Ay yi yi! What a ride the last two
days have been! Now it's late in the afternoon on Saturday and I'm just sitting
down to visit with you.
"What's going on, Peg?" you
ask.
Years and years ago, about a hundred
of them by now, I bought a ton of eBooks. 32,000 Classic Books and it came on
two discs. Two discs worth of data isn't that much, is it? I downloaded them
onto my computer and browsed the books. I was looking for C. S. Lewis books or maybe
something by A. W. Tozer. In the children's file, I found a few books with my
mother's name including Dorothy's Mystical Adventures in Oz, and a series of
Patty books. Patty At Home, Patty in Paris, Patty Blossom, and Patty's Suitors.
I scroll down a little further and see Peggy in Her Blue Frock, Peggy at
School, Peggy Stewart Navy Girl. I didn't know there were children's books with
my namesake. In another section I found a poem called Peg of Limavaddy. It
talks about a traveling guy who stops at an inn and the serving girl is Peg,
the pretty hussy. I laughed. He's so taken with her he spills his beer down his
pantaloons. He goes on to regale us with her attributes. Lovely Peg, smile like
an angel, laughter sweet and clear. Slim waist, comfortable bodice, bare arms,
pretty ankles. And he'll dream of her until his dying day. One line I found
especially descriptive and appropriate for this time of year:
Through
the crashing woods, autumn brawld and bluster'd, tossing round about, leaves
the hue of mustard.
It's been just that here the last few
days.
That night, I did something I haven't
done in a couple of months. I shut the lid of my computer without shutting it
down first. I used to do that all the time, then a couple of months ago my
computer didn't like it and I had a hard time getting it to work right. I think
I wrote about that struggle. Since then I've been leaving my computer open at
night and letting it go to sleep. Well, it wouldn't sleep the other night and I
didn't want to leave the screen on all night. Surely it's worked out its problems by now, I thought and shut the
lid. The next day nothing on my computer was working. It'd keep freezing.
Between Mike and me I bet we rebooted it a dozen times, did several defrags and
scans, ran problem checkers, and installed updates. By Saturday afternoon
everything was working except Google. I searched on my iPad and found out that
Google takes a lot of memory and won't work if your memory's full. I didn't
check mine. I just deleted all the books, rebooted, and Google still wouldn't
work. I went into my programs thinking I could update or fix it but it wasn't
an option. Then I thought I'd try a different browser but without Google, how
was I going to get on the internet? I looked around on my computer and found
Firefox. It must've been there since the first day I bought my computer — thank
goodness! I launched it and it works just fine. I figure Google must be
corrupted so I deleted it. Now I'm back in business! I'm late getting started
but ever so thankful.
Guess what I found!
This
is an easy mushroom to identify and there are no poisonous look-alikes. You
will never see this mushroom in the stores for two reasons. First, it's very
delicate. They won't even stand the weight of too many on top of each other.
Second, it's in the Inky Cap family. Within a matter of hours you'll have
nothing left but a pile of ink.
I
took my mushrooms home and turned them into a little bit of soup. It was really
good! I couldn't wait to find more so I could make more soup.
I found a late-blooming Buttercup.
We've
had a couple of really nice days. I hooked Ginger up and took her for a walk
down along the creek.
I found a couple more late-blooming
wildflowers.
A chair in the woods.
I left the creek, walked through the
woods, and ended up on our little dirt road, just down from the Robinson's
house.
Maybe there'll be some Lotus flower seeds,
I thought and headed up to the Robinson's pond. I did not see one single Lotus
pod but I did surprise a Great Blue Heron. He stood still long enough for me to
get several shots of him before he took flight.
Mike had an appointment in Towanda
early last week. On the way, we pass this new building, and we're currently
having a debate.
"I bet they're going to put brick
up there," is my guess.
"I
think it's going to be windows," Mike says.
"Windows?!" I asked
incredulously. "Why would they put windows on the floor?"
"It's
higher up than you think."
I'm like, "Okay. Whatever!"
Time will tell which of us is right.
Going past a car lot in Wysox I see
this. Why, oh why!, would you even put something like this on your truck? What
is he thinking!
On
the way home, Mike pulled off the road and let me walk around the falling down
motel units, at least I think that's what they used to be. I got to see the
back and look inside.
I
started to feed the birds for the winter again. I try to remember to bring my
feeder in at night, otherwise the coons will unhook it and drop it to the
ground. I've lost a couple of feeders that way. I looked out the other morning
and see I forgot to bring it in. I could see it wasn't hanging any more but
stuck on the side of the branch. What in
the world, I wondered. Upon investigation, I discovered the coon had gone
to drop it and the cable tie caught the screw on the way down. So there it
hung.
We got two more of our Rhododendrons
wrapped in burlap this week. They're right on the edge of the yard. I took the
weed side while Mike took the grass side and we passed the roll of burlap back
and forth. When I had a minute I looked up through the trees.
"Is
that a fence post?" Mike asked.
The bank is our dust barrier between
us and the road so we let it do its own thing, like overgrow with weeds. And
it's home to junk that's lived there since before we bought the place.
Mike
pointed it out and I walked over to check it out. "It is! And it still has
a sign on it." I grabbed the end of the post, pulled the sign from his
grave, and passed it out to Mike. I wonder what else is buried under the years
of leaf litter — but not bad enough to go looking for it.
We
put two vents in our eaves. Up until now, the space has been sealed and it
causes us a condensation problem. Mike is hoping that venting it will take care
of that.
Mike
trimmed out the back of my stove (it needed a couple of more boards then the
old one had) — and I decorated for Christmas! Actually, the lights have lived
there all year, I just hung 'em back up when Mike was done and plugged 'em in
for you.
Here are a couple more pictures for
you.
We
had so much rain so fast the Susquehanna left its bed. Several roads in our
area were closed for either flooding or mudslides. The winds were fierce and
thousands of people in our area were without power. We were lucky and didn't
lose ours here.
My handsome brother David in Texas has
been experiencing a lot of flooding lately too. He saw minnows swimming in the
street. And he gets trash floating into his yard. He gets really stressed out
not knowing how high the water's going to get and it did get up into the
garage. After that it went down so he's good right now.
A
patch of sun on the hillside.
Miss Rosie gave me a fabulous gift!
Earlier in the year, I asked if she'd
take a slab of wood from one of the trees we had cut down and paint something
on it for my birthday or Christmas gift. Her studio is unheated so she has to
plan ahead for that kind of stuff.
Well,
this week she gave it to me and I'm ecstatic! It's reversible and I absolutely
love it. Miss Rosie is so talented!
Friday
was our turn to clean the church and by 'our' I mean the Kipps and me. On the
way to the church, I spotted a whole bunch of Shaggy Manes.
"Can we stop on the way
home?" I asked Lamar since he was our driver.
"Sure."
"Mike won't even try it. Would
you like to try it, Miss Rosie?" I asked.
"I like mushrooms." She
paused for just the briefest of a second. "Sure. I'd give it a try."
We cleaned the church and on the way
home Lamar stopped for me. I didn't pick them all. You need some to go back to
seed. When Lamar pulled out onto the road there was an awful dragging scrapping
noise.
"What is that?" I asked.
"Probably a branch," Lamar
answered. "I'll pull over when we turn off onto Woods Road."
We
didn't have to put up with the noise for long because it wasn't far and when he
stopped I jumped out and pulled the branch from the undercarriage and showed it
to him. "BOY! For such a little branch he was certainly making a lot of
noise!" I said when I jumped back in.
Later, in the early evening, I went
looking for my cell phone. "It's gotta be here someplace," I told
Mike and he called my phone while I ran around the house listening for it to
ring. "I know I had it in the Kipps' car when we went to clean the
church," I told Mike. "Maybe it fell out there. Or, we made two stops
on the way home. One for mushrooms and one just as we turned onto Woods Road so
I could pull a branch out from under Lamar's car."
I called Lamar, "Could you please
check your car for my cell phone?" I asked.
"Sure. Hang on. I'll go
check," he said. I heard a door open and close. "Here. Talk to Gene
while I'm gone."
I'm guessing he set the phone down on
the back porch so he wouldn't be out of range of the base and Gene Wilder is
their outside cat with crazy hair.
"No. It's not there. Did Gene
talk to you?"
"Nope. He did not."
I remembered that you can get on the
internet and ping the location of your phone. I did that. It found Mike's phone
but wouldn't find mine. You can even send a signal to your phone that will
sound for five minutes and will sound even if your phone's on mute. I did that
too. But still couldn't find my phone.
"If it's beside the road," I
told Mike, "maybe someone ran it over."
We didn't jump in the Jeep and go
looking for my phone because it was Friday night, exercise night, and Miss
Rosie and I would be leaving for class soon. I'd look for it then. And I hate
to admit it but when Lamar brought Rosie up so she could ride with me to class,
I checked the back seat of his car for myself. Lamar was right. It wasn't
there. We stopped at the end of Woods Road near where I'd pulled the branch out
and Rosie used her cell to call mine. We couldn't hear it. We did the same
thing where I'd gotten out to hunt mushrooms. We couldn't hear it ring there
either. And it wasn't at the church.
"We can call when we leave
here," my beautiful Jody suggested, "and we might see the screen
light up in the dark."
We stopped at the mushroom place, no
phone. Miss Rosie and I get down on Woods Road, she calls my phone and I see it
glowing there beside the road! Yay! It worked. I have a protective case on my
phone so even if it was run over, it was fine.
My hopes of getting a new computer and
a new phone all on the same day were dashed to pieces! I'm not sad about it
though.
One more thing before I update you on
the bridge work this week.
The
humaditaty err humidity level is such in my house that my envelopes sealed
themselves.
Stick
it in the freezer for several hours, the internet said. Slid an opener under the flap and it'll open
right up, it said.
I tried it. I left my envelope in the
freezer all day. The internet lied to me.
The
bridge.
When the weather was nice, Mike and I
had things to do. When it was bad we didn't want to sit there. Besides, a few
times everyone was too busy to talk to us. But here's what I know.
We heard a chainsaw running one day so
we went to investigate. Duane was in the bucket of the track hoe and was
cutting branches.
"I
bet it's so they can get the crane back down to the bridge," Mike
speculated.
There's so little room on this side of
the bridge that the crane is sitting outside the work zone just a little way up
the road.
When Duane came down to help Dawson
clear the just-cut branches from the road, he confirmed that was the reason.
"We can lower the boom,"
Duane said, "but the branches get caught on the gantry." That's the
back part that holds the other end of the cables.
"It's to put in the
diaphragm," Duane told us.
"Diaphragm?" I questioned.
"It
ties all the beams together," he explained.
We got lucky one afternoon because
Brian was there and he came to talk with us.
"The diaphragm is there to keep
the beams from spreading, but by the time you pour the deck on there and it's
tied to the rebar, how could they ever spread?" Mike asked.
"It
shouldn't. The deck steel is tied to the diaphragm steel and the diaphragm
steel is tied, and the bars come out of the pile caps. Everything is tied
together. This design is called Integral Abutment. And this bridge is made so
the whole thing moves together. That's why we build a lot of these. This design
has been around... maybe ten years. It's cheap and it's quick," Brian explained
There are three diaphragms on this
bridge. One on each end and the center one.
The side walls are called parapets. There's
going to be a drip notch to keep the water from going down to the beams. Deck pans
is slang for SIP forms (Stay In Place forms).
"What's
the strip for that Fuzzy's putting on?" I asked.
"It's a chamfer strip. See, any exposed edge has to have a chamfer strip on it. We can't have any ninety-degree edges. They don't want that because it's a weak spot. Where if you chamfer it it's a little stronger, looks nicer, and isn't as apt to chip."
"It's a chamfer strip. See, any exposed edge has to have a chamfer strip on it. We can't have any ninety-degree edges. They don't want that because it's a weak spot. Where if you chamfer it it's a little stronger, looks nicer, and isn't as apt to chip."
Gary, in the picture with Fuzzy, is putting
grease on the bolts so they can take them back out of the concrete.
We sat there talking with Brian for quite a while as we watched the guys work. Fuzzy came along and made marks all down the form then Joe came along with a template and drilled holes.
We sat there talking with Brian for quite a while as we watched the guys work. Fuzzy came along and made marks all down the form then Joe came along with a template and drilled holes.
"It's for the saddles."
"Saddles?"
"The
rails go on top and the Bidwell machine that we pour the deck with rides on that,"
Brian explained.
A
couple of random pictures I snapped while we chatted.
Let's call this one done!
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