An interesting week………………………………………..

10/7/18 – Sunday – Up early and usual morning routine. Out to pick up Gary for church. Back home and coffee and paper. Kathy came home and we had lunch. Downstairs to do the blog. Back upstairs and a nap. Up at 2:30 and ready to go to Gary’s for Sunday afternoon get together. Home and to my room for computer work. Kathy came home from Mike and Julie’s and we had dinner. Back downstairs to finish up computer things. Upstairs to bed, Big Bang and sleep.

10/8/18 – Monday – Up at the usual time and usual morning routine. Did additional data collection on my shelving project. Got out the drafting stuff to make up a detailed drawing of what I want to do. Kathy went up to Mike and Julie’s to watch the kids while Julie went for her doctor’s appointment. She called when she left so I started dinner. Had it all ready for her to sit down when she got home. After dinner came downstairs to chat with the guys on 2 meters. Re-programmed a radio for Mike. Then upstairs, to bed, TV and sleep.

10/9/18 – Tuesday – Up at the usual time and usual morning routine. Then out to gather walnuts that are all over our yard. Took a break and came inside for lunch. Back out and started husking the walnuts and washing them. I have them laid out on my work bench with a fan on them to dry. Still lots more to husk and wash. In for dinner. Downstairs to chat with guys on 2 meters. Upstairs to bed. TV and sleep.

10/10/18 – Wednesday – Up at the usual time and usual morning routine. Downstairs and made the 10AM retirees net. Played radio awhile then upstairs to get cleaned up. Had lunch then down to Taylorsville to drop off back pack buddy items. Stopped for some shopping and home. Down to my room and took care of some banking then played radio. Out to pick up Gary for dinner at church. Home and dessert. To bed, computer updates, Big Bang and sleep.

10/11/18 – Thursday – Up at the usual time and usual morning routine. Out to the Morton building and started working on the walnuts. Worked through lunch and finished up and cleaned up around 3:30. In the house and have lunch/dinner. Then to bed for a nap. Up and downstairs to make the 6:30 PM net with Gary and Mike. Then some computer work and made the W4CN nets at 8:30 and 9:05. Upstairs to bed, computer updates, Big Bang and sleep.

10/12/18 – Friday – Up early and usual morning routine. Over to pick up Gary and took him to get his driver’s license renewed. Stopped and picked up prescription at CVS then took Gary home. Home myself and picked up things to pay new property taxes, to Taylorsville. Got gas and home. Did banking till Kathy came home then took her to the Legacy for lunch. Home and took a nap. Then up and dressed. To church for Fish Fry then to HAM club meeting. Home and some dessert. Bed, computer updates, Big Bang and sleep.

10/13/18 – Saturday – Up at usual time and usual morning routine. Did chores around the house most of the morning. Had lunch then downstairs to play radio. Bands were in great condition. Upstairs for dinner. Kathy went to Mike and Julie’s to go to the zoo with the grand kids for Trick-or-Treat. I went downstairs and worked on the drawing for my new bench.

Now the specifics:

First I must apologize.  I have two major updates that need done and I haven’t gotten time to do them.  I have new pictures for the main website that I need to do and I also have pictures of Todd’s visit that I need to do a separate blog entry for.  So standby for those.  Probably won’t get done till the weather really gets crappy.

We got an invitation to my cousin/brother-in-law’s 80th birthday party.  It will be held in Pennsylvania just outside the State College area on the weekend of November 10th and the 11th.  We will travel back to central PA on Friday the 9th and stay overnight.  Then attend the birthday party on the 10th.  Kathy has some things she wants to accomplish on Sunday the 11th and I’d like to go visit with my friend Jim and his wife for awhile.  Then we will come back to Kentucky on the 12th.  Todd plans on coming out that far to visit as well.  So, if anyone is going to be in the area let me know and we will schedule time to visit.

When we moved here we noticed that we have several walnut trees.  We never did anything with them.  Our neighbor told us we should since walnuts are expensive and that we could probably make money harvesting them.  But we usually just ran over the nuts with the lawn mower and more or less ignored them.  This year there seems to be more than the usual amount so I decided to do something with them.  I did some research online to figure out what to do then spent the most part of two days working on it this week.  To begin with, having no knowledge of what or how this process worked, we picked up all the walnuts we could find.  As it turned out, a lot of them where either rotten, moldy or full of worms.  Then I made the mistake of letting them in the wagon for the yard tractor and the worms seemed to enjoy that they were all together and they migrated through most of them.  But I did get to save some.  Then the process of taking the hulls off started.  We were not sure what kind of walnuts these were but we learned quickly they are black walnuts.  That is good in that they are worth more and it’s bad because they are a pain in the ass to work with.  The hulls have a chemical that is very caustic.  It will kill vegetation and stain your hands black.  I wore gloves like you would wear for doing dishes if you didn’t want to mess up your hands and the chemicals leached through the gloves and still managed to stain my hands.  I cut most of the hull off the shells with a pocket knife then used the power washer to remove the rest of the hulls.  What remains is the walnut itself in a very hard shell.  The only successful way I have found to get into the shell is to put the shell in a vise.  If you try using a nut cracker, you need to apply so much force that when the shell finally breaks you end up just crushing it.  I managed to break one open and tasted the nut.  It was in fact a very delicious black walnut.  You get very little meat out of the black walnut shell so in the end you have very little to show for you efforts.  But I have 3 or 4 dozen walnuts in the Morton building that I will shell and hopefully get a decent amount of nuts from.  I’ll keep my eye open for some heavier gloves.  Perhaps commercial chemical handling gloves.  And I’m sure there will be more nuts to harvest before the year is out.

My friend Gary asked me to take him to get his driver’s license renewed.  I guess his old one had expired.  I must say I was a little concerned that they wouldn’t renew it based on his new disabilities from the stroke.  I’m not sure I would want to see him driving down the road when I’m out there.  He also didn’t have any idea where to go to get it renewed.  So, I made a call to the office I go to but they said you had to go to the office in the county where you reside.  So I did some research online and found an office in Middletown that would be close to him.  We went over and he had no problem getting his license.  In fact I saw people in a lot worse physical condition getting their license.  So, I did my good deed for the week.  Or perhaps not.  Well, Gary appreciates it.

OK, that’s enough for this week.  I’ll blog at you again next week.  Bye for now.