Paradise ponders...

Paradise ponders...  Our local grocery store (Macey's) had fresh scallops this week, so I bought a pound and a half of them, and Debbie made her patented baked scallops (butter, lemon, dill, and garlic) on Friday and we had ourselves a feast.  These were gigantic scallops – that pound and a half was only five scallops apiece!  When I bought them, I had a nice conversation with the store's seafood guy.  He sends out a weekly email telling us what he'll have that week, which is how I knew to go up and get the scallops.  I found out that he can special order just about anything, including soft-shell blue crabs (in season, of course) and Maine lobster.  Not bad for a grocery store in the boonies of Utah!

Yesterday we had a feast of a different sort: burritos from a local Mexican food truck.  This truck has the best Mexican food we've found in Cache Valley, and we've been eating there once a week or so.  Their burritos are the best item on the menu.  I generally get a carnitas (pork) burrito, and I'm stuffed when finished.  Debbie gets a carne asada (beef) burrito, and sometimes can't finish it so I get some leftovers.  This excellent food is prepared by a friendly, happy crew in a pleasant outdoor setting with lots of chomping people (including a good percentage of the local Hispanics) – and our meal for two costs $10.  We combine it with a glass of Rosehill milk; a great combination.

Today we're having a feast of a different sort: I picked up two prime ribeye steaks at the same time I got the scallops.  Macey's generally has prime ribeyes or New York strip steaks on the shelf.  They're expensive, but they're also just as good as the best steaks I've ever had in a restaurant for far more money.  We don't do a darned thing to them other than broil or grill them.  In San Diego, in grocery stores frequented by people with plenty of money, finding a prime cut of beef was a rare thing.  It's interesting that here, in a far less wealthy community, the local grocery store routinely has them in stock (along with a wide selection of choice cuts).  It's true that even the good cuts are cheaper here than in San Diego, but still...

We have a morning ritual, the dogs (all four of them!) and I.  It involves bananas.  I take a peeled banana and a knife, and I cut off slices to drop into the drooling maws of a waiting dog.  All four of them love bananas.  The puppies are just learning to catch the falling slices, and they're not very good at it – they miss perhaps half of them.  The big dogs are expert banana slice catchers, and rarely miss one.  The big dogs now, however, are learning that a slice falling toward a puppy isn't necessarily lost to them. :)  So now they intently watch such a slice, and if the puppy misses it they pounce.  That leads to an outraged puppy.  The whole affair is just hysterically funny to watch.  When we're finished, and there's no more banana, the dogs are so disappointed...

Yesterday I got our laundry room put back together, ran to Lowe's to buy a bunch of window and door trim, then came home and got all the interior trim cut and installed for the our new door between the kitchen and the deck.  Next step on that project is a whole bunch of masking, caulking, sanding, and painting.  I won't be doing that today, though – today is paperwork day.  I've got a huge pile of receipts, letters, bills, etc. that I need to plow through.  Dang.  So I've got the stereo playing '60s music, and I'm going to work...

Paradise ponders...

Paradise ponders...  Somehow yesterday slipped by without me posting.  I don't know how that even happened!

Last night I did something I don't recall ever doing before: I fell asleep with my iPad on my belly and the remnants of a glass of (good!) Scotch in the crook of my arm.  Debbie rescued both the iPad and the Scotch, and I slept solid for about eight hours – a very rare thing for me, and very nice!

Lots of things yesterday; it was chaos central around the house.  The tile guys showed up as promised, but quickly disabused me of any notion that they'd be finished on Saturday.  It will be Tuesday before they're done, but that's ok.  The two-man team is led by a Hispanic fellow named Adrian, who until three years ago lived in Escondido – not far from where we used to live.  He even knew Jamul, as he had tiled a couple of homes there.  Adrian was interesting to talk with about the recent election.  Bucking the liberal stereotype of Hispanics, he's an ardent Trump supporter and loathes Hillary with spittle-splattering intensity.

Our construction workers showed up around 3 pm and worked for a couple of hours, installing about a third of the redwood planking.  They're supposed to be back on Monday to finish that part, and hopefully to start on the deck's roof.  Our roofer/siding guys never showed up, dang it.  The fencing guys did show up, and they've got almost all the panels cut for our fence.  They'll be here again today to complete building the gates, cutting the final panels, and a few other little details.  On Monday they'll be back to actually attach the panels (the fasteners are arriving on Monday morning), and they'll likely finish the entire job by Tuesday night.  However, we won't be able to let the hounds loose, even with the fence finished – it's muddy, and the dogs would track mud onto the unfinished redwood (you know they would!).  So they won't be allowed to run and play in that yard until the painters put the finish on the redwood and it's had time to dry.  Poor doggies – they'll have to suffer through leashed walks with the papa...

I went through most of the day in a daze induced by sleep deprivation.  In the morning, though, I did manage to paint over the repaired drywall in our laundry room.  That came out great – you really can't tell that those repairs were done.  That's an important lesson for me: I will feel much freer, now, about chopping through drywall to run plumbing or wires.  It's not trivial to fix it up, but it's not the disaster I'd thought it would be, either...

Today my plan is to focus on trim, paint, and similar finishing details.  I have things like this around our new (and wonderful!) dishwasher, in the laundry room, and around the new doors in our bedroom (to the sun room) and kitchen (to the deck).

Oh, and I have an excellent customer service story, too.  We bought our new exterior door hardware from FPL.  This is the same hardware I bought two years ago for our barn, and I've been very happy with it.  One of the sets arrived with a broken metal part.  This was no fault of FPL: they had packaged it beautifully, padded and inside two nested boxes.  The shipper had somehow poked something through the boxes and plastic bags, long and skinny, like a long metal rod.  I took a photo of the damaged part and emailed it to FPL, and the next day they shipped out a replacement part for me.  It arrived on Thursday, and I installed that yesterday.  You can't ask for anything better than that!

Paradise ponders...

Paradise ponders...  Another busy day – this is starting to feel like a habit!

I got the wiring all finished in our sun room, except that I could not mount the light fixtures as I had planned.  The way the fixtures are constructed I would not be able to take them down for painting, then put them back up later (unless I were to buy 6 more toggle bolts!).  So the lights are all wired up and ready to go, the circuit is tested, but they won't actually go up until next week after the painters finish.  After I got the wiring done I spent the rest of the day cleaning up in the sun room and mud room, getting ready for the flooring guys who are due tomorrow morning.

Our construction guys were here all day today, starting at around 7:30 am when a big load of lumber showed up: 8x8s and lots of redwood planks.  With the 8x8s in hand, the framing underneath the deck went up in a big hurry – the crew of three was all finished by about 1 pm!  I took that last photo just a few minutes ago, shortly before they knocked off for the day.  Tomorrow they'll be back to put the actual deck on, then comes the roof.  Progress!

In the afternoon our fencing guys showed up.  They're hoping to finish up cutting all the panels and building gates by Saturday, then early next week they'll screw them all into place.  They believe they'll be done by Tuesday or Wednesday.  The part they've finished so far looks glorious by comparison with what it's replacing; it will provide us with a nicely secure dog yard.

In the late afternoon, the wallboard repair guy finished the fix-it job to the wallboard I mangled in our laundry room.  It's almost like magic the way these guys can make damage like that just disappear.  Once that texturing is dry, I'll slap a coat of paint on it and nobody will know how I butchered that wall and ceiling!

Betsy, RIP...

Betsy, RIP...  Our smooth-coat border collie, Race, was one of Betsy's puppies.  Betsy belonged to a breeder (Angie) in eastern Oregon, and she was the mother of a line of puppies that have been stars, including in agility.  In memory of Betsy, owners of her puppies are each writing stories about their dog, and they're all going to be collected to send to Angie.  Here's the one we wrote for Race:

Betsy's son Race lives with us today in northern Utah, along with three field spaniels and a ridiculously large collection of cats.  When he first came into our lives, we lived in the mountains of Southern California, not far from the Mexican border.  We drove from there up to eastern Oregon to pick Race up, and he had our hearts from the first moments we saw him.  He was terrified at first - scary new people, strange brown dogs that were so slow, and lots of these funny-smelling things called cats.  It took a few weeks for him to really settle into our household, but settle he did.  It wasn't long before we'd often find Race in a pile with other dogs and cats, and he joined in the play along with all the others.

Debbie trained him to run agility, and the two of them were doing wonderfully until one day four years ago when Race slammed into Debbie's knee.  She was badly injured (a tibia plateau fracture) and took many months to recover to the point where she could run agility again.  Race was the proximate cause of the injury, but it really wasn't his fault - we could hardly hold him to blame for doing his very best in exactly what he was being trained for.  But the risk for Debbie was too high, so we decided that she wouldn't run him in agility any more.  That means Race became "just" a companion, but oh what a companion that boy has been!

Visitors to our home always marvel at Race's never-ending desire for play, especially to chase and retrieve something thrown.  It doesn't matter to him what you through: a ball, a pine cone, or even a stone are all equally fun for him.  He takes such joy in the chase, the catch, and the return - and you'll tire of it long before he does.  He's been great with visitors, including kids, once he's sure they're not threats.  While Race is making up his mind about that, though, it's best not to get too close.  If anyone ever invaded our home (or our car) while Race was on guard, they'd have some mighty fast teeth and claws to contend with!

These days, of course, Race is an adult dog (eight and a half years old).  His constant canine companion is Miki, our ten year old field spaniel.  The two of them share a special contempt for our field spaniel puppies, Mako and Cabo - while occasionally condescending to play with them, too.  Besides chasing thrown things, Race's favorite activities include riding with us on four-wheeling trips, walks through the country around our home, and swimming.  Our field spaniels are supposed to be water-loving dogs, but we have trouble getting them into a stream or pond.  Race, on the other hand, goes completely bonkers anytime he figures out that he's about to go swimming.  He loves to bark and snap at moving water (as in a stream), and to fetch sticks thrown into a pond.

This morning as I had my tea and toast while reading the (depressing) election news, I felt something worming its way under my left elbow and into my lap.  When I looked down, two big brown eyes were looking at me - and then flicking over to my buttered toast - and then back to my face.  When I took a bite from my toast, there was a little piteous whimper from below, and a little drool.  His tail was wagging furiously the entire time, of course.  I did manage to keep a little toast for myself. :)

Dog people understand us completely when we say that we think of Race and our other dogs as our children.  Others think we're crazy, and they may be right about that.  It's our great privilege to have Race as part of our lives, and we're grateful for him every single day.  Even when he eats our toast.  Especially when he eats our toast...

Paradise ponders...

Paradise ponders...  Another busy day yesterday.  The roofing/siding guys are finished except for a piece of fascia and a little trim; they have to bend these things up and then install them, hopefully before Friday.  We heard from our builder that our painters should be here next Tuesday to do several things: the exterior of the mud room, the interiors of both the mud room and the sun room, and the framing that will underlie our new deck.  They might also be able to paint the repaired drywall in our laundry room – repairs on that started yesterday and will allegedly be done by Friday.  The builders were still waiting on lumber, which was supposed to show up yesterday but did not.  Our fence guys showed up and cut another 10 or so panels, including some of the more challenging ones where the fence is on a slope.  That fence is going to look great when they're finished!

In between dealing with all the contractors I spent the day working on the final electrical work in the sun room.  In addition to the outlets, I got the lighting switch installed, one of the three lights almost finished.  That leaves me with two lights to go, and then I can move on into the mud room.  The siding is now finished around all my lighting plaques, so I can do the final wiring on the entire thing.

Our flooring contractor called yesterday to let us know that our tile would be arriving one day late – so they moved their installation schedule from Thursday/Friday to Friday/Saturday (tomorrow and the next day).  The mud room and sun room will look much different after that!

I forgot to mention yesterday that on Tuesday night we took Cabo to her first night at her new puppy class.  This one is held in Logan, much easier for us to get to.  One of the things we trained for was really basic leashed walking, something both of the puppies are really bad at (they pull like little bulldozers).  The instructor gave us some simple techniques for that training ... and within one lesson we see definite progress.  That's the good news.  The bad news?  I can only train one puppy at a time this way, so our walks will now have to be with individual dogs.  Lots of walks!  I did a bit of practice on this yesterday with both puppies, and saw definite progress.  Cabo is picking this stuff up much faster than Mako; she seems to be the smart one of the bunch.

Yesterday afternoon I had an appointment with the insurance agent who handles our health insurance.  He was very sympathetic, and said that he's running into this giant rate increase with most of his clients who are between about 55 and 65 years old.  If Trump really does repeal ObamaCare, the burden may be considerably eased starting in 2018, but for next year the high rates are pretty much locked in.  We went over all our alternatives, and the best option we could identify was to switch from our current carrier (SelectMed) to the local Blue Cross/Blue Shield (called Regence) carrier, and at the same time switch to a lower-tier plan.  The lower-tier plan will cost about the same as the plan we have this year (about $1,400 a month), saving over $1,000 a month in premium.  The coverage is about the same as our current plan, but the out-of-pocket maximum is much higher.  The best feature of this plan from our perspective is a much better network, one that includes every facility and doctor that Debbie is using.  Our current plan doesn't cover her physical therapy facility, for example – even though it's the only one in Cache Valley that has the equipment she needs.  If by some miracle we don't actually get near our out-of-pocket maximum, we'll actually save some money with this plan.  If we do hit our out-of-pocket maximum, the total cost will be about the same as the higher tier plan.

The possibility (probability?) that ObamaCare will be repealed is a very disruptive threat hanging over the entire healthcare industry right now, including health insurance.  I don't mean that it will necessarily be a bad disruption.  But right at the moment, with no idea what would replace ObamaCare as a regulatory framework, the industry has no idea how to invest in their future.  That uncertainty trickles down in lots of ways that people might not think about, from the economic opportunity (or lack thereof) in drug research investment to the wisdom of acquiring another treadmill in a physical therapy facility.  It will be best for the industry if the government can move very quickly to repeal and replace ObamaCare.  This is one of those times when making the decision quickly is more important than making the decision optimally (and this happens quite often in business).  Moving quickly is not a notable feature of our federal government, however...

President-elect Trump...

President-elect Trump...  Like so many others, we stayed up late last night to see the election results.  They were pretty much my worst-case scenario.  Here's the plausible scenarios I'd come up with (pre-election) for an election outcome, ranked from my favorite to my least favorite:

• Neither Trump nor Clinton made it to 270 electoral votes, Evan McMullin takes Utah (and it's electoral votes) and the election goes to the House where McMullin is the compromise candidate.  In this scenario it doesn't matter who controls the House or the Senate.  This was a low probability outcome, but not implausible.
• Hillary wins the presidency, but Republicans had firm control of both the Senate and the House.  This was a recipe for total gridlock, which means no giant entitlement programs would (hopefully!) be enacted, and also no giant new tax scheme.
• Hillary wins the presidency, the Democrats take the Senate, and the Republicans hold the House.  This is still gridlock city, but riskier.
• Trump wins the presidency, the Democrats take the Senate, and the Republicans hold the house.  This is very similar to the preceding bullet in terms of legislative risk.
• Trump wins the presidency, and the Republicans had firm control of both the Senate and the House.  This is a balance that could actually get things done, which is ... terrifying, given Trumps public policy pronouncements.

You may, if you're paying attention, note that nowhere in my scenarios did I account for Supreme Court justice nominations.  That's mainly because I'm really uncertain what kind of justices Trump would nominate.  I would be equally unsurprised if he nominated another Clarence Thomas or another Ruth Ginsburg.

So we ended up with my last and least-favorite scenario.  Prior to last night, with only the polling to go on, this seemed nearly as unlikely as the first bullet – and yet, here we are.  My biggest fear at the moment is that Trump will actually follow through with his anti-free-trade babble, get it through the Congress, and cause significant economic damage in the process.  My biggest hopes are that he does follow through with a repeal of ObamaCare, and that he nominates originalist Supreme Court justices.

Both Trump and Clinton gave exemplary, calm speeches after the election.  It would be oh-so-pleasant if this spirit prevailed from now on, but I expect it to end around, oh, noon today.

I think my alcohol consumption is quite likely to go up over the next four years...

Paradise ponders...

Paradise ponders...  Yesterday was an absolutely crazy day around here.  The roofer/siding guys showed up and worked all day; they're going to finish today on the mud room.  The drywall guys showed up and finished the job (beautifully!) on the mud room and sun room.  Local friends showed up to pick up one of our old doors and a built-in ironing board; both of them are going to be used in their home (I love seeing the replaced bits of our home help someone else!).  Our builders also showed up, albeit briefly: they 6x6 posts they need for the next step on our deck had to be special ordered.  None of us anticipated that 6x6s are no longer often used.

I spent much of my day cleaning the sun room.  I had done this once before, prior to the drywall guys doing their job.  The amount of dust, dirt, and debris they created is nearly beyond belief. :)  I also cleaned the casements for the basement windows, which I had not done since the foundation for the sun room was poured.  It was a good five hours of work to clean that little room well.

This morning I started the final electrical work in the sun room.  I've wired the two duplex outlets (and they work!); next up is the lighting and switches for it.  I'll be done with that in a few hours.  On Friday the tile contractors will be here to install cement board and tile in the sun room, and tile in the mud room.  Painters will be here early next week.  We're getting close to the point where we can actually use those rooms.  Woo hoo!

Paradise ponders...

Paradise ponders...  Well, all sorts of progress today!  I somehow muddled through a mess of contractors here today, despite having absolutely no sleep last night.  As I write this, I'm just barely keeping my eyes open – so don't be surprised if my prose (or spelling) is not quite up to snuff!

Our builder got here with three helpers quite early this morning, and they went to work on our new porches (for the sun room and the mud room).  Forms were finished, rebar was cut and laid, and the concrete truck called.  The result:

By tomorrow morning, those will both be perfectly usable.  That means we can actually use the mud room as an entrance again.  I've almost forgotten that used to mainly use that door!

After they finished the concrete work, the builders went to work on the deck in the back yard.  The footings for this were poured so long ago that the cardboard forms had rotted!  Most of what they did here today was invisible, along the side of the house underneath the back door.  Tomorrow should bring lots of visible progress!

A few minutes after the builders left in the afternoon, Mark and Dave (our fencing guys) showed up and went to work installing the first 1/4" wire panels (visible if you embiggen the second photo below).  These turned out just great – vastly better than the wire fencing we had before.  Even our evil puppies will be unable to get through these!

While all this was going on, in between working with the contractors, I finished up the second dog food drawer in the laundry room.  Then I put cheesecloth over the gaping hole in the drywall made by removing the built-in ironing board, and stuffed the hole with insulation. Much sneezing was involved with that – so dusty!  I also put up some hooks, hung a dry erase board, and put a few other finishing touches on the laundry room.  It's looking much better than it was!

Paradise ponders...

Paradise ponders...  Today should be slightly more relaxing than yesterday's cable-mania wrestling match.  I've got to install an outlet box (with wimpy little 12/2 cable – should feel trivial compared with yesterday!), adapt a cabinet to hold dog food containers, and flip a window module in one of our doors so that the Venetian blind controls are on the inside.  Something will probably go wrong along the way. :)

I need a “new work” box for that outlet I'm going to install, and I know that Ridley's has them.  So I looked up their hours – and they're open at 6 am on Sunday.  Wow!  On my way...

Salt-lick camera take...

Salt-lick camera take...  Here's what I got in the last few days: cats, lots of deer, a neighbor's beautiful daughter, and some old man walking dogs in the middle of the night. :)