Here Comes Our Stuff

After being told, with the holidays and all, we would be lucky to get into our new Klamath Falls home by January 10th, we learned last night we can be in the place this coming Sunday. The closing isn’t actually until next Friday or at the latest Monday the 23rd, but we are paying 8 days of rent to the seller, to get into it on the 15th.

First thing this morning I notified both the Mayflower movers and the car shippers that it was time to send us our stuff. Dash Auto Logistics was first to respond and the Miata could be here the day after Christmas Day. Not long after that, the movers got back to us, our household goods won’t even be loaded onto the truck in Augusta until the day after Christmas. So we might end up with a convertible that won’t be usable for another 3 months and be waiting an extra week and a half for our pots and pans, couch, TV and bed.

That’s of course the worse case scenario. With the car pickup date and travel time ranges and the household goods travel time range they could actually get here only two days apart, December 30th and January 2nd respectively. It is winter and and we are in the Cascades, so weather might be a factor here as well.

Comfort TV

We tried several other different TV shows on Netflix or Hulu or Amazon Prime after polishing off both the 2 seasons The Kominsky Method and 6 seasons of Grace and Frankie and finding only one, Episodes, a little ditty with Matt LeBlanc. It wasn’t great television, but it was fairly entertaining and we watched all 5 seasons while not wanting anymore after we were done. With that finished, we were completely out of stuff to watch that was new to us.

So we opted for comfort TV, we reverted back to watching a show we’ve already watched all the way through about a have a dozen times before, The West Wing. In the past week we have watched 3 complete seasons and the first 6 episodes of season 4. That’s 73 episodes or approximately 54 hours of TV. Hey, it gets dark early out here, what else do we really have to do.

Weekend Wrap

On Black Friday, we, along with quite a few Klamath Fallsians, went shopping. And while most everyone else was looking for bargains at all the retail stores, we went to Fred Meyers to do our usual weekly grocery shopping.

On Small Business Saturday we walked the mile and a quarter into downtown. Not really to shop though. We had purchased some advanced tickets to participate in the city’s Annual Chocolate Walk, a fund raiser for the Disabled American Veterans organization. A total of 30 downtown businesses were participating. After getting our wrist bands we visited a couple of places on the way to the furthest spot and the place we were going to have lunch.

That out of the way, we started the trek of visiting as many of the 30 businesses as we could to collect chocolate treats. A few places were handing out just store bought chocolate candy and we certainly didn’t turn any of it down. The businesses are in competition to be voted best treat and some places go above and beyond to make some delicious homemade treats, this the real draw. The both of us agreed that the fresh made truffles offered by an Avon store were the best of the best. Some of the other yummy treats included several barks from pretzel to peppermint, fudge, popcorn covered with white chocolate and a thick drink made with heavy cream and shaved Italian chocolate. Oh my. Felt like trick or treating for adults.

We visited several businesses that we never knew were there. A few of which we will be returning to for any help we need for decorating our new house once we are in it. About two thirds of the way through we stopped eating the chocolate treats and started putting them in the small paper bag they gave us at the start. For various minor reasons we missed just 4 places.

Along with the Chocolate Walk there were 15 places doing something called Shop Small, several of which were on the walk too. For every $10 you spent you received a raffle ticket to be entered into a drawing for several prizes ranging from gift baskets to a seven day trip. We ended up with just 4 entries, which pales in comparison to the 2 folks who stopped into the bike store and bought high-end bicycles netting then over 200 entries…

As we walked back up the hill to our rental spot the weather turned much cloudier and cooler. And after changing into comfy clothes, we looked out the window and were treated to a windy white out of snow. By sundown we ended up with about an inch of the white stuff that covered up everything we had shoveled off on Wednesday.

On Football Sunday, where we typically watch 3 NFL games back to back to back, before we even got to the early game we had to go outside in the snow and do some cleanup. Yesterday’s 1″ of snow was followed up by another 2″ overnight. Donna started by shoveling off the sidewalks and a path to the Mini and then I took over by sweeping snow off the car and cleaning up our make-shift driveway to the street.

Donna looked at me during this and said, “I’m still not as tired of doing this as I was raking leaves in Aiken.” To which I replied, “I don’t remember complaining about raking leaves for the first few years we lived there. Give it time.”

More than likely all this snow will be gone before the end of this coming week anyway, after tonight’s upper 20s low it is supposed to be above freezing, even at night, until next Sunday.

Happy Thanksgiving

“What kind of Thanksgiving dinner is this? Where’s the turkey, Chuck? Don’t you know anything about Thanksgiving dinners? Where’s the mashed potatoes? Where’s the cranberry sauce? Where’s the pumpkin pie?” – Peppermint Patty

Because we are still firmly ensconced in the AirBnB we decided that instead of trying to find a really small turkey or do a turkey breast we picked up a couple of Cornish game hens. We used to do these as a regular meal a long time ago, but stopped for some reason, and remembered them fondly. We did a couple of baked potatoes along with corn for me and carrots for her.

Either our memories are faulty, possible, our tastes have changed, also possible, or they have started breeding these hens to be more like turkeys because the breasts seemed overly large in comparison to the rest of the bird and it tasted pretty bland. Turns out we really missed the mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing and apple pie flavors. We may have to search out a local restaurant next week that is serving a Thanksgiving-like meal…

February’s Average Snowfall Total

From yesterday morning to this afternoon we had snow fall in the amount the equivalent of February’s total average snowfall – 6 inches – in November.

Shortly after it started we took a small drive downtown just to see what was what and to check our mail at the Post Office. It had barely started to accumulate, maybe an 1/8″, but the roads were getting pretty slick. We came home and parked the Mini. The photo above is what it looked like 24 hours later. And now 12 hours later it still sits there unmoved.

We did go out and spend an hour shoveling a path to the car to brush off the snow covering it. Because it is parked on grass we also shoveled off a path to the street down to about an inch or so to allow me to back out if needed. I hope it is not needed though, the roads have been packed down to a super dense icy consistency. The high performance all season tires on the Mini would be able to handle a little bit of snow on the grass okay, but the roadway, not so much. Looks like a set of dedicated snow tires is in our future…