Our updates for all of you

In our area, our town is in a valley surrounded by the rocky mountains, so consequently in the Fall to Spring seasons there are quite a few days of little to no sunlight, just overcast. Many area residents seek out tanning salons to keep from looking all pale from days of no Sun. This year, we've also been dealing with days and days of dense fog, and often very slick freezing fog at that. The last few winters, while still cold, are definitely warming as far as the snowfall goes. Earlier this week records were broken for the warmest winter days on record with temps almost to 50 degrees locally and almost 60 degrees south towards Spokane, Washington. The old "average" is supposed to be low 30s in the daytime and there 'used' to still be about 3 feet of snow on the ground this time of year. On the radio this morning there was talk of invoking the road restrictions for the area that normally wouldn't be enacted until late March or April because the area dirt roa...

Last Saturday the 24th of January, Stacy and I, with around a hundred or so other people from the area, met at the intersection of Main Street and Kootenai Street in Bonners Ferry to reenact a ceremony that had occurred almost exactly 100 years earlier. Monday, January 25th, 1915, Boundary County became an independent and separate county in the state of Idaho with the 'village' of Bonners Ferry designated the county seat. In honor of this centennial, it was decided to recreate the photos taken at that exact intersection at the exact time, 2:00 p.m.,that the proclamation was read to the happy residents of their newly formed county in 1915. Top photo as with the photo below, were enlargements of those original photos posted so everyone could see what it had been like back in 1915. Snow on the ground, it had to have been even colder than the mid 30s and drizzly it was last Saturday with the snow mostly gone in 2015.  The military was in attendance, seen in the top photo, ...

As I'm starting this, it is T-Minus 1 day, 17 hours and 5 minutes till my date with a Laser and camera in a catheter on Friday morning the 12th of December, very early. First off, I'm going to be writing a good deal about this procedure. I am also going to tagging this post for others to find it that may be considering this procedure to help themselves in deciding if this is right for them and what they might expect should they go through with it. Since I experienced this and when I was looking and couldn't find too much about it from a "review" standpoint I thought I should and could tell about my experiences. As this is pretty off topic of my usual postings, you may want to skip this post if you are a usual reader. It won't hurt my feelings! So why in the heck am I having a laser surgery you may ask? Well, for almost 6 years now I've been dealing with an older adult male health issue call "BPH." Or in English, B enign P rostate H yp...

Last Thursday the 8th, I had a doctors appointment in a nearby town and Stacy went with me for this appointment. We left and got into the town a little early to do some shopping and Stacy also wanted to go to our area Sears store. As we live in a primarily rural area, it is a smaller store nothing like the big Sears department stores we used to visit back in California in the mall. Being a rural store they stock large appliances as well as home work equipment like movers and snow machines and tools. While we were at Sears I wanted to look at the selection of snow throwers and was talking with Stacy about maybe getting one next fall for next winter because our snowplow of our Polaris quad has limitations when it is wet heavy snow it really can't move it well and starts to bog down or just gets stuck in the slush even with all wheel drive and chains. A snow thrower could work through that as well as getting closer to places and areas around the house I can't get to with the plo...

A little before Christmas Stacy wanted to make some more holiday treats. She'd already made a couple of batches of caramel candies earlier and we thought to tackle some divinity, a favorite of mine as it is a childhood favorite my grandmother used to make. Photo above I'm in charge of the mixer as the ingredients get mixed. Photo below, the first batch with the first 6, the ones that look like paint drops, not mixed quite enough. They still tasted good though! And the others after mixing a bit longer. Stacy did the ones that look like they should, mine are the scary looking ones in this batch since I couldn't get the mix to fall off the spoon cleanly. Those still tasted good too! With this new baking push, and at my request, Stacy agreed to try a batch of shortbread cookies. One of my favorite cookies next to chocolate chip, I thought they came out great! I couldn't decide what cookie cutter to use so I used a hand and a fish, this was after all experimental! S...