Early Saturday
morning, 12JUL, we headed into the Seattle Center for the Urban Craft Uprising
which we went to last year (see below BLOG).
Corrie was in line so she got SWAG; Dan was parking the car so he
didn’t. In our opinion it was not as
good as last year. The few food vendors present
all seemed to advertise – gluten free, dairy free, no nuts, no fructose, no
corn syrup, no GMO.
From the Uprising we
went to the third annual Polish Festal at another part of the
Seattle Center. This was much more
enjoyable. For lunch we shared a sample
plate of pirogues, polish sausage, stuffed cabbage, sauerkraut & hunter’s
stew. Then it was back home to escape
the heat & sun.
Wednesday, 16JUL, we
took the RV to Poulsbo RV in Everett to have our old Converters removed, and an
Inverter installed. Why –
---older rigs like
ours usually had Converters for charging the house batteries & the starting
batteries; very few older rigs had Inverters, now Inverters are pretty much
standard equipment
---Converters are
very poor at charging batteries to full capacity & will shorten the life of
the batteries
---charging AGM
batteries (that we just installed in February) with a Converter can void the
warranty; since we spent bucks on all new AGMs, we don’t want warranty issues
down the road
---lastly, an
Inverter allows the running of 120v AC equipment off the house batteries
without starting the generator; once the installation is completed we will be
able to run light AC loads like the TV, satellite dish, laptop & charge
phones for hours without starting the generator; although we rarely dry-camp,
this capability would have made our JAN trip to the Everglades National Park
much more enjoyable when we were forced to dry camp for three days
Monday, 21JUL, we
received a phone call from Dan’s cousin Sheila saying she would be at her mom’s
(Aunt Madeline) house that evening. That
resulted in a spur of the moment visit with aunt Madeline by us. Sheila’s friend Alan was also there & we
had a great time. First we played
Mexican Train Dominoes, which we have discussed several times in this BLOG. We have mentioned that everyone plays the
game different even when reading the same rules? Aunt Madeline took the cake though! She had several sheets of different rules
that she had typed up over the years! It
was interesting to say the least? For dinner
Sheila recommended takeout from a Thai restaurant she had used once. She couldn’t remember the name, but knew
where it was. Turns out it was
Vietnamese, not Thai; but excellent food anyway! A great day was finished with ice cream w/fresh
wild blackberries from our property
The rest of the
month was spent:
>>mowing &
gardening, battling with invasive blackberries
>>Dan
installing a motion detecting security light on the pump house; we have been
carrying this security light in our house hold goods unused for 20 years &
it worked
>>Corrie continued
cleaning & re-staining our big deck
>>on Thursdays
Dan volunteers with Habitat for Humanity
>>Corrie
finally has had enough of our kitchen cabinets & had Dan install sliding
shelves in the lower cabinets
>>Dan
installed keyless remote security pad for the smaller garage door on the
shop/RV garage building
>>more
difficulties with new laptop involving the dreaded Windows “Blue Screen of
Death”, back to the local computer tech
>>Dan looks
into replacement engine for old lawn tractor, no joy engine has been out of
production for several years
>>installation
of (wireless) ADT home security system
>>Dan cleaning
mold off the lower eaves of the shop/RV garage in preparation for painting to
try & prevent future mold
>>Wednesday,
23JUL, was record rain day for July; after almost three weeks of sun & heat
- one day of rain makes it the 3rd wettest month of July on record;
so the next day, Thursday, Dan is at Habitat for Humanity as heavy rain fell
>>Corrie heads
east of the Cascade mountains a couple of times to spend time with cousin
Sheila in Cashmere, WA
As stated at the
beginning of the BLOG we finished the month by picking-up sister Sharon up at
SeaTac Airport for tomorrow’s interment of youngest brother Gary James Ryan.
