What's Dave doing while I'm away?

It's pretty steamy in Tennessee this week, so staying inside in the air conditioning is a good idea... for a day or two, but then cabin fever can set in, so a ride into town is the solution.
It just so happens that this is the week for the Sequatchie County Fair. Dave reports that there is no livestock on display, too hot I guess. But there is a carnival and he found a game he could play and win. It requires tossing two beer bottles at a swinging target. If you can break two bottles you win this:Dave is an old hand and tossing beer bottles so winning this stuffed bulldog was a snap for him.

At a fair you are entitled to eat some of the local delicacies.

Back at home the eggs were beginning to pile up, so he decided to make egg salad.

Pretty nice job.

He likes a little hot sauce on his eggs. Note his toes in this shot.

But the real reason for the trip was to get this weedwacker, which we really needed.

I'm lonesome for him...

Dateline: Manchester, New Hampshire

World Quilt and Textile Show
Known for early political debates, sightings and primaries, um ...we are not here for any of that. O no. This is the Big QUILT SHOW!
For once I am not going to complain about traveling (only an hour delay on the tarmac in D.C.) or about losing the wheels completely off my carry-on bag (no flowers please). I emptied the contents into one of my larger suitcases and left the dead carry-on on the carosel.

Well, you can't leave a suitcase just anywhere, they will think it's a bomb.

Our room (my roommate Marjan Kluepfel will arrive later) is just wonderful at the Radisson.

The beds have a dial to set your sleep number. Geesh. What luxury!

I am more or less unpacked, and have FREE INTERNET. So you know I am happy as can be.

And for my health I trekked half way through downtown in search of a little inexpensive liquid refreshment.

I almost panicked when I discovered there are no bottle openers in the room. But, sigh, this is a twist-open bottle. Phew! Manchester has several wonderful restaurants, all in walking distance from the hotel. Last time I was here, I was seriously dieting, and stayed away. Whatever happened to that mindset?

Oh Well. C'est la vie.

Tomorrow I will teach my last ever two sessions of Really Free Motion Machine Quilting. Woowoo!

Just Ducky

While I love my chickens, I equally love my ducks, and feel I am giving them less attention on the blog. How are they to feel famous, without a mention weekly?

I thought I would name them Ruth and Dick but then I heard they were already named Jack and Jill by the previous owner. I think Dick Duck is a much better name.

They have been keeping cool in the pond, which seems to get lower each day. Hopefully next week the hot weather will break and they will get a good rainfall.

Here in IL we have had two good thunderstorms in the four days that I have been back. The garden loves it.

Let's Go Shopping

I have completely given up the cowhide rug idea, you will be glad to know, after I found these wild and crazy rugs online at Target of all places. And would you believe they are from the Mary Kate and Ashley collection?

Of course quilts come to mind, but the colors here are so wonderful that I know I would love to have any of these designs under my feet. And then make a matching quilt for my bed. Woowoo!
This one would work in my living room. I know Dave will say we have to wait until the demise of Popeye, who can only upchuck on carpeting, not bare floor. He has standards.
My sister and I are currently entranced with concentric circles, and she has already started on her quilt, while I am merely in the paused mode, fabric packed and studio empty. Excrutiating.
I love this one too. O geesh, I love them all.
The theme is matching my chair. I learned this from HGTV, find a theme and stick with it. Pretty hot colors, no? And then paint the walls and hang the artwork, and I am moved in...
On another note: I am retiring but will do just one workshop a year to keep my fingers in. For 2008 it will be Art Quilt Tahoe. I just got the invitation today. Woowoo!

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Five men were scheduled to show up Saturday morning and two did. Well it was going to be damn hot work, so that may have been sufficient reason to stay in bed. Work began at 6am to avoid the heat and Dave was ready with a freezer full of pizzas, as well as plenty of ice water and beer.

The first task was to separate the remaining timbers from each other. Dave had been working on doing this manually with a pry bar earlier in the week. Some of them wouldn't budge, as they were partially covered in earth and each movement made them dig deeper into the clay. So the tractor was employed to finish the separating. It scooped up the timbers and then dropped them down again to jossle loose the pinning. It looks like that worked out just fine.

Our hero, the tractor.

It turns out that there was another reason why the wall tumbled down in the first place. At the base of the hill was a super large stone outcropping a few inches below the surface. The iron rods couldn't pierce this rock and therefore couldn't secure the foundation. The only solution was to break up and remove this rock. Sledgehammers had to be used.

Hours of slamming the hammers and finally the rock was broken and removed.

A base of crushed rock was added to the hole for drainage and then the base timbers were secured with iron rods going way down. The clay behind the wall was also dug out and piled up, to be returned later when the wall was erected.

We had discussed fitting in deadmen (timbers at a 90 degree angle) to secure this wall as directed by several experts on the subject. I knew this had not been done on the other part of the wall and now I can see it was not done on this part either.

To drive these rebars in, a hole was drilled slightly less in diameter than the rod. Still it must be hard work to get them in place. These timbers were set back from the first wall which corresponds to the shape of the wall it will support.
During the process of separating the timbers from the rebar several timbers disintegrated and became unusable. Still the earth was sloping at this point and the timbers did follow that slope. Since I was not there for any of this I don't know what became of the timbers that broke, but I do know we have loads of backwoods where other downed trees are piled up, and my guess is that the tractor took them away.

Supervising chickens

The earth behind the wall is very hard clay and at this time is dry as ceramic. With the next hard rain we shall see how this wall holds.

Elvis Melody has left the building

I kid you not. I just drove the rental truck back from Tennessee to Cary, and my half empty house. I left Palmer at 3:45am and made it back in ten hours. The speed limit is 70 and I was very near that number all day as I sped along. I didn't exactly go straight home… IKEA has come out with their new catalog, and I just happened to drive right by that store, so I stopped and shopped for a while.

I needed a couple of rag rugs, and got those after trying to decide for an hour if I should or shouldn't buy an entire cowhide for our new living room floor. Only $199 and the skin/fur matches my leather chairs. I ended up passing on the purchase because my cell phone wouldn't let me call Dave for his opinion.

Would a cowhide rug be too creepy or just perfect for a country cottage? After all Dave is a retired butcher…I have the truck until noon on Saturday, so if Dave likes the idea, I can still go back and get it. What do you think he will say? They don't have the tail attached or the head, so there is nothing really too gruesome about it. And some of the brown skins have curly hair, white with auburn. I guess they were Herefords. There are also white and black skins, with branding marks still visible. All were imported from Argentina. You have to see them in person to get the full effect. The nice thing about a cowhide rug is that Popeye probably wouldn't go near it.

The fur was really shiny, like this one...

OK that does it. I have lost any remnant of my good design sense. Living in that sweet Tennessee cottage for two weeks was like being in a stage play, The Long Hot Summer, or Lil' Abner. (Remember the young Paul Newman? O my!)

Now I am in Cary and reality is seeping back into my veins. I have returned to get to work. I leave on Weds for World Quilt and Textile in New Hampshire. Then back to Cary for five more days of getting our house cleaned before I go to Switzerland at the end of the month.

My head is spinning already. One day at a time…

Silver Queen for Dinner

Dave was getting antsy from practically a whole day without shopping so he left me alone with my laptop and TV and went over to the next town, Gruetli-Laager, to the Ace Hardware for a browse. Next door is Dollar General and then the Piggly Wiggly. What more could a man want?

While at Dollar he met up with Bill again, our neighbor with the Silver Queen corn for sale. Bill was paying for his purchases from a handful of change that included several 22 caliber bullets. Since he was robbed several years ago he never wants to be without some ammo. He worked hard for what those robbers took and it has obviously affected him deeply. In our twice meetings with him the subject has come up both times.
When Dave returned from shopping (broom, oil filters, Q-tips, pry bar, shovel) he insisted we go back to Bill's and get that sweet corn before it gets too old to eat.

Bill and his 'signifikin' other' Clara were out in the yard having a brewski and listening to the chickens. Clara is a 'widder lady' that was married to a pal of Bill's who died about six years ago. Bill attended the funeral and then the very next day Clara invited him over for a chicken dinner and they have been together ever since. Ah, romance blooms in Palmer.

Before we got the corn we were regaled with stories of the folks around town. The Widemore's were 'goin' on the innernet chasin' down their roots' and found kin down in Alabama and then had some free time and found themselves going up to Kentucky in search of another Widemore. They located the home of Charles Widemore and knocked on his door. A black man answered ,


"Are you Charles Widemore?"

"I is, I is!"

That ended their interest in chasin' down their roots.

Bill started telling us about Sarah who was old when he was a kid and now must be 147. She is such a gossip that they call her the Mouth of the South. He wanted to tell us more but Clara made him stop.

Clara and Dave out in the field of corn. There is so much here and not that many customers.

" You can freeze corn," sez Bill. "We eat it all winter."

I guess.

Speckled red beans. These don't give Bill gas like the pinto beans, we were informed.

Thanks for the info.

Their garden was hiding lots of surprises amongst the weeds, including several varieties of watermelons, such as these cute icebox sized beauties.

Clara called this a sweet potato squash. It is HUGE. That is my dainty foot for comparison. I have never heard of this variety, but then I am from the city.

Pumpkins from Mars.

And okra. My first time to see this vegetable growing. Now I know I am really in the South.

We bought a dozen ears of corn and Dave paid double for the pleasure. I had the water boiling the minute we got back. Real butter, kosher salt and cracked pepper and...a cold glass of beer. O August, your bounty exceeds our imaginings.

The Good the Bad and the Ugly

While I am enjoying a honeymoon mood in my new house, there are a few things here that are not going to make the cut. In the back room are these Victorian sconces, six sets of them. Very ornate and to my taste completely out of keeping with the rustic nature of the house. The wall color in most of the rooms are also WRONG. They are a dulled down manila envelope color and just too neutral for moi.
The front room had two of these area rugs to define the space. We took them out almost immediately. One went upstairs into my temporary studio to cover the floor in case I spill paint. If it gets on this carpet I won't mind a bit. The other one we put in the back room with the sconces. It will probably stay there for a while as we will be moving the rest of our furniture in through this ground level entrance and this will keep the wall to wall carpet clean.

This is the other half of the back room. That woodburning stove is stinking and ugly and must go. The stone wall is great, and with a gas log burning fireplace in that spot we will both be a lot happier. No mess and no stink. The wall adjacent to the stairs there has the support for a wall mounted lcd TV which is also in our plans. Woowoo! No doubt we will LIVE in this room most of the time.

Yesterday we installed closet rails and shelves in the hallway for my clothes. I am soooooo glad I didn't buy that IKEA armoire I had considered. There are two closets that I have claimed and they are spacious and well lit and are not another piece of furniture that would have always been inadequate.
Wild sweet peas. Just growing on the roadsides with abandon. At this time of the year there are althea, and daylilies and just huge hibiscus in bloom down here. And even though people talk of drought, we see nothing to support this. Everything is just so lush. Speaking of rain, makes me think of water. We have well water and that is the biggest surprise of all. It tastes wonderful! Absolutely no mineral-y flavor at all. And it's free to boot.

BAD: Sure it's annoying to be rousted out of bed at 4 am by that rooster, but then there is the delicious compensation of a morning siesta later on. GOOD:Not to mention the best tasting freshest eggs daily.

I just discovered the spearmint in my garden. I know that it could become a pest but in the meantime I am enjoying mint tea and mint juleps. I'll get around to corraling that herb when I have a minute.

And now that we have internet again and cable TV (all those stations and still nothing to watch) we are as happy as pigs in mud, y'all.

The best part is being here with my two fave buds.

Meeting the Folks

(I just got dsl installed and saved up some episodes for the blog.)

Saturday August 4, 2007

The riding mower’s solenoid that we bought at Lowe’s got exchanged for another at Ace and neither of those did the trick. Dave was getting frustrated and the grass was growing at an alarming rate. We looked in the funny phone book to find a repair place, but most are far away in another county. We are getting to understand the distances, and to be more self-sufficient if possible. At the same time as we searched the yellow pages for repairs we also sought out garbage removal companies. Hmmm. None were listed in the area, so what do we do with the trash?
Now that we have our phones Dave called Eugene, the fellow that originally built our retaining wall (the part that stayed up!) and had an interesting conversation with him. Dave called early Friday evening and Eugene listened intently to our wall collapse problem and said that he couldn’t come over that night (we never expected him to run right over) but would early Saturday morning be soon enough? Well, yeah. Eugene is a nice looking country boy in his mid 30’s and father to two teenagers. He is currently building his own house, as well as doing his regular job and picking up odd jobs from folks like us. Ah to have that kind of energy again.
The two men looked at the wall and Eugene offered a prying bar for Dave to use to get these timbers apart so they can be moved and reassembled. Since we have an escrow account from the previous owner to fix this wall, Dave put both Eugene and himself on the payroll. O boy…


After Eugene left for his homebuilding tasks Dave decided to call the recycling place we saw in Palmer and see what the deal is there. They are open all day on Saturday, so we gathered up the recyclables, and trash and cardboard into the truck and headed down the road. We expected to be asked to prove our citizenship of Palmer but the two old guys there were not the least bit interested in asking for it. They were straight out of central casting as Good Old Boys.

As I stepped out of the truck to introduce myself I found my mouth uttering “Howdy!”
Howdy? What is that? I have never said howdy to anyone before. I mentioned that we had bought the place on 399 and they mentioned the other neighbors who they knew around us. I caught one name, only because I had read the mailbox previously. Everything else they had to say was lost in translation. O, but I did get their proud declaration, “We’re whacha call hillbillies”.
O.K.
Between chaws they helped us unload our trash and tossed it into the awaiting dumpsters. My careful separation of recyclables was wasted effort. It all went to be compacted. The charge for this service? Free.
Quick thinking Dave asked them if they knew anyone who could repair the rider and immediately they offered up Ernie. He lives around the next corner and down to the dead end. We followed the directions and found an open carport loaded with defunct mowers and three guys sitting in the shade tinkering and chawin’. I stayed in the air conditioned truck while Dave asked for assistance. They thought they could come and pick up the mower in about an hour. On a Saturday! Wow.
So we returned home and had some iced tea on the porch. Sure enough the guys arrived in a more hopeful than sturdy pick-up with the trailer attached for the mower.

With that problem under advisement we decided to take a ride to see what was down Stagecoach Road, our next nearest side street. I am not making up this title. The alternate title of our road is Artillery or Cavalry or something similar. No signs to prove it, but we know this only from Googling our address. Nothing of note was found down Stagecoach with the exception of Bill’s house. Bill is a real old mountain man who had stopped by earlier to announce he had Silver Queen sweet corn for sale in his yard. Judging by his dental condition, he won’t be eating any of it soon. “Only house on the left”, he said, “down Stagecoach road”. I had to see for myself, but when we drove by, I demurred from following through. Something about the dark house alone in the dark forest and the sad looking corn crop dampened my enthusiasm.

Our afternoon ride took us away from town down unfamiliar roads that appear and disappear on our map. Eventually we ended up in a big town, Manchester which happened to boast a liquor store (keeping that in mind for when I run out) and several Mexican restaurants. One, El Molcajete was packed with cars so we decided to try it for a bite to eat. The waitress, a chica with very tight jeans had a great smile. We ordered Dos Equis and she asked if we wanted a regular or a tall mug? Feeling parched (really) we ordered the large. O my! They were at least 32 oz. mugs and took both hands to lift to our lips. We didn’t finish even half of the brew, as we ate our delicious dinner.

The ride home was faster than the wandering ride to get to Manchester ( full bladder) and I discovered a Piggly Wiggly store only 10 minutes from our house. Now that made the trip really worthwhile.
As we drove up our driveway, the lawn mower was sitting in front of our garage, fixed and awaiting its use. Dave hopped on and soon was clipping the western lawn. I sat on the porch to watch and heard our phone ring. It was Ernie, saying he would be over to collect payment for the repaired mower. Only $60. That included pick up and delivery on a Saturday. Try that at home in Cary. Ha! It was the starter that was the problem, and Ernie sharpened the blades as a bonus. We are very pleased to have done business with him and hope he uses the money to buy himself a new shirt with more than one button.

I tried to find out what time the service starts at the church I ‘chose to attend’, but there is no sign at the church and no phone number in our funny phone book. The reason I call it funny is that just some of the numbers have an area code, some list the town the phone number is in and some don’t. Finding any listing for Palmer is practically futile. It’s as though if you were from here, you would already know and if you aren’t from here, why would you care? I am hoping to be visited by any of the thirty neighboring church pastors within the next few weeks. I’ll find out from them when to show up.

Just Campin’

Sunday August 5

For part one of our move we just brought necessary items, a small dining table and four folding chairs, two patio chairs, our beds, the two Poang chairs and some end tables. Tools were a top priority but the garden tools didn’t make the cut. Since we knew we needed to set up the kitchen we did bring all the pots and pans, pantry items and some dishes, a service for four. The knives and flatware are included as well as all the drinking glasses, minus the stemware and crystal. One TV and one laptop and the all important stereo and mp3 player are also here. We have been listening to radio as our only source of entertainment, not counting listening to the roosters of course.
It is amazing to me how well we are doing with so little. We are a little media deprived with no internet connection for the first week, and not having Law and Order for several hours of every day has been quite an adjustment.

To fill the gaps we have been shopping practically every day. That doesn’t mean we buy anything. We just go to the store and walk around and discuss the fact that we already have this stuff in our Cary house and will be getting it here by the middle of September.
One newly purchased item was leather palmed garden gloves to help me pull out the many gigantic weeds in the orchard. I unearthed 24 blueberry bushes from the weed jungle obscuring them. Then I discovered we have more than those two dozen bushes, also covered with morning glories the size of hibiscus blooms. O I mean Tennessee hibiscus. Wow. Are those some giant hibiscus! Imagine that this bloom is 12" across. Honest. Not in our garden, yet.
And we did get a garden wagon that has a dumping feature. It can be attached to the rider to carry up to 600 pounds. Of what? Rock, stones and logs. Small logs. I am thinking that as adorable as this wagon is, I still need a wheel barrow and may have to get one on my own, as soon as the opportunity to shop alone arises.

We are doing EVERYTHING together. I have lost the ability to make a single unilateral decision, even down to what flavor ice cream I should get. But this will be offset when I am back alone in Illinois, New Hampshire and Switzerland the rest of this month.
I have very mixed emotions about returning to our Cary house. I’ll see my friends again, get a decent haircut, and get back to work. But I will be missing Dave, the chickens and my new home. The extra two hours of morning sleep will be appreciated, but the focus will be so drastically different. And I will not have a car. Or bike, just my roller blades, which I will not be using to get to the airport twice. It will be limos for this gal.

Dave will stay here and possibly have a guest while I am back at work. I will have to change my pink bedsheets to white to accommodate the manly Dan who will visit from Virginia. I am hoping Dave can pull a Tom Sawyer and get Dan to show him how to uproot the weeds around the pond. This will be good.

The weather here has been hot, but not so bad at our elevation. Upper 90’s in Chattanooga, a town which Eugene says was built atop Hell. (pronounced: Hay-ell) Our house stays cool from the shade of the trees and our porch, but the ceiling fans are always going full blast too. Yesterday it got really hot inside, 87 degrees, so we turned on the air conditioning for the first time and vrooomm instant coolth. We were warned that the summers here would be hot. Like they aren’t in Illinois? At least here no one expects to do anything but sit on the porch with an iced tea and watch the chickens scratch.

Popeye is finally feeling at home and came out on the porch to visit with us. The chickens were in the yard in full view of the lazy old cat. This was the first time he has seen them and they him. The fowl reacted as they should, voicing a loud warning crow. Luckily Popeye is deaf as a stone and wasn’t perturbed. However he was simultaneously interested and cowardly. He stuck his head under the porch fence to get a better look and walked down the steps towards the birds to test their veracity. He may have thought this was merely Animal Planet and not the real thing. We were amazed at his calm demeanor. It is not like our scaredy cat to behave like this. He slowly approached the big rooster and we held our breath. The rooster felt discretion was the better part of valor and scooted off into the driveway, followed by the hens and junior cocks. Popeye took this move as proof of his dominance and returned to the porch steps like the conquering hero. We let out our communal breath and then gave the Pops many congratulatory pets.
Life here on the farm doesn’t get much more exciting than that.

HURRAY!!!We now have dsl and cable tv and are back to normal. I will again be posting daily.

The Farm Report

Inasmuch as this blog is part communication and part diary, and days have gone by without blogging, I can't expect my memory to contain all the events that have transpired since moving in to our new place.

Monday was our first night and while I did say that all went well at closing, it was tense, since we never heard from our banker that the mortgage loan money was disbursed. It was, of course and we closed with no problems. Then we skedaddled to the house and began to unload boxes, and mowers and beds and even though it was late, we did manage to reconstruct both beds and had a great night's rest.

Good thing. We were aroused at 3:10am on Tuesday by the Big Rooster. I have never seen chicken lungs, but they must be huge. Not being a country gal, except in my imagination, I wasn't prepared to hear the volume turned up so loud, so early. But ha! I was already awake when he crowed for the first time. Too excited to sleep and wanting to see and experience everything all at once, I got up and wandered around. Motion detector floods on the porch flashed on at my entrance like cops at the crime scene. So much for the serenity of the moment.

We keep repeating exclamations of wonder at the beauty of all this scenery and the denseness of the vegetation. Although I have been stating that we were moving to the Smokey Mountains, it says on the map that we are not in them. We are farther west, in the Cumberland Plateau. Yeah right. Remember that as you drive up the steep grade surrounded on both sides by rock walls and vistas filled with repeating mountaintops fading from dark to lighter to lightest off into the distance. Our road is hilly and winding and alternates between dense forests and new forests that have been previously logged with the regrowth in the ten year range, and farms with cattle, and respectable well kept homes, and a few shall we say neglected abodes. Intermixed with views of misty valleys and corresponding hilltops and you have the 8 mile drive from the main road to our house.

On Tuesday we went back to town, Dunlap, where we left Popeye in the motel. Yes, we paid to have our cat stay there until we got the truck unloaded. He was happy to see us and equally happy to crawl under the bed for the entire first day in the new house.

I unpacked the kitchen stuff and loaded up the pantry and found the coffee maker which I sorely needed. My schedule starting so much earlier made my day sort of off kilter and a nap was necessary around 3ish. I slept for three hours! Dave was just as busy as I was, but outside. He mowed the grass in the orchard and as he finished the task, the mower sputtered and died. He started it again and drove it to the garage, but then it died again. Solenoid, he pronounced. We'll have to get a new one. Another shopping trip! We had done some shopping before getting Popeye, at the Super Wal-Mart but of course I forgot a bunch of things. This is the closest real grocery/dept. store for 19 miles. We had started a list and we added this solenoid thingy and a vacuum cleaner to it, as well as a wheelbarrow and ibuprofen for my sore everything.

Wednesday's tasks included establishing the phone service, and buying a new washer and dryer. Another shopping trip but this time we went to McMinnville. There we found a Lowe's and the solenoid (which didn't end up working) and the washer/dryer. They wouldn't deliver because neither of the set was expensive enough to qualify. No problem. We have the truck! So we bought a cheap dolly and the salesman helped Dave load the laundry pair on the truck. Off we went, with the incorrect electrical plug for the dryer. Not our fault.

Phone/internet/cable TV service had to be established in Tracy City, and we managed to find that office without trouble. Tracy City is an exaggerated title. The phone company is a co-op and we have to buy a membership. Cute. We were asked what numbers we would like for our last four digits and I chose the same numbers as our street address. Double cute.

On the way home from the phone company it began to rain. Buckets at first and then blinding torrents. The laundry pair was securely strapped down but their cardboard boxes were getting drenched. The rain dissipated slightly by the time we arrived at home and we got the ramps in place at the back of the truck to unload the two appliances. Getting them off the truck was easy compared to getting them up the stairs and into the house. I am too old for this. And the wet cardboard was just so slippery. We tore most of it away from the base of the dryer and got it up the stairs pretty easily, since it doesn't weigh much. The washer was another story. This was a case of the Two Stooges in action. No blood was shed but it may have been washed away by the returning rain. Let's just say that the cackling hens in the peanut gallery didn't make it any easier.

Eventually all the wet cardboard was removed and the connection directions were found and Dave began to install the washer. It turned out that the water lines were reversed and the hot line was actually cold and vice versa. We can switch them, but it is funny because the shower in the master is reversed the same way. When it came to installing the dryer, we discovered we had been sold the wrong plug, a three prong, when we needed a four prong.

More shopping!

The trip on Thursday took us to Chattanooga. We were sightseeing along the way and I was the navigator. I got us off to a bad start by insisting we take the I-75 ramp toward Atlanta, when it should have been toward Knoxville. I was wrong and we ended up in Georgia for a few miles. Nice drive. We did know where we were headed, and we got there finally. Another Lowe's. We returned the solenoid for the mower and exchanged the three prong plug for the four prong and set out to Target to get our phones. The previous owner has phone jacks everywhere in the house so we could finally have phones next to the bed, in the great room, kitchen and living room. In our Cary house we had only three jacks, never in the bedrooms. What luxury. But who would be calling us? We communicate via email so much more than by phone. Nevertheless Target had Slimline phones for $5.99 so we got four! While in the electronics department we were seduced by the big plasma, lcd and flat screen TVs. There were some with huge price tags that didn't have the picture quality of the less expensive models. I know this is a tuning adjustment situation, but still. $1600 vs.$799? The Magnavox model was crisp and clear and reduced in price, with the added incentive of 10% more reduction if a Target charge account was opened. Can you believe we passed up this bargain? I can't. But it is stewing.

The real reason, I cannot lie, to go to Chattanooga was to buy wine and some decent beer. The counties in our area sell only beer. And for good reason. Driving these hills under the influence has no doubt resulted in the reduction of many a wild and crazy guy, over the edge, pickup and all, never to be seen again. Finding a liquor store was not easy, and when we finally did, we were surprised at the high prices. Nevertheless, I stocked up. Well, I had saved all that money by not buying a TV.

With the correct plug in our possession Dave finished installing the laundry pair and I did two loads. Sigh. Such a relief. He then toddled off for a nap and I decided to reassemble the Poang chairs from IKEA. I am pretty good at this stuff. I usually insist that Dave be out of the room when I reconstruct. It is too stressful on him.

As I was about to finish the second chair I heard the sound of a car coming up the drive. A VISITOR!!! Yes, a woman was at my front door. Her name is Chris *****, and she lives in town, Palmer that is. She knew the previous owners and wanted to welcome us to the area. Isn't that nice? Almost the very next words out of her mouth were "What church do you plan to attend?" Ha! That's the country for you. Good thing I had already stashed the liquor in the house.