There’s a children’s book series that started off in 1985 with If You Give A Mouse A Cookie. It’s a fun little circular/slippery slope kind of story where one thing leads to another and another and another. We had several books from that series and got a huge kick out of them. We still toss out lines from them now and then.
I had one of those days today. Or at least it seemed like it.
Amazon delivered my new weather station last night (I’ll do a separate post about the whys and hows). But that meant I needed to start thinking about where I was going to mount it, because I’d learned that where I had my old station wasn’t the best mounting spot for an all-in-one station.
So I took Athena for a walk while I considered other mounting locations.
I had the idea to mount the sensor on the fence post that has the electrical box for our pool. Mounting it there would have meant building a mounting plate or box to allow the flat mount to get properly attached to the round fence post. Building the box would have meant a trip to Lowe’s for the lumber.
And that would have meant moving the electrical box.
So I needed to wait for Diana to come back from the store where she’d gone to buy a new filter for our second pool.
That’s why I was vacuuming when she got home.
Because I knew I needed to bounce some ideas off her, because that’s how I process a lot of my ideas. And while I was waiting, I remembered that she had talked about vacuuming the house today (which we try to do once a week even though we run the robot vacuum daily). So I was running the vacuum when she got home—without the second filter.
Then while I was sitting at my desk eating dinner, I happened to glance out the window toward the north edge of our property just in time to see a tree split and collapse. It wasn’t a small one, either. This thing was probably forty feet tall and fifty across. There was no wind at the time and no lightning strike. It was just a combination of old age, bugs, and rain. Fortunately, it missed the house, but a couple of other trees were damaged. Our tree guy is coming out Sunday to give us a quote on cleaning it up.
But the fun part is that we won’t be around for most of the cleanup.
Country Roads and Genealogy
Recall that my maternal grandmother was originally from West Virginia. The Smith family holds two reunions each year. There’s a larger one in August for all of the descendants of Abraham Smith (my great-great-grandfather), and a smaller one in July for the descendants of Albert Campbell Smith, my maternal great-grandfather. I seem to recall attending one or the other reunion back in the mid-80s just after we rediscovered the Smiths, but it’s been forty years since I’ve been able to get back there.
I regret that.
At any rate, this year will be the 70th reunion for the Albert Smith family and I decided I’m going. Diana’s even tagging along, which is kind of cool. We’ll pass through Columbus on the way there to see Number Three Son as well as Sister-in-Law, and with any luck, Oldest Son will be able to make it to the reunion, since Pittsburgh is just a couple of hours up the road.
But that means Youngest Daughter and Middle Son will be the ones overseeing some of the tree cleanup. Our tree guy will be out Sunday, but because of weather, I don’t expect him to be able to do much until Wednesday, which is when we’re leaving. It’ll be fine.
I’m really looking forward to this.
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