Some Highs, Some Lows

 Our weather has turned wet again, as predicted. I measured .64 in. of precipitation this morning, and there has been a hatch of mosquitoes, I think. I'm seeing them clinging to my window screens and I know they are just waiting for me to come outside so they can attack. This wet weather seems to bring them out of hiding.

I went to the Italian Supper last night and it was very good. There was a very big crowd there, but it was nice meeting new people and seeing old friends. Shelly Walker went with me, and it was fun for both of us. We were reminded of when Shelly was a nursing student and my kids were young. Every now and then we would pile as many kids as could fit into my station wagon and head to Morrisville to the drive-in movie. I guess it depended on what was playing there, but it was fun. Shell was always "Shelfie" to my kids. Shell and I co-chaired the boat parade a couple of times, too - I think around 1973 or 1975 - hard to remember the exact dates, but we remember the experience; it was a lot of planning and hard work, but great fun, too. 

My screened porch is moving ahead nicely. I am excited about how it looks - the cedar (that I stained!) looks really nice, and I'm beginning to get a sense of what it will look like finished. Aside from encounters with a couple of snakes and some wasps, work has gone smoothly. The weather cooperated this past week and the framework is mostly finished, ready for the roof to be put on. The top two photos show the frame. They only worked half a day on Friday, and that was to get the staging set up so they can begin putting on the roof on Monday. Now I am hoping it doesn't rain on Monday - and it would be wonderful if we had a string of dry days so they could get it done. There are still things to do like installing the slider that will come (hopefully) the first week in August. And I will have a reinforcement rail part way up the screen - but I need to be able to figure out where I want it so it won't cut off my view when I'm sitting out there. Then we'll be ready for the screens to be made. We will have Mayo's in St. Johnsbury make those up. If the weather holds and we don't get a lot of rain next week, I should have a roof over everything by the end of the week.

There have been glitches, of course. One that both Randy and I had concerns about was the changeover of the exhaust from my heating system. Thursday I was cold here in the house most of the day, but thought it was because I was sedentary, working at the computer. Mid-morning I decided to do a little baking to warm the house up. Had I really been paying attention, I'd have realized the boiler wasn't working - at all. I finally came to when I began to run out of hot water, and when I checked the boiler, it was off, with an error message on the diagnostic screen. I called Bourne's who do the service on the boiler, and both Levi and Tim stopped in on Friday morning.  It didn't take them long to figure out that the new arrangement to get the exhaust into the chimney was allowing moisture to build up - the exhaust from the burner is mostly steam - and water had collected to the point that the pipe was closed and of course the burner quit. After a trip to St. J. for a part, Tim got it going. What a joy to have heat and hot water again! This oil boiler is sort of a rare bird in the industry - something like 94% efficient - but it has it's quirks. Not only that, but apparently the manufacturer, Boderus Company in Germany, is no longer in business. Wouldn't you know? We knew when we had it installed that it was not an everyday, common to everyone, piece of equipment, but it was so efficient, it was something Fred really liked. It has been great, but it can be finicky. It's a learning process, and now that there are no authorized parts for it on the market, substitutions need to be found, and that's what Rob Lawson did when he changed the vent system, but he just didn't get the slant of the pipe right so the water could drain properly. But everyone agreed on Friday - better to have it fail in July than in January!