The RJ Ranch

We have a new mail box. The poor old one that sagged to starboard and swayed in the breeze is gone. Here to stay (unless some passing motorist takes it out) is the new, improved “safety” mailbox. Why is it a “safety” mail box? Because it has a lock on it…ooh.

Of course it leaked like a sieve. Roger had to caulk up the seams and do some revisions on it so the mail would stop getting caught up half way down to the bottom. It came without a red flag to indicate that there was mail to pick up. Also, there was no place to put the outgoing mail so Roger had to rig up a spring to hold the outgoing stuff. Finally, the mail collection door was in the back. Roger had to take the box apart and reverse it so that we could open it without taking a swim in the drainage ditch behind the mail box stand.

It used to be all we had to do was drive up to the box, open the door and voila, we had our mail. Now, instead of just opening the box and retrieving the mail one must use the key. What happens if we lose our key? Hmmm. Gosh, green is such a great color.

Good Bye Ol' Yeller. When we moved to Washington last summer we got two estimates from professional movers so that we could move all our “stuff”. After talking with the movers both said approximately the same thing which equated to $1.00 per pound of “stuff” plus gas for the trip. At the time we estimated the total weight to be about 16-18,000 pounds. At a dollar a pound that’s quite a chunk of change to dish out just to move a little furniture.

So, we decided to rent a truck but even with us loading and unloading the truck the charge for a one way trip was going to be about $3-4,000.00 for one way. That was still no good because we estimated that we would need to make three trips up and back again to finish the move.

We started looking around and wound up buying a used Penske Moving truck for $14,999.00. Believe it or not, Roger and I were able to load all of our furniture ourselves. He found the most amazing belts and we were able to lift furniture that we had not been able to push across the floor in the house. We unloaded two loads at this end. Patrick helped us with the third load. All in all we moved 26,500 pounds of “stuff”. This made me feel a whole lot better about putting a little of my own sweat into the move.

Well, once we got here the truck was retired to the side of the barn where it lived for 6 months. We only drove it on sunny Sundays and to take empty boxes (and we had a lot of boxes) to WSU for recycling.

Roger drove the truck to Spokane last week to help a friend move into her new home. On the way to the new home, Sunny had to pick up a TV she had purchased from a Discount Sales store. The owner of the store saw the truck and mentioned he would like to find a truck like that to haul his merchandise. Well, the move was on Thursday and the truck made its final departure from our little ranch on Monday. The store owner is now the proud owner of a used Penske Moving truck and we are $15,000.00 richer. I guess you could say we got the move done for the cost of the gasoline, a little sweat and a lot of elbow grease. Not too bad I would say.

A cold front is moving through our little "banana belt". I opened my eyes about 4:00 this morning and looked at the digital clock reflected off the ceiling. The temperature at this wee hour of the morning was 2 degrees. The wind chill factor is -11 (that's below zero). Later this morning after dropping my daughter off at work I passed this sight. I just had to stop and take a photo, especially for my family members who live in sunny Southern California.

This is the most recent addition to our landscaping. No, they're not going to remain where they are. These pretties arrived the day before Roger left for Dallas, TX. Since the lights are solar powered they had to charge for two days before they could be turned on. They've been sitting in our front yard soaking up sunlight since Rogers’s departure. Last night I turned them on just to see what would happen, and. “Viola! Houston, we have lights." We haven't decided whether to run them along the drive way (as if anyone could use them to navigate the bridge) or along the walk way to the house (a better choice I think).

Much of the original landscaping was taken by the former owners of the property leaving us with a lot of details to fill in. We are figuring we should be done in about 10 years (+/- 5) with the outside renovations. That is if I can just keep Roger from getting more “projects”.

Yesterday was the official flag raising on the RJ Ranch. Roger installed a flagpole outside the front of our home and we hoisted the flag about 10:00 AM. It was the perfect day for the event. Roger made a video of the whole event and Kimberly took the stills.

Next project(s): Mailbox, telescope and the CCTV.