Marolynn goes Fishing
On Saturday, Mike R. took us on a uh... business trip fishing at Deer Creek Reservoir to talk about selling and buying houses while trolling lures up and down the lake. The totally cloudless weather and warm conditions prevailed through the end of the week so it was a nice trip to break Marolynn in on lake fishing. It was pretty much a boat ride, except that I was able to scrape up my limit of 4 fish. The fall colors are spreading down the mountains and aspen are beginning to turn, so that made for a very scenic trip.

Utah Mountain Fall
Summer hangs on in Utah with a narrow band of fall color up the canyons between 7,000 and 8,000 ft. Up above, the aspen are still as green as they were in July, so when we went over the Alpine Loop road, the best pictures were to be had around Sundance on the other side of the pass from the American Fork side. Its a bit strange only having the maple trees turn, but they made for a pretty site. The nights are cool but the days are quite warm, and we'll use the opportunity to go fishing again this Saturday.

Yucca, Yucca; Fall is almost Here
We're getting perfect Fall-like days and the backyard yucca is in bloom. The weatherman, though, forecasts a cold front riding down the east face of the Rockies, with temperatures 25 degrees colder than today, and snow in the higher mountains. I saw Kate's blogsite which turned on the alarm that Fall colors are peaking in Utah, so we're packing cameras and another load of household goods and heading up there tomorrow. We'll spend a day or two on the Alpine loop and other places, just taking pictures of the trees and leaves.

Housepainting
We arrived back from Utah on the 11th; walked around the house, and listed about 30 jobs including repainting stucco patch jobs where the contractor mis-matched his paint with the older color of the wall. It was tough to get it right because the paint went on quite light and dried darker. As we progressed, more exterior walls were placed on the list until yesterday we painted the front of the house and decided to go on and fihish the rear wall. A long day of painting with the reward that we had finished the entire house. Most outdoor jobs are now done and only packing remains after we get back from the next trip to Salt Lake tomorrow.

The Rain keeps on Trying
We're within a week of Autumn and it's still trying to rain around here. Of course, we're painting the exterior of the house now and we wait through the 50% forecast of rain days (almost a certainty around here) when the clouds part and the sun blazes down, to the 10% days to paint. On those days the clouds bunch up in the afternoon and we always get a shower. The forecast is for rain again today and tomorrow and last night we were kept up much of the time by thunder and lightning with only a few drops of rain. That gives us an opportunity to pack more stuff before we go back up to Utah next week with another load.

(We finally got rain; a full day and night's downpour which totaled two inches. This time a new water barrel drained water from the roof out to the front yard, so we didn't suffer any flooding.)

Victory in the Victory Garden
There's nothing so good as harvest time and the garden at the Mineers is showing its stuff. A day of our latest stay in Salt Lake was dedicated to canning tomatoes. In addition, plenty of dill pickles were put up by Marolynn. Up and coming are loads of winter squash, pumpkins, some watermelon and cantelope, peppers - hot and bell, beans, and still lots more tomatoes and several varieties of summer squash.

We went to Market square uptown to get bargains there and found them closing out their garden center. Seeds were 2 cents per package, so we bought a year's (or rather a lifetime's) supply of seeds --- hmmm, lets see, 200 packages of seeds at 2 cents is 4 dollars.

Strawberry Fishing Again
Back up to Utah again on the 6th for another chance at fishing with Mike Rowbury, my son Michael, and two of Mike's sons, Adam and Ethan -- a full boat. This time the trip was to Strawberry lake to see if we could break the June jinx and everything started out great as the first two lures in the water immediately got fish on. But as it turned out, we had to work hard for fish and the catch for the morning was 18 and the man in the carrot-top hat only caught one fish.


The winner for the day and I mean the WINNER was Adam who caught a 22 1/2 inch keeper and who also caught the most fish on the trip, on a lure that was irresistible, which we're all going to buy for the next trip.

Santa Fe Birthday
We both took a ride on the Rail Runner up to Santa Fe on September 3 and celebrated my (Paul's) birthday with the Finance Office Staff with a lunch at Thomasita's. It was just a good day off from packing and doing all those jobs around the house. I may be doing some contractual work with the budget this fall, so that was all discussed and promised to be set up.


After lunch we took a look in the shops around the plaza. One such shop was selling paper flowers and that gave rise to a photo-op which I took advantage of.

Actually next week is Santa Fe's 400th birthday or anniversary, shared with two other North American cities; Quebec City and Jamestown, Virginia. The other two cities planned their celebration for the past few years and had big celebrations and lots of tourists. Santa Fe? Well, they'll think about it sometime. Man~ana is always the attitude in northern New Mexico

Marolynn's spiffy new Door
Today the contractor finished up all of the repairs we needed to have to put the house into shape to get it on the real-estate market. The other side of the story is that we packed and packed more than one load to take up to Utah. The (Paul's) mineral collection took over 2 days to pack, as Marolynn kept pulling flats of rocks out from nooks and crannies in the garage. The rule with packing is that everything has to be carefully examined and we throw away or donate things we don't want to the Goodwill.

The contractor's jobs included refinishing the garage ceiling damaged by a leaking roof three years ago, refurbishing and replacing molding around all the bedroom doors that the cats had used as scratching posts and refinishing the front door. When it came to the storm/security door in front of the front door, Marolynn remembered one that Karen had in Fairview last week, where the upper glass could be slid down, leaving a screen, so she really wanted such a door installed. So down to the local hardware store with the contractor, and we bought the door this morning - rather an assemblage of a few thousand parts that the contractor had to figure out how to put together. Well, if we stay in New Mexico, at least we'll have that wonderful new storm door. If we move to Utah, may it be inspiring to whomever might want to buy the house.

We had stucco people who went around the house repairing any cracks and totally refinishing the front patio wall which had been taken over by the ivy last spring, and the garage door and window frames have been repainted.

Of course the grapes ripened and we had the biggest crop of apples in several years while all the construction was going on, so 19 quarts of grape juice were put up yesterday and a dozen quarts of Jonathan apples were put up today -- they're perfect for apple pies. We have an equal or larger load of Granny Smith apples from our big tree and we'll do them tonight and tomorrow. Then a trip on the Railrunner to Santa Fe on Thursday and a road trip up to Utah on Friday or Saturday with the mineral collection and other boxes.