Brrrr. back in the deep freeze this morning.

[Clipper]

Only 30 here this morning and everything is covered in frost. Good news is that it will be 60 this afternoon. We are going out today for a ride in the country. We have to drop off some prescriptions to be filled and then we will go for a ride up into SW Virginia to look at a campground in Cleveland Va, on the Clinch River, just to get out of the house. Kathy has not been out of the house in over 3 weeks. Sadly we can't stop at any restaurant to eat, and will probably resort to Drive Thru cuisine to be eaten in the truck or in a picnic setting somewhere along the line. At least we will be able to get out and walk around somewhere scenic along the river. Maybe find a nice sunny spot to eat our take out lunch while sitting in our camp chairs and breathing the fresh air. Cabin fever is getting a bit boring and claustrophobic.

[Deleted]

Enjoy the day and have fun. Be nice to be able to do that. I so do miss that! 

[clarencebunsen]

There are a couple BBC series that I used to enjoy: Waiting for God and Last of the Summer Wine. Both feature older characters. I will look up some to watch later today.

[Clipper]

We took our ride to Cleveland Va to look at that campground. It is only about 40 miles away but the last 8 or 10 miles is over a major mountain. Hairpin turns so darned sharp that you can almost check your own tail lights, haha. Several miles of climbing and then several miles back down the other side, all at about 20mph or so. No way would I ever pull our 28 foot trailer over that mountain. So much for camping on the river front. We found that Cleveland Va is a small mining town with not so much as a convenience store. There is about 25 or so houses, a couple of churches, a firehouse, a post office, and of course the campground.

It was a beautiful sunny day though so we did enjoy the ride and the fresh air. We decided to skip the drive-thru and came home for dinner. Kathy has a pork tenderloin in the air fryer and we have some potato salad left from yesterday, a steamer bag of broccoli, and a tossed salad with Olive Garden dressing.

I love the air fryer oven. It will cook that pork tenderloin in 15-20 minutes on 375.

[BHU]

Yep, this cabin fever thingy is gettin' old. We get temps in the 60's Monday with rain. The rest of the week is downhill from there. I'll work on the mower Monday just to get out in the garage & do something besides vegetating in front of the boob tube.

[Clipper]

Yep, back to the deep freeze this morning. 32 degrees. A record tying temperature. There is snow on the mountain tops. We normally see the last freeze by the end of April. It is going to the mid 60's today and into the 80's by the end of the week. It has been a strange spring weather wise.

[BHU]

Right now it's 45* & cloudy with rain in the forecast. Yesterday I mowed half the lawn then gave up when it started to sprinke. Only my 2nd time on the mower this year. There's a freeze warning for tonight, temps are supposed to drop to 25*. So i have to shut off the water spigot outside & in the garage. This is the year without spring. A couple weeks ago the wife planted some gladiola bulbs. I told her it was too early but she wouldn't listen. So much for those as they've sprouted & the peonis which are about a foot tall & usually bloom in early June.

[Clipper]

It warmed up a little bit here this morning. It was 38. It is 48 now and only going to 54. I won't be working outside today without a sweat shirt under a flannel. I have the chipper/shredder set up in the back yard with a tarp over it and I still have a pretty good sized pile of branches and limbs to chip. It is a 9hp engine so It does a pretty good job on limbs up to about 2 inches. Bigger than that I cut in firewood lengths and a neighbor burns it in his fire ring. They sit out on weekends and always have a fire burning. With all the damned trees we have there is always a need to trim low hanging branches and limbs.

[Clipper]

So much for the cold mornings thank goodness. We awoke this morning to 55 degrees at 6:30. It was in the 70's yesterday and I am glad to got the mowing done yesterday evening. It is going to get into the 80's today, and up to 85 by Sunday. I am going out and putz around the yard just to get some exercise but when it starts to get hot I will retire back to the house and turn on the AC. I might go back out after supper for a couple hours until it gets dark.

Whether I want to wrestle with the rototiller and try to plant a garden of any size this year remains a subject up for debate. If we continue to be isolated as the pandemic continues I may want to have a garden in order to have something to keep me busy and occupy my time. The biggest factor is whether I will be physically able get the plot tilled up and ready to plant.

I have a large pile of branches and twigs that accumulated up in back over the summer last year. I chipped some of it a few days ago. I may spend an hour or so chipping up some more of it. Even with the 9hp chipper it is a slow process to feed sticks of any size into it. It will chip branches up to about 2 inches, but you have to feed it so slow that it becomes tedious in a hurry. Having all these mature trees all around the property makes trimming low hanging branches and fallen twigs and debris when the wind blows is a constant chore.

[BHU]

What's A.C.? Is that the thing you put in the window & take out a couple months later, throwing your back out in the process?

[Deleted]

76 degrees today now pouring rain and temp has dropped to 66 degrees with tornado warnings.

[Clipper]

May 15, 2020 16:53:46 GMT -5 BHU said:

What's A.C.? Is that the thing you put in the window & take out a couple months later, throwing your back out in the process?

LOL! Well BHU we don't have to wrestle with window AC's here. We have heat pumps that do both the heat and the air conditioning. The electronic thermostat that we have that has been such a pain in my ass, will switch the unit from heat to air automatically with changes in temperature when we have it set on auto.

AC came on this afternoon. It got to 84 this afternoon. I took a homemade strawberry/cream pie that Kathy made down to my buddy that manages the Walgreen's pharmacy in Blountville around 3:30 this afternoon. With the truck closed up and sitting in the sunny driveway the temperature in the truck was 104 when I started it. Whew.

[clarencebunsen]

I still struggle with window units but I get my son to help. Not needed yet in any case.

[Clipper]

When we moved here there was a combination AC and electric heater unit in one of the garage windows. It was a beast. Way too heavy for me to remove. It was way to small to heat the entire garage when in heat mode, and would probably make the meter spin right off the side of the house. It was so heavy that I took out the screws around the window, went outside and pushed in out of the window onto the concrete floor, and disassembled it into small enough pieces for me to put in the bed of my truck and take to the scrap yard. It was heavy enough that the scrap yard gave me $8 for just that one item. Better than taking it to the dump and paying the fee to get rid of it there.

When we lived in N. Utica we had two fairly small units. One in the bedroom and one in the living room. Coupled with a ceiling fan those two small units kept us cool and they were small enough to be easily handled by one person without busting their back.

[BHU]

We don't have central air so we use window units. And I can't justify spending thousands to have one installed. We bought a new one a couple years ago but had to take it out of the living room because it was so loud you couldn't hear yourself think.