Chef Ralph

I really do have books on solar power and have looked into wind turbins that make power. Well, I’m re-thinking this whole idea. On January 19th at about 7 am, we lost power.

We had lost it before, but it came back within an hour or two. As the sun was coming up I noticed that things looked odd outside. It was raining, but it was 29 degrees. Everything was getting coated in a blanket of ice. EVERYTHING !  After 30-40 minutes, we decided that we needed to get the generator running, which meant moving the car out of the garage, which ment, moving the truck from in front of the garage door.

Back up to everything was coated in ice,

the truck was totally encased in 3/8 inch of ice and wasn’t moving..We got the generator out and running, and discovered that we didn’t have alot of gas. I drained 4-5 cups out of the riding lawnmower and looked into syphoning gas out of a car…forget that…never gonna happen. NO way to get any type of hose into the gas tank. The tree at the end of the driveway had leaned over and was totally blocking the driveway, and developed the attitude of, If you touch me, I may just fall over!  My neighbor shows up and takes me to get gas…we got 9 gallons or 36 bucks, and keep the power running off and on through the night. Sometime on Friday I let the truck warm up for 90 minutes and get the ice off of it in order to go get more gas..13 gallons or 52 bucks…ya have to drive to the station and get gas on your hands, and maybe the inside of the truck, where you have towels laying down…why all the gas…the generator. In addition to running the furnace, even more important is it keeps the sump pump running, which keeps the water out of the basement.  Saturday, went and got 48 bucks worth of gas and sometime around 9 pm the power came back on.. the generator worked great…the hum of the cul-de-sac with 6 of the 11 houses buzzing away. We are so happy to have power back on, we turn on things like the microwave and the lights don’t dim…it’s wonderful.

Update…After 2 weeks, things seem back to normal, except you can’t drive a block without seeing 10 trees and hundreds of branches piled up along the streets. Could be all spring to finish the cleanup.

It will be Thanksgiving this week and I am thankful for my furnace!  Woke up today and it was 27 degrees. But just in time, yesterday we re-arrainged the garage and got both cars inside. Still plenty of room around them. The poor truck is out but..it’s tough. We are hoping to blow and rake leaves today, but it have to get above freezing first. I am going to make chili today, and that will be perfect for weather like this.

How can you top Rammstein…well, with an Oktoberfest party maybe…Small only 6 people this year. And I need to write more..I have lot’s to say , just nobody to read it This is a start !!!

On March 9th (Ash Wednesday) our oven element caught fire. It wasn’t too scary, but it did make you wonder. The fire department showed up after Ruth went out to the street and flagged them down to tell them where they were going. And 2 days later we had the guy come out and replace and check the element. Flash forward 2 weeks to Wednesday the 23rd. It was about 8:15 and Ruth was putting the cats to bed in their room in the basement and she smelled smoke and asked me to come check it with her. I could smell the smoke and decided that it was coming from outside and was coming in through the crawl space vents and then into the basement. We decided to look outside and check on this. I opened the front door and stepped out onto the porch and could see the entire sky was orange and embers were blowing across the sky from the right. I ran back into the house and as I was picking up the phone I yelled that the neighbors house was on fire. We called 911 and as I was reporting this, I could hear sirens heading our way. We both went out and grabbed our garden hose and started to water down the shed, the side of our house, ourselves and anything that seemed dry. I believe 3 fire truck showed up along with aid cars and others and it seemed to take too much time before they got water heading to the fire. The house was burning big and at this point they seemed to be keeping things from getting worse rather than keeping the house from burning. Well two and a half hours later the fire was under control and we would try to get some sleep. There were fire trucks there and I don’t know when they left. The next day the building was still smoldering. It turned out that it was a garage, a 2400 sq ft garage and not the house. But a two story 2400 sqft garage is as big as a home. I have two photos, one from a cell phone , shot from our driveway where you can see me aiming the hose at the shed and the building the next day.

I don’t fly much..Maybe 3-4 times a year. We just flew in mid-January and again TSA provided the entertainment.

There was a guy in front of me that was beeping and he kept backing up and putting more stuff on the x-ray belt…Finally he got through and then I walked through and beeped because of my knee.  2 TSA folks grabbed my things and walked me to an area to pat me down, and up! Then we had close to 2 hours before the plane left, so we went into the only restaurant and got a sandwich. Seating was limited, so a couple asked if they could sit with us. They told us a story about just going through the detectors and when they went to gather their belongings, ( it was the guy from in front of us) his prescription sunglasses weren’t there. They said HE was responsible for keeping an eye on them. He explained that they had him going back and forth so many times, he was luck to keep track of his wife…  The next day as we were finishing up unpacking we came across his glasses. The TSA people put them into my backpack. When they scooped up my belongings they scooped up his glasses and dropped them in my stuff. Ya know, that coulda been anything at all…this time it was glasses..let your imagination run wild with other things it could have been…scary huh..  We called TSA both at the airport twice and once in DC,where we had to leave a message,  and emailed them, and it has been two weeks today, and we have heard NOTHING back from them. We knew what city the glasses guy was from and we knew what hotel they were staying at because a conference was there too. So Ruth got on Google and found the guy in under 20 min…Yea I know, that is scary too…but it worked and they drove to our house and picked up the glasses. If TSA ever calls us or emails..I will follow up here..Sad!

I hope everyone had a great Christmas. It was warm here 51 degrees and didn’t rain until bedtime. Woke up on the 26th ready to do chores, First thing was to check the traps in the shed. Out in the country the mice like to come into the shed in the winter to get out of the weather. I guess they like peanut butter because they try to eat it over and over again…Well actually each mouse only tries nce, and then well…..

Netflix is great…I used to think Hollywood Video was great…No I take that back..I never really liked HV, it was just there. It was easy to see that Netflix would put them out of business. Yes Blockbuster is next. Here is another reason why Netflix is on top. I have had Californation Season 3 at the top of my wish list for a month. I have watched it go from very long wait to long wait and getting my #4,5,6 choices etc. Today I get an email from netflix telling me they are sending my the disk from a different location because it’s taking so long..oh, and it’s a bonus..in addition to my other disk that I have coming. Amazing…this is the 2nd time they have done this in the past 6 months. see copy of letter

So what about Netflix in 2020…well we don’t know how we’ll be watching movies in 10 years, but I bet Netflix has something to do with it