2026-08-30 Still in Bend - getting some different projects done

Sunday was nice sunny day, and we enjoyed our daily walk, with more deer, and some geese.

Nice clear day with good view of the Mountains - not much snow on Mt. Washington

Dean worked on installing some booster spacers for the car. Kris is a bit of height impaired, and has been sitting on booster seats in the car when driving and as a passenger so she can see out comfortably and doesn't feel like she is sitting in a hole.   We found some blocks that will work with our car, so Dean installed them, and now she sits a bit higher, and can drive and ride without a booster.  She still might use the boosters for long trips, time will tell.

Special spacers to lift the seats

On Monday we got the call that the painters would be arriving on Tuesday, so we had a bit of work to get done to prep the house, and we still had to decide on the final color.   So a quick trip to the paint store for some small samples, which we painted on the house, and then we started removing all items from the deck, and decor from the exterior walls, and hundreds of old staples that were once used to hang Christmas lights many many years ago.

The deck doesn't look that full of items, until you start working.

40 year accumulation of staples, hooks and screws that were in the house.  Must be around 50 hooks we unscrewed from various places.

We got quite a surprise when pulling some art off the front of the house.  Behind a wooden hanging we found a small bat.

Judging by the poop, it has been his home for a while.

Was not happy to be exposed to the daylight and have his home removed.

Some species of bats in the eastern Oregon area do nest in groups, so solitary males are normal.  This guy flew off, but we bought a bat house for him which we will install in a nearby tree that gets lots of daytime sunshine.

We also disturbed another small critter while prepping the house.

We let this little Pacific Tree Frog hop off after putting him on the ground.

The painters got right to work, painting the new color on half the house, and then stopping to make sure we were OK with the color before continuing on.  

Think we will be very happy with the new color

We still needed to move a trailer Norm had full of scrap metal, so decided to finish loading up all scrap metal he had and take the trailer into the recycling yard.   Got $22 for the ferrous, and $200 for the non-ferrous metals.   Norm wants to help with projects - but as you might imagine, at 94 he moves a bit slower than us. So projects tend to go slower sometimes, but it gives us a break from the heavy lifting while we wait for him to check everything over.

Kris waiting on Norm to check to make sure we did not get any non-ferrous mixed with the ferrous.  (We didn't)

Norm decided that some old broken concrete needed to be broken up further, so he put on his normal work outfit, gloves and his pith helmet.  

Breaking up concrete.  He doesn't have the strength to lift the sledge much higher, but he did not want help.

The weather has turned cold, so our walks our not as enjoyable.   Kris was bundled up for the walk yesterday, it was only about 54 degrees F.  Not sure if we will be able to handle the Trinidad weather after getting "climatized" to this.

Today is quite cold, only 42 degrees this morning - so we won't be walking today - we just don't have clothes for that cold of weather.  Dean is even wearing sweats and a sweatshirt inside the house.