Bert's Musings

Kathy drove the pickup, with the U-Haul trailer, back up to Lebanon on Sunday. She picked up our check for the house this afternoon. She will be heading back to TN tomorrow. This week we will get our TN drivers licenses and get our vehicle plates changed to TN. By the end of the week we will be Volunteers instead of Hoosiers. I goofed around most of yesterday. This afternoon I put up a mailbox in front of our building. The dirt is DRY & HARD, digging was TOUGH! I also sprayed for bugs around our building. While I was down there several neighbors stopped to chat. We will have to spend some time catching up with them when Kathy gets back. Temperatures were in the mid 80's but the humidity was low enough that it didn't feel to bad. The low tonight is forecast to be 59, it is already down to 62. Good night to all and may God bless you and yours.

We just came back from the Pickin Barn. It is about a half mile down the road (well, its almost a road) from us. We thought that tonight was the night for the monthy show but when we got there Janice Burgess, the neighbor who owns/runs the place, told us that they were only having a jam session tonight. She told us to grab a chair and enjoy, which we did for several hours. There were usually 12-15 people in a circle who were part of the jam session, people moved in and out, and 20-40 of us watching and listening. The singing and playing was great, especially the lady with the bass (it was bigger than her). One of the highlights was watching two little girls, maybe 8-10 years old, dancing barefoot to the faster songs. During one of those songs there were 4 or 5 of the more senior ladies dancing and one of the musicians commented that if they had played one more chorus they would have had to call 911 for the ladies. Those two girls and a somewhat older boy were the only people i...

We arrived at our property in TN (actually we are at Tom & Mary Lou's, Kathy's brother, campground) around midnight. No problems but traffic was heavy most of the way. I drove our pickup and pulled a U-Haul trailer and Kathy drove the motorhome. Last night we just pulled in and went to bed. This morning we will get parked in "our spot" and hooked up to utilities. We saw quite a few places in KY & TN with $3.39/gal gas. We did not close on the house, more broken "promises" from the buyers real estate agent and their lending institution. I honestly feel sorry for the poor buyers. They, especially Jennifer, are totally stressed out. After thinking about it I bet Greg is the same, he just doesn't let it show. They had to pay over $12,000 to get out of the house they sold, and had lived in for several years. Now the mortgage company that pre-approved the loan, is jacking them around. No one thinks there is any real problem, it is just having to deal w...

We didn't close on the house today, because God had other things for us to do. I had an appointment with my Endocrinologist (diabetes doctor) this morning. All good news. I have lost 10# since my last visit, BP was 120/70 & my pulse was 68. At my last appointment my A1c (a measure of average blood glucose levels over the past several months) was 6.0, which pleased Dr Meacham. My "family doctor" is happy with anything under 7.0. This time my A1c was 5.5.  He is cutting back on some of the oral diabetes meds I take. Just entering Lebanon on the Interstate I noticed a car off on the side of the road, with a tire laying on top of the roof. A mile or so later I saw a young (early 30's) couple walking back to the car. God nudged me to turn around and help them but I found excuses. I ran an errand and had breakfast at Denny's. God kept nudging me so I went over to Casey's, filled up with gas, and then went down to get on the Interstate at the fairgrounds exit. I ...

We did not close on the house today. We have been told that the appraiser who screwed up the paperwork has finally been tracked down and that today he straightened out the mess he made. It is possible that we might close tomorrow afternoon but probably it won't be until Fri. It isn't really a big deal one way or the other. Kathy has been working and working and working and...... She will need a month of rest to recuperate. Since we did not close this morning we were able to attend the graduation of one of the Teen Challenge girls who I tutored. (God just works everything out.) Her story was quite stunning. Doug came out and while he helped Kathy I picked up the enclosed U-Haul trailer that we will use to go to TN. I parked it by the garage and then went back and got an open trailer to use to haul stuff down to Dougs. It took 2 trips to get the the things he is storing down to his house. Anthony helped him unload the first load and then came back with him to help with the piano....

We are supposed to close the sale of our house tomorrow, which will lead us into another chapter of our lives. We met the guy who is buying our house, his wife wasn't able to come, yesterday and he seems to be a really nice guy. We have been serious about selling our house since the end of Feb, The lack of interest was disappointing. Now, as I look back on it, it is so great to see the Lord's hand in our lives. I believe God wanted our house to be available for the young couple who were house sitters for us while we volunteered at Spring Hill Camp. The timing of that couple no longer needing the house and the sale of the house was certainly not a coincidence. I was dissapointed with the final deal but accepted it because I wanted to move on. I was also stressed out with all the negotiating going through the realtors. Even after all the road blocks to the sale seemed to have been overcome I was still stressed, and I guess even bitter over the sale. It seems child...

The house if getting bare. Master bedroom & my upstairs office are empty. Doug & Anthony are taking the bedroom set from the other bedroom. Kathy sold the leather living room furniture to the people down the road who have plowed our drive for the past several winters (actually we have had two neighbors plowing our drive)  The family room is empty except for the coffee table Nate made and some misc stuff that is going into storage in TN.  Kathy downstairs office if empty except for the rocker that is going to TN and an empty filing cabinet that we still need to get rid of. Kathy got rid of a LOT of STUFF during her two days of garage sale. Most of what is left will go to Goodwill. Even my pole barn looks clean and fairly empty. As far as we know we are still on track to close on the house on Wed morning, and then off to TN on either Thur afternoon or Fri morning. After some time in TN we will wander over to Kelsey's in Russellville, MO. I've contacte...

On one had it doesn't seem like there is a lot going on, yet on the other hand it seems as though I am really busy. We had 5 people stay in the house last night, one of Kathy's nephews stayed with the neighbor. Tonight there are 5 again. Tomorrow we think we will have 2 more. They are down from Kathy's sisters church in NW Ohio to work on things at Teen Challenge. I spent yesterday fixing things on the house inspection list. An HVAC guy was here 4 hours working on HVAC items. As far as we could tell the system worked fine before he worked on things for 4 hours. I know the guy and I'm sure he wasn't loafing, just took him all that time to do all the nit picky things on the list. This morning I had breakfast with my old Tuesday morning crew. I certainly enjoyed the fellowship. Mid-morning I went down to Dougs and worked with him, on one of his houses, until 5:30. Came home, had supper, visited with the work crew some, took a shower, and it is now bedtime. Goodnight to...

We had a good time at Mom's. Friday night we went to the Moose in Fremont, IN, for fish. Kathy's Dad, her sisters Nancy & Cindy, and Cindy's family were there along with my Mom and Kathy and I. Today's drive home was uneventful. The weather was good and traffic was relatively light. We went to the Mexican restaurant in Lebanon for supper. It was every bit as good as we thought it would be. The lawn was nicely mowed and everything was in order at the house. I saw Phyllis, our neighbor, on her way out (she was probably going up to the BBQ event at the park in town). We just said hi, we will talk later. On the way home from the restaurant we went by Hillman & Cleta's. I asked Hillman if we were still on for breakfast on Thursday and he said yes. I've already told the Tuesday morning guys I will meet them. (I can't believe the guys are still studying the book of Luke <grin>). Tomorrow I plan on going to church at Harvest and then going over to watc...

It was 46 in Evart this morning. I put on a long sleeve shirt over my tee shirt, just to get over to the dining hall for breakfast. Today was a little sad because we have enjoyed our time at Spring Hill. The folks there treated us great. I will miss the guys in Maintenance. After spending most of my first couple of weeks solo painting bath house ceiling I was just starting to get to know some of them. I can't remember if I posted a photo of our "home" at Spring Hill. This was the view out the front window of our RV. We went to Ebels Grocery in Falmouth early this morning. Unfortunately the Pineview Amish grocery is closed on Thursday so we didn't get to stop there. We arrived back at Spring Hill in time for an early lunch. During lunch I took this photo of a portion of the dining hall where we usually ate. I think it seats 500. After lunch we hooked up and left. On the way South we stopped at a roadside market, just north of Ionia, and bought 2 bushels of tomatoes, s...

It is almost 9 PM. We are spending our last night at Spring Hill sitting out at a campfire next to our RV. The weather was quite cool this morning then after some light mist around 10 AM it warmed up and was a beautiful day. The temperature now is 68 and long pants and a long sleeve shirt would not feel bad. The sun has gone down but it is still light enough to see the keyboard. Kids are doing something fun because we have heard them hollering and laughing for over an hour, but that happens almost every evening. Kathy input survey data again today, but did it from the RV. Computers were slow again so she cleaned the RV while waiting on the computer send/receive data. My last work day was probably my busiest. Phil and I worked together all day, we started at 8 AM and finished a little after 5, with a half hour for lunch. We: 1.       replacing a warped board in the sidewalk at Frontier Village. 2.       replaced a couple of damaged stai...

Temperatures were great today. The low was 63 last night and the high was 77. Tonight the low is supposed to be 56. It rained last night. Not a lot but what we did get was a nice gentle rain. Just after lunch it rained quite hard for a short time. The rain was needed. I GOT A HAIRCUT, finally. This morning I went to Nick's Barbershop in Evart, for a $10 haircut. I arrived at 8:10. Nick opened at 8:00. I was third in line. My jobs today were: Phil and I did maintenance checks on three generators around the campus. We started and ran them for 20 min each. Actually Phil had already completed the first one before I got back from my haircut. They were relatively small 4 KW units. Next we were told about a leaking water pipe that was eroding the soil around one of the small buildings. Neither of us fully understood the directions and we went to the wrong place. No big deal, just an extra half mile of walking. After lunch we went to the "game room" and removed over 100' of ...

Nothing much happened yesterday. Kathy did more inputting of campers/parents evaluation forms and I painted a 2nd finish coat on the Norway mens room. I tried to get a 2nd coat on the ladies side but after getting fresh paint in my paint pan, and all ready to go into the ladies side, one one of the TST leaders came in and asked if I was going to paint. I said yes but asked what she needed. She had around 20 TST girls who wanted to take showers. I put my paint back in the pail, cleaned up and left. I went down to the site office and to kill time I checked the oil and gassed up 10-15 of the 35 golf carts that are on site. At 3:00 I set in on a site department meeting to discuss the condition of the campground area. There are some problems with the campground, namely they don't have enough electrical capacity when they are full of campers during holiday weekends. This would be a HUGE upgrade, and one that would be hard to justify the expense. One of my "must dos" today was t...

Weather was quite nice today, after the rain last night. The high was 81, It is supposed to get down to 60 tonight. I worked painting bathhouse ceilings today with Phil, another volunteer (we have two volunteers named Phil). This Phil and his wife came in last weekend. She is a nurse, volunteering in one of the on-site infirmaries, and he is retired from the aerospace industry. He attended Tri-State, where I received my degree, for a couple of years but finished his degree somewhere else while working. Phil "trimmed" and I rolled. Our top priority was finishing the priming in the women's side of the Meadowland bathhouse. We typically are supposed to wait until around 9 to start, so that the girls/women have time to take morning showers, etc.  At 10:45 we still had not been able to start because it was so busy. The guy we are working for stopped by and said it was time for the girls/women to use another facility. There is one reasonably c...

Two of Kathy's sisters came for a visit yesterday. They stayed overnight and returned home this afternoon. Kathy took them to the Amish grocery store, then Ebel's grocery in Falmouth, and they had lunch at Duane's restaurant. There were places we found during a day off about 3 weeks ago. I've been painting again. One of the summer help guys worked with me yesterday and we primed the men's side of the Meadowland bath house. Today I worked on the women's side. Today all I was able to get done was to "trim paint" the shower side. I had some other things to take care of this morning and didn't get over their until around 10. It was 10:45 before my brush touched the ceiling. Since it would be to big an inconvenience to close the restroom I have to stop every time a woman/girl wants to use the toilet or take a shower. (I fully agree that it is better for me to go in and out rather than make them go to another bath house.) Pancakes and good link sausage f...