Photo Test

The gang at Christmas 

Click on picture for a bigger image.

This has been a test. We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

January in Eastern Washington

The blessings of the winter snow has arrived in Eastern Washington this month. I know some of the rest of you are thinking, "Big deal." I'm just glad that as loan cosigner I have driving privileges for Millie's nice 4WD truck. It sure has come in handy when I had to break trail for the morning paper route.

I managed to attend the reorganization meetings of my county and legislative district Democratic party committees. And I was successful at avoiding assignment to any onerous duties. (For a perspective, our Democratic party meetings are typically smaller than church business meetings. You get the picture.) This means I can continue to push my favorite agendas through proxies and by persuasion without having to be publicly responsible for the results. It won't be long before these people wise up to this and make me do some real work.

Austin made it back to Provo in good order. And I'm still trying to find a new home for a people-friendly blue heeler. When Teri's house sells I'm going to end up with their dog and this house and yard is just not big enough for two dogs. We have had two offers on the house that failed to arrive at a satisfactory price and we still have lots of people looking at it. So we are sticking to our guns so far.

Mitch and Claudia are doing all that wedding planning stuff for their April wedding. I just try to stay clear of that as much as possible.

Welcome New Blog Members

I hope lots of new people have accepted my invitation. Welcome, and play nice.

Open Thread

Non-bloggers can post comments here. Just click the word comments below.

Update: Whoops. Looks like you will have to register with Blogger to comment. No big deal since Blogger tends to play nice with the email addresses of registrants. I'm going to send out another round of invitations to family members. You will have to click the link in the invitation email to get put on the allowed-to-create-posts list.

Update Update: I changed the setting so that non-bloggers can post to comments. Therefore you don't have to register with Blogger to make a comment if you don't want to.

Newz from Fairland

(from Bill and Madaleen's email)
No ice yet. Looked out but didn't go out. Just rain.

We had a good three days with Alison, Eric, and Catie. Just loafed around the house. Took down the 'little house on the prairie' at the Twin Bridges light show.

Got so warm upstairs that Eric announced that he had turned off the heat. I assumed that he would either close the vent in his room, or lower the thermostat. When it cooled off Monday (too warm before for the fireplace) we shivered all day, kept inching up the thermostat. Tuesday it got cold enough to build a fire again though it is always very very slow starting off again once all the firebricks get cold. Kept inching up the thermostat and finally noticed that nothing was happening. Furnace wasn't working. Checked upstairs, vents weren't closed. Bill checked outside, didn't see anything wrong. Were looking for the repairman's number - another wasp nest in the fan?

No, finally noticed that the switch on the thermostat was in the 'Off' position. Eric had actually 'turned off the heat' just as he said.