ONE THING LEADS TO ANOTHER

Sep 9/10

Many of you are probably wondering why we are so busy every day when we are retired from work.  Well, we like to have a purpose each day and having a sense of accomplishment at the end of the day is important to us.  The freedom to choose what you do each day and how long you take to do it makes it very enjoyable.  The projects that we take on are things we like to do as well as being things that will maintain or improve the home and property that we have.

Our “to do” lists are constantly changing with some projects being completed and other ones added and sometimes one thing just leads to another.  For example, we cleaned the oven yesterday using the self clean function and when the inside was clean, we decided that the glass in the oven door should also be cleaned.  So that entailed taking the door off, separating the front glass panel from the door, opening the sealed inside glass panel and cleaning all the parts.  The job wasn’t supposed to take very long but by the time we got it out, cleaned and put back together, an hour had gone by.  These jobs are also fraught with danger and destruction.  As we were attempting to put the door back on the stove, one corner slipped and hit the tile floor, breaking the front glass panel.  Good thing that it was safety glass but it still shattered into thousands of pieces and made a mess.  We got that cleaned up and contacted our local appliance shop to order a new glass front.  More joys of home ownership.

Stuart did a creative project this week by making a recessed lock box with a sliding lid to fit under our bed in the trailer.  Many RV’ers find places in their rigs to “hide” passports and valuables and having a lock box seemed like the best idea for us.  Here is a photo of the box:

My biggest project this week was to do some touching up with deck stain on the front and back door steps that were looking worn.  Well, doing a few boards made the rest of it look shabby, so I ended up doing the entire front porch and steps and the back door steps and landing.  It sure looks good now.  Here is a photo of the work in progress:

It’s not all work, though.  We took the motorcycle out for a ride the other day when the weather was still nice and checked out the par 3 golf course in Christina Lake.  It looks lush and green so we will dust off the golf clubs and play a game next week.  We also had a visit with one of my former co-workers from Kamloops who dropped by to check out our place.  He didn’t have the exact address but used his knowledge of the area, our photos on the blog and digital photo images from work to locate our house.  Good deductions, Sherlock.

When we purchased the house, there was some defective siding on the garage that the seller agreed to replace as part of the house sale.  He ended up hiring someone to do the job and the fellow is here this morning replacing the siding.  A photo of the work in progress:

Although we seem to be busy, we are not as busy as we were last year at this time with packing up the Big Steel Box and moving out of the house into the trailer.  A lot has happened in this past year and it’s all been good even though there were some rough spots.  There is so much to be thankful for every day.

Look what popped up in our garden last week.