The New Stove & Vent Hood are Installed !

Kat & I moved into my current home in mid-September of 1992. The house came with refrigerator, dishwasher, stove and vented stove hood. The stove & vent hood were installed when the house was new, so after 26 years it little wonder they were more than ready for the local trash center. I'd been keeping a weather eye out for a good deal on a glass top electric stove (gas stoves are nicer but installing a tank here at the house is complicated & costly). Sunday last I stopped at Best Buy on the way home from church & what do you know, there sat my stove. A nice midline Frigidaire on sale for half price due to some dents in both side panels and a matching vent hood for less than half price. Monday about noon my little red truck & I went and got me a stove & hood. Getting it up the steps of my house & into the kitchen was a bit of a struggle but I got it there then headed off for work.

Today I got the old stove and hood removed and out of the kitchen. The stove was easy enough, but the hood was a nightmare. The installer seemed to think a light weight aluminum stove hood needed 8 mounting screws and lots of glue to keep it in place. A couple of the screws broke off so after the rest were out I had to wiggle the hood over the broken screws & then remove the screw stubs. Plus the inside of the old hood had at least 3 different kinds of abandoned wasps nests inside its fan and vent pipe. Of course the wall & floor area behind the old units needed serious scrubbing. Lots of serious scrubbing. The kitchen cabinets are recessed on the bottom so the hood needed spacer blocks. I had wood for that but couldn't get at things to screw the spacers in place. Elmer's Woodworking glue to the rescue ! Then I needed to chisel out a notch for the hood power line, the cord port is in a slightly different spot on this hood and the hood wouldn't fit flush to the wall & cabinets without a notch. At this point I discovered I needed about 4 drywall mollies. Well I wanted to put a wall shield between the hood and the top of the stove anyway so Hi Ho Hi Ho Its Off to Lowes I Go ! Took forever to find what I wanted at Ruckersville's new Lowes, its a bit smaller than the Charlottesville store & organized a bit differently. Came home with dry wall mollies & a nice stainless wall shield. Got the shield up with a bit of tweeking here and there to get it flat & screwed down in the lower left corner were it butts up to the counter. Got the old power cord hooked up to the new stove but had no stress relief bracket. Enter American ingenuity - adapted a hose repair clamp to work as a stress relief bracket. Got out my level, leveled the stove, & flipped the breaker. Drum roll please, everything seems to be working just fine. Set the clock & boiled some water for tea.

Happy New Year ?

Welcome to 2009. I think. The wedding photos still aren't finished, the kitchen cubboards still aren't completely cleaned up, the Christmas cards still aren't done - although in my defense I do have until January 7th, Julian Calendar et al - and I've had not 1 but 2 colds since mid November. Its gotta get better from here.

On the bright side, I've been hunting out local free music & doing quite well. Been to 2 concerts hosted by the UVA music department and several open mic sessions at the Lydia Store. The Lydia Store bills their music as "Blue Grass", which it is if one employs a very loose definition of blue grass. As in Carter Family songs accompanied by an autoharp is bluegrass, a teenage Elvis impersonator is blue grass, Uncle Dave Macon & Charlie Poole tunes are blue grass. Now some of the music performed is truly blue grass, but only about half. Mostly its just regional musicians doing music for free because its fun. Jane's been with me twice & we had a great time. Nothing like good free music to improve ones life.

Busy Busy Weekend

Holloween found me first taking pictures at a wedding practice & then at D&D's doing the treats thing. A surprising number of Hersey's Dark Chocolate Morsels appeared to be defective & had to be disposed of by yours truly.



Saturday afternoon Don & I - with help from Dolores of course - took over 800 photos of Sara & Noel getting married. Kat was a bride's attendant, the photo is the bride & her 2 Chatham Hall attendants doing the "Chatham Hall Angles" thing. And yes the bride really does know how to shoot, the day after the wedding she went hunting with her Dad & brought home a nice deer.



It was fun & I liked doing the photos for Sara, but @#$%^&* am I one tired out puppy !

OVPR Rendezvous !

My favorite rendezvous are hosted by the Olde Virginia Primitive Riflemen - they host a 'vous in March & again in October. Unfortunately I usually can't get time off for all of the October 'vous, so I just drive up Friday morning after work & stay until around noon on Sunday. Its still a bunch of fun, just not as much fun as I would like. I met up with Jane aka Buffalo Woman & a shining time was had by one & all. This event also marks the end of another rendezvous season. From now until late March I'll work on getting various pieces of gear made & learning new old songs for the fireside singing.

Fall is Upon the Land

Since late May I've been working on painting the trim on the house. Its now gotten too cold for the paint to set up properly, so now I just wait for May to roll around again. I've gotten all the window & door trim cleaned, sanded, primed and painted with 3 coats of Valspar exterior satin paint. The paint is named "Lime Twist" but it dries into "John Deer Tractor Green". At least its a traditional rural color. The rear gutter has been removed, the trim cleaned, sanded & primed too. It may not look impressive as yet, but there's a lot of surface area to a window frame. Its a job that has definetely kept me busy !

Unexpected Pleasure

Ruckersville hosts a modest Civil War Re-enactment the 3rd weekend of September. And I of course must work on that weekend, which is a serious bummer. The event is all of 4.6 miles from my house, I could bicycle there already. But I gots LUCKY ! Work needed to reschedule my time off next week and I of course agreed - agreed to go home early Friday night and stay home Saturday night. Huzzah !

So Saturday morning early I went & hung out with my 2nd Rhode Island Volunteer Co. F buddies. Then when it started to get unpleasantly warm, I headed home and painted house trim for a couple of hours. I could hear the cannon firing from my yard. Dinner rolled around, I put on a Garabaldi skirt & blouse & headed back to the CW doings. Ambled over to the Rebel horse camp, had a great dinner with the horsey guys, meandered back to the dance tent, danced a bit, then finished the night off with the night cannon firing. I had a fantastic time. Saw a whole bunch of friends & arranged to sell my Amrisport .58 Springfield. Sorry, no pictures. I was too busy having fun.

The End of Summer

Its official. Summer is over. I know, the weather is still warm, the woods still verdant green but summer is over. The fireflies have stopped rising, there have been no blinking little bugs in my neighborhood for a week. So summer is over. Much as I love fall (which really is my favorite season) I always feel a profound sadness when summer ends. It has been a good summer, I have been camping once a month at the Izaak Walton League in Lynchburg, attended 2 'Vous and ALBA, spent some time with my kid, seen Tina off to Japan, and gotten well along on the exterior house trim painting. It has been a good summer so I guess feeling a sorrow at its ending makes sense.

This is the late summer woods behind my home.