Wednesday, 01MAY, Dan starts the month off by finishing the
garden shed extension project, & raising our new fence to six feet high all
around by adding what they call hog panels on top of the existing cedar picket
bottom (just leaves gates to be installed?).
But first thing that morning he had to get a crown installed as
a last step on his latest root canal repair.
Thanks to computers/modern technology – no more taking a plaster
impression & sending it out to manufacturer the crown. Then the crown comes back & dentist
spends an hour fine tuning it. Now, they
take dozens & dozens of pics/measurements straight to a computer & the
crown is “machined” on site, glued in place, with almost no fine tuning. Just a one hour visitJ!
Saturday AM, 04MAY, we head to the Redmond Saturday Market
celebrating its 44th season. Redmond
being the world HQ for Microsoft & over 30K plus employees, the market was
large & pretty impressive.
Unfortunately by the time we finished at the market & walked over to
City Center for a walkabout, we missed the weekly Saturday gathering of Exotic
CarsL Again thanks to the nearby Microsoft
HQ/Campus, it is supposed to be very impressive?
Saturday AM, 11MAY, Corrie returns from babysitting the
grandkids. We then meet Dan’s brother
Shawn & wife Cindie at La Premira for lunch. Sunday (mother’s day) we had dinner reservations
at Adam’s NW Bistro. They had two
special fixed price meals or you could order off the menu. We went with the specials. They were both very good; but Corrie only got
three scallops for here main course – hardly an appetizerL
Thursday AM, 15MAY, Dan headed to Bremerton for babysitting
duties; Corrie stays at house w/dogs. Saturday,
17MAY, Dan, Rebecca & grandkids go to the Poulsbo Viking Festival. Very nice small town festival; but due to
Rebecca’s work schedule, we could not stay for the parade.
Saturday, 25MAY, we headed to the Edmonds ferry terminal to pick
up Rebecca’s dog Gracie for dog sitting.
On the way there we had breakfast at a 85 degree bakery. This is a worldwide chain that started in
Taiwan. Pretty good, worth a visit.
“In 2003, the founder of 85°C
Bakery Cafe, Mr. Cheng-Hsueh Wu visited a cafe in a 5-star hotel. While
enjoying gourmet pastries and drinks, he realized that the prices were set way
too high for people to enjoy on a whim. From that moment, Mr. Wu has envisioned
a cafe that provides premium coffee, bread, and cake at affordable prices. Thus
the 85°C Bakery Cafe journey begins… Today, 85°C has over 1,000 locations
worldwide. In 2008, the first U.S. store opened in Irvine, CA. The location
quickly became an overnight sensation, with over 5,000 Yelp reviews and lines
out the door. Featured on TIME, CNN, NPR, and Travel Channel, 85°C Bakery Cafe
has become a culinary phenomenon and a new cafe experience for all.”
Sunday, 26MAY, we headed to the Formisano’s for BBQ & bocce
ball. If you have read our BLOG, you may
remember that Rich is a CG Academy classmate of Dan’s; & the Rich &
wife Jan have a yearly gathering at their house for family & friends (see
below BLOG link). The ladies, Jan &
Corrie, have tried to get together since last gathering, but something always
crops up? But this time the planets
aligned & the weather was great.
Excellent time & food; only negative was ladies were the bocce ball
champsJ
Off & on during May Dan worked on preventive maintenance on
our gas powered gardening equipment.
Back in the day we survived with just a push mower & weed
whacker. Now we have rid’em mower, large
walk behind mower, regular mower, two weed whackers, hedge trimmer, chain saw
& pressure washer (and don’t forget the generator). Almost all of this equipment came out of the box (ie factory
assembled). The rid’em mower & large
walk behind mower were floor models (ie assembled by the store). Dan discovered none of them was 100% in
accordance with the owner’s manual.
>not one sparkplug was gapped correctly.
>some sparkplugs were not on the approved parts list.
>three pieces of equipment were supposed to have air foam
pre-filter before the paper filter. They
didn’t.
>both the weed whackers didn’t have any air filter, even
though clearly shown in owners manual.
>two pieces of equipment had no parts list for engines,
requiring you to go engine manufacturers website, find the engine info &
download it.
>etc.
After far too many hours on computer/internet, Dan sorted it
out. Then it was time to buy the
parts. Turns out that big box stores
that sold the equipment, often didn’t have the parts. If they did, the prices weren’t competitive;
for the cost of one sparkplug in the store, you get at least four off the
net. So now we have everything “tuned”;
& enough spares for the future!
