And Some Other Thing

Just a follow up on the house. On Friday we finished framing the last wall. See the picture below.

The roof trusses are the next step. The plan is not to erect the walls until the trusses are on site. They are currently scheduled to be delivered on Thursday the 16th. From there it should only take a day or so to get the walls up and trusses installed and start on roofing.

Once upon a time, somewhere back in the ’80’s, I clipped a Far Side (by Gary Larson) cartoon (that I can’t exactly put my hands on currently) that showed a cat looking at a clothes dryer that had a sign on it labelled “CAT FUD”, with a dog standing upright, hiding just beside the washer thinking “oh, please…oh, please…”. Here is a (licensed) picture of what I mean.

That was brought to mind when I saw the below package at WalMart today.

Speaking of the Way Back Machine, In the early 1980’s the USS Sam Rayburn (SSBN-635) did a refit at the new submarine base at King’s Bay Georgia. One of the annoyances was swarms of midges that arose at dusk. One of the things that that the locals recommended was an Avon product labeled “Skin So Soft”. One of ingredients of the perfume repelled the bugs. We discovered it did keep the bugs away, but the ambience of the product wasn’t ideal for a bunch of sailors. They discovered that cutting the Skin So Soft with about 10% of diesel fuel did the trick.

While working on the house, as the weather warmed up, we began to be bothered by gnats and such off the pond, I relayed the story to AT. I started looking at Amazon on-line and I discovered this:

Apparently, the secret is out. There is a whole line of Skin So Soft bug repellant available online. What was old is new again.

My plans for the summer vacation have somewhat solidified. Here are my current plans: Late Breaking Changes I apparently are going to leave a week earlier than planned.

• Leave from Casper on June 29th, after dropping off the cat at his kennel vacation. I plan on driving down I-15 and stopping at Beaver UT for the night.
• On the 30th I will drive into Las Vegas to meet up with Sis, Jan & Mike and Terry & Voula to attend a The Grass Roots concert. They were a pop band big from ’65-’75 or so.
• I will be topping off gas in Nevada. I am awaiting delivery of an auxiliary tank which should give me a 1000-mile range. With any luck I won’t buy gas in California.
• On the 2nd I will drive back to Jan’s and celebrate the Fourth of July.
• On the morning of 7/8 drive up to L.A. and board the Carnival Radiance for a 3-day cruise to Ensenada. We get back the morning of the 11th. Engage in annual drinking contest with Jan.
• On the 12th and 13th Jon & families arrive.
• On Friday the 15th I pick up Kate (and possibly Jen????) at the airport in San Diego at 1:18pm and that evening we have dinner at The Old Spaghetti Factory.
• On Monday 7/18 I drop whomever at San Diego Airport at about 1:00pm or so for their flight back to PDX
• Tuesday at various times Jon’s families fly out.
• I depart sometime Wed or Thur to drive back, again stopping somewhere and maybe bringing Sis, Jill, or whomever with me.
• Arrive back home sometime around Friday the 22nd.