay was not being able to find Kumquat, my cat. I had policemen helping me search the concrete and drywall rubble for her. Thankfully, we didn't find her there. She crawled out of wherever she was hiding about an hour after everything got quiet. One of the cops had been here the week before.

The family has run out of pickup trucks, but have a couple of cars and a motorcycle that reside there. We can't wait to see what they do with those!

Today both trucks were towed out of our yard and we got a rental car. We have arranged for a construction dumpster to have the rubble hauled to the dump. That should arrive tomorrow along with the damage assessor from the young man's insurance company. Then we can start clearing the mess. All this is supposed to be reimbursed.

Our insurance company is really great about helping us! They got the guy's insurance company to call us before the guy even had called them. They were great when we had the accident down in Florida a few years ago, too.

Anyway, things are starting to move along.

Oh my gosh, Ark! What a MESS! Thank the Lord nobody has been seriously hurt through it all. We'll look forward to seeing the pictures when you get your computer back to work.
Tornadoes, flooding, runaway pickup trucks? What else?
The cousins were coming Monday evening. The house was clean, cookies were made. I was ready. They got here and got the camper set up. We knew there was some weather coming in. The storm hit about midnight and took out the electricity all across northern Indiana and southern Michigan. We didn't get power back until today (Wednesday) about noon. Generators and chainsaws were running all around here. The noise has been deafening. Everybody was worried about losing freezer food, cutting limbs, hauling lake water to flush toilets, taking baths in the lake, and all the other inconveniences that go with not having power. Fortunately, the weather has been cool enough to be comfortable. After 35 hours with no electricity, we were all very relieved when they got it fixed and the power was back on. It's quiet again, and showers will be taken by all. I am very thankful for those hard-working (and probably very tired) linemen from several states who have spent the last two days providing power for thousands of people all over northern Indiana.

Trudy, it sounds like a really good parade. I often think it's rather interesting to hear the estimates of crowd sizes. They call them estimates; I call them guesses. LOL

CB, where are you going? I'm sorry it isn't working out there for you.

ELLEN, I saw your storm on the map but didn't know if you had gotten hit or not……hope your trees made it. Glad everyone is fine.


CB, sorry you are choosing to move but sure understand taxes & hay prices.   

Graymare, I didn't have any tree damage at all. Just a few little twigs down in the yard. The neighbor across the road had a fairly large branch fall off of a tree that is in the process of dying. Another neighbor got out his chainsaw and got it cut up and neatly stacked in short order. The owner of the house just had a heart episode on Saturday night and doesn't need any additional stress. He's doing okay now.
We have such a great neighborhood.
There were at least 500 or more lines down, and over a hundred poles down across the area.

OH My is right. The adventures everyone is experiencing is something else. CB sorry to hear that you will be moving from Texas. Seemed that you were really enjoying living there (with the exception of the hay prices.) Where would you like to move to next?

ARK, look for the silver lining, you wanted to do a little home remodeling anyway, right? Glad to hear that none of your family, including 4 legged ones were hurt.

ELLEN glad you got your electricity back on. I was fortunate that I didn't lose power, only more trees. I had a big ol' White Pine come down and take out the one little section of fence that I hadn't replaced earlier this spring along with the 16 ft steel gate. The gate is mangled beyond repair. The bolt hinges that were screwed into the railroad tie post were ripped out of the post. The good news is that the tree is so big that it acts as a barrier to keep the horses in the field until I can get it cut up. I'll have to replace the fence and gate at that time. Also had a giant limb come down on the pole barn. Good news is that it mostly bounced off. It did punch a hole in the roof but it's fixable. At least it didn't do any real structural damage. Too bad that it's all White Pine which is lousy firewood. There sure is a lot of it.

I probably won't get back on here before, so Everyone Have a Happy Fourth of July.

Yesterday, a 15 year old neighbor kid pressure washed my deck. Today he and my 10 year old third cousin painted the dock. For a couple of kids, they did a pretty good job. At least the top of the deck is white. They got paid.
Last evening and again this evening, those two plus several other visiting neighbors' kids all got together in my yard to play and talk. One of them had a an Eagle's Nest Outfitter hammock. It was soooo funny to watch them try to get in it. It was so much fun to hear the kids laughing and enjoying a late summer night at the lake. 11:00 and the fun was over for the day. They'll be ready to start again tomorrow.

Happy 4th of July everyone. Fly your flags high today.

CB: Sorry to hear you guys are on the move again, prices are really high up here too, I don't think there is anywhere that is escaping the crazy economy. Good luck with your move. I'll be praying for ya.

I think we are being spared from the wrath of Arthur, he seems to be staying out on the coast. Prayers for those not so lucky.

Love & prayers for all.

HAPPY   FOURTH of JULY !!!

   


This is my favorite holiday, although this year it isn't going quite as planned. Zippy gets the day off, no parade for us. We are going over to Blacksburg this afternoon to watch their parade. We've been in that one a couple of times, it will feel strange to view it from the sidewalk,   . The weather is perfect today, 70's and clear with a breeze. We aren't getting any rain off that hurricane, although we could sure use it.

We have cleared the loose rubble from the t.v. room. It is so weird to find things that have survived the crash all the way across the room. That room is 20 feet wide. Most of the electronic things that got hit will have to be replaced, along with our Monitor heater that heated that side of the house. Donnie wants to replace it with a heat pump. Donnie shored up the missing wall with jacks to keep it from further collapsing and damaging the wooden ceiling and metal roof. There are a lot of concrete blocks basically hanging in the air. If that old dairy parlor hadn't been in those walls, that truck would have landed completely inside of the house. A frame wall would have never stopped it. As it is, we found lots of truck parts mixed in with the rubble in the floor. Concrete rubble extended ten feet into the room.

Since we have such a nice hole in the wall, we have decided to enlarge the window there. The window size had been determined by what existed in the dairy parlor. We didn't want to cut into the concrete there since we had several other areas we had to remove. At least ten feet of wall will have to be replaced, so it may as well be nicer.

Poor Annie thinks every loud noise is another truck landing in our yard. Last night was windy and blew the giant dumpster' s swinging door shut. It made a resounding boom. Annie came running convinced we were in the midst of another accident.


CB
I am sorry Texas is not working out. Where will you go? Missouri?

ELLEN and INDYAPP
I am sorry about your storm damage. I totally missed that there had been such big storms up your way.

Hope everyone has a fun Fourth!  

HAPPY 4TH OF JULY EVERYONE!!!

We had our Liberty Bell Service this morning which was really nice…….reading the Declaration of Independence………….ret. Senator John Kyle read it.  It was a nice gathering honoring our vets and ringing the Liberty Bell followed by a nice BBQ…………..then it rained and the temp fell off.  I'm sitting here on the porch w a sweatshirt on and then wondered why I'm cold……..gads, it's 54 degrees.

We don't have any fireworks at all in the mtns so we do have laser light show tonight……should be fun.

Good grief, ARK! What can I add to what's already been said? Absolutely incredible -- and terrifying and deeply distressing and lawsuit-worthy maddening, not to say monstrously inconvenient . But wonderful that you're all OK!

And that order is already beginning to be restored, with even the prospect of some improvement in the end.

Whew.

No such excitement to report from here! Though a region just 40 miles to our south was under a tornado watch last night while we were weathering some severe thunderstorms, and Rumford, to our north, was gullied to pieces by torrential rains the day before. Right now we're getting rain as part of the backwash from Hurricane Arthur, but nothing very noteworthy -- and I'm tickled pink that we're finally through a period ('til next week, anyway) of godawful heat and humidity.

Most exciting personal news I can offer is that I had eight teeth pulled last week; they were all of those remaining in the top, plus one of only six left on the bottom. Slapped a brand new set of china choppers in for the uppers immediately after the yanking, and will add to an existing partial plate below once that lower gum has healed. Extraordinary that they can do that, and that it really does work! After only 10 days, I'm quite comfortable! And delighted to have my previous ravishing beauty fully restored. I say all this to give heart to all those who view something similar in their future with dread.

CB - With the others, I want to know more. Where next? If I'd forgotten the winter we just survived, I'd say to you -- and to Sunny -- come to Maine, because it's green and lush and absolutely lovely here just now. But, sigh, I've not forgotten...

ELLEN - Are you riding Flame? I've been racking up the miles on Golden Girl recently - 110 miles on Monday of last week, and 60 onTuesday. Thus far ,I think I've personally put a little more than 5,000 miles on it. On Wednesday, road the little Ruckus one mile to our tiny library's weekly tea, and got so engrossed in conversation with a fascinating fellow who's retired from 30 years of flying for American Airlines that I failed to notice that outside it was thundering and lightening and pouring down buckets. Had to leave because the library was closing, turned down the offer of a ride home and successfully braved the storm. Got wet but not electrocuted. Hooray!

Beech, it's always good to hear from you.
No, I haven't been riding Flame this year. The battery is dead, and I haven't really needed to go places that much. I do want to get a new battery and get going again before the summer is gone. I tried using the trickle charger, but it wouldn't take.
I've been caught in the rain a few times. I CAN ride in the rain, but sure DON'T like to. The road can be so slippery in spots. Whenever I'm going for a ride of any distance I USUALLY carry a rain suit which helps a little bit.
Last summer, I was riding home from work about an hour away, with no rain suit in the trunk. I got about a quarter of the way towards home when the skies let loose with a real 'goose drownder'. I pulled off the road at a little church and at least got out of the worst of it for a little while. After finally deciding I wasn't going to get any wetter and it wasn't going to get any lighter that evening, I mounted up and headed home most cautiously. By the time I was about 10 miles from home the rain stopped. I was decidedly soggy and cold when I got home. Not my finest hour on the bike, but I made it. The rain suit now resides permanently in the trunk.
Walmart carries inexpensive rain suits that work just fine, in case you want one.

The fireworks started on the lake about 9:00 and at least 75 boats and pontoons were parked and ready for the show. It wasn't bad, but what all those people didn't know is that the big fireworks are going to happen tomorrow night. The lake looked like Christmas with all the red and green and white running lights.

The second round will be reported tomorrow night.

BEECH
Thanks. We'll be fine......put out, highly inconvenienced, totally ticked off with the Bumpkuses across the road....but okay. We didn't get hurt, my cat didn't get hurt, just stuff that can be replaced got damaged or destroyed. Donnie's July Fourth vacation has not been very relaxing, although certainly memorable. We are lucky they have any insurance, they don't have two nickles to rub together. Even if we wanted to sue them, which we don't, you can't squeeze blood from a turnip. These folks are turnips.

The Hole-in-the-Wall has gotten bigger as we have taken out chunks of broken blocks. At least 10 feet of wall will have to be torn out and rebuilt. Getting some of the blocks out has been somewhat dangerous. Donnie the engineer has put his brain cells to the test getting those blocks out without having them fall on him or do more damage. Tearing down is going to take as much time as rebuilding, I think.

We have Annie's little tv hooked to a DVD player for evening entertainment. We are off to watch a movie.....

Beech, I've replaced the battery on my scooter 3 times. The first battery that came with the bike lasted for about 5 years with heavy use. The replacements only seem to last about 2 years at best. I just need to run over to the shop to pick up a new one.
I'm really glad that you are having so much fun with your scooters.

Ark, I hope they can get started on your repairs and get things back to normal as soon as possible. I think maybe I'd add two or three of those big concrete and stone pillars along the road to prevent the Bumpkuses from damaging your property again. Or maybe a whole stone wall reinforced with steel.

Ark I hope they have enuf insurance to cover it all...have known friends having to have their own insurance having to kick in and then their rates go up...good luck with getting ur repairs done quickly.

We really don't know for sure where we may go yet. taxes and hay prices in mo are very enticing tho.

The neighbor hood lit up the skies here and the horses did great even tho some of the big ones lit up their runs! we were out there watching and gave some extra hay....they were happy.

The puppies will be ready for their new homes in week and half..they r weaned now and doing great....holy terrors when not asleep!

Hubby has been out mowing...weeds and grass took over after that week of rain. we had.....he loves his old jalopy riding mower....I thinkit was built in the 70's and my nephew bobby souped it up, put bucket seat on it so it sits good...it's tough mower.

ELLEN You are way ahead of me on the batteries. I thought maybe you were stuck figuring out how to get the scooter to where it could be fixed. On battery life: Do you bring yours into the house for the winter? I've been told that helps, but I don't know for sure. Once when I was a mile or so from home on the Ruckus, it suddenly had no juice for starting at all. I sat for several minutes debating my options, none that seemed very good, when suddenly a big light bulb went off in my head: it has a KICK STARTER! It worked!  Alas, GG lacks that. Thanks for the info about the rain suits, btw.

Today I tried to tackle a long list of neglected tasks and got as far doing a little vacuuming, replacing a water filter, and removing a wheelbarrow's broken handle before testing the horse's electric fence and finding it not working. Two hours later... Tomorrow, first thing, it's off to the grain store for a new controller. For that, I Get to ride GG again...

Beech, I have a battery tender that should keep the battery charged through the winter. Of course, it works a lot better if one actually uses it. I didn't bother to plug it in before winter started; now I'm paying for it.

Mine doesn't have a kick starter, so if it dies for any reason I'm out of luck.

We are all off to the zoo this morning for the benefit of the kids, not-quite-2 and 10. It's going to be warm and HUMID today. Fun, huh.