Chapter 413

Happy NATIONAL FOSSIL DAY! 

Speaking of fossils, mine was outside putting the new gutters on the house. 

I think he did a great job especially considering I didn't help hold that big old long gutter up. Now all he has to do is paint those crispy new gutters to match.

I looked outside and Bob was painting the back steps, trying to Bear-proof the paint for his next visit. Next, I see is him standing with his tree counting blossoms while holding a container of paint in his hand. Talk about me seeing something shiny and wandering off...

He painted all the new shutters the trim color only to find this message in the packaging while cleaning up. So if it looks like our shutters have a black patchy skin rash, this would be why. Are we concerned? Nope.

It was really windy here a couple of days ago. Bob's flower tree fell over and was leaning up against the fence when we got up in the morning. It's getting cold enough we are going to cut it down and store it away for the winter. We cannot allow it to grow to 12 feet again next year since it outgrew our own patio.

For most folks, you can tell fall is coming by the changing color of the leaves and the way they pile up everywhere and cause additional clean up duties.

At our house we don't need no stinkin' leaves to know it's fall. We know it's fall because Nitro disappears into his kitty sack until next spring. The only way we can find him is by his tail sticking out of the bag. I guess his tail must not get cold.

This time he didn't even manage to get his leg sucked in before he fell asleep.

Fall means I have to clean the spent plants from Reagan's garden then Grandpa hauls them away. It's hard to believe that such small gardens could have so much plant rubble in it.

This year, instead of letting the farm lay fallow all winter, I'm going to step up my game and attempt to grow winter root vegetables. Pinterest makes it look so easy, wish me luck with this one. I feel lucky to have grown veggies in one season.

The Seattle Parrot Expo people have been plastering Auburn with these posters. They dropped them off at school, they are on every post, on every Facebook page. These people were very enthusiastic about their event and I wanted to support Auburn for landing such a gem in the midst of our modest town...and it was free. Wishing I had Reagan with me, I arrive at the much bally-hooed Seattle Parrot Expo with high expectations.

Blah! There were more parrots on their poster that at their expo. The 3 parrots I saw cost $5 to have your picture taken with them. There were parrot toys...even parrot clothes. Most of the vendors (like Costco) were unrelated to parrots as far as I could see. I did get to pet a tegu lizard and hold a guinea pig though. I'm glad there was no admission because I'd want it back! Now I understand why the Parrot Expo was located in Auburn. It was not more than I could imagine.

 Erik and Darla said they were going to go to Octoberfest at the Puyallup Fairgrounds today. It seemed like a cool idea and I invited us along. We didn't wait for Erik to get out of church first and went ahead with the plan to meet them there. Basically it was the Parrot Expo all over again and we didn't stay long enough to meet up with E & D.  Anyway, Bob had a picture-worthy moment with some Sasquatchy-looking thing. I don't know it it's our Sasquatch or a German creature of similar lineage. It seems all mountainous/forested countries have a version of this guy in their folklore.

We tried to watch the weiner dog races but it was so crowded, this was the best view I got.

There were some wonderful authentic German clothing. When I asked about the little leg warmers, the nice man told me they were to use less precious yarn while keeping their muscles warm. When the little sport-style socks in their shoes were worn out and couldn't be repaired any longer, the entire sock didn't have to be re-knitted, only the foot part. It seems to me there are some "holes" in this plan...

 There were a lot of folks dressed up in authentic dirndl and lederhosen. Some were more comfortable in their outfits than others. This dirndl-wearer seems very comfortable in his outfit and wore it with pride. From the number on his dirndl, it appears he ran the Stein Dask 5K dressed like this.

As well as authentic traditional clothing, others were showing their pride in a less traditional outfit. This guy matched the legs on the tables and most of the other decorations as well.

  After Octoberfest, we did a bit of caching. Following the coordinates, we arrived at this very official-looking cache site. This is a new 2017 city cache that was supposed to be a real head-scratcher. And it was. 

First we had to close a connection with the little dangling wire to light up the little lights under the big box. By translating the light colors with the key on the Geocache website, we figured out the combination to open the brass Padlock on the top box.

Then we had to connect the half the leads to four of the correct terminals to light up more lights. These were translated to another combination so we could open up the key box below.

The key box has the golden key ...

...needed to open the final lock box where the log was stored. Whew, that was a lot of work for the privilege of signing your name but it was a really, really, good hide.

 We hit up another couple of caches while we were in town. 

When I crawled under a bush to locate this cache, I was really, really, careful before I reached in and grabbed it. I think the animal that would have done this would have been much larger than the tree it was hidden under and nothing I would want to meet up with.

As you can see, it was just your basic harmless peanut butter jar engulfed in foam insulation with a cache within. Bob happily signed it and we were on our way to Lowe's for our next errand. Just another day in the life of a couple of old folks.

Reagan sporting the latest in fire protection wear. Maybe she'll want to be a fire fighter for Halloween.

Or maybe she'll want to go through her dress-up stuff and come up with a Reagan original design.

Reagan loves her painted rocks. Reagan and I painted this "12" rock awhile ago and we hid them in Fish Park the next day. After being out of circulation for awhile, it turned up on the "Kitsap Rocks" Facebook page. Reagan was very excited to see it had turned up again. That's all part of the Kitsap Rocks fun.

Reagan and Chris like to attend craft day at Home depot. This is right up Reagan's alley and is a win for Home Depot. They are growing a future generation of buyers by empowering them to use tools all the while their parents are picking up a few things since "they are there anyway".

 Reagan is so intense when she's doing these type of projects.

Have a good week everyone!