June was a pretty quiet month in the twenty acre woods in the year of Covid.
I puttered away on the outside and the inside of the garden shed and got it to the point of “substantial completion”. That’s the term used by people who build pulp and paper mills when they walk away and leave you holding the bag. In home project terms it’s when you have almost everything done and your attention is captured by some other task or book or YouTube clip… and the “Oh yeh, I’ve got to’s” become a gentle, disturbing whisper in the depths of your subconscious.
We had social distancing visitors this month from both the Meadow Lake clan and the Edmonton clan. We pretty much kept our anti-social distancing maintained. When the Edmonton clan visited they stayed in our fifth wheel trailer and kept out of our daily dwelling unit tiny house. We stayed out of the fifth wheel trailer for a week after they departed. Scientists have exhumed viruses from the graves of 1918 Spanish Flu victims but we all know this virus only lives 72 hours depending on the surface. Oh well. There is so much conflicting information out there including from experts who contradict themselves, let alone each other. All you can do is make your best guess and run with it until it is confirmed wrong. It will be at least five years before the truth is known about this pandemic and then it may disturb the narrative and not be readily available.
While the Edmonton clan was here they all went over to the Meadow Lake clan’s house and we joined them outside to visit at a safe distance, too. Debbie and Ernie are getting their motorcycle licenses. Juanita took a spin on one of the motorcycles. I didn’t. Coward.
Speaking of entertaining visitors. Some years ago when Rebekah was an engineering student I entered into some correspondence with the volunteer/intern co-ordinator of LeTorneau Institute in Longview, Texas. Nothing came of that other than ending up on his e-mail newsletter list. One day, a few years later, I received a group e-mail from his wife saying they were moving to another ministry. Could anybody come help them pack? I replied that we would be in the area as SOWERS in Big Sandy, Texas less than an hour from Longview and would be willing to help and what days we were available. She replied that they had acquired all the help they needed but could they invite us to dinner?
We showed up on the scheduled date at the scheduled time. Juanita took the bouquet of flowers we had bought up to the house and I sat in the truck until the turbo exhaust gas temperature got down to a safe level. That was before I installed an electronic box to do that job automatically. After forever I joined Juanita. Greetings all around. Meet the teen still living at homes and sit down to dinner. The host is looking puzzled for a while and then he just can’t contain it any longer.
“Excuse me, but how do we know each other?”
“We don’t.”
I explained we were just subscribers to his newsletter and how that came to be. Everybody relaxed. We figured out that he thought we had been one of the hundreds of volunteers he had worked with over the years. After that things were quite pleasant and we had a comfortable visit and a good meal. As a side note, Rebekah did end up volunteering at Big Sandy as a graduate engineer. When we were there after that they said we’re happy to see you, but is there any way she could come back. We’d be really happy to see her.
When I bought my iPhone a year ago I purchased a ten dollar a month protection plan from the carrier, SaskTel. Somewhere during the shed build the screen acquired a hairline crack. The replacement process to get a new phone was pretty painless as far as dealing with the insurance company on line. I hear if you try it over the phone you may have a different experience, but my experience on line was good. The sitting for hours using the cell phone store’s Wi-Fi restoring data to the new phone was annoying. Pity iPhone (Canada USA) won’t let you use your unlimited cell phone data to do back-ups or restores. Do Android (Canada USA) phones?
