Skiing Mt. Bachelor !!

Since USUALLY honesty is the best policy, I must admit it was not I that skied Mt. Bachelor today. Jennifer and Ryan are visiting for a few days and Ryan brought his skis - so it was off to Mt. B this AM.

Ryan took a number of photos (at Ms. Helen's request) while he was on the mountain.

Apparently on his very first run, Ryan took the lift to the top of the mountain, only to discover that visibility was a LITTLE tough. So he ended up in an ungroomed area with deep snow that was a "little" hard to turn in. This picture shows how many went this direction before him - HUM apparently not many:

This picture shows Ryan celebrating his skill(LUCK?)in managing to get back down from the top:

This is a most excellent view of the mountain that is called Broken top:

A fun shot at the top showing what appears to be signs that point to nowhere:

A tree near the summit that shows how fierce the winds and general environment can be at the top:

And finally - the view of the Woman waiting for her MAN to come down from the mountain - hopefully with a fresh kill for dinner!

Jobs & Refrigerators

First of all the GREAT news - John sent me a message last night that said "We have jobs!". As you may or may not know both John and Sophie work for Sprint in KC and they where sweating over the details of the latest layoffs that had been announced.

It was too late last night to call him when we got home, so I don't know the details - but I'm hoping this will keep both him and Sophie out of harms way for a while. Keep them and everyone else that is facing hard times in this economy in your prayers.

And now the REFRIGERATOR.

For those of you who read a previous blog regarding the case of the GE Advantium oven, we now have the case of the GE refrigerator. It's one of those custom jobs with wood on the doors to match the cabinets in the kitchen - retails we think for about $5,000! Anyway a couple of weeks ago we noticed that everything in the frig was freezing - and no matter how we set the controls it was still freezing the food.

Similar to the situation with the Advantium oven, when we contacted GE for warranty work they said that the frig was purchased in the summer of 2006 and the 2-year parts and labor had expired. Helen, that fearless pursuer of justice, advised them that the frig had only been in service a little over a year and that in was ____ ____ that we would be faced with paying for this repair. Anyway after two service trips, one to diagnose and one to install a $300 part, the total repair bill is right at $500.

GOOD NEWS this morning, GE called and said they have adjusted the warranty date to the date we bought the house and they would be sending the local repair people an authorization for the work! Kudos to Ms. Helen!

Twiddley Dee

Twitter my eye! Seems like someones eyes are on a hot chick!
He appears to be using the old line - "Want to see my poles? - they are really cool!"
She does seem impressed!

And what about the mailbox repairs he has been doing?
Thank heavens the little old ladies at Mountain High are having a little wine now and then, which makes for backing out of driveways a little tricky!
The mailboxes suffer - they have a good time - and it gets him out of the house!
Plus he has decided they need to be re-engineered!
We have also had some good times recently - took a snow shoe trip with church lead by the Park Rangers on Mt Bachelor, gave some great information about water shed management, trees, moss and what do if there is an avalanche.
With the snow we have been receiving this week, the base on Mt Bachelor should be well above the 350" - which will help with the water for the summer.

Twitter You This

As you have probably noticed, I have been somewhat remiss in posting anything in this blog of late. There is a reason for this - my perception that most of what is going on here is somewhat boring. I guess it reflects my feelings about Twitter, Facebook, and all of the "social networking" sites - in general nobody REALLY cares that I had salmon for dinner tonight and that I then closed the financial books on BendEscape for March. OH - and I used my new nose spray from the allergist this morning so that I wouldn't sneeze and blow my nose all day, and it REALLY works!!

SO - if I am wrong and you would like to have one of those daily commentaries (of course less than 140 words) let me know, you can either comment through this blog site or send an email to outofthoughts@ihavetoomuchtimeonmyhands.org

OH - by the way I bought a AWESOME steel storage rack for the garage at COSCO yesterday... As I've said before, life is sweet in Bend OR.