Cop Car's Beat

Playing catch-up

Thanksgiving

Our Thanksgiving week was a delightfully busy one that included all four generations of our nuclear family plus my Elder Brother. On Tuesday (the 22nd of November), the elder three generations of our family gathered at our home for dinner, but I did none of the preparation. WichiDude provided meatloaf that first night, and set the table, while Dudette heated the meatloaf and prepared side dishes in our kitchen. The next night, Dudette prepared a spaghetti dinner for us all - again, at our home, in our kitchen. The only thing I did either evening was load/unload the dishwasher and clean off kitchen counters.

Dudette hosted her traditional Thanksgiving Day dinner for all four generations of family with help from WichiDude and our Wonderful GrandDaughter - and, I suspect, Bogie - at their Bel Aire home on Thursday. Hunky Husband and I stayed out of the way, at our own home, until it was time to sit down for dinner - and left Dudette's and WichiDude's home shortly after dinner. (Dudette texted us when she was an hour from putting food on the table so that we could get ourselves in gear and make the 25-minute drive to her house.) New readers aren't expected to know that Dudette's traditional Thanksgiving meal comprises roasted turkey, mashed potatoes, turkey gravy, stuffing, green bean casserole, green and black olives, her wonderful crescent rolls (made following Hunky Husband's mother's original recipe) and butter and jellied cranberry sauce. She tops it off with pecan pie and/or chocolate chiffon pie - often provided by Wonderful GrandDaughter. (A late, and missed, friend from the early 1960s gave me a recipe for a very similar chocolate pie that she called "Paul Newman Pie".)

Elder Brother had had his Thanksgiving dinner with his Colorado "family" on the prior Sunday and did not arrive in the Wichita area until Friday. The short overlap between visits by daughter Bogie and my Elder Brother (one evening - Friday the 25th of November) made it imperative that we get everyone together that evening, so we held Pizza Friday in our home.

We baked three large Papa Murphy's pizzas and had a great time - as always! We failed to take photos, being too busy enjoying ourselves.

Furniture

 

There are some years during which Hunky Husband's/our dining table is not once extended to its full length; but, as the table had to be expanded for this Pizza Friday, I was reminded (once again!) that I need to find someone to do repairs to the table. Its latching mechanism (for when it is at its least extension) is missing the pivoting part (see above, left photo) on either side of the table and the extremely outboard alignment pegs have been broken off, remaining within the receiving holes (above, right photo). As the table is 40 years old, I'm not sure where to start looking for a repair person. While I'm at it, I should have the repair person replace the broken latch on one door of the matching buffet server (below, left photo - nylon rollers broken off) and tighten up the structure on my grandmother's easy chair/rocking chair set (below, right photo) that is over 70 years old. People are afraid to sit in the chairs for lack of rigidity in the structures; thus, the chairs have been relegated to the rarely used front room leaving a shortage of seating in the living room.

 

 

 

 

 

While on the subject of furniture, I'll provide a photo of the chair that Bogie missed seeing by about eight hours. I had ordered the chair in September to help relieve the seating shortage in the living room, being promised delivery in late December. La-Z-Boy kept me updated on the status of construction and shipment. Finally, they sent me a message saying the chair would be delivered between 2:10pm and 5:10pm (I love the specificity of the times) on Saturday, the 26th of November. It was actually delivered at 1:10pm. Sorry, Bogie. You get to try it out the next time you are in town. BTW: The chairs are constructed in Neosho, Missouri. Neosho is about 80 miles from Nevada, Missouri, in which I was born. In addition, we lived there for a short time, early during WWII, while dad worked construction at Camp Crowder. Most notable to me during our short residency were the nanny goat next door and that I first was able to whistle - discovered while running down the sidewalk to meet Dad when he was returning from work one day.

 Fiber Optic Cable

Some weeks ago, a team came through our neighborhood planting flags to indicate various utility line installations. We were told that a fiber optic cable was to be installed. As weeks went by and flags got broken off or misplaced by the vagaries of suburban life (the neighbor across the street just pulled them all up so that he could mow, unimpeded), we began to wonder what was happening.

A few days ago, the utility line marking team showed up, again, replacing/correcting flag placement. This time, AT&T left a hang tag (below, right photo) on each door delineating what we should expect in "the next several weeks" and giving us a phone number to call if we have concerns. There is little of our front yard that is clear of flags. The tree guys had misplaced a couple of flags in taking out the gingko tree in front (see the patch of dirt just beyond the far post of the front steps' handrail in the photo, below, left) and I had run over a couple in trying to mow our yard each week, but they are all back, now.

Friday Lunch

This has been one of those weeks when we've been really busy at our house.

Monday, we saw Hunky Husband's audiologist (she upped the gain on his hearing aids a little) and I took my car in to have the coolant and transmission fluid systems serviced (having delayed those every-seven-year services for one year).

Tuesday, we had JoJac's tree guys out working (they removed two hardwood trees, two medium-sized yews, and the remains of our late cherry tree, and trimmed limbs from two of our old black walnut trees that are just inside our woods.)

Wednesday, we took HH's car in for it's 10,000-mile service (it only has 7,300 miles on it at age 4.5 years, but HH has been obsessing over getting it done because the dealership kept sending him notices that service was due). They went ahead and changed his oil and filter, then rotated and balanced his tires.

Thursday, I cleaned the outside surfaces of some of our back windows (a real struggle maneuvering the ladder around all of the bushes and basement window wells with their bubble covers) and had a business meeting to go over some financial stuff.

Friday...Friday was a little less busy. JoJac's guys (Cornelio and Corbin) came back to grind out the stumps from the removed trees and fill in the holes with dirt, but we didn't really do a lot, ourselves. The biggest thing that I did was to finish cooking a pot of pinto beans with ham hock. For the past 40-50-60 years, I've used diced ham in making bean soup, but our local meat market (for the past 20 years, now) had one great-looking, large ham hock for sale when I had shopped there a few days prior. Wow! What a difference a smoked ham hock makes. We had bean soup with cornbread for lunch, Friday (yesterday). The photo shows our leftovers. I filled two pint jars and one pint-and-a-half jar with the bean soup and plan to use the cornbread in making bread dressing. (Thanksgiving is coming up, you see. I'll need my dressing.)

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I can't imagine that anyone cares, but I made the bean soup, thusly: I had had the butcher saw the hock into three sections (retrospectively, I should have made it four sections). On Thursday, I set the hock out on the counter to warm while dealing with the beans. I sorted one pound of dry pinto beans, rinsed them, threw them in the Crock Pot, and added about two quarts of boiling water and a "glug" of olive oil.

I put the Crock Pot on high temperature until it all came to a boil at which time, I put it on low temperature. After two or three hours, I dumped in the hock pieces, continuing to cook for several hours. The Crock Pot cooking container was cooled down and placed in the refrigerator overnight.

Friday morning, after warming the Crock Pot container of beans and ham hock up enough that the soup was liquid, I removed the pieces of hock from the beans to shred the meat off with a fork, returning the meat and bone marrow to the Crock Pot. A couple of hours later, we had a delicious meal. No seasonings (other than those already present in the ham hock) were required. Delicious (if I do say so, myself!)

Aside to family: The spoon that is shown in the Crock Pot is part of the set of utensils that I purchased with Vesta. As I recall, I paid the previous homeowner $25 for everything that she left in the kitchen (including the milk in the refrigerator - lol).

Mea Culpa - I am oblivious

Why, in the digital age where (at least in the United States) only about 1/3 still have landline phones, and thus possibly have dial phones, do people/companies/organizations insist upon displaying their phone numbers in a cute combination of letters? For instance, this morning I was trying to add an organization to my contacts.

I gave away my last phone that would help me translate "JO-MINER" into numerics some time ago - to Elder Brother who still has a landline. I worked it out, but went online to check my translation.

I was somewhat amused to note that the image that I chose to use was of a phone in the Washington DC area code region. I used that area code a lot when volunteering with the American Red Cross and dealing with federal agencies.

ADDITION of 11/12/2022 10:23am

I am even more greatly amused since learning that the number in the above image is a number to the White House switchboard. (I just had to look it up, didn't I?)

We are working on it

The rain that we received yesterday, 2.55" in the 24-hour period of 11/4/2022, probably moved us out of the exceptional drought category. Rainfall rates varied from light to heavy with winds around 20 mph with gusts to 40 mph - not unusual for our location. (One week ago, the gusts had been in the 60-70 mph range.)

As of last Tuesday, 11/1/2022, the conditions in Sedgwick County and in the State of Kansas were as presented in the next two images.

Sedgwick Count, Kansas

State of Kansas

Understanding Different Types of Dementia

The NIH suggested sharing their chart, below. The link to the information was contained in an email that Hunky Husband had received and shared with me. He is on distribution for information (concerning dementia) from a few different sites. The text is more readable when one clicks on the image to enbiggen. 

As far as I can tell, things are back to normal for this blog.

Review of the Week - 10/29/2022

Cantaloupe - Saved from freezing

The day before our forecasted first hard freeze of the season, I removed the nine largest melons from our cantaloupe vines that had grown from green garbage that I had buried. They aren't very large and there isn't much flesh to them, but they are still good eating.

Mid-Term Elections - Hunky Husband and I voted. Our ballots are in the mail.

Rain - We've been in severe drought for several months. Unexpectedly, we received 1.43" of rain. Projected rain amount had been 0.25" or less. Wichita is still 5+ inches shy on rain for the year and they received only about 0.7" or 0.8" of rain this time. A couple of days later we received 0.17".

It doesn't get better than this! - Found at Bits and Pieces (4:19 minutes:seconds)

 

While we are dancing - not better, but shorter - also from Bits and Pieces (15 seconds)

Leaves - It's that raking time of year. For the past couple of years, HH has declined any leaf-raking assignments. (He used to help me with the raking.) In smallish batches, so as not to overwork my puny muscles, I spent a few days raking up the leaves blown onto our back lawn from the trees in the woods (south winds of up to 60+ miles/hour) and leaves on our front lawn from our soon-to-be-removed gingko that is (too) near the front of the house. HH then mowed/mulched the rest of the leaves in back after which I mowed/mulched the leaves in front. I did the front because we have multitudinous, multi-colored marker flags in the front lawn (in preparation for the installation of fiber-optic cabling). HH did not care to attempt the maze. As HH said when we were talking about mowing patterns, his pattern is "...a random walk pattern."

More Lawn Watering - Having had the irrigation system winterized one week ago, I shall need to spend the weekend watering in the fertilizer and broadleaf weed killer that was sprayed on, yesterday. It is forecasted that the winds will be under 15 miles/hour over the weekend, so it will be time consuming task but not frustrating.

Furnishings - I did get HH's treadmill into position in his workout room and I moved a table up from the basement, having decided to set up my backup computer in my upstairs den (in the space that had been occupied by the treadmill) rather than keeping it in the basement. The table is from a friend's garage sale in about 2005 ($12-$15, as I recall), which I made precious by having a beautiful burled-wood-patterned plastic laminate installed on the top. If you wish to see fine furniture, I suggest that you visit Stu's place to see his posting, Fehmarn furniture. [Note: I am having issues with links copied from Stu's website. Currently, the Fehmarn furniture posting may be accessed by following the "Stu's" link and scrolling down to below the beautiful butterflies.]

Review of the week - 10/23/2022

HVAC - serviced for winter operations - A couple of days later I noticed that the outside air-conditioner unit is sitting atilt and that it had walked itself off of one side of the vibration damping pad - which was, itself, tilted. I was able to horse the unit back onto the pad, but tomorrow, I shall call to have the service company return to correct the installation.

Irrigation System - water blown out of the system & turned off at the main for the winter - A couple of days before the service guy was scheduled to be here, we endured 25-degree (F) temperature for 8-10 hours, necessitating that I pack the backflow stop valve to protect it from freezing. As the temperature hung around longer, I started running the irrigation system for a few minutes every 40-50 minutes.

Hand Watering - Not from lack of the irrigation system, which doesn't extend that far because of the floodplain, I started the every-three-weeks watering of the newish trees in the far back yard, Saturday. (We are still in severe drought.) I got most of it done, but it was so hot out that I was suffering. I turned off the water and came in to cool down. By the time we went to bed, I was feeling better.

Hunky Husband caught me -

HH, who had always been one who ran and worked out with his weights, since being diagnosed with dementia, has been sloughing off the aerobic exercise. He still works out with his weights, but it has been a challenge to get him out for aerobic exercise, at all. A couple of weeks ago, I asked HH if he would use our (manual) treadmill more often if it was moved out of my den and downstairs into the basement. He answered, "Yes", so I got busy making that move. 

The 1st photo shows the treadmill as we assembled it in my den back in early 2020.

I thought it an easy thing to get the treadmill downstairs. It isn't as if it weighed hundreds of pounds with a big, bulky motor. It weighs about 50 pounds. However, it has become another challenge to have HH and me to work together in moving heavy/bulky items - mostly because we are each, in our own way, wobblier than ever and HH doesn't hear well enough for me to be able to provide input to him in real time. HH had no faith that we were capable of moving the treadmill and, with his obsessive concern, it became clear to me that the easiest way would be for me to move the treadmill by myself - which put HH into a tither. I folded up the treadmill and moved it into the dining room awaiting inspiration on the safest way to approach the problem and how to do it at a time when HH wouldn't be around to fret.

The next photo shows the basement stairs down which the treadmill needed to be moved.

This morning, I had waited long enough (about one week). Since I normally arise at about 5am and HH normally arises at about 8am, I jumped out of bed, threw on some clothes, and got to it. It turned out to be even easier than I had posited - except - when I had but two more steps to go down, HH showed up at the top of the steps. Fortunately, seeing my methodology (which had me above the machine and easing down one step at a time on my bottom) and that I was so nearly finished, HH took it in good graces and laughed with me over the whole deal. The next photo shows the treadmill as it is now in a temporary position in the basement. The only parts of the machine making contact with the steps were the two legs, one of which is visible in the photo. Each leg has a roller which allowed me to roll the machine forward (in its walking surface upward position, my holding onto the hand holds) to the edge of each step, easing the machine down the one step before I eased myself down one step.

You will understand why it is in a temporary position when I show you (next photo) all the stuff that must be removed in HH's exercise room before the treadmill can be moved to its "forever" home.

HH has spent much time during the past couple of years trying to weed out the papers, books, office supplies, and other stuff that he no longer needs to keep. The boxes at the left edge of the above photo are filled with books for disposal. I have permission to dispose, also, of the radio and audio equipment in the photo, but HH must assess the contents of the boxes at the center of the photo. (In the past couple of days, I have carried three boxes of VHS tapes and his TV/tape player unit, that had last been turned on about 10 years ago, out to my car for disposal. The radio/electronics will join them.) 

He knew!

You may/may not recall that I've been having troubles with getting Microsoft Outlook set up on a computer that I bought in April, and I don't know how long it's been since I've been able to use Microsoft Outlook (or Mail) to send emails from either of my two machines that I allow to access the Internet - perhaps a year? (A secondary issue was that I had great difficulty signing into webmail to use my email account. Sometimes it would take me 24-36 hours to get through the error message stage and sign in.) For at least eight months, I've been wrestling with our ISP's techies trying to solve my email issues - not continuously, but every several weeks/months when I've felt up to the challenge. Today, the stars aligned and, while Hunky Husband took his early morning nap, I contacted the ISP's (Cox's) Complete Care - for which we pay an extra $5/month. Today, it was absolutely worth it. I spent one hour and 42 minutes on my phone while working with "Jason" to un-honk my email capabilities. 

Jason was the 2nd or 3rd techie to try to use remote access to figure out what's happening and to fix it. He had a hard time establishing the remote access. Either of my two computers acted as if it was not receiving Wi-Fi. Hmmm...I kept switching the two computers, physically, to the location in which I normally operate this computer. Jason did establish remote access with the "new" computer - in "this" position - and started looking at my settings. Eventually, he discovered that I had VPN turned on for our Wi-Fi (through Norton). It took a while, but between us we figured out how to turn the VPN off. After that, in relatively short order, Jason was able to set up all three email accounts to operate successfully in both computer environments. Wowee!! Who knew that Norton's VPN does not play nicely with Cox ISP - or is it vice versa? That incompatibility seems to have been the root of all of my email issues.

This "old" computer and the "new" computer now are running Microsoft Outlook with our three email accounts, without a hitch, in either physical location. The Wi-Fi, as such, was not the issue. I'll have to check out to see if Wi-Fi works in the downstairs location from which I had removed the "new" computer a few weeks ago - after having one of the Cox techies convince me that I was not receiving Wi-Fi in that location. (I know that it's asking a lot for the Wi-Fi to punch through two walls, one metal file cabinet, and one metal bookcase to provide line-of-sight service, so I didn't really contest the idea.) 

Now I need to decide whether I want to upgrade the memory in the "new" computer. Somehow, I managed to buy it with only 8 GB memory - probably because I thought it would be used by Hunky Husband who doesn't demand much from his computer. The question is: Which machine becomes my primary computer, and which becomes my backup. This (the "old") machine has 12 GB RAM but has a hard drive while the "new" machine has but 8 GB Ram but has an electronic drive.

ADDITION of 10/15/2022 3:48pm - No dice

After going through several iterations of attempting to get the HP people to sell me the chip(s) to upgrade the memory of the "new" computer, in multiple modes (online messaging, phone, email), I have determined that the "new" computer will henceforth serve as my backup. Although I was once (or thrice) able to buy pieces and parts from HP to install, myself, they seem to be out of the pieces and parts business as far as I could determine. Oh, well. It isn't terrible to have the more reliable computer with the electronic drive as the backup. I'll quit worrying my pretty little head, as HH tells me to do.

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I did tease Jason about his company's being challenged in the near future. AT&T has just had all of the utility lines marked on our street (flags, galore!) in preparation for installing fiber optic cabling. Cox cabling is metallic. I don't really have a problem with Cox's speeds, so it makes no difference to me.

Beep Beep

Thanks to Bits and Pieces for posting the following embedded video. Car Show Crazy tells the story of the song and the car.

 

Hunky Husband and I were first married on January 1, 1958. The song was released in 1958 and tickled my funny bone. Yes, our* second car was a Nash Rambler, purchased in 1960, our first car having been a used 1955 Plymouth Belvedere (in 1956 livery) that we purchased a couple of weeks before Dudette's expected birth. As she was a couple of weeks late in making her appearance, HH was fully acclimated to the Plymouth when he rushed me to the hospital for her birth. HH rushed me to the hospital in the 1960 Nash Rambler for the birth of Bogie three years later.

 

Did this song influence our purchase of the 1960 Nash Rambler? I doubt it. In those days, we were big followers of the recommendations by the Consumer's Union - now known as Consumer Reports. (I still subscribe to Consumer Reports.) 

 

Captain Wayne's Mad Music.com provides the following tale concerning the song in a left-hand sidebar.

 

I was told that this song was the result of a story related to the writer by a man named Bob Dietrich. He has passed away since but Bob was an old midget racer that had a short stint in NASCAR in 1951. Bob told me that he was driving his Lincoln between nascar races in a line of other racing people. He saw headlights coming up from the rear fast so he attempted to signal to the others ahead that they should slow down. He flashed his lights, swerved and beeped his horn all to no avail as his friends thought it was just a game and did the same to cars ahead of them. Then, suddenly as the headlights neared and passed him he saw in his headlights the side of the car which read "Billy Rexford - 1950 Nascar Grand National Champion". The Car was a NASH RAMBLER. Well, when Bob got to the hotel they were all staying at he found Billy in the bar and said "I've gotta see this Rambler". When he lifted the hood Rexford had replaced the factory six cylinder with a (I think) cadillac straight eight engine!!! Years after I heard the story I met Mr. Julian Busink - Bill Rexfords car owner. Mr busink stated that Nascar did give rexford a rambler and changing out the engine sounded like something Rexford would do!!!! (spuddy98)

 

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*     HH and I considered that car to be "ours", but in point of fact, we have never had joint ownership of a car. One must own a car outright in order to have a license plate with one's amateur radio call on it. Over the years, nearly all of our license plates have been HH's or my amateur radio call. Our first two cars were HH's. I didn't obtain a driver's license until Dudette was approaching her 1st birthday (I had just passed age 22), and I didn't own a car until a few years later when I bought a used 1962 VW Beetle making us a two-car family.

 

    Having an amateur radio call license plate was originally intended to provide amateur radio operators with unusual access to accident/disaster scenes so that they could provide emergency communications when called upon to do so. The fee in Kansas has always been $1/year for those plates, compared to the current $45.50/year for "vanity" plates that are available.