Trail Seeker

After working the ARRL Sweepstakes contest (amatuer radio) a week and a half ago, I made contacts to 73 of 80 sections of north America. The only western US section I did not make a contact on was Oregon! I made 261 contacts to other amatuer radio operators over the weekend.

This Saturday is my youngest little lady's birthday, she will be 14, my oldest (16) was asked out on her first date to the winter formal coming up soon, she also was inducted into the National Honors Society a week ago Monday. They're growing up to quickly.

The ewe in my field recently got company when my neighbor dropped of a ram. This past year was bad for predators, we lost both of her lambs, the second one was almost as big as his mom when coyotes dined out on him.

We are still debating on the hot tub, after a call to the one company we had most interest in, we found out that shipping was more than they suggested on their web sight and even though they advertise packages complete, all you need to supply is water, there are two neccesary items not in inventory, one being stove pipe and the other is the 4x6's used under the tub. I also would prefer the stainless steel stove pipe as the stove in Stainless and designed to take the weather outside.

I have been using this computer for a few years and have no intentions of upgrading to a new one, but I did want some more hard disk space. I ordered a hard drive and learned that the new standard is Serial ATA which has a totally different set up and cannot be use on an IDE system. With a little research, I found a PCI card that would take care of that problem. As soon as that card gets here I will be transfering all the 8mm video into the computer for editing and burning on DVD's.

We plan to see Harry Potter when it finally gets here, possibly a week and half. My dear wife wants to catch the Sunday matinee, I am sure some of you can get the significance of that. I also spent the day looking for some stove pipe fittings for my shop wood stove, boy it is not easy finding what I need and I may need to resort to a very expensive route.

It has been on the colder side here, snow levels have dropped to 500-1000 feet this past week and along with that here, is very cold rain. No hikes are planned in the near future, but we are looking into it. We have been planning this next summers outings including the 44 mile route around Mt Hood.