Sunday ; Today was a beautiful, sunny, warm day. We sun dried apple slices and baked an apple cake in the Sun Oven. We spent the day doing outdoor chores. Biggest and toughest job was washing the trailer. As we sat down at 8 PM to have supper and watch the three hour finale of Survivor ... HEY ... that's a Black Widow Spider walking up the wall beside the TV ! ! !
Monday ; A beautiful, sunny, hot day ! This morning I drove to Penticton, without Joanne, to get the truck's fluids and filters changed. YIKES ! ! ! Thirteen hundred bucks ! What a lot of fluids and filters !
After I returned home late in the afternoon Joanne and I did some yard work and garden planning. AND ... discovered that one of the two Douglas Fir trees we planted last September ... is dead ! It seemed to be doing fine up until a few days ago and then ... POOF ... it's gone !
Tuesday ; Another sunny, hot day. This morning we drove into town to run some errands. First stop was the local nursery / greenhouse where we bought the two Douglas Fir trees and two Saskatoon bushes last September. The female owner declined to guarantee / replace the Douglas Fir tree that died. Briefly it made me angry. I decided we will not do business with that local business ever again. Bad decision on Anna's part, in my biased opinion. As a former retail business owner I know how much more painful it is to a small business to lose a customer's long term loyalty than it is to give a small dollar value refund or exchange. Then I had to put some effort into my relatively recently new found mantra "don't sweat the small stuff'".
Bye bye, Don & Anna's. Hello Art Knapp in Penticton !
Late in the afternoon I returned to town to drop the truck off at a local service station to have the brakes serviced tomorrow. On his way back from Penticton our neighbour Brett picked me up at the service station in Keremeos and gave me a lift home. A few days ago we had invited him over for supper tonight. Joanne used the Sun Oven to roast a chicken and potatoes, and bake an apple cake. After dinner we visited with Brett for awhile in our gazebo.
Wednesday ; What started out as $500 worth of brake service on Lanoire turned into $800 in early afternoon with the addition of a rotor and caliper, and $1300 by late afternoon with the addition of a hub and bearing assembly < sigh > ! The truck won't be ready until Friday morning.
Joanne worked on landscaping and gardening today. We did some spring cleaning. I did some minor maintenance and quite a bit of online work. Paid some bills, did some investment work, did some Similkameen Day Tours marketing.
Thursday ; Today was sunny but windy and cold. It was a lazy day of doing little.
Friday ; Had to get up at 6 AM to catch ride into Keremeos with neighbour who was leaving for Vernon at 6:45 AM. Picked truck up at K Mountain Auto Repair. Thirteen hundred dollars worth of brakes and related work became almost $1500 thanks to taxes ! Drove home and went back to sleep !
Later in the morning we headed into Penticton for another long day of running errands. And spending money ! Lots of errands, lots of money ! Bought an apricot tree to replace our dead little Douglas Fir.
Saturday ; Today started out sunny and warm, but became cloudy and cool. Unfortunately the weather is forecast to be not great for the next few days. And we have friends arriving tomorrow to visit for a few days.
Today was a busy day. Joanne went grocery shopping in Keremeos. I did some work on the truck, torqueing the lug nuts, and reinstalling the valve extenders, wheel liners, and hub caps. I drained some excess power steering fluid. A much messier job than I had anticipated. Next time I’ll return to the shop in Penticton that overfilled it and let them do it. I removed the truck’s “permanent” air filter for its annual cleaning and re-oiling. I dug out the dead Douglas Fir tree. It died because it was “root bound”. The root ball was tightly packed and tangled in the nursery pot when we bought the tree last September. When we planted it the tangled root ball did not untangle and the roots strangled themselves. We planted the new apricot tree where the Douglas Fir had been. I disassembled and cleaned our small electric heater. YUCK ! Does it ever suck in a lot of dirt over the course of a winter’s use.
I barbecued a thick Ahi Tuna fillet for supper. MMMMM ... it was good ! After supper we watched the Celebrity Apprentice episode we missed last Sunday.
DSK
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