Saturday 7-6 Happy Saturday

Smile and have a great day

We had a great day. I spent a large part of my day playing my Solitaire Challenge Event: Solitaire World Tour, it had a total of 30 games and after 10 hours of playing I gave up. I had 2 games left to complete the games.

Yesterday, I wrote about our Weber grill. Larry decided to repair it. In the morning we went to The Home Depot where we bought a piece of metal to build a plate to cover the hole in the front of the grill, we also picked up a new igniter. When we got home Larry worked on the grill. It took him awhile to tear it apart and remove the burner tubes because one of the screws was rusted in. He ended up using his Dremel tool and grinding the screw out. Then he cut and installed the metal plate to patch the hole. After he finished he ordered a new set of burner tubes from Amazon. They won't be here until Tuesday so the grill will remain in pieces until then.

The plate for the hole in the grill

The hole that the plate goes over

While in town we stopped by the UPS Store to pick up our mail and a package that was waiting for us. The package was a pair of shoes from Orthofeet for Larry. They had Velcro straps instead of shoe laces. He doesn't like how they fit so he's going to ship them back to the company and replace them with a pair that ties. He has another pair of shoes from Orthofeet that he likes. 

This week Amazon has a special going on where you can rent some of the Avengers movies for $1.99. We hadn't seen Spiderman Homecoming so we rented it. It was a good movie. Afterwards I watched a few episodes of Murdock Mysteries.    

Friday 7-5-19 Patriotic Dance

Killeen Kickers Patriotic Dance

We have a Weber Genesis Gas Grill that is 13 years old. We use this grill all the time and it has always worked great. Other than a little cleaning maintenance and replacing the automatic starter it has been trouble free. Last week when Larry was preparing our gas grill to smoke a pork roast he found that the middle burner wasn't working. This morning he took the grill apart and discovered the burner tube is deteriorating and there is a hole in the area where the gas feeds to the middle burner. He also found a hole burned through the front of the actual grill. He tried to remove the tubes but over the years one of the screws has rusted in. After looking at the rest of the parts he cleaned it up and reassembled it. Then he went inside and did some research on the replacement parts. He also looked at new Weber grills. They don't make the model we have anymore and the new grills don't have all the options we have on our grill that we love. They don't have the same enclosed storage area under the grill or the fold out tables. We have two options: one is to buy a new grill or replace the parts on the old one. He's going to look at the grill once again and determine if he can do something about the hole that has burned through the front of the grill before we make a decision. The cost to replace the casting with the hole would simply make it too expensive to fix but maybe he can come up with an alternative fix. Fortunately the grill still works so we don't have to be in a hurry.

Our grill

Parts from the grill

In the evening we attended the Killeen Kickers Patriotic Dance. Their regular caller Dan Clairmont took the evening off because his grandchildren were visiting. The club invited Dale Smith to call the dance.  We had three squares of dancers. Christina Wiggins cued line dancing in between the tips. The club served refreshments. Dale did a super job of calling. A lot of the dancers were dressed in Patriotic colors. We had an outstanding time dancing with friends and to Dale. Christina did a great job of cuing. 

As we were entering the dance Clara gave us an article from the Killeen Daily Herald that had our picture from yesterdays parade in Temple. We were really surprised. Our picture was on the Temple papers web page but it was not in the Temple paper so to find it in the Killeen paper was unexpected. It was so nice of Clara to save it for us.

Friends having a great time at the dance

Lynn having a great time with friends

Pam Smith having fun dancing while her husband did the calling

Our friend Louis having a great time dancing with friends

Dale Smith calling the dance

Dancing the man's part during a tip

Line dancing with friends

        

Thursday 7-4 Happy Fourth of July

Happy Fourth of July

Happy Fourth of July. I hope you had a great day.

Larry invited his sister out to celebrate the Fourth of July with us. Every year we go to Belton and watch the parade but this year we decided to go to Temple for the Historic District Parade.

Every year the Temple Historic District Neighborhood coordinates a 4th of July parade. The parade travels about half a mile from 9th and French to Nugent.  Anyone who wants to participate can, all you have to do is show up. We decided to walk in the parade. Louise, Larry and I dressed up in red white and blue. People from all around Temple showed up to walk in the parade. Some of the walkers brought their dogs. Louise brought her dog Alice. People were sitting in front of their homes watching the parade. There were no floats but Temple Police and Fire Station did participate. At the end of the parade they were giving out snow cones, sweet tea, water and cookies. The neighborhood is full of gorgeous old houses. We had a super time walking in the parade. A number of folks took our pictures, one of them was Nan Dickson from the Temple Newspaper. Later today Louise discovered we were featured on the Temple Daily News website....

Link Temple Newspaper 4th of July

Our outfits

Louise and Alice

Uncle Sam wishing people a Happy Fourth of July

Louise and I walking in the parade

Having fun participating in the parade

Families walking in the parade

More families

The Temple Fire Department ladder truck

Getting refreshments after the parade walk

One of the gorgeous homes in the neighborhood

We got home in time to watch the Belton parade on the television. Belton has been doing their parade for 100 years and have 200 entries. People come from all over the local areas; Killeen, Harker Heights, Fort Hood, Morgans Port Resort and Belton to participate in the parade. You have to sign up because they limit the entries to 200. If you're not in the the parade you can watch the parade from the street. I think the parade route is about 1.5 miles long through Belton downtown. 

It was a perfect day for a parade, cloud cover helped keep the temperature down and there was a nice breeze.

Louise stayed for lunch. I barbecued hamburgers and we had baked beans to go with them. For dessert Louise and I had Edwards Chocolate Creme pies and Larry had an Edwards Apple pie. I fed Alice some ham for her lunch. After lunch we visited a little longer with Louise. We had a wonderful Fourth of July celebration with Louise.  

Wednesday 7-3 Doing This & That

Check List

Today was a very beautiful day. We really didn't have anything on the agenda so we decided to do this and that.

Because of all the rain we have had the car was filthy so we started off by going to Mister Car Wash to give the car a bath. Then we stopped at a donut store that we had not been to before in Temple, their donuts were not the best. Yesterday we shopped at the HEB in Temple on 31st street, today we went to the one on Adams, it is really old, very small and the parking is challenging, definitely not our favorite HEB but we only wanted a couple of things.

Going to the car wash

Grocery Shopping

When we got home I mowed the front and back yard. While I was doing this Larry cleaned the grill. When he was doing this he noticed that the back porch needed cleaning so he got out the power washer and cleaned the porch, the chairs and the railing.

Mowing the yards

 After lunch I did my weekly housecleaning and laundry while Larry read.

Weekly Chores

In the evening we watched the second X-Files: I Want To Believe. It was very good. Then we started watching the second season of Cadfael. Afterwards I watched a few episodes of Murdock Mysteries. We had a busy day but fun.      

Tuesday 7-2 Visiting the Dentist

Visiting the dentist

We started the day out by going to town because Larry had a dentist appointment. Larry has been working on getting an implant for almost two years. The first one had to be removed due to a crack in his jaw bone, the second one didn't integrate correctly and screwed out. The one in there now is the third one, the dentist used a different type of bone graft and a different implant, he is very confident it will work. This implant has been installed for three months and today the dentist installed a cap, he had to numb Larry up because he had to cut the gum to screw the cap on the implant. Three more weeks and they will take an impression for the crown. The two failures were discovered when he went in for them to take impressions for the crown, hopefully this time there will not be a problem.

Afterwards we decided to do our weekly grocery shopping. The dentist was located in Temple so we stopped by the Temple HEB, this store is older and smaller than the Belton HEB, we like the Belton store much better. Dollar Tree is in the same parking lot so we picked up bleach for the septic system along with some rice rolls and cookies that we like.

Weekly grocery shopping

On the way home we swung by the storage center to take the Minnie for it's monthly ride. We drove it a little farther today trying to ensure the battery got a bit more charge.

Last week while Larry was flossing a crown popped off. He called our regular dentist and the quickest they could fit him in was this afternoon. Fortunately they didn't have to numb him, the dentist cleaned the crown and glued it back on. 

In the evening we watched one of the dvds Larry converted, it was the X-Files. It was a very good movie. Then we watched an episode of Cadfael and I watched a few episodes of Murdock Mysteries. We had a great day.         

Monday 7-1 Beginning of Another Month

Happy July

Today was the beginning of a new month so Larry did some of his monthly projects. He started out by putting bleach in the septic system. Then he fertilized the far back of the backyard. Next he sprayed the exterior of the house for bugs using his backpack sprayer. He sprayed under the eaves and the porches and around the foundation. While Larry did these projects I did some Sudoku puzzles.

Treating for Bugs

In the evening we drove to Sun City to dance with the Sundancers and friends. Brad had just returned from the National Square Dancing Convention in Georgia. He lost his voice while there and it had not come back completely, he still did a great job of teaching and calling the dance. Tonight was the first Monday of the month so the schedule was a little different. The class was one hour, Mainstream dancing was 6:00 to 7:30 and Plus dancing was 7:30 to 9:00. For the class we had three squares. Brad reviewed the moves that we were taught so far. He introduced us to one move called All 8 Spin the Top. During the dance we had four squares. We had enough people of an A tip but while we were dancing the last Plus tip two of the coupled had left. So Brad did a two couple tip of A. It was a lot of fun. We had a super time dancing.

Having fun

When we got home I watched an episode of Cadfael and a couple of episodes of Murdock Mysteries. We had a great day.     

Sunday 6-30 John Wayne Movies

Beautiful Day

A front came through late last night with heavy rain and when we woke up this morning it was sprinkling. By the afternoon the sun came out, it only got to 88. It's amazing, we have not hit 100 degrees yet this year. We had a beautiful day.

We started the day by working on this months last item for the Home Depot Seeds Program, a Armacost Slim Linkable LED Linear Light. We installed it in the garage by the utility closest for the air conditioner and water heater, the motorcycle is also parked there. The light came with hardware for hanging it, you could either hang it on cables from the ceiling or install brackets directly to the ceiling. Larry decided to use the brackets. He got his stud finder and located a stud for one of the brackets but he had to use an anchor for the second bracket. Once the brackets were installed he snapped in the light fixture. He installed this right next to another light so that he could use the same power source. He removed the other light to get to the wiring. Then he wired both lights together and reinstalled the light. The new light puts out a lot of light. Now Larry has a lot more light in the garage to work on projects and to see into the utility closet. I helped Larry when he needed me.

The hardware that came with the Slim Light

Installing one of the brackets

Putting the old light back into place

The finished project

After this was finished I did some Sudoku and played The Solitaire World Tour Event. There were 30 different Solitaire games to complete. Larry read the paper while watching the weekly GizWiz show.

In the evening we relaxed in front of the television and watched a couple of old John Wayne movies Larry converted from our dvds, True Grit and Rooster Cogburn. We still enjoyed them after all these years True Grit was made in 1969 and Rooster Cogburn 1975. We had a great day.  

Relaxing in front of the television