Bert's Musings

This morning I did some more grouting around the stove in the Prayer Chapel. I didn't quite get finished. I had to leave because the group coming in was scheduled to have a meeting in it. I just need to pull off the masking tape on the trim and some do a little cleaning. After that I took some of the stuff I had, in the back of the car, back to the warehouse/maintenance shop and swept out the back of the car. I've been using it for my "tool truck". Not a real busy morning. Kathy did more cleaning and more laundry this morning. It misted rain almost all day today. It was light enough that you didn't bother with a rain coat unless you were going to be out in it for a lengthy period of time. We had lunch at home today. There was no breakfast or lunch in the dining room today. After that we both took naps. Kathy took a short one but mine was about 2 hours. I've pretty much got all the things on my work list done, or done as far as I can go without someone else doi...

Yesterday’s weather was reasonably nice. We occasionally had a little sunshine. Today it was supposed to be partly cloudy in the afternoon but we got solid clouds and mist instead. The Intervarsity teenagers left after lunch (hamburgers and hot dogs). Since there were no “guests” last night we were on our own for supper. I got out our little propane grill and grilled steaks. Kathy baked potatoes and made a salad. Life is good. A new group of people is supposed to come in tomorrow (Friday) afternoon. Work around the camp the past two days has been pretty much the same. Still working on the door trim (it is a good thing they aren’t paying me by the hour <grin>). I removed one of the old shims that trimmed the door and made a new variable thickness shim so that the new redwood trim would fit the door frame and existing gypsum board. I now have two coats of polyurethane on the redwood and it is going to take a third coat. Today I grouted the big (1/2”-1”) gaps between the st...

I’m not sure how much it has rained since the middle of last night but it has been a LOT. By 9 AM the normal road to Sebastopol was flooded. Apparently having the road flood at one area is not unusual during the winter (the rainy season). Frank gave us a map showing “flood routes” to get to town when the normal route is flooded. When you drive through the area that is the first to flood you can see why it floods. It is down in a “bottom” and close to a creek. In all its wisdom the state of California will not allow any modifications to roads within 100’ of a natural waterway, so the road floods and people just have to deal with it. It would not be all that disruptive to drive sheet piles along both sides of the road and raise the road surface at least 5’. Of course the government would be involved so they would probably require that taxpayers pay for a bridge across the low area. Money is never an object when politicians and bureaucrats are spending taxpayer dollars. I worked in the wa...

It started raining during the night. I'm not sure when because I hardly remember my head hitting the pillow. One of the guys at breakfast said that it has rained an inch since it started. It is supposed to rain all day and into the night. There are 96 older teenagers here. They came last Friday. They are with Intervarsity Christian Fellowship. Kathy commented last night that being around them gives one hope for the future of our nation. I haven't had much contact with them but she has as she has been cleaning. Yesterday I think I finally finished the demo on the bathroom floor. First thing in the morning I took my recip saw with me because I thought I was going to have to cut off a cast iron toilet flange. When I walked into the bathroom the flange was off. Bob worked on it over the weekend and finally cut it off after trying to get it off using other means. I took out some more questionable floor and installed some new floor supports that will be under the 3'x4' piece ...

This morning we went to Sunday School and church at Hessel church. It is loosely affiliated with Mt Gilead. It is located south of Sebastopol, a 30-35 minute drive from the camp. The location of the church was in the information packet Frank had given us. In addition Chis, one of the regular local volunteers, invited me/us. It is quite a facility. Their monthly budget is over $130,000. The Sunday School teacher in the class we attended was born and raised in a Jewish family. As an adult he converted to Christianity. He is teaching on the book of Esther and, as you might expect, because of his Jewish background he had some interesting insights to share. We had lunch at a small Mexican restaurant in Sebastopol. Not bad but not worth going back. As we were driving through town we noticed a Farmer’s Market so we parked and walked through it. Based on what we saw at the market, and later at the grocery store, this place is certainly a home for aging hippies. At the Farmer’s Market in Oaklan...

Rain, or a chance of rain, is in the forecast here 6 out of every 7 days. This is the first day that it has actually rained since we arrived. It isn't a hard rain, more like a heavy drizzle. Yesterday I did end up eating at the Dining Hall. Breakfast was at 8, not 7 as I had been told. It was being put out on the steam tables before I finished using the WiFi. WiFi is active only in the Dining Hall and "Staff Room", which is an appendage to the Dining Hall. I have to be within 50' of the building before my phone starts picking up the WiFi, so there isn't a chance that we can get it at the RV. I'm in the Staff Room again this morning (the Staff Room/Dining Hall are about a quarter mile from our RV, I drove this morning but normally we walk) to check emails and write/post this blog. I will be eating breakfast here again this morning. Yesterday we had plain pancakes, blueberry pancakes, smoked sausage, fruit and cereal for breakfast choices. For lunch yesterday we...

I got up early to meet with one of my "bosses" but it appears that the person (the Camp Director) who told me that Roper, the Operations Manager, was going to be at the cafeteria at 7 AM was in error. I can hear people are working in the kitchen but no one else is here. This is OK because I was to tired to come down here last night, so that I could access the Internet and post to the blog. I went to be early. Kathy came down after I went to bed partly to get on the Internet and partly to see what "treats" might be available in the "Staff Room." Matt, the chef/cook, had made chocolate eclairs for treats last night. For lunch yesterday he made cream puffs. There are still a few choclolate chip cookies left over from Wednesday. I had one of them, it was good! Yesterday's activities: Today (Thursday) was partly sunny with a high of 62. Last nights (Wednesday night) low was 48. We haven’t turned on our propane furnace since we have been here. It was right b...

Today was our first work day at Mt Gilead. I met with Frank (he and his wife have been pretty much full time volunteers here for years) at 9 AM and we spent the next 2 1/2 hours looking at jobs. Frank gave me a list of things I can work on and basically said to find him or "Roper" if I had questions. Kathy helped Sue (Frank's wife) set up for the lunch they serve seniors on Wednesday's. The seniors come out for a program and lunch, quite a few of them. After helping clean up after lunch she helped another lady take sheets off beds, launder them and put clean sheets back on the beds. We are pretty much turned loose. Frank gave us keys to almost all the buildings. One of the jobs he gave me was to trim a door. He previously trimmed an adjacent window with redwood and suggested I do something similar with the door. He took me down to the "warehouse" and showed me where they stock the redwood they have rough sawn on site. He also showed me the planer and table s...

We arrived at Mt Gilead around 4:30 PM. Mt Gilead Bible Camp is about 10 miles northwest of Sebatopol, CA. It is about a 20 minute drive in the car. We are all set up and ready for a good nights sleep. I can't believe how tired both of us are tonight. It doesn't seem like we did all that much but I guess there is a fair amount of labor involved to get things back stored in the RV after spending over two months at the same place. No problems getting here other than Garmin must make the world's stupidest GPS's. I paid extra to get a GPS that was supposed to have a setting the prevented routing you down cowpaths. NOT! We came up here before, in the car, to look around. The route we took then was MUCH easier. Today it routed us down roads that were barely two lane, and with one switchback after another. More than once we just had to go around a corner blind because it was so sharp that we had to take up both lanes to get around it and we couldn't see if there was oncomi...

If all goes according to plan we will be spending tomorrow night at Mt Gilead Bible Camp in Sebastopol, CA. Sebastopol is about 70 miles north of Drews. This morning I went to a Cummins Service Center in San Leandro and picked up an oil filter for our generator. I need to change the oil in the generator when we get to Mt Gilead. Drew and I did more painting (mostly Drew) and then Drew mowed the lawn. Kathy went to a luncheon at one of the lady's with whom she has worked at the storefront church. I've mentioned the storefront church before so I thought a photo of it was in order. I filled up with gas on the way back from San Leandro. I don't know what any of you are paying for gas but this is what I paid today. Ain't California grand. This is Drew's dining room. Obviously the Seseme paint is not finished on the back wall. The big square of light in the ceiling is a skylight.  Below is the other side of the dining room. The large doorway on the right leads  into t...

We had a fair amount of sun today, which was great after the recent rains. My trip to Best Buy, to exchange the Bionic for an Incredible 2, went far better than I expected. I walked over to Best Buy and was there about 10 minutes after they opened. It took an hour to do the exchange but they didn't balk at anything. They even refunded the $24 for the screen protector I had them put on the Bionic. (That is a nice thing about the area. Best Buy, Office Depot, Home Depot, IKEA, a grocery store, and more, are within walking distance of his house.) Vivian, from Verizon, called me around 1:30, just a few minutes late. She says she set me up with a 2 GB data plan, instead of the 5 GB plan I used to have. Supposedly Verizon no longer offers the 5 GB plan. She told me Verizon will pick up any "overage" charges if I exceed the 2 GB. I'm sure they won't pay the charges if I exceed 5 GB, nor should they. They "win" because I'm sure that when I upgrade the next t...

Yesterday I did some painting in Drew's office. As I was getting started I bent over to put a pan full of paint on the floor and my cell phone fell out of my pocket into the paint. It was nearly submerged before I could finish setting the pan on the floor and digging it out. I washed if off, dried it, cleaned out the ports but after played with it in the evening it was apparent that it was no longer functional, even though the screen would come on. I spent maybe an hour researching a replacement phone, including the time I spent chatting with a Verizon rep. I asked the rep, several times, if upgrading to a 4G Bionic would cause any changes to my plan and evey time she assured me that the upgrade would not change my current plan, nor the cost of the plan. I kept a copy of the online chat. This morning I went over to Best Buy and bought one. I was in the store for over an hour. When setting things up I told the young lady that I wanted no changes to...

Not much going on. Other than a trip to the Post Office to pick up a package and a trip to Costco I didn't do much yesterday. The wall I painted Wednesday is going to need three coats to cover. It was a wall in the front of the house and it didn't get washed because it didn't appear to be dirty. Today I'm going to try washing the other walls in the room with TSP to see if that will help with painting. In the RV we use a Eureaka Whirlwind Lite (mostly Kathy uses it) for vacuuming. We bought it for my office in Lebanon so it has a few years on it. The foam filter is getting ratty so I went to Eureaka's web site to find the correct replacement filter and ordered one through Amazon. That is what we had to go to the Post Office to pick up. I guess the box was to big to fit in the mailbox, although I haven't checked. The postal service here SUCKS! They only seem to deliver what they want/when they want.) We were here both days when the postman claims he tried to deliv...

We took the day off, other than Kathy helping at the food give away. After she returned we went to Fenton's Creamery for a late lunch. http://www.fentonscreamery.com/ Kathy has a salad and I had a ham & swiss. The food was good. Surprisingly good. Dessert was even better. Mine was the "diet" version. I did without the whipped cream and the cherry.  Good night to all and may God bless you and yours.

Not much exciting happening. It has been raining, lightly since early morning. We pretty much took the day off Sunday. Drew and I went "across the bridge" to a Lowe's in San Francisco. He bought lumber and screen wire for a chicken coop. He plans on getting 2 or 3 chickens, to go along with the bees. Don't know if I mentioned bees. He has all the hardware ready to go for a beehive (I think they call it an aviary). In a month of so he plans on buying a queen bee to get things going. Tonight he is going to a bee keepers meeting after work. After Lowe's we stopped at a Burger place in San Francisco. It had maybe four small tables and seating at a counter. It probably qualified for the label of a "greasy spoon", although it did appear to be reasonably clean. It was an old, non-fancy, place, probably used to be a gas station. The burgers and fries were great.  I got double cheeseburger and he ordered a single plus a corn dog. We shared a large order of fries....

Didn't do much yesterday. Took some stuff over to the hazardous waste facility and that was about it. Today Drew spent most of the day painting trim on the front of the house. The colors don't show up well at all in the above photos, except maybe the orange. The main trim is green while the minor trim is either blue or red. The front isn't 100% done but it is close. I built a brace for the long ladder so that Drew could reach to paint the different colors at the roof peak. I also did some work repairing some trim around the kitchen bay window and getting the attic/roof ready for the first shoring post. Good night to all and may God bless you and yours.

Today we did some sightseeing. First stop was the Conservatory at the San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. It is a beautiful place with lots of interesting plants. The Conservatory is the white building.  This is inside one of the Conservatory wings. All the concrete walkways had these ornate cast iron grills down the centers.  There is some stained glass around the top of the center section of the Conservatory. These plant leafs actually looked like they had blue sections, until I realized that it was just the sunlight coming through the blue panes of stained glass.  After spending about 90 minutes at the Conservatory we drove to the other end of the park, to Queen Wilhelmina's Tulip Garden. (The garden is named after one of Holland's longest serving monarchs.) The windmill at Queen Wilhelmina's Tulip Garden. Queen Wilhelmina's Tulip Garden is just a couple of stone throws from the ocean. We walked down to the ocean and had a late lunch at Louis' (pronounced Louie...

Yesterday I did some "bodywork" repairs to the motorhome. We had a side panel that had come loose and when we were at the Alameda County Fairgrounds, just before moving to Drew's, I noticed that my previous repair attempt had failed. Hopefully the ones I made yesterday will hold up better. Last evening we (Kathy, Drew & I) went to Berkeley, walked around, had dinner and later dessert. Downtown Berkeley is a very "happening" place. Berkeley is home to one of the University of California campuses. It used to be known for all the left wing whacko's that were there. They are probably still there but are just being out "whacko'ed" by nut cases like those in the Occupy movement. There are virtually no vacant stores and there is a lot of activity occurring on weekday evenings. The only difficult thing was finding a parking place. Kathy and Drew almost at the crepe place where we went for dessert. Have a great day. May God bless you and yours.

This morning we were awakened as the bed shook. Our first California earthquake. At 5:33 AM there was a 4.0 earthquake centered a few miles from us. For us it was similar to one of the old vibrating beds at motels, except that it lasted less than 10 seconds. There were actually two earthquakes. The first was a 2.9 magnitude and then 7 seconds later the 4.0 earthquake occurred. There were a couple of lesser aftershocks later, but we slept through them. When we got up we went to IKEA for a free breakfast. It is only about a 10 minute drive from Drew's. The last time we were there we noticed that they served free breakfasts on Monday mornings. It was a decent breakfast, even the coffee was included for free. We bought the "Swedish pancakes" because we were curious about them. Our breakfast cost us less than $2. The counter we sat at while eating was against large exterior windows. It was clear today and we could look across the bay and see San Francisco. Our view w...

It was a beautiful day. I took off my long sleeve shirt in the afternoon and worked outside in a tee shirt. Today we painted more exterior trim, "opaqued" a window and oiled more woodwork. I think we may be doing washing and oiling woodwork. I think I forgot to mention that Drew planted a multi-fruit fruit tree in his backyard yesterday. We also cleaned some tree/bush roots out of an area in the front yard and he planted a plant there. Not much excitement but we are making progress. Good night to all and may God bless you and yours.

This should probably be in my political blog but I want more people to see it. I just finished listening to Ayn Rand's book titled "Anthem." I strongly urge every one of you to read/listen to it. I downloaded it from the Indianapolis Marion County public library and listened to it on my phone. The Crossville, TN library has a hard copy available, an audio copy that can be played on Windows media player, and a digital copy that can be read on Kindle or Android systems. I am sure that other libraries also have copies available. Ms. Rand wrote in the 40's and her vision of man and events that can/will occur to choke out initiative, innovation, etc. are astounding. Her book Atlas Shrugged, was recently made into a movie. The distribution of the movie was limited and I have not seen it but I will be purchasing a DVD copy so that I can see how well it follows the book. The weather today is beautiful, as it was yesterday. Yesterday we worked on some odds and ends around Drew...

After I posted last night Drew texted us to say that he was testing his newly repaired oven by baking chocolate chip cookies. He told us to come over at 8:45 to try the first batch. He texted some of his other friends also. Collin and Stephanie came over to eat cookies. We had not met them before. We had thought about going to SF's botanical garden today but Kathy decided that she wanted to help with the food pantry at the storefront church down the street. I went to the Farmer's Market, mostly just to see who would be providing music at the center of the market. Today it was a white guy in his 50's, playing a regular guitar. The guitar was "mic'd" so that everyone could hear. He was good. No singing, just plain ole guitar playing. I recognized some 60's songs but did not recognize the blues/jazz music that he played. Even though I didn't know the songs I sure enjoyed them. After the farmers market I went to Shoreline Park. It is right in the middle of...

Today we went to Walmart to get some prescriptions filled and worked the timing so that we could walk over to In and Out Burger and have lunch while we waited on the prescriptions. I like going to that place. The burgers and fries are good but even better is watching the workers while waiting on your food. You get a number on your receipt when you order. Our number was 85 and they were handing out food to people who had numbers in the low 70's when I started waiting for our food. There are a LOT of people working behind the counter and they keep BUSY. You don't see any of them standing around. What is really interesting is that most of them are smiling a lot of the time. By the time we finished eating they were serving numbers in the 20's. From the time we ordered to the time we were leaving they had served around 40 customers inside. I don't have any idea how many drive thru customers they served during that time, but I'm sure it was a lot. The drive ...