SNOW!!

Awoke to the white stuff this morning. We had a few teaser flakes on Tuesday, but today it actually stuck around. Fortunately not much fell since many of the trees still have their leaves. We lost one fairly large branch in the front yard, but that is it.

I'm home today waiting for the second visit of the washing machine repairman. Hopefully I will shortly have a functioning washer. The dirty clothes hamper is over flowing! This sure has been an expensive year: a new high efficiency gas furnace/air conditioner, new water softener, new tankless water heater, new Honda Civic Hybrid, new electric grass trimmer, new sump pump, new insulation and several expensive dog and cat vet bills! The good news is that many of these qualify for tax credits because of their energy efficiency and because they are cheaper to run (filled up the empty Honda for $28 the other day!) that will help eventually pay for them all.

I've been very busy being a Christmas elf and my workshop is overflowing with "creations". Fun! I only have 3 1/2 weeks left of this semester and the remaining labs aren't too taxing fortunately. I've begun preping for next semester too, so I can take off most of December with a clear conscience.

Make it a good day!

Beautiful Ride

We rode 17 miles today on the Maple Highlands trail from Headwaters Park in Middlefield to Chardon and back. Ate at Bass Lake Inn outside in their patio. Lovely! Talked to someone I used to work with at Laurel and another couple interested in the bike trail. A lovely day and I did make that batch of applesauce too! I still have 1/2 a bucket of apples left....

Apple Crisp, Apple butter! Yum!!!

Mom and dad brought over a huge bucket of apples from their trees last weekend. This was a great year for fruit production of all kinds. So far I've turned them into two batches of apple crisp (Mmmmmm, warm with vanilla ice cream.....) and one batch of apple butter, which I canned today. Boy is it good!! I made it in my crock pot. It took all day to cook it down. I still have about 2/3 of a bucket of apples left!!! Yikes! I guess applesauce is in my future tomorrow!

The leaves are getting spectacular now. The beautiful blue skies we've had over the last couple of days really sets them off to their best advantage. I just love all the oranges, golds and reds. They inspire me to be creative! I just love leaves. Every year at this time I start designing quilts in my head. Maybe someday I'll make one. Hopefully we will be going on the Maple Highlands bike trail between Middlefield and Chardon tomorrow for a bike ride. Its gorgeous this time of year and only about 17 miles round trip. Either that or we'll go golfing, which would be fun too.

Its so nice to be done with all the 90+ lab reports to grade. I worked on making Christmas gifts today and planted about 44 bulbs in the front garden beds as well as all the apple cooking. I still have a lot left to plant! Oh well, I'll be happy that I did it in the Spring. Roasted hot dogs over a fire made from all the twigs and branches that fell during the remnants of Hurricane Ike. George got all the finishing touches done on the tankless waterheater installation. It was trash day in South Russell, so we hauled the old water heater and several other large misc. pieces of trash over to City Hall. It so nice that they offer this twice a year. They certainly get a lot of stuff by the end of the day.

Make it a good day!

So, Anya got hit by a car....

....however, she is okay except for a few bruises and scrapes. She was riding her bicycle on the sidewalk in Baltimore and someone pulling out of a parking lot hit her, knocked her off her bike and ran over the back tire. They didn't even get out of their car to help her but left her there to fend for herself. She was too afraid to ask for any identification and didn't think to get a license plate number so there is no way she can get compensation for her ruined bicycle. What an awful phone message to get on my cell phone! I'm just glad she is okay. I'm also kind of glad that she now doesn't have a bicycle in Baltimore. I was worried about that. She's had a very difficult semester so far with her computer hard drive crashing and now this!

George spent the day cheerfully (really!) installing our new tankless gas water heater. It works! It's really tiny and is attached to the wall. We discovered that the leaking electric water heater is still under warranty for about a week longer, so we may call that in and see if they will honor it. Yesterday George took half a day off work to begin to install the new water heater instead of going to his Academy golf tournament! The day before he had to install a new sump pump since the old one wouldn't shut off in the morning. He did get the old one to work again, so we will save it as a backup. He discovered the back flow valve was shot in the piping and fixed that too.

I've been buried in a pile of 90+ lab reports and other papers to grade for the last two weeks. Hopefully I'll get them all done by this coming Wednesday. This is the worst time of the semester. Of course, all the spring bulbs I ordered got delivered last week too! I planted about 40 bulbs today for about an hour as a break from grading.

Biking from Akron to Independence!

Boarded the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railway train with our bikes at 9:00 am for a 1 1/2 hour train ride to North Akron station. A very pleasant ride with beautiful scenery on a gorgeous prefall day in the 70's. It was rather cool early on but quickly warmed up. By the time we got to Akron I stripped down to my sleeveless T-shirt and bike shorts. After getting our bikes off the train, pumping up George's tire a bit and taking a slight detour in trying to find the trail head we were on our way. What a gorgeous day and tow path trail! I'm so glad that some smart people had the foresight to preserve all this and convert it to this use. The conductor said they had a record day for ridership on the train yesterday, and since they started the "Train your bike" program (only $2.00 to ride to Akron with your bike!) ridership has tripled from last year.

We had never ridden most of the trail south of Penninsula. It was beautiful. I took pictures of the Heron, carp and beaver dam and lock's along the way. We stopped after ~ 14.5 miles in Penninsula to eat at Fischer's Cafe. The thought of Caravel's ice cream at the end of our trip kept us going the rest of the 29 miles we biked today! A nap in the hammock was a nice finish to a beautiful day once we got back. We'll sleep well tonight!

Life Off the Grid a.k.a. Camping In the House

So, the hot water heater allowed us to take lukewarm showers up through Wednesday (although the shower Wednesday was rather invigorating!). Otherwise, we are doing rather well without electricity. It dawned on me Tuesday after we went to bed, that we COULD plug in a lamp and have REAL LIGHT!! We laughed a lot about that! We are gradually adapting. The biggest issue is the shower thing. So yesterday I went out and bought a solar camp shower thingy. We heated water on the camp stove and mixed it with room temperature water to fill the 5 gallon bag. However, the tubing and stopcock are rather wimpy so this will take some tinkering. All I can say is I'm sort of clean enough to teach today....

Later!

Hurricane Ike Hits Ohio!

Hurricane Ike wasn't content with messing up Texas, but decided Ohioans needed a taste of the fun! The winds were in the 70's mph in gusts. It was weird, all wind and no rain or lightning. We'd fortunately battened down the hatches and eaten dinner before the silver maple lost the large limb from the top of one of the trees in the front yard as seen in the picture above. It managed to land on the power lines going to our house and ripped the lines off the side of our house along with a little siding. There was a huge noise and a shower of sparks as it crashed to the ground. We are basically screwed for probably at least a week since thousands are without power and many line crews were sent to Texas. Fortunately our generator is working well, we have lots of propane for our camp stove and lots of candles and flashlights. We may be showering at the neighbors, however!

Hiram lost power too, so there weren't any classes today. George's plant was also without power.