Raincharm’s Weblog

I feel like I didn’t really do anything today. A little of this, a little of that, cooked dinner, but no major accomplishments.

These are days when I feel I need to do something to succeed at retirement.

I didn’t have a real plan in place for how to fill my time before I retired. I was too busy working. An initial trip helped with the transition. Then the basement flood provided a forced focus. That is still what I call my current job, but nobody gets on my case if I slack off for a day or two or three.

Tomorrow morning has medical type tests, so I get to slack some more, at least until the afternoon.

For now, leaving work on my last day – Halloween as it turned out. No ghosts.

Short Report

1. Blood Donation  – NOT, again! Low iron, even after consuming spinach egg bites for the last few days. Based on the blood-pressure monitor reading my pulse was too low as well. I made an appointment for a week from now to try again.
2. Walk, about 7,000 steps worth, most of it when it was not raining.
3. Taxes – at least started.

All for today.

I decided last night that I was going to take a day off from the basement. And I have held to that decision,  so far.

Instead we watched some soccer and took a long walk. The rain stopped before we ventured out, and the sun even made a brief appearance.

If I get motivated I may start our taxes tonight. We’ll see. There is a jigsaw puzzle begging to be worked on.

We participated in the general strike today, loosely. No shopping, but we did run an errand and also had a previously scheduled home project completed.

Basement work for today first: Completed getting the area around the workbench and old shelves vacuumed. Started the process to uncover what tools we have, what we should retain, etc. The sorting has just begun. 4 claw hammers?! Every time I ask Carl about an unidentified tool he suggests,”I think a contractor left it here.” ??? Well maybe a few. And I have found many items not used in years. Spark plug cleaner anyone?

A regular blood test for Carl was the errand of the day. The folks at the lab are pretty nice, and today we got to talk about how to modify his meds prior to a minor upcoming operation. Also chatted about alcohol consumption on Super Bowl Sunday, a few days before said operation.

The work on the house today was on the gutters. One of the high gutters had started to pull away from the house. It’s hard to see, but our neighbor had alerted us. It’s beyond the reach of our ladders as well, and maybe I shouldn’t be climbing that high anymore.

It was hard to find a contractor or person to just do this small repair, so we found a local place that would clean all the gutters and do minor repairs as well. Of course, when the scheduled day arrives it was raining, but that helped show the problem gutter because water was pouring over the wrong end of the gutter.

Two workers arrived mid-morning and proceeded to start cleaning. I showed one of them the problem gutter, and he took care of that first. I haven’t been able to fully verify the fix, but I choose to be positive.

The two workers are not native English speakers and used translators on their telephone to communicate when it was important. I chose not to try using my limited Spanish. I wonder what type of identification they feel compelled to carry these days?

Basement work continued. Is this boring? Well, it’s my current life.

Today’s work continued to empty off the workbench so it can be cleaned and reorganized. It had primarily been a storage or pile here location, not so much for working on. Today was taking each thing off and making the initial decision of keep (after dusting), throw away, or put in the giveaway garage.

The clean off was ultimately successful and sweeping the area was accomplished. But it was not without distractions and disruptions.

Distractions included figuring out what some clips and hardware labeled for screens went with. Ultimately we think they go with the two screens I found last week that probably go to a door that is no longer part of the house. Next was a  bunch of door hardware for interior doors that are no longer in use. Lots of glass doorknobs that I had saved, although we only saved one door for possible reinstallation. And for the exterior doors our old locks, including keys.

The remodel included a short extension of the kitchen. The old kitchen had been extended previously, probably in 1947 or so. The first extension went beyond the foundation, and there was newspaper used as insulation below the kitchen floor. This was all removed during our remodel. At the time I just shoved some pages into a bag and left it in the workbench. We had moved almost everything out of the house, but the workbench had stayed.

Today I took a break when I found the bag, and read some pieces. These are from November-December 1947. Some from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, others from the Seattle Times.

The 78 year old paper is falling to pieces, and is going out the next trash day.

The basement effort today started by continuing on the workbench piles. Some progress was made, in fact the entire lower shelf has been cleared off, and select items from the top have been removed, specifically safety glasses/goggles and an assortment of locks.

Where unexpected progress was made was in the toy section. Carl was working out in the basement and started taking one thing and then another off of the big storage shelves. And sorting, saving some but identifying pieces for recycling or giveaway. This was not anticipated and I thought getting his input might be difficult, so I just rolled with it. Tools can wait for another day.

Most of the giveaway went to the garage, but an opportune call from our son identified a few items that we can send their way.

Some of the things in the giveaway garage are new or barely used, while others are well-loved but still have lots of life left.

Basement work continues. Focus on the remaining corner of the basement that hasn’t been swept. There are two “furniture” pieces in this area, an older shelving unit and a workbench. The workbench is really just a place to pile tools and associated stuff, especially after the flood, because it was high and dry.

Today’s work included the shelving unit and as an added bonus, the shelf over the basement sink.

I took everything off of those shelves, cleaned the dust and cobwebs away, and found a temporary holding spot for the moved items.

A few things got designated to the giveaway garage. Including a trophy for, “Top Camper Award” for a week-long baseball camp. Rey, the recipient, would have been 12.

And no, Rey doesn’t want us to send this to him.

Another set of artifacts that have been scattered around the basement are yardsticks. I found 4 different ones.

The Stancato School of Accordian intrigued me, cue a rabbit hole. Googling ensued.

“The Stancato School of Music, founded by Joe Stancato and rooted in Seattle before expanding.”

One bit of related information I was able to find from HistoryLink.org is about Lorraine McConnell,  who was “discovered” in 1931 in Seattle by Zona Lillian McDonnell, as an 8-year-old busker.

From the HistoryLink.org article:

Lorraine McConnell would go on to graduate from Queen Anne High School and the Carolyn Leonetti modeling school, and also studied drama at the University of Washington, where she appeared in plays at the campus Showboat Theater. As a skilled accordionist, she was hired by Joe Stancato to serve as the National Supervisor of Training for his Stancato School of Accordion at 7405 Greenwood Avenue, and then traveled as its West Coast representative. In time she would meet and marry Dave Ballard, a grandson of Seattle pioneer Captain William Rankin Ballard (1847–1929). Dave Ballard was the classical music director at Los Angeles’ KGFS radio, while Lorraine worked as a jazz dancer and scat singer. Both were actors at the Pasadena Playhouse, and got bit parts in Hollywood movies. 

There is a bookstore now at 7405 Greenwood Avenue, in theGreenwood neighborhood. The building may be the same, it’s only 2 stories tall, so not recently built – it would be taller.

Note that the Greenwood neighborhood is north of Ballard, named for the Seattle pioneer, mentioned in the article above.

All for today. Tomorrow’s goal is to clear the workbench. A bigger task than the shelves, if I get into the tools themselves.

I opened up the newspaper this morning, after plowing through the articles about the Seahawks heading to the Super Bowl, I noticed the headline about blood levels being really low. I give regularly, but had failed to make the cut the last two tries due to low iron. I decided I should give it a try again.

Started drinking, water and coffee that is. Drove over to the donation center to check in and get my vitals taken. They took the blood for the dreaded iron level check, and it was low, but only a smidge. I assumed we would take a second sample and hopefully make the grade.

But the phlebotomist said my pulse had shown as only 49 when they took my blood pressure, which was 1 beat below the minimum allowed of 50. She checked it again, and it was only 44.

Dismissed, or rather deferred, due to a low pulse rate. New one on me.

So we took a walk in the afternoon. Even though it may have been warmer than yesterday, it felt colder.

No basement work today, I just didn’t have the inspiration.

Seahawks 31 over Rams 27 🎉

The picture is from the Seattle Times, I did not take any of the TV during the game.

So this means Seattle is going to the Super Bowl. And more importantly, we get to have another get-together to watch the game with friends.

We had a gathering today for the NFC Championship. Kevin and Sue brought chili, Mark and Dotty brought salad, and we provided cheese (a goat cheese spread, jarlsberg, and smoked gouda) and crackers and garlic naan. It was good food, good friends, and a tight game. In the end the Rams literally ran out of time.

Before the game the day was spent like many other recent days, in the basement. I moved a lot of stuff hither and yon to clear the last large area of floor to be swept and vacuumed. This meant cleaning 10 years of dust off of many things. On the reducing clutter end, about 15 hats were consigned to the threads or reusable hats.

There’s only one small area of floor left for cleaning. But the shelves in that area (old unit) also need to be cleaned. And while I was scoping out those shelves I noticed the  cobwebs. It’s a basement, so cobwebs are to be expected, but ick, or more correctly sticky.  But that’s for tomorrow.

Most of our extended family lives east of us, so storm Fern is of interest. This is what we have for reports as of Saturday morning.

• St. Louis: Snowing and cold enough to bring in electronics. In this case an automatic bird feeder camera.
• Ann Arbor: Really cold, single digits. Possible snow later. Issues with getting cars to start.
• Richmond, VA: Really cold, with predictions of snow tonight, followed by ice. Cold temps for the next week, and potentialforpoweroutages. We discussed checking exterior hose bibs to make sure no hoses are attached and wrapping with towels.
  • Rey has been trying to prepare by locating the water master valve, with no luck. He even consulted the inspection report from the house purchase, and he inspector never found one either. I think a present for their house may be addition of a master valve, says the water District parent. But kudos for thinking to check ahead of the storm.
  • Zai Shin’s teacher prepped the class that they may have a snow day coming up. So he was sure there was going to be snow this morning, and was a bit disappointed.
• New York City: Cold enough to look for indoor places to play. Maybe snow later, but doesn’t look paralyzing.
  • One of Elijah’s friend’s building has quite the setup. Pop-a-shot, skee-ball, driving and Pinball games.

Continuing on the grandchild theme, E’s 3K class had a fashion show, and he wore his Mariners clothes. (In NYC!)

And the video of his runway walk, with his introduction.

Living our relatives Fern experience vicariously has been a nice break from the almost tedious basement work.