Oregon Living 2022 – Blog #4 – A New Shed, a Lock Repair Order, and Visiting With Family

 

Saturday, January 22^nd., 2022…… Still cold today. But no rain in the forecast for at least a week!  Yaay!  They say temps won’t warm up even though we should see several sunny days. So, I don’t expect it to dry up the soggy grass enough to mow at this time. Not much on the agenda today. I spent most of the day watching tv and hanging out in my room. Cathye did the same in her room. Cathye talked to the lock specialist from Tucson about her Shasta entry lockset. Based on the conversation, he is confident he can repair it. Should be around $140.00. Apparently, eBay sends a notice to the item owner when someone is on there looking at their product, because I got a follow up message saying that the $750.00 lockset that I was looking at was now reduced to $550.00!  Yeah right!

 Anyway, we got his address and we will remove, package, and then mail the unit to him on Monday.       

Sunday, January 23^rd., 2022…… Eric came over today to do some work for cash. Eric is Corey’s friend and lives with them. He is looking for some extra income to help with rent and such and asked if we had any projects he can do here. Well, she found some! She had him work on some of the weeding in the flower beds – which we both hate to do! – and he filled up 3 trash cans with weeds.

Monday, January 24^th., 2022…… Today was errand day. Beside taking Jamie his money, and sending off the lockset, we needed to run off to see The Foam Man. She is looking for someone who can make her that bolster for the bed in the Shasta. I think she was also considering making it herself with a new foam piece. That was definitely decided when the lady from the foam store shooed us out because we didn’t make an appointment and just showed up. How dare we! She was rude and told us if we weren’t planning on sitting on it, then any old foam would do and we wouldn’t want hers. The price for her foam alone was starting out at $140.00-180.00! Can’t imagine what the price would be if they covered it! She said Joann’s or Home Depot, both of which were down the street, would have what we needed.  Anyway, we ended up with a piece of foam and some material from Joann’s, which will work (and, with the discounts and sale items, it was WAY cheaper!). We stopped at Dos Arbolitos for lunch and then came back home to relax. We purposely only ate half of the meal and had leftovers because we have a 6:00pm dinner with her sister, Mary. She is in from Benson AZ to see her son Justin and his wife Amy, who live in Sweet Home.  It was Amy’s birthday so we met them and Amy’s son, Skylar at The Point for dinner. It was a nice visit.  Plus, we had a chance to use our gift card for The Point!  Mary will be spending Thursday with us and we will take her to the airport on Friday.

Tuesday, January 25^th., 2022…… Today was shed delivery day!  We are so excited!  I had found a spot for it (where the pvc pipe is laid out)  but needed to cut back some of the grapevines first.

The guy showed up at 10:00am with this big old thing on a special trailer. I say special because it has a lift/tilt/turn feature in the bed, allowing him to position it on the trailer and back right in to offload with precision. Here are some pics coming in 

When he got here, we discovered that the door was facing the wrong side and needed to be turned around – so the guy just remotely used electric jacks in the trailer bed and actually lifted it up from the middle like a pizza and spun it around on the trailer! He backed it in and dropped it and then used a jack and leveled it in no time at all. It fits perfectly! 

We chose the barn style because of the extra storage space in the rafters. 

Next step for me will be some minimum electrical wiring out there, maybe an outlet for a heater and a florescent fixture or two. I will only need to run an extension cord which can be pulled for other uses as needed. I have some ideas working in my head…    

Once he was in and out (and paid) we took off to go get some pegboard. This is for another project in the shop. I have ended up with so many more tools and such from Cathye, that I need more wall space for them. Plus, I will also install some out in the potting shed for hanging her garden tools.

Wednesday, January 26^th., 2022…… Getting colder!  There is frost outside every morning now. We walked the dogs and then Cathye took off to head to SHEM. I spent some time pulling down the totes for the ‘snowpeople’ that we have left out for January. Time to get those out of here in a few days!  When she got back from her volunteer morning, she brought me a surprise!  Bears!  Not just any bears. If you look closely, you will see that this one is dressed in yellow and grey.

Just like this photo! 

Back a month or so ago, Cathye had made casual conversation with me and asked which one of Lydia’s tops I remembered and liked to see her wear and showed me some that we had not yet donated or gave away. I said “the yellow one was one of her favs”, so, unbeknownst to me, she had a friend make her a ‘memory bear’ with the material. She also took one of Jim’s favorite workshirts from his engine club and they made her one too. I cried!  But it was all good memories!

Next up was grocery shopping. We hadn’t been in a while so we needed to stock up.  We had a nice dinner and then settled in to watch tv. Tonight was The Amazing Race. Cathye is now a follower and can’t wait to see where they go next!

Thursday, January 27^th., 2022…… Weather is definitely cold!  Low this morning was 24°!  Yeah, that’s cold!  I forgot to turn the ‘Rylee Rinse’ hose on to dribble last night and it was frozen solid this morning! Oh well, no harm. I went out this morning to work on the electrical for the new shed. For today, I worked on changing out an electrical outlet outside the potting shed and just ran a cord out. That way we can use it for other needs out there (corded trimmers, blowers, etc.). Next up is to drill and mount an outlet to plug onto the shed which will go inside to an outlet or two. Today, Cathye’s sister, Mary, was coming to spend the night. Her son, dropped her off at Apple Tree and Cathye met her there and brought her back to the house. Later, I cooked a Santa Maria tri-tip on the bbq. They worked on that bolster that Cathye wanted for the trailer and also cut and sewed a Texas patchwork quilt for the bed. A surprise to me was that they finished both!  And they turned out great!...   

Friday, January 28^th., 2022…… The plan today was to go out to breakfast and then head down to Eugene to take Mary to the airport. Her flight was at 1:00pm and we got out of the house and to Kevin’s and even had time to go back home and hang out for an hour or so before heading south. After we dropped her off, the plan was to go to the Pedego e-bicycle store in Eugene. I am looking for an e bike and wanted to start with the best. I thought maybe they had some used ones there that were in my price range. I was surprised that they had one line of new ones that very much appealed to me. I still want to look around but now I’m interested! We also stopped at JC Penney’s to look at dress shirts. Cathye has changed colors on mine again so we checked those out and we bought both mine and Corey’s. Randy’s is already here and waiting for him. After we returned, we rested a few minutes and Cathye did some laundry and then headed off to Walmart. I went out and gathered up what I had for my electrical project in the new shed. Turns out I had the romex and all of the inside boxes. All I need is an outside receptacle. When Cathye got back, we were done for the day and spent the rest of time relaxing and ate leftover steak and watched tv until calling it a night.