Sold couches and loveseats

I sold my couch and loveseat to make way for Tammy's couch and loveseat as Tammy didn't like my furniture.   My furniture was originally dad's furniture.

As you can see below my furniture was leather or fake leather - I'm not sure which.  It was in very good condition.  I put an ad on craigslist and sold it within a couple of days when a lady came and bought it for her son and his kids to have as she said the kids are very hard on the microfiber furniture currently in their basement.

I thought it would take longer to sell the furniture here as craigslist has lots of used furniture for sale here in the Flathead.  However the furniture listed is either cloth, microfiber or contemporary overstuffed leather furniture. To me the furniture listed looked ugly.  And the prices being asked seemed high to me.

I sold my furniture last week but the lady didn't come get it until this morning.  I had to call and remind her a few times about getting the furniture as I needed room for my living room rearrangement.

The room without the furniture.  ...for now.

A few weeks earlier I had sold my couch and loveseat that I owned back when I lived in Minnesota.  I had left that furniture at my mother's house when I moved to Montana.  The couch had built-in recliners which my mother really liked so she used it until she died.  My brother and mother already had a couch, and my brother didn't care for my couch and loveseat, so I sold it, again via craigslist.  It sold quick even though that couch and loveseat is a cloth version I had bought in 1992 and is now long out of style.  The oil workers flooding to North Dakota need furniture so the demand is high and the listings on craiglist are low.  The guy who bought my furniture said he didn't have any furniture where he lived. His place was bare.

Tubes and TVs

When writing about my bicycle inner tubes last night I forgot to include a photo of them.  Tonight I thought I had better success repairing them but I found one tube went from a fast leak to a slow one.  The local shop I visited today didn't have my usual Rema patch kit.  Instead he had a glueless patch.  I haven't pulled the tube tonight to see if the slow leak is because this patch loosened up, or whether the slow leak is from elsewhere on the tire.  The tire fits so tight over the rim that I have to be very careful when putting the tire back on the rim so as not to puncture the tube again.

Yesterday I also went from having my new TV on the console TV to having my TV on a coffee table.  This is just an intermediate step as I have a wall mount on order to have the TV hung on the wall.  Tammy thinks the coffee table is ugly.

Flat tires

I got a flat tire on my bicycle today when I decided to ride a couple miles after getting the mail.  By the time I got home my bicycle tire was flat.

In the evening when I got around to patching the bicycle tube I successfully patched the hole but then found the valve stem was coming out of the tube.  That tube was no good.

I didn't have any more new tubes so I worked on four old tubes I had trouble patching over the past few years.  Back then I had different type of patches and different glue.  I thought with better patches and glue I would get the tires fixed this time.

I struck out.  Some tires I patched the hole only to find a second hole after I put the tube back into the tire.  A few patches didn't take for various reasons.

On.  Off.  On. Off.   What made it worse was the tire barely fit on the rim.  That means I had to really work with tire irons to get the tire off and on the rim

I only had four patches and glue for four patches.  I ran out.

Frustration.

On the to-do list tomorrow is to buy a new tube and another patch kit.  I have so much crap around here that either these tubes will be fixed now or they will get tossed.

New digital TV

Saturday I bought a digital TV.  I've been talking about buying one for years and finally did this year.

For those not in the know... my previous TV (which still works fine) was a Sylvania Superset console TV.  My mother bought it new back in 1983 and gave it to me after I moved to Montana.  I actually had two TVs as the console TV could not get the PBS station without a lot of snow.  So I also had a small 13" TV dad bought in the 1990s that clearly received the PBS station.  Neither of the old TVs could get all of the channels on one TV. Half of the six channels available over the air wouldn't show up clearly on the small TV.  Go figure!

So my solution was two TVs.  Not that it mattered as I don't watch much TV.  When Tammy got here it was confusing to her as to which TV had which channels.  The remotes were a bit confusing too as the small TV had a remote and the signal to the large TV was run through a digital converter and that had a remote.  (Because some of the channels are re-transmitted on translators those signals were analog and not digital and therefore the small TV not using a digital convertor could receive them.  Confusing?  Really?!)

But I finally broke down and bought a new TV.  And I went big.  I bought a 55" Samsung.  Model  UN55D6000.

Right now I have my new TV sitting on top of my console TV.  The new TV replaced the 19" TV of Tammy's that replaced the 13" TV of dad's.

Note: that is the flash of my camera that made the star burst on the screen.

The TV was easy to set up.  I also found more over-the-air channels when I scanned for channels.  Between my two old TVs I got six channels.  This new TV found 14 channels.  Four channels were duplicate channels as the TV pulled in channels from Missoula that were identical to Kalispell's channels.  So I am up to ten unique channels.   None of the channels are HGTV or TLC channels so Tammy still isn't satisfied.

The long term plan is to buy a wall mount and attach my new TV to the wall.  Also in the plan is to get a home theater system.  I had my eye on a Yamaha YHT-495BL system at either Best Buy or Vann's Electronics for $299.99.  But they are sold out in Kalispell and one can't order them online right now at either store.  They cost $100 more at Amazon.com.  The sound from my new TV is decent so there is no rush to get a home theater right now.

The next step is to work on getting cable or dish for more channels.  It was very windy here tonight and that affected many of the digital channels as they would freeze up off-and-on.

Cactus flower 2010

My indoor cactus plant is still alive.  Since it is the end of November, the cactus is flowering.

For photos of the cactus plant in prior years, click here: http://tallpinesranch.blogspot.com/search/label/Cactus

Tamping down drain field dirt

The past few days have been warmer than usual.  The snow has all melted except for a few areas where it is cooler than average and always shady.  

The ground is no longer frozen.  I took advantage of this and tamped down the dirt heaped over the septic tanks and the drain field where I had dug it up.  No sense in tripping over a frozen mound of dirt under the snow this Winter.

I used a "tamper" tool I had bought at an auction west of Whitefish, MT a number of years ago.  I haven't had much of a chance to use the tamper till now but it came in real hand for this project.


Before and after:

Look better now, doesn't it? Keep in mind I had to use a little muscle power to flatten the dirt.

First thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving!

Tammy and I had our first Thanksgiving together here in Montana.  She made a delicious meal and I am full after eating it.

We got a frozen 11.61 lb turkey Wednesday.  Tammy was concerned about the turkey thawing in time so she soaked it a while last night in warm water in the kitchen sink.

I already carved half the turkey before I thought of taking a photo.  The gravy is homemade by Tammy.

Green bean casserole.

My full plate.  I don't mind if my food mixes together before I eat it.

Then for desert Tammy made Pumpkin Pie cheesecake.  It was one of her Homemade Gourmet products from when she used to sell Homemade Gourmet food.

Vaughn trivia

A local radio station I sometime listen to has a morning trivia contest on week days. Often I know the correct answer, and even have won a couple times.  Often the prize is coffee from Montana Coffee Traders.  I'm not a coffee drinker so I don't call in with my answer.

Robert Vaughn's birthday is today.  He is 79 years old.  This morning the trivia question was:

Name the character Robert Vaughn played in this 1960s popular TV show.

I am not sure if the question was how I worded it or whether they mentioned the show was was The Man From Uncle.  It didn't matter as I knew the answer based on how I wrote above the trivia question.

I called and the phone rang and rang and I thought the radio station was on another line with someone who answered the question correctly.  When they answered the phone I asked if they had a winner yet.  They did not.

My answer of Napoleon Solo was correct and I won a free breakfast at the Montana Club restaurant.   If they asked I would have known the other character's name in the show was Illya Kuryakin.

I have vague memories of the TV show as I was in elementary school when it was on TV (1964-1968).  I do remember that a neighbor girl with whom I car pooled to school, and who was two years older than me, had a big crush on the Illya Kuryakin character.

Tool shed wood room

For the first time since dad died I cleaned out the tool shed's wood room. And who knows when dad last cleaned the room out?!  Dad had pieces of wood stored in this room: smaller and larger pieces of tree branches.  And some split wood.

Over the years I have added some wood and used some.  The past year I have made an effort to use more than I add.  I wanted to get to the bottom of the pile and see what all was in there.

I didn't use all the wood, but enough that I could clean the rest of it out and stack it in a small pile according to size.  I found a dozen logs that needed to be split.  Needless to say the logs were very dry and the splitting was only needed to get them into smaller sizes to fit and burn nicely in the wood stove.

Once the wood was out of the room I shoveled out the sawdust and wood chips covering the floor. I filled a large garbage can and a medium sized tote container.  Over the years ants and/or other insects had bored into the wood making the wood holey and leaving sawdust.  One year I could even hear them gnawing on the wood.  The sound was a high squeaking noise similar to when a person slowly tightens a screw into hard dry wood.

Here is the room after I cleaned it.  Apparently the small opening at the far end use to be opened for ventilation.  Someone told me that the tool shed used to be a chicken coop many years ago.  If so, I wonder what was stored in this room?

Once the room was cleaned I discovered the room's outside walls were only supported on a few small pieces of old crumbling concrete.  Before I shoveled out the sawdust etc. this was covered.  Now I had to seal the walls to keep the snow and rodents out.  Fortunately I had odds and ends of scrap metal from which I could chose to cover the openings.

Now my room is sealed and tight.  Well, kind of.  The room is still lacking a door.  A project for another year.

Now that the room is cleaned and sealed I need to put the pile of wood back into it.  And then add similar sized wood currently piled in the pole shed as I need to find another place for the wood stored in one bay of the pole shed in order to park Tammy's van in there.

Always something to do.

Snowy weekend

A snowy and cold weekend.  I kept tossing logs in the wood stove.

A cleaner tool shed

I've taken crap from Tammy and my uncles and aunts about my 'treasure pile' in the middle part of my tool shed.  Last month, before Tammy moved here, I went through most of my treasure pile and cleaned and sorted it.  Part of my motive for cleaning was that I was looking for something in case I hadn't gotten rid of a year or so ago during my last mini-cleanup.  I must of gotten rid of it as I never found it.

It looks a lot cleaner now.  Perhaps next year I will find time to go through the rest of the stuff along the back wall.  Tammy wasn't impressed by my cleaning work.

Snow filling

I woke up to an inch or so of snow on the ground this morning.  The temperature did warm up a little above freezing.  It wasn't warm enough to melt much of the snow, but I was able to fill the dirt back over the septic tanks.  It was warm enough that the dirt wasn't frozen.    The sod, however, was almost frozen.

This photo was taken after I attempted to mash the dirt down. 

The weather forecast is for our high temperatures to remain below freezing until next week.  It was almost 'now or never' to get the dirt back over the septic tanks.

2011 pocket gopher count

The other day I removed my pocket gopher traps from my hayfield and pasture.  I had covered all of the hayfield and pastures, and Winter is coming.  Theoretically this would mean I have gotten rid of all the pocket gophers. Based on past history I seriously doubt this has happened.

I trapped 126 pocket gophers this year.  My lifetime total is 1598 pocket gophers killed.  I so wanted to get two more gophers this year.  If the ground wasn't usually more frozen than thawed, the temperature colder than normal, and snow in the forecast, I would have trapped some gophers on Wyatt's land just across the fence.  He looks to have some fresh pocket gopher dirt mounds.

There is always next year.

Almost jury duty

I have been in a jury pool since September 1.  They call it the "Fall" term but this jury pool lasts until February 29.  Fall and Winter?  I thought that was a long time until the Flathead Clerk of Court said Monday that Montana law sets jury pools at 1 year: September 1st through August 31st.  Really?!!   The Clerk said Flathead doesn't follow that law and only goes for six months.  When I was in a jury pool years ago in Minnesota the term was two months.

Well... Monday I had to report for jury selection.

The clerk of court was selecting jury members for two court cases, an estimated three day trial and an estimated seven day trial.  I was in the selection for the seven day trial.  Oh joy.

I am not sure the defense attorney were the ones listed on the court calender.  The defense team consisted of two people and one of them was a young woman.  She was the defense lawyer who questioned the potential jury members.

I didn't count, but it appears that fifty people were in each trial's selection pool.  The clerk had us all together in court room #3 for orientation and we barely fit.  Some people has to sit in the jury box as there were no more benches to sit on.   She went over the basics of jury pools and the selection process.  That is when I learned we were lucky to only be in the jury pool for six months.

If a person serves on a jury they they are done for this term.  After being called twice and not selected, then they are done for this term.

We are paid mileage at 55 cents mile each day.  When called for jury selection we earn a whole $12 - a day.  If we serve on a jury our pay increases to $25 a day.  Woo hoo.    That's not even minimum wage.  Jurors should be paid at least minimum wage for doing more than minimum wage work.

Once the overview finished the three-day jurors were moved to their court chamber and we began our selection for the seven-day trial.

We were to report that day before the 9:15 am jury pool orientation.  Jury selection was to begin at 9:30 am.  With so many people having to sign in we didn't start orientation until 9:25 am.   The selection process did not begin until close to 10 am.

The judge and lawyers entered the court room and Judge Lympus introduced the lawyers and court personnel and spoke generally about the process.  He promised the trial would not last more than seven days since if the trial went to eight days it would be the day before Thanksgiving and people do their traveling then.

Once a court official called everyone's name to make sure they were there, 20 people were called to sit in front of the courtroom for questioning.  People were selected at random to be in the jury pool and this same random order was used to call the 20 people up to the front of the room to sit in the jury box (14 seats) and temporary chairs (6) in front of the jury box.

I was in the first 20 names called to the front for questioning.   Oh, joy.

The questioning process, which lawyers refer to by the French term, voir dire, is to select a fair and impartial jury.  Judge Lympus did not conduct this process, instead letting a plaintiff and a defendant lawyer do all the questioning.

Traditionally, lawyers did almost all of the voir dire questioning. However, many judges have come to believe that lawyers take up too much time and try to persuade jurors of the merits of their cases rather than simply select a group of impartial jurors. As a result, today many judges conduct most or all of the voir dire questioning.

Judge Lympus's lack of involvement in the questioning process resulted in a long jury selection process.  The Clerk of Court told us during orientation that she expected the jury to be chosen by noon to 1 pm.  Our process drug on until to almost 5 pm.  The judge appeared to let the two lawyers to somewhat "try" their case in order to get the jury pool's feelings on broad arguments they planned to make.  I guess the better to get rid of jurors who they felt were unsympathetic to their case.  Everyone's time was wasted by Lympus's lack of involvement and control.

The plaintiff lawyer, Henning, asked questions of the jurors from after 10 am until 3 pm or later, minus an hour and a half for lunch.  An hour and a half?  An hour was plenty.  Let's get the process over so the jury can be seated and everyone else released so they could go back to work or home.


Here is an article on what the lawsuit is about:
http://www.flatheadbeacon.com/articles/article/family_of_boy_who_drowned_in_septic_tank_suing_developers_evergreen_sewer/15537/

   The part of the lawsuit I was in the jury pool for was:

Last year, Henning filed a separate suit in Flathead District Court against Mohl Concrete Products, Inc., which sold the septic tank, and against Washington-based W.M. Matzke Co., which built and distributed the septic cover without the “kid catcher” safety device.

The plaintiff lawyer asked questions like:

1. This tragedy was covered extensively in the news.  What have you heard about it?
2. This trial is about product liability.  What do you know about product liability cases? 
3. If a mom and pop shop sold an item sealed in a package that was defective, the law says they can be held responsible for it being defective in addition to the manufacturer of the product.  Would you have a problem following the law to hold the mom and pop shop responsible for damages?
4. Has anyone lost a person close to them?
5. Who has heard about tort reform?  What are your feelings about tort reform?
6. The burden of proof for the plaintiffs is that their argument is more likely than not.  That could mean you could feel 50.1% one way to 49.9% the other way.  Are you comfortable with that, or would you feel you needed a higher burden of proof?
7. Would you have a problem awarding a large sum for damages?
8. The law says the jurors must only consider cause and harm when awarding damages.  Would you have a problem following the law when deciding damages, and you would not take in account of things like whether the party is deserving, etc.?
9. We had a three year old boy who died and we will never know how his life will have turned out. We will have an expert testifying to the loss income of the three year old.  Do you have a problem awarding damages for lost income?
10. And on and on and on...

He asked everyone some kind of question in order to get a feel on how they would decide the case.

For how much people knew about the case, most people were general and said they had read about it or seen TV news coverage.  A few people mentioned a few details.  I mentioned even more details.

For product liability cases I brought up the McDonalds/Hot coffee trial.  He said that was negligence and not product liability.  My impression was he didn't want to discuss it.  Later, in regards liability vs negligence I brought up stupid stickers warning against commonsense behavior.  The example I used was a sticker saying not to use a blow dryer while taking a bath.  He didn't want to talk much about these scenarios and changed the subject.

For the tort reform question I explained a little about tort reform. He flattered me and praised my description as very good.  Like I said, flattery.   After lunch he asked a few follow up questions of a few people.  To me he asked me to explain more about tort reform and how I felt about it.  I gave a long winded answer listing pros and cons and when pressed I said I could see good ideas on both sides of the issue.

A number of people had no strong opinions on matters.  But when it came to the question about losing someone in their life some people talked about their family losing a member or relative before the person answering the question was even born and therefore it didn't really affect them.  They didn't get that the lawyers were only interested in situations where the loss was so close as to have had an effect on the person.  The lawyers were trying to figure out the emotional versus the analytical people.

From the plaintiff lawyer's questions he seemed to be asking for damages for:

1. the boy's funeral expenses
2. the boy's lost income
3. the parent's loss

He focused on whether anyone had a problem awarding damages based on the boy's funeral expenses.  No one did.  A couple of people had reservations with awarding damages on lost income for a three year old as they said no one can predict how his life would turn out.

I told him I had no problem with an expert testifying about lost income, but I had a problem with giving a deceased dependent a settlement for damages.  I had no problem awarding damages to an estate of a person who was not a dependent, especially if the deceased was a spouse or had children or others dependent on them.  I suppose that since an "estate" is an abstract legal concept even a three year old could have an estate.  By damages to me mean compensation and how do you compensate a dead three year old?  Awarding damages to a dead three year old seems to be punitive as they cannot benefit from the amount awarded to "them".

I opened up a can of worms and a few people began to open up they had a problem awarding damages on the future income of a three year old.

Challenges for cause:  Here the lawyer claims on the basis of information provided by the panel member that he or she might not be able to render an impartial verdict. An example of a challenge for cause might be one in which a lawyer asks to excuse a panel member from serving during an auto theft trial since the juror’s car had been stolen just the week before. The judge will grant challenges for cause if he or she agrees with the lawyer’s argument that impartiality might be threatened. There is no limit to the number of challenges for cause, which either party can make.

The lawyer pressed people on whether they could set aside their conviction on an issue and follow the law as stated by the lawyer.  A few people said they weren't sure they could set aside their conviction on the matter and the lawyer asked the judge to excuse that person for "cause".  A few times the female defense lawyer objected and had an opportunity to question the potential juror some more.  Usually she impressed on the person that the law was such and such and then asked if they couldn't set aside their personal convictions and follow the law.  People think of themselves as law abiding individuals and most said they would follow the law even if they didn't agree with it.  The judge sometimes granted the request to excuse the juror and other times overruled it depending on how reluctant the juror said they could follow the law.

In my case of awarding damages to an estate of a three year old, when pressed by the plaintiff lawyer I said I would follow the law but I would struggle with it.  He said I should think about it more and he would get back to me.  Once the defense attorney stepped up with objections to jurors being dismissed the plaintiff lawyer toned down his efforts to get rid of people who he felt was unsympathetic to his case.   He never got back to me for my final answer.

Whenever a potential juror was excused the court called from the jury pool the next person on the list.   As they had not been part of the prior questioning the lawyer would go over an abbreviated list of his questions with them to get a "feel" for how they could rule.

Around 3 pm the plaintiff lawyer finally finished and the defense attorney had a chance to question the jurors.  Even though she had heard everyone speak and mostly likely had a decent idea on how they felt about things, she still asked everyone a question or two.  Sometimes it was a hypothetical question as to who they would select as their charity if someone wanted to donate money in their name.  Other times it was further questions about losing a loved one.  For people who answered on their jury questionnaires that they had served on a jury before she wanted to know more about that experience and how it went.

She also used this questioning as an opportunity to make her case.  For example one question was about this hypothetical situation:

Suppose a person had some strong chemicals in a closet that has a door that locked.  Supposed the door's lock was broken and a child got into the room and into the chemicals and something bad happened.  Do feel the business that sold the door should be held responsible for what happened? 

When the person answered no, she then asked that if the person knew that some doors were sold with an additional deadbolt lock, would the person hold the business responsible for the accident for selling a door without a deadbolt?

Yup, this appears to be the case in a nutshell.

She asked several other hypothetical questions on situations very similar to this case and asked how the potential juror felt about it.

Yup.  The jury selection process can be improved in Montana.  The judge should be the main driver of the questioning.

Finally around 4:20 pm the lawyers quit the questioning and entered the next phase of jury selection:

Peremptory challenges:  Each side has a limited number of challenges for which no reason need be given. These peremptory challenges give both sides some choice in the make-up of the jury. 

Each lawyer got to strike four people from the jury pool with no reasons given.  Of course this phase can open up trials to being overturned based on the appearance of racial or sexual profiling, or other issues.

At the end of the selection process, those in the panel who have been "challenged" will be excused, and those remaining will be sworn in as jurors.

When the names of the selected jurors were read, my name, along with a few other people with strong opinions, were absent.  The man who earlier was almost excused from the jury until the defense attorney got him to say he would follow the law as written, was also excused.  A woman who had strong emotional stories about losing people in her life and also volunteered to rescue animals was not chosen.

The eight of us not chosen could leave.   The jury selection them moved to the phase where the court selected two alternate jurors. I do not know how that works as I had left the courtroom when the court called some people up for more questioning from the jury pool.

Stuck nail

In the corral I had an old unused wooden gate that I plan to take apart some day as it is too old and broken to bother to fix.  Today I noticed a few nails sticking out the gate and from a few fence posts.  I decided to remove the nails before an animal rubbed against them and got cut.

The wood is old and dry and that made removing the nails difficult.  One nail in a post was extremely hard to remove.  I took a pair of vice grip pliers and was able to turn the nail so I knew it wasn't "welded" to the wood.

I even used a crowbar and hammer and had trouble pulling the nail out.  Finally after much work and leverage I got the nail out.   Oh... the nails had 'ridges' and that was what made it difficult to remove.

November Mountain Snow

A few photos from Sunday when the clouds lifted.  Fresh snow!

2011 Kalispell Women's Expo

Saturday Tammy and I attended, as a Tastefully Simple vendor, the 3rd annual Women's Expo at the fairgrounds in Kalispell.   This is a big event put on by the local Biz-to-Biz network  (http://www.biztobizinc.com/Womens_Expo.php).  I think there were about 75 vendors there.

It is a bit expensive to have a spot there: $275 for the cheap spots.  But Biz-to-Biz claimed a thousand people attended the first year and 1,600 the second year.  So for Tammy, who is new to the Valley, it was a good way to get the word out that she and Tastefully Simple is here.

Since Tammy moved here several weeks ago we learned that several women had sold the Tastefully Simple product in the Kalispell area in the past, but they stopped last year and earlier this year for various reasons, among which was that they moved away.  So some women attending the Expo knew of Tastefully Simple and were very happy to have a consultant in Kalispell from who they could buy their favorite Tastefully Simple product. The Beer Bread mix is especially popular.

Many other women had never heard of Tastefully Simple and Tammy had to do some explaining of the product and how it was sold.

The expo ran from 10 am to 4 pm.  People traffic was fairly steady all day.  A few times it was slower, such as when the Expo put on a fashion show at 11:30 am and 1:30 pm.  I am not sure how many people attended as I am not an expert people counter, but I wonder if it was a thousand people.  Still it was a good turnout, especially since the Expo was competing with a large arts and craft show this weekend at the Majestic Arena.

The weather cooperated.  While it was an overcast chilly day, the day was better than what the weather forecasters had predicted: which was snow.  We didn't have any snow.

Vendors were allowed to set up Friday afternoon and night.  Which was essential as it takes time to set up one's table with product and signs.  We set up Tammy's table Friday night once it got too dark for me to fill the septic drain field's trench back in with dirt.

The Expo provided a free lunch of tacos, chips, cookies and candy for the vendors from 11 am to 2 pm.  I went to eat at 12:30 and they had just run out of meat for tacos with no plans/means to get more meat.  A few vendors were frustrated by this.    So my lunch was chips, lettuce, shredded cheese, tomatoes and olives.  I guess you can call it a salad.  Oh, and lots of the cookies and candy. 

Once I finished eating Tammy went to eat before the rest of the food was gone.  When she came back she told me they had gotten gumbo to eat.  So I went back and even though you were limited to one meal they allowed me to have a plate of gumbo since I didn't have any meat earlier.

In the spots next to us was a Pure Romance vendor (www.joellenwilliams.pureromance.com) and a vendor (Mike Powers) selling Farm Bureau Financial Services (www.mwfbi.com).  Mike also helped organize the fashion show.  In the morning before the fashion show he seemed to be away from his booth more than there.  Most vendors give away a door prize in order to get people's names and phone numbers or email ids.  Most door prizes are related to the product being sold.  Mike's door prize was a free one hour massage.  He got lots of door prize slips from people.  Imagine that!

The next vendor location was for Northern Lights Chiropractic (www.northernlightschiropractic.com).  Rhonda was giving free neck tests using a scanner and laptop.  In the afternoon Tammy had her neck checked.  The scan picked up that her right side of her neck had issues.  This is the side where Tammy had fractured her shoulder this past February.

Tammy sold about half of her product.  She sold out of her Beer Bread mix. 

The view from Tammy's location.

Tammy's Tastefully Simple website: www.tastefullysimple.com/web/tshank
If you see something you would like, you can order it from her website and it will be shipped directly to you.

Septic drain field failure

My earlier septic tank cleaning did not work.  Thursday morning water seeped out of the tanks' lids as after last week's work I had not shoveled the dirt back over the tanks in order to wait and see if the drainage problem returned.

*sigh*   It looks to be a problem with the drain field. Not good.

Once the ground thawed in the early afternoon I got a shovel and set out to dig and find the drain field pipe.  I am quite proud of myself that I found it quite quickly.  The PVC pipe was inches away from the hole I originally dug.  It was a pretty good calcuated guess as to where the pipe was over 20' away from the septic tank.  The pipe doesn't go straight out of the tank as it had to turn to miss the patio.

Once I found the pipe I started digging to see if I could find an area with a mass of tree roots around the pipe  - the likely cause of the problem as two large box elder trees are relatively close.  I didn't find any.

I was surprised to find a number of small pieces of long dead tree roots in the ground above the pipe.  It appears that when the pipe was laid in the 1980s dirt and roots all were pushed back into the trench to cover the pipe.

I also ended up digging up some of the alfalfa plants growing above the pipe.  The alfalfa has very long roots.  The roots went down deeper than the pipe.  Several alfalfa plants I was able to dig around without slicing through the roots.  I will be interested if the alfalfa continues to live as large sections of the roots were exposed during the day.

I kept following the pipe to the west.  I did this partly in hopes the end would have a cap at which I could enter the pipe from a direction other than from the septic tank.  Also I was curious at how far the drain field went to the west.  I half expected the drain field to be small considering the soil is porous and dad could have skimped on the size when he had it fixed/redone in the 1980s.

I found the west end of the line was a "T" connector with pipe going to the north and south. I found connections for side pipes all along the east/west pipe.  I eventually found 8 side pipes.  I have no idea how long these side pipes were.  All total I estimate the drain field size to be 220' feet of pipe if the side pipes were the same length as the one side pipe I dug out.

The "T" connector did not have a cap or access in order to run a snake from that side.

It was dark by the time I dug out the east/west pipe.  I had dug out 45-50 feet of pipe.

Friday - once the ground thawed late morning - I dug 20' away from the main line at where I guess the side pipe would end.  I was right once again.

I took the cap off and found a small amount of very dry stuff along the bottom of the pipe.    I ran a small snake into the pipe and found it to be blocked fifteen to sixteen feet away.  In other words the first four to five feet of the pipe from the main line was blocked.  I had to dig out the entire length of the side pipe.

Once that was done. I removed the two 10' sections of pipe.  The four feet or so of one pipe was clogged with fine tree roots that had entered in a number of the small holes running along the bottom of the pipe.  The fine tree roots acted like hair clogging a drain.

Small holes on bottom of the pipe

Once I cleared the roots out of the pipe I turned my attention to the main pipe.  The "T" connector was mostly clear of roots.  I had thought the blockage was to the right .  The problem was how to remove the pipes from the middle and not from the ends.

I found the pipe had enough give for me to lift it high enough so that the end came out of the "T" connector.

I found the right pipe had some roots in it covering the bottom half.  I cleared them from the pipe.

I found the left pipe was where the clog was located.  A foot from the connector was the clog. The pipe was completely blocked for a distance of about four to five feet.  It took a lot of effort to remove the tree roots.  Some roots had grown large enough to fill the hole they entered the pipe.

I ran a snake into the rest of the pipe I could reach (most of the east/week pipe and one side pipe) and didn't find any more tree roots.  I was sure the roots I had removed were the problem and I didn't want to dig up any more pipe.

Confident I had fixed the problem I began to shovel the dirt back into the trench to cover the pipe.  I got the side trench filled and a little of the main trench filled before dark.

I had read up on drain fields and it seems as if laying the pipes on a bed of gravel was the way to do it.  There were lots of rocks under the pipe but dirt had filtered in over the years.  If Winter wasn't approaching with a weather forecast of snow on Saturday I wanted to finish this project.  Besides I had other stuff to get done before Winter is here for good.   I estimate the length of the drain field pipe from the septic tank until the blockage at a little over 20 feet.  Apparently this length was acceptable for just me.  Two people used enough water to be a little too much water.  So the 220 ft available now should be plenty of length for drainage even if the gravel bottom is not as robust as I would like it to be.  If it isn't good enough, the pipe will be easier to dig out next Spring.

Off off-year election

Tuesday I worked part of the day on the election.  Kalispell, Columbia Falls, Bigfork and Whitefish held elections. All but Columbia Falls held mail-in elections.

The County administered the elections.  A couple dozen of us had the job to open the mail-in ballots.  This was the first time I did this type of election job.

A team of three to four people were at each table.  One person opened the mail-in return envelope with the voter's signature.  He/she handed this envelope to the second person who took the secrecy envelope out of the mail-in envelope and handed the secrecy envelope to the third person who opened that envelope and took out the folded ballot and handed the ballot to the fourth person who unfolded the ballot and placed it on a stack of ballots.

This sounds simple minded but part of the purpose was to separate the envelope with the voter's signature from the ballot to ensure confidentiality.

Prior to us getting the envelope, the election department had verified the voter's signature to ensure the returned ballot's validity.

My job was to open the mail-in envelope.  And I filled out the paperwork for each bundle of 25 as I was the first to complete my task.  Sometimes I helped unfold the ballots to get them flat and more easily read by the computer.

We worked on bundles of 25 ballots at a time.  Once 25 ballots were opened and stacked, we counted the mail-in signature envelopes and the secrecy envelopes to make sure we had 25.  Another election official gathered our 25 ballots and envelopes.  She counted the ballots to make sure she had the correct amount before the ballots were fed by another person into the voting machine to be counted.  That is why it was important for the person unfolding the ballot to do it in such a way as have the ballot lie flat for easy feeding into the voting machine.

There were exceptions to 25 in a bundle.  Sometimes the returned envelope was invalid for some reason.   I didn't work that part so I don't know the reasons an envelope and its ballot could be rejected.  But a few of our bundles only had 24 envelopes in them.

I was one of the younger people working the election.  I think the average age was in the mid-60s, if not higher.

I worked in a table of four with three other women, Tammy, Fran and Bobbie.  One woman said she was 41.  Another woman said she had a 60 year old son.  The third woman looked to be in her 70s at least.  None of us had worked before at opening ballots.  The 41 year old and I had worked as chief judges in the past.  The other two ladies had worked many previous elections.

We all got along well and chatted the time away which made a boring job go faster.  The ladies all had led interesting lives.

The election department had lunch catered for us as we were sequestered once the opening of ballots started.

I believe that countywide over 10,000 ballots were mailed out and a little over 3,000 ballots were returned.

Whitefish had a contentious election with a clear divide between conservative and liberal candidates.  Around 53% of the Whitefish ballots had been returned vs. a countywide return rate of over 30%.

Voters had until 8 pm to return their ballot, but after the mail was delivered the only way a voter could return their ballot was to hand deliver it to the courthouse election department.    As a result most of us workers ran out of envelopes to open after 3 pm.    My table ended our work at 3:30 pm.  We had started at 10 am.

Everything ran smoothly and I was impressed at how the County election department ran the process.

Auction and dining room set

Monday afternoon Tammy and I went to an auction.  It was an estate and liquidation auction.  They had lots of stuff so the auction started at 2:30 pm rather than the usual 5:30 pm.

A quick look around and they didn't have anything of much interest to me.  No fencing stuff, gates, or stuff useful on a ranch.

But then Tammy noticed a wood dining room table with six chairs.  It was "farm style" of furniture.  Wood.  White legs.  Clean lines and a warm bright blonde color to the wood.

Oohhh....  ...said Tammy.

It is so cute and so perfect for the dining room.   ...said Tammy.

What about the current dining room table?  The one filled mainly with our computers and equipment?   ...said I.

We'll move the table and computers into the south part of the living room.   ...said Tammy.

Oh.

It is so cute and so perfect for the dining room.

Oh.

How much is our upper limit that we would bid?  Neither of us were sure what a similar dining room set costs.

It was 3:20 pm and the auctioneer had at least an hour or more of stuff before they got to where the table and chairs were located.   We left the auction and visited a few stores and looked at their furniture to get an idea of the price and availability.  No one had anything close to this style of dining room set.

We stopped by the library and searched online at Amazon.  We saw a similar dining room set (though with a larger center supporting leg instead of four legs) for $474.  Also the other dining room tables similar to this one were square and not round.

We got back to the auction by 5 pm.  Did they sell the table and chairs when were gone?  No.  They were at least a half hour away from it.  When we got a bidding number the clerk told us the order in which the auctioneer would sell stuff in the main room, which was different than what we predicted.  She estimated they wouldn't get to the table until 6:30 to 7 pm.

Should we wait?  Or leave and come back?   We decided to wait, and to sit on we found some chairs with backs. 

We also re-looked stuff over and found a few other items of interest.

For my cousin Jen - the sailor girl - we found this painting:

For my aunt Cathy and uncle Curt who collect roosters we found this in among the collectible items being sold:

Tammy sent Curt a text message with a photo asking if we should buy it for them.  We got no reply back.  You don't want another rooster in the house Curt?

It takes two people to get a bidding war going.  Some of the other furniture being sold went cheap, and others went much higher than I expected.  What would our table sell for?

The auctioneer started the bidding on our table at $200.  His starting prices that night were almost higher than what the final bid was.  He quickly dropped to $100.  When he then dropped to $50 someone else bid.  I bid the next call of $75 rather than waiting in hope he would cut his asking price to $60.  I wasn't taking a chance of him selling the table without cutting the asking bid.  He then asked the original bidder for $100.   No bid.  He cut his asking bid to $85. Tammy and I waited and hoped no one else would bid.  He called and called for another bid before finally selling the table and chairs to us.  Success!

The auction house charges the buyers a 10% premium so the final price was $82.50.   Still a very good price to buy the table and chairs.

The auction also sold two pairs of Whirlpool front load washer and dryers.  More people were interested in them and they sold for $500 each (pictured) and $350 each (same washer/dryers but without the bottom drawer).  I see Sears has these washers and dryers on sale for $999 this week.   Tammy was happy with the table and chairs so I didn't get pressure to upgrade my washer and dryer.

This ATV sold for $4,700.  With the buyers premium it cost $5,170.  A grandma wanted the ATV badly and got it.  I talked with her later and she was excited to get it so she could go riding with her husband.

This mower sold for $3000.  Only one person bid.  Apparently the mower had been repossessed and $10,000 was owned on it. It was a little fuzzy as to whether the auctioneer had to accept the $3,000 bid or if the owner had a right to reject the bid later.  I believe $3,000 is cheap for this machine.

Tammy and I didn't wait much longer before paying for our table and chair and loading it in my pickup.   The painting and chicken were a long time off from being sold.  Sorry Jen, and Curt and Cathy.  The Dancing with the Stars TV show was on and we were missing it.

Even though I had some rope to secure the table and chairs I drove home slowly on a longer less traveled route and went around corners even slower.

Now to find a place to put it in my house as I have boxes, a hutch and two sets of couches and loveseats in the living room already, and a full sized table and chairs in the dining room.

Tammy is happy.

Note, the table does have a leaf to make it bigger.