Saturday 5-6-23 Spring Cleaning, New Pinball Game & More

 

Humid Day

We woke up to overcast skies and the temperature of 63 degrees. It got into the low 80s.

I got out of bed at 8:00 and made pancakes for breakfast. When breakfast was over it was time to do a little spring cleaning.

It looks like the oak trees are finished dropping their pollen. The back porch is a mess. We try to wash the railing once or twice a year. We wash the gas and charcoal grills at the same time. Today was a good day to clean. We got our buckets and cleaning tools out to do the job. Larry also got his Ryobi power sprayer out. He power washed the patio chairs, railing, porch and grills. He started with just the wand and moved on to the surface cleaner. After he finished I wiped down the railing. It was so much easier without the heavy coating of grime, what was left came right off. While I was doing the railing Larry did the porch, chairs, table and grills. It took us two and a half hours. Now the back porch looks great.

Time to clean the grill

 

 

 

Dirty railing

 

Spraying the railing with the wand

 

A little birdie keeping us company

 

Brown before and white after using surface cleaner

 

Cleaning the porch with the surface cleaner

We had a couple of small birds who built a nest inside the birdhouse on the back porch and before we went on our trip we thought they had babies. Since we have been back we have seen the birds go into the birdhouse but we may have missed babies since we were gone for a month. While we were cleaning the porch area Larry peeked in the birdhouse, It was dark so he couldn't see anything but while he was looking in one of the birds flew out of the house and almost flew into him. As soon as he moved away she came back.

Yesterday Larry saw a hummingbird. I hadn't put out the feeders because we were going on our trip, so I made some nectar and while it was cooling I got out the feeders, they're homemade out of sour cream bowls. After recuperating from the cleaning I asked Larry if he could replace the Velcro. One of the lids didn't look too appealing so I gave him a replacement. He drilled holes in it and then painted it red. He put the yellow one out for the hummingbirds. After the red one finishes drying we will also put it out. At sunset a hummingbird showed up and started drinking out of the feeder. It came back multiple times. 

I played my games. I did the Daily Challenges of Solitaire and Mahjong. The event today was Event: Spider Adventure of 20 games. It took me 4 hours, 8 minutes and 26 seconds, which put me in 7th place in my group. Before going to bed last night I played Angry Birds 2 and Angry Birds and Friends.

While we were on our trip we played some real pinball machines. We played some we really liked and didn't have. One of them was Monster Bash. Larry found it on a virtual pinball site and downloaded it. Then he installed it on the pinball machine. We played it this afternoon. We had a super time. My new weekly challenge is Cactus Canyon. We already have it so Larry just needed to change it from five balls to three balls. Tomorrow I'll start back playing the challenge.

Real pinball playfield of Monster Bash

 

Virtual pinball of Monster Bash

We continued catching up on our YouTube videos.

In the evening we continued watching the 12th season of Call the Midwife. Then I finished watching the 9th season of The Brokenwood Mysteries. 

Larry ordered me new batteries for my Garmin yesterday and they came in this afternoon. By the end of the day I did 21,000 steps.