Another One

Yep, we had another one, three days in a row with beautiful, warm, sunshiny weather.  This time of year that’s rare! 

I spent the day getting ready for a dinner party—cleaning a little and cooking.  Steve and Jeane along with Jill and Terry joined us for dinner tonight.  Good food and lots of great conversation enjoyed out on the deck for the first time this year.

Michael mowed the grass and did some more digging on his project—he came across a rock which gave him just a little bit of trouble—--the rock was almost as big as the skidsteer.  When we go for our walk in the morning I’ll take a photo of the gigantic boulder!

I must have planted the lettuce a little too deep, the radishes have sprouted, as well as some of the peas but not a sign of a lettuce sprout—what’s up with that????

Today my sister Ann and her husband Danny celebrated their 38th wedding anniversary.  Danny wrote a tribute to his wife posted on Facebook that made tears come to my eyes—it was beautiful!  Their daughter Niki and her husband Eric also celebrate their wedding anniversary on this date.   Happy Anniversary to all!

The yellow on the hillside is thousands of balsam root plants—seems to be a good year for balsam root, we are seeing fields of yellow everywhere.

The chokecherry trees are blooming—such a wonderful fragrance!

Another Sunny Day

I bet if I have said, “it is such a gorgeous day,” once today, I’ve said it at least 10 times!  After yoga this morning, several of us enjoyed a cup of tea on Ebbie’s deck by the East Boulder River—it doesn’t get any better than that!

Lunch then Michael was off with the truck and trailer to gather the load of metal/tin roofing materials he purchased from Terry.  It took them a long time to load the metal and get it securely tied down for the trip back up the Boulder. 

Michael had started the weed whacking before he left for town and I finished what little he hadn’t done.  Our house has extra wide eaves and when winter arrives I push our patio furniture up under those eaves providing a little protection for the pieces.  While we were gone to Texas it appears a whole flock of robins decided to use a couple of the chairs, the deck and the bedroom windows as their own private bathroom—gross!  It took me a while with the hose and a brush to get the furniture clean again.  I put the seal of summer on the deck putting out the umbrellas and the flag—it’s officially summer at our cabin on the East Boulder.

When Michael came home we had a little happy hour on our deck—we listen to the creek and watch all the birds coming and going—plus we enjoyed the sunshine.

Tonight I made two chocolate pies—YUM! 

Taken June, 2012

Glorious Sunshine

On Monday I received a follow up call from the dental office to see how my teeth were fairing after their cleaning last Friday.  My dental office is really into this touchy/feel-ie stuff—gifts when you leave the office—a bottle of water and a carnation Friday, a newsletter is mailed, etc—it’s a dental office, lower your prices and forget the touchy/feel-ie stuff!

I replied, “my teeth are fine but my pocket book is not!”  The young woman got all flustered and referred me to the billing department.  I explained to the billing department, “$468 to have your teeth cleaned and x-rayed is exorbitant!  It is more than twice the going rate in Billings.”  Her reply, “but you had a filling too.”  AHHHHHH  But I didn’t have a filling done Friday, I need one but more important things such as a haircut were calling—the filling is postponed for a later time.  So, my cleaning and x-rays cost $268 which is still too much.   

A glorious day, sunshine with warm temperatures!  I even moved the tomato and herb plants outside onto the deck in the sunshine.

Michael worked on the Tin Tee Pee today and I quilted.  More quilting would have happened if I hadn’t been struggling with tension issues!  When a quilter uses a dark colored backing for a lighter colored quilt top, the longarm quilter has a dilemma.  Either she uses a lighter colored thread on the backing and it stands out like a sore thumb or you fight tension issues.  Some of the dark color thread will show through on the lighter piece no matter how much you adjust the tension—in the longarm world we call those “pokies.”  I wish more quilters would think about this when choosing their backing fabric—think about the color thread you would like to see used on your quilt top and chose a backing which will match that thread choice. 

It was such a beautiful day we got the little Toyota MR2 out of the garage and went for a drive.  Ice cream was on the agenda and finding roofing tin/metal for the shed Michael is constructing.  Our friend Terry is a contractor/builder and frequently has used or surplus new “stuff” lying around.  Michael hit the jackpot and will go pick up his metal/tin tomorrow.  We enjoyed lemonade and the wonderful weather on the deck with Jill and Terry after the shopping was concluded.  Emmi may not be invited back—she chased the chickens! 

A glorious day in Montana.

One Of Those Disappearing Days

Cold morning with low hanging clouds all around us—made it look as if our mountains had disappeared.

After our walk Michael went back to digging and I went to yoga.  It was almost lunch time when I got back and by the time I made lunch and cleaned the kitchen it was mid-afternoon, one of those disappearing days!

LoraLee called to tell us they were heading to Great Falls tomorrow to see Laci and take her out for a birthday dinner—we had some presents for Laci, birthday and belated wedding—we drove over this afternoon late to take our presents and had dinner.  Granddaughter Katie made a delicious meal—a shrimp/garlic/cream sauce pasta dish that was fantastic!  LoraLee mentioned the other day that rhubarb crisp sounded good—my rhubarb is going crazy this year so that was my contribution to dinner. 

I really need a couple days of sunshine! 

My sweet great-nieces, Leah and Elizabeth.  My sister-in-law Vicky took a bunch of photos of the girls the other day—she does a great job photographing people.

Success But Not Without Some More Frustration

We have a printer and it even prints wirelessly!!!  Imagine that!! After lunch I called Canon and got this nice young man—poor guy, he didn’t know what he was getting into when he answered that phone call!  When he told me I needed to call my anti-virus software company, Anti-Malware, and ask for codes which would allow me to enter through the back door so to speak in order to install this printer, I came uncorked!!!  In no uncertain terms I told him what I thought of the install procedure for Canon printers. 

When I calmed down I asked him what would happen if I uninstalled the Malware program temporarily.  He told me our call was being recorded (I knew that), the techs could not tell someone to remove their anti-virus software due to liability BUT if I made that decision he thought the process would work and darned if he wasn’t right!!!  I was uninstalling the software as he was explaining to me why he couldn’t tell me to do so, he walked me through the same steps I had done at least 10 times and all of a sudden I had a printer!!  The process worked as it should have in the first place!! 

When speaking with the Costco technician on Saturday he had me turn off the Windows firewall and my Microsoft Security Essentials but didn’t think the Anti-Malware would be a problem.  So much for his “thinking!”

It was just a nasty day here, cool, windy with rain squalls every ten minutes it seemed. 

This morning I finished Aunt Margaret’s other quilt and after dealing with Canon I loaded another quilt backing onto the longarm.  The backing fabric is that delicious red Moda Luna Norte wide back—I thought about keeping it and substituting something else but decided the customer probably wouldn’t like that very much!

Michael worked on his digging project all day—he even went and got the big backhoe to make easier work of all that digging.  He got an email and we got a blog comment from one of his Texas working buddies—seems they miss the cowboy down there.  It is hard to leave behind people who have become good friends not knowing if your paths will cross again. 

A very productive Montana day! 

One Finished Another Started

It was another nice, warm, sunshine filled day but now we can hear thunderstorms in the distance.  After our walk this morning I put a pot of vegetable beef stew on the stove and started bread dough rising.  Nat joined us for lunch—we enjoyed watermelon and cantaloupe with the stew.  For dessert I tried a new recipe I saw in a magazine—blackberry frozen yogurt—but because I didn’t have any blackberries, mine became strawberry frozen yogurt and it was delicious!!  Puree 12oz of fruit, add a 32oz container of 2% plain yogurt (I only had non-fat so that’s what I used) and honey to sweeten—the recipe calls for 3/4 cup to 1 1/2 cups of honey—I used the 3/4 cup and think the recipe could have even used a little less.  Place all the mixed ingredients into your ice cream maker and voila, you have frozen yogurt in about 20 minutes—and healthy too!

I finished Aunt Margaret’s little log cabin quilt today, loaded another one for her and got about a third of that one quilted.  Michael has started a building project, adding onto our storage shed up in the pasture.  He has been on the little mini-excavator most of the day—sure am glad we were born in the days of machinery instead of digging all that with a shovel!!

The Canon printer (Pixma MX922, Rick) has continued to sit in the guest room.  I did receive an email from Canon with a list of things to try but I refused to spoil my Sunday fighting that stupid thing!  I will tackle it tomorrow, maybe! And yes, we would love to try an Epson printer but Costco doesn’t carry those at this time—their return policy and their free technical support is just too good to consider buying things such as cameras, computers and printers anywhere else in our opinion. 

I noticed Rick had a spam comment on his blog yesterday morning—a spammer with a Blogger profile—blank of course when you try to view the profile but a profile none the less.   My longarm quilting machine is made by American Professional Quilting Systems, APQS.  In the last year the company redesigned their forum partly in response to the increasing amount of spam which was getting through onto the forums.  Well, today the forum just disappeared—a GoDaddy page popped up when trying to navigate to the forum web address.  The good folks at APQS have the forum back up and running but what a complete waste of someone’s time—dealing with these spammers and their strange agendas!

I’m sorry you guys are having to look at photos of the same mountains all the time but maybe you are like us—we never get tired of looking at these mountains!

Frustration

Even though I had the master mechanic/Mr. Fix It on the job, set-up for the Canon printer was NOT easier!  Do those development guys sit around writing install instructions to drive us all crazy—I am sure they just sit there giggling knowing we will be cussing and pulling our hair out!  I usually handle all things computer related but Michael decided he would give this one a go—didn’t help—Canon has no technical support on the weekends and I spent a hour on the phone with the Costco technical support folks to no avail!  So, I shoved the stupid Canon printer into the guest bedroom where it will reside until Monday when I give the Canon tech folks a call and a piece of my mind!

Michael headed over to the West Boulder to help Lonn with a project today and after I finished pulling my hair out I quilted for a while.  Put a new bobbin in and the machine just didn’t sound right—noticed loopy threads after about 12 inches of quilting, stopped, looked at the back of the quilt—spent probably a hour ripping out those stitches.  It must have been the new bobbin I inserted—took that one out, inserted a different one and now I have beautiful stitches again.

We have sunshine today, beautiful, warm sunshine! 

The grass is growing and the weeds are growing even faster—I need to get the week sprayer out!