It Gets Better

Today: running hot water in the sink! We received our brand new Takagai TK-JR tankless waterheater today, and just after the pancake breakfast, Charley and Phillip installed it. Hot water in the sink! We all washed our hands in celebration. A couple more trips to the hardwear store later, we will also have the washer hooked up and the vent installed. We are waiting on a kit to transform the dryer from a natural gas to LP-run dryer. Our local propane service charges $65 for the kit, but Charley found it for $12 on the internet, so we're waiting on one more shipment.

I baked some cupcakes in the oven today, and cooked lunch. The oven runs hot, and the burners are burning with some yellow/orange flame. We're quite sure that the flame should be all blue, so we have a few small kinks to work out, but for the most part we're up and running with a mostly-finished kitchen. Possibly tomorrow the cabinets will be installed, but that's a big job and may take more than one day.

The pancake breakfast was a hoot. We met a few people, and made sure to visit our friend Pricilla at the general store. She had to work during the breakfast, which was across the street from the store. She had the wood burning stove going in the chilly morning, so it was nice to hang out with her for a bit before ducking in for sausage and bacon and hot cakes. A couple of the masons made an attempt to recruit Charley for the Masons - even gave him a tour of their temple. I think he told them that he's all ready to join once they get the bonfire and the goat sacrifice and the dancing girls ready. They laughed nervously and assured him their organization was not pagan or atheist. I guess that means Charley won't be flipping pancakes next year!!! Besides that minor social gaffe, everyone was quite delightful and we always enjoy meeting the people in our small and scattered community. We shopped the garage sale, and made out with a collapsable clothes drying rack and a pizza pan.

I'm serving as the Team Leader of the Box Office Crew at the Old Settlers Music Festival in a couple of weeks, so I've been spending some time on the computer reading and readying documents for our volunteer training meeting tomorrow. I still need three volunteers - locals? anyone interested? It's a good ole time.

The guys have been working hard all day, and we're going to sit back with a big homey steak dinner tonight. Maybe tomorrow we can all take the day off and catch a movie. The baby has been hiccuping and dancing on my bladder more and more, which is a very distracting sensation. Happy weekend to you!