What was your day like?

[red]

Chilly, my girls had fun trunk or treating with other kids at church where their older sister go. There is a hurricane coming it scares me. I miss the Philippines a lot my home sweet home.

[Edwin]

Red, I will bet that you do miss your home sweet home in the Philippines. When I left here in 2010 to visit the Philippines the middle of October it was freezing ice on the water here, and when we got in Manila our friends ran the air conditioner all night! It was also hot down in Dumaguete, Negros Oriental. I'm glad your girls had fun trick or treating with other kids from the church. My first and one of my only experiences with trick or treating was with a church group when I was a little guy! It was fun also!

[Edwin]

Yesterday I worked harder than I have been working lately. I poured concrete in the morning, and in the afternoon I backfilled with dirt between the concrete block wall and the dirt wall. I have more of both to do now, and will have more yet after tomorrow as the wall will be competely built by them. I worked until after dark, and my hand was so stressed that it lost feeling during the night and kept me from sleeping for a while, so I was still sleeping this morning when my kids came over ready to work, so I skipped some of my morning chores, only washing my face and combing my hair instead of shaving too, which I seldom ever skip. After tomorrow we will be building the top on the cellar, and shortly we will have it completed and the water system put in it, which will be a happy day for all of us, and especially me, as it has been a very difficult project and long lasting one as well!

[mystic]

Today I am in my old work place, in another town toward the mountains. Temperatures dropped and the air is very fresh. The mountains around are full of snow, very nice to see. Now... a big pizza is waiting me for lunch
Nice to see the old colleagues again.

[Edwin]

Yes, mystic, it is always nice to see old colleagues. In 2014 I will have been out of high school 50 years, and our class will have a reunion. They have had some, but I never attended any of them, as even though they were all my friends I was never that close with any of them, because we lived out quite a ways on a ranch/farm, and the only activity I participated in was playing my trombone in the high school marching band. But after 50 years I am going to attend the class reunion, the Lord willing. I think I have only seen one of those students in all those years, as he was a school teacher, and often I was teaching in the same school as he was, so I got to see him once in a while, but that was 15 or so years ago! My how time flies, and that is why the monkey tossed the clock off the cliff, to see time fly!

[Edwin]

We too have snow coming down at lower elevations all the time. We can look towards our mountains near by and see snow, and I know on them would be snow measured in feet, not inches. Once here it snowed during the night, and we woke up in the morning to about 2 inches of snow. Other than that it has snowed several times, but that snow has not accumuated on the ground. Normally I don't mind the snow, but this year I am not ready for it, as I still have more work to do finishing up my cellar and the water system, as well as putting concrete blocks around the bottom 4 feet of your house. Oh, well, it will all work out, then I will have an excuse to do what I want to do, which is play the piano, as it will be too cold, too much snow and wind; snow drifting to do anything else! The Lord gave us 4 seasons here to enjoy! Spring with rebirth; grass turning green, flowers blooming, usually some rain, summer with the heat where we don't need to put very many clothes on our body, and we don't need to warm the house, fall when everything is dying, turning beatiful colors, and warning us that we may not have long to get ready for winter; like when Jesus said that the fields were white unto harvest, and people needed to get busy, and then winter which is the dorment time of the year, when everything lies dead and waiting for the awakening of spring again, with its expectations and renewed joys!

[Edwin]

Well, today I got out of bed earlier than I normally would because my kids told me that they wanted me to be ready to work by 8 a.m., so I got up early enough to get all my chores finished, and was out the door by 8 a.m. We got the block wall finished except for where we have been going in an out, and we are leaving that open until we put in railroad ties to support the concrete pad above. Our kids from out of town had to leave by 11 a.m., but we did alright anyaway. We rested most of the remainder of the day as we have been, and I have been working pretty hard lately! Then late in the afternoon I went for my 6.5 mile walk with the doggies. Tomorrow I will back fill the rest of the wall with dirt between the outside of the block wall, and the wall of dirt where I dug, leaving a cavity between the outside of the block wall and the wall of dirt. I imagine that will be hard day's work, but I haven't done it yet, so I'm not sure. One step at a time, even though there is so much to do that I am tempted to try to do more than one thing at a time! But, that doesn't work, and only leads to frustrations. My kids are anxious, and they are helping me, so I don't need to worry or fret so much, just work on one thing at a time!

[Smiley]

I`m taking another day off from work today!Things at the shop are very slow.I went out last night and got a few big bags of candy for the 'trick or treaters' this evening.Sometimes I really do miss having younger kids,I miss the trust and the happy excitement!
After catching up on the housework I`m just goofing off on the computer for a bit. I plan to spend a couple hours on my internet marketing tonight as well as that is what will be footing the bill for my Philippine trip!

[Edwin]

Yesterday we only had one gallon of milk, so I knew it was time to go to town to buy milk. I usually buy anywhere from 4 to 6 gallons and that lasts us about a week. I am a heavy milk drinker, and sometimes Carol drinks her fair share, but definately most always less than I do. I started getting milk from a pharmacy store where Carol used to work up until 1998, because it was cheaper, and also it was from a dairly not far from here where we know the place. But they don't always keep it in stock, so last time we had to go to another store to get our milk; more expensive, but good milk! Today they only had 3 gallons, but that will keep us in milk until Sunday anyway, and that is good enough. We got to town in time to go with our youngest daughter, and her daughter to take some food to her youngest daughter. Her father got into some kind of a disagreement with the school over lunch money, and he was just going to make her go without food during the middle part of the day, so every since then our daughter has been taking her daughter lunches and the her two children visit with each other while the youngest eats, and I think the other daughter eats with her as well. Our daughter is not allowed to be with her youngest daughter without Carol or I being with her because of past problems, but we are trusting it will all get worked out.

Then Carol, I, our daughter and her daughter went to eat at McDonald's only the granddaughter did not eat as she had already eaten with her sister. After that I went to get the milk, while the girls went to the dollar store, where everything in the store costs just one dollar! It is mostly good stuff, and some of it is in small quanities, but if you watch, you get a good deal there! We then went to another store, Walmart, to get a couple of things that Carol was not able to get a few days before. While we were at our daughter's house, Carol did the washing and drying of our clothes because we still don't have running water to the clothes washer, only the kitchen sink, and dishwasher! I then went and got 30 more concrete blocks to put around our house at the bottom to keep the cold wind from blowing in underneath during the winter. Now there is metal roofing for skirting, but it doesn't do very well at keep the freezing wind out from under the house as it is not very tight and is not insulated. I am thinking the blocks will work great, and I will know in a few weeks after I get them all placed, and it gets very cold!

[Smiley]

Edwin: I lived in Nova Scotia for several years.I had a beautiful location looking over the Bay Of Fundy and a 200 year old farmhouse.The house had a cellar made of fieldstone and the frigid winter winds blowing down from Labrador would cut right through the house making it impossible to be warm regardless of the amount of hardwood being burned.
I tried lots of different ways to block the wind. The most effective ways were bales of straw around the foundation,and in the back where nobody could see I stapled a roll of plastic to the house and stacked the bales on to keep the wind from blowing the plastic off. What a difference that made!