Year: 2021

I Miss Fish Tacos

Today is Friday and quite possibly is should have been Fish Taco Friday, but today we had chili. It could have been Fish Taco Friday because ever since we have lived in Klamath Falls every other Friday was a visit to a food truck that served them and this might have been the day.

Unfortunately that food truck has stopped serving them on Friday. Two out of the last three times we visited the truck on Friday she didn’t have them. On our next try, there were no fish tacos, so three strikes and you are out. I did ask why this last time and she replied that there wasn’t enough interest in them.

On the first no fish taco day we drove around looking for another place that we wanted to eat at. No joy, one of the other food trucks (not strictly Mexican) we’ve eaten at before and liked, but they weren’t in their spot.

The second no fish taco Friday, we tried a different Mexican food truck. They didn’t have any, so we tried some of their food and was not really good at all.

After the third no fish taco Friday we were just going to head home, but when we passed the spot where that other truck that we ate before was, it was there. We were going to get a burger, but she had a sign in the window that said “Fish Tacos”, I decided to get a couple, Donna opted for Fish & Chips.

Well, the fish was good, but the taco package was not nearly as good as our previous suppler. The tortillas were not heated and too chewy, there was lettuce instead of cabbage and the pico de gallo was just chopped tomatoes. The fish & chips was plentiful enough that we though maybe we could come back every other Friday and split the meal between the two of us, but that will probably not happen.

So, I miss fish tacos, but I’ve lived long enough now that I miss a lot of things, what’s one more…

Jigsaw Puzzle Madness

As I mentioned the other day, we have been doing a lot of jigsaw puzzles here during pandemic quarantine/avoidance and smoky summer days.

We have probably bought a couple of dozen brand new. We visit our local independent bookstore once a month on haircut day and Donna usually buys one, while I buy an actual book. We have also bought a few at Fred Meyer when we catch them on sale.

But most of the puzzles come from thrift stores, Goodwill sells them for $1.99 or $2.99 and one place in town has all of their puzzles priced at ninety-nine cents, otherwise we probably couldn’t afford our habit.

And what a habit it is too, for the last 10 months there has always been a jigsaw puzzle going on what used to be our dining room table. I have been posting photos of every puzzle we complete on Instagram and early on I was just using the hashtags #jigsaw and #jigsawpuzzle, but after completely a bunch of them I started to add #jigsawpuzzleanonymous, a play on Alcoholics or Narcotics Anonymous, to them because it was looking like we were addicted.

As it turns out, so far, I am the only one using that hashtag, so when I want to know how many puzzles we have done so far all I have to do is look at the #jigsawpuzzleanonymous page and count the posts. There is one post with three small puzzles in it and for one panoramic puzzle of Portland, Oregon I created a triptych with 3 posts so the counts works out perfect. Right now we sit at 93 puzzles in 275 days or about one every 3 days.

Yesterday I had someone like a photo of a puzzle from a few days ago and I went to see his page, to see how he connected with me, and he posts time-lapse photos of his puzzle building. Five hundred piece puzzles in three hours…yikes, but it is fun to watch: For some reason, none of the puzzle builds are available on his YouTube anymore…

Sport, Off-Road, Touring

Labor Day Edition of SORT
As of Monday, September 6, 2021 at 9:00 PM pacific time:

Sport Off-Road Touring
2002 Panoz Esperante 2005 Mercedes-Benz G500 1957 MG Magnette ZB
Hand-built in Georgia of aluminum & carbon fiber with a 5-litre V-8. This one is sort of hand-built as well, it started as a regular enclosed SUV. A British midsize car that is already left-hand drive from the factory.

Here is what last week’s cars sold for, or bid to, if the reserve was not met.
Sports: 1964 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia Sold for $34,888 on 9/4/21
Off-Road: 1977 Volkswagen Fargo Dune Buggy Sold for $5,100 on 8/31/21
Touring: 1962 Volkswagen Beetle Sold for $11,750 on 9/3/21

All Jumbled Up

We used to do the crossword puzzle, 7 Little Words and the Jumble out of the semi-daily local paper. We would do the crossword together and Donna would do the 7 Little Words & Jumble. If she got stumped, I would help out.

Then back in December last year we made a seemingly innocent purchase of a jigsaw puzzle. But we got addicted to doing jigsaws and the word pencil games no longer got done. Our noses have been stuck inside square cardboard boxes filled with cut pieces of cardboard with brightly colored images glued to one side of them since then. But Donna has still faithfully cut out the newspaper puzzles and we have amassed quite a pile of them. Every once and a while she’ll grab a month’s worth 7 Little Words and hand me the same sized pile of Jumbles so we can try and keep the backlog around six months worth. This morning I got a stack of Jumbles from March.

I get the Jumbles because they, for whatever reason, are in my wheelhouse. I also have a better grasp of the pun like answers involved in the cartoon. Most of the time I can get the top two 5-letter words without having to use paper to unscramble them. More often than not I do have to use some paper to figure out what the bottom two 6-letter words are. Sometimes just writing those six letters down in a different order will let me see the word and others I have to shuffle them around a dozen times before I get it. Every once and a while I’ll get totally stuck on a word and I will cheat by checking for the scrambled word answers at jumbleanswer.com. Also, every once in a while, I’ll get three of the four words and the cartoon answer, which allows me to solve that word.

The Sunday puzzle is more difficult than the other six days because instead of 4 jumbled words, it has 6 and all of them are 6-letters long. Plus the cartoon answer usually has well over a dozen letters in it. Today, I almost hung up my Jumble pencil for good because I did something that was pretty improbable. I got to the first Sunday Jumble of March and I aced it. I could figure out all six of the six letter words and filled in the cartoon answer without having to write anything down on paper to solve. I’m not ready to start doing them in pen just yet, but boy did that feel good.

Changing Filters

Today was change filters day.

I have been changing all the filters in the house every 2 months ever since we have been here. This not only includes the two HVAC filters (one upstairs, the other down), but also the Keurig coffee maker and the Brita water pitcher.

When we got the A/C fixed last month the tech mentioned that if we set the fan to ON instead of AUTO it would run all the time, but at a slower speed, which would cause the air to be kept in constant circulation which would help filter it better. And as well, possibly increase the motor’s lifespan because starting up from stopped was harder on it than just increasing and decreasing speeds to match demand, so, this is what we started doing. The ON setting will cost a few bucks more in electricity, but the extra filtering might help Donna’s dust allergy. With the added airflow through the HVAC system we figured that those filters probably should get changed every month starting now.

Although the current HVAC filters have been in there for 2 months they have actually only been in use for a month because in July the A/C was broke and didn’t run at all. Can you guess from the picture below which filter is new and which one is used?

That is the dirtiest filter I have ever seen, and both of them were that color. I don’t think the level of dirt captured has anything to do with running 24/7, but more to do with the air quality here in Klamath Falls.

The first days of the month were the only ones in green, AKA Good, and the A/C was still broke then. So for the rest of the month we got 5 days of Poor, 9 Unhealthy, 10 Very Unhealthy and 4 Dangerous. The skies have been smoke filled from wildfires to the east of us and then when they were finally under control, Northern California started burning.

Maybe I’m going to have to change the HVAC filters every two weeks during Oregon’s 5th season, the months of July to September are called Fire Season.

Sport, Off-Road, Touring

In last week’s verbiage for the VW Transporter I proclaimed my love of all things Volkswagen and that is mostly due to today’s birthday girl, as her first car and what she was driving when we met was 1971 Beetle. So, in her honor, this week we have an all Volkswagen line-up. And any one of them we’d be happy to have in our stable.

Donna’s Birthday Edition of SORT
As of Monday, August 30, 2021 at 9:00 PM pacific time:

Sport Off-Road Touring
1964 Volkswagen
Karmann Ghia		 1977 Volkswagen
Fargo Dune Buggy		 1962 Volkswagen
Beetle
Some may disagree with this being a sports car, but its got a Poor-sha engine, guages and door panels. Perfect for bombing around Oregon’s forest service roads, but only in the summer! This is a beautifully turned example. All except that ugly modern JVC radio in the dash.

Here is what last week’s cars sold for, or bid to, if the reserve was not met.
Sports: 2017 Ford Shelby Mustang GT350 Sold for $50,000 on 8/30/21
Off-Road: 1995 Mitsubishi Delica Space Gear Chamonix Bid to $29,750 on 8/26/21
Touring: 1959 Volkswagen Type 2 Double Cab Transporter Sold for $125,000 on 8/29/21

Making It Ours

We have been slowing putting our stamp on our Oregon home. When we bought it, its style was Plain Jane contractor flipped (we think in 2012), because every ceiling light in the house was a bronze “boob light” and the upstairs walls were sprayed a sickly tan.

The first thing we did was, tear up all the tan carpet in the three bedrooms and replace it with “wood” flooring. We also spruced up the kitchen, the walls got a bright yellow coat of paint, changed out the ratty faucet and updated both the over sink and room light fixtures. Then the two upstairs bedrooms and baths got coats of paint, blue for one set and green for the other.

That was last year, this year we have freshened up the 2 upstairs bathrooms with new size appropriate vanities, brushed nickel fixtures, new mirrors and lights (even a new vinyl tile floor in one.) Next up were changing out all those ugly ceiling light fixtures, a total of twelve of them. Up went 9 LED lights and 3 ceiling fans, almost all in the brushed nickel finish. Recently the living/dining room got a nice coat of light green paint. The original tan paint still adorns the walls of only the stairwell going downstairs and the area right at the top of them. These are still that color only because I can’t figure out how to paint the top of the wall from the bottom of the stairs.

The bottom floor walls are all white and adding some color down there is next on the list. The hallway might get some wall color, the bedroom will probably get a feature wall of color, the bath/laundry room is also a candidate for a bit of paint. The den/family room might stay white, but who knows, but I have a lot of leftover paint in most of the upstairs colors…

Oh, I almost forgot, we had the outside of the house painted as well, from dull gray to a bold blue: