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.
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.
As much of the rest of the country preps for the huge storm, we are basking in the sunshine. It is winter, so it’s cold, only low 40s, but sunny.
So we walked, again.
I also noticed a sign in a front yard I hadn’t seen before, although it has probably been there for 20 years. In my defense this area is on a steep hill and we’re usually going uphill on this stretch. But today was downhill and I spent more time looking around instead of at my feet.
Our first crocuses.
The basement work for today included building the last of the shelving units we bought. Moving some things onto said shelves. The things today were mostly emergency supplies. Food, fire starters, stove, etc. And finally cleaning a mat that is going to the giveaway pile. It wasn’t too dirty, just surface dirt.
All for today, until tomorrow’s sun shines again.
Living in a big city there are several post office branches that we can use. Which one is visited depends on the task at hand, and how much time can be used for the trip.
Many times there is an associated walk. It can be a mile or two or more. So that’s a factor. And almost always the post office trip is because we are taking something there to mail, or perhaps buying stamps. Carl sends a lot of mail. He is single handedly trying to keep the post office in business, so there are frequent trips.
Today’s trip was for a pickup.
An order had been placed a while ago. And the order was delivered to our house, but one of the items didn’t work out and so the company sent a replacement.
Instead of the normal tracking number and estimated delivery date we got an email telling us the package is at a USPS Parcel Shop for pickup, with an address. This was unexpected as we assumed a home delivery.
We walked to the address provided, but it was nothing to do with a post office. It was a business that makes light switches. They were very nice but no packages.
I clicked on a different Track Your Package link and it brought up a map showing a Post Office a few blocks away.
This is the Post Office we would not choose for an efficient trip, but not our choice. There were about 6 people in line in front of us. Not a great sign with only one counter person, but there we were.
We got to the front of the line and told them our story. She requested a tracking number. I hadn’t seen one yet, so I started clicking on anything that looked like a link. Finally the post office tracking number appeared and I wrote it out for the one counter person. She disappeared into the back, and was gone. And continued to be gone while the line grew, and grew, and grew. It felt like an hour but was probably less than 10 minutes before she showed up with our package. Provided ID and we were on our way, apologizing to the 10 or so now in line as we left.
Questions for this interlude: 1) Why didn’t they deliver it to our house as they did before; and 2) Where did they come up with the address the email directed us to initially?
One bonus for this adventure, other than just taking a walk, was finding a pocket park we hadn’t seen before.
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