In the past 3 weeks, we've had 3 power outages, all occurring at night or during the evening. So, today for a change, we had our outage during the day. And again, it was just our house. This is getting really old. Anyway, the repair crews found a "ground fault" in the underground line, dug up that spot, and repaired it.

But, given that the underground line is 30 years old, I'm starting a pool as to when the next outage will be........

Wednesday (07/28) was noteable for being the first Wednesday in 2 weeks for which we did not have a fairly long (6 hrs or so) power outage. So, I thought our streak of power issues had ended.

But, it was just a false sense of security, and we experienced another outage last night (even though there were no storms or other obvious causes).

The "good news" is that it wasn't just us - our neighbors were affected too. Now I know that sounds a bit odd. But, the last two outages affected only our house (which is the last house on the line), and its a long way between us and the neighbors. That leaves a lot of above ground and underground utility lines to have problems between us and the neighbors. (And the underground line is very old.) Having had 2 recent problems, I was beginning to worry that we needed some major maintenance done. So, I was a bit relieved to find out the problem wasn't just with our lines this time!

Hopefully, we're done with power outages for a while.

It was just a week ago where LCUB installed a new transformer at our house. Late yesterday afternoon, we had a pretty good thunderstorm come through the area with lots of wind, lightning, and even a little bit of hail. And, near the end our power got knocked out. Sure enough, it was just our house that was out.

The LCUB overhead line crew came out, and it turned out to be the same crew as last week. But, they couldn't find anything wrong with the overhead lines. So, they called in the “subsurface crew” and said it could be quite a while before we got power back. The “subsurface crew” worked several hours and couldn’t find any problems with the subsurface lines. So, they “re-powered” us, and the power stayed on. Their thoughts were that the overhead crew missed a branch or something. All I know is that we have power again (after 6 hours)! Let’s hope it’s the last time for a while.

OK, I know that pictures of cows aren't really very interesting. But, what makes these cows unusual is that they are grazing on our front field. The past month or so has been quite dry locally. The grass has turned brown, tree's are looking very wilted, etc. The surrounding counties have all had rain, but it always has seemed to miss us.

Our neighbor runs cattle and he asked about using the front pasture to let his cattle have something to eat, since his fields were grazedd out. We agreed, so we've got cattle in the front pasture.
The good news is that we've finally had some rain, and things are greening up. Hopefully, the mini-drought is over.

The sunflower pictures are from our sunflower patch.


Yesterday was a perfectly ordinary day. The weather was sunny and nice, no thunderstorms whatsoever. So it was a bit surprising when our power went off at about 10:30 last night.

Maggie (the dog) didn’t much care for the situation. Although she’s not allowed in our bedroom, she took the sudden plunge into darkness as an excuse to “sneak” in and lay just inside the door. After a few minutes, she did the get up and turn around 3 times thing that dogs have to do, and moved in a few more feet.

At this point, I got a flashlight, found my reading glasses (as it’s impossible to read the phone book without them), and called LCUB. We’re the last house on the line and when power outages occur, we’ve always called LCUB, just to be sure that LCUB knows in case we’re the only house impacted. And that was the case last night – just our house was out!

After a while, LCUB called me back. It seems they were having trouble finding our house. They had chickened out before heading far enough down our road. I ended up going down to meet them to make sure they were in the right place.

Eventually, they checked the aboveground lines leading to our house and found nothing amiss. (The last bit of the power line runs underground). They then started to work on the transformer, which required multiple smacks with a sledge hammer to get it open. Which of course sent Maggie into a panic, what with their truck driving up, strange voices in the yard, flashlights waving around, and loud noises going on. It took them about 4 hours, but we’ve now got a nice, new shiny transformer and even more importantly, power (which translates to having AC and water).

For those paying attention, you’ll note that Jenn’s last blog post is from June 14. Never fear, although she has neglected to blog, we have heard from her occasionally, so we know she’s not been buried in an avalanche or other catastrophe. (I refer you back to Ignorance is Bliss and the Addendum for a more complete list of potential catastrophes…)

Part of the problem is lack of internet. Although they now have internet in their dorm, it’s hard to get on, and she mostly still has to get off the mountain to have good internet. Cell phone signals are also difficult. The weather has been great on the mountain, and the views fantastic (as viewed from the webcams), but the cell signals are poor, and it frequently takes many tries to have a cell phone conversation.


Today must be the day that they are taking the park's pictures for the new postcards. The views are awesome. I'm so jealous that Jenn get's to see these views for real rather than just the pictures.

Web cams are everywhere, providing us a real-time glimpse of things elsewhere. Many years ago, I discovered http://www.africam.com/, which provided refresh (static) web cam pictures from several watering holes in Africa. Of course now the site has updated to streaming video. There’s also a site called http://www.ustream.tv/ which has zillions of websites with streaming videos.

Many other sites offer webcams, including many National Park sites. I’ve been checking the pictures at Mt. Rainier daily to see what the weather is, and how the snow melt is progressing. The pictures included are the Tatoosh range (which is along the southern boundary of the national park) and part of Mt. Rainier.

An interesting fact is that the better the weather, the worse the cell phone signal. It usually takes several tries for Jenn to find a signal strong enough to allow an actual conversation.

You can see the web cams at:

http://mms.nps.gov/mora/cam/east.jpg
http://mms.nps.gov/mora/cam/west.jpg
http://mms.nps.gov/mora/cam/tatoosh.jpg
http://mms.nps.gov/mora/cam/mountain.jpg

Just remember, that no matter where you are, someone may be watching!

Jenn’s been posting pictures of all the interesting wildlife she’s been seeing while “out west.” But, we have a lot of interesting wildlife here in TN, too, and being the start of summer, we’re starting to see all the spring babies.

While out on the lake fishing last week, we came across a bear cub foraging in the woods. David managed to get a few pictures (with Jenn’s camera since Jenn has his good one…). Conditions were sort of foggy and the bear didn’t cooperate to get any great shots. We didn’t see a mom anywhere although we watched for one.

In the last week on our property, I’ve also seen a baby raccoon (just one), and a cute fawn with its mom. And, we also saw some wild turkey chicks, two moms, with 8-10 chicks. This is good news, because for the last few years, we’ve not seen any chicks, and turkey sightings had become sort of rare.

We also should have house wren babies in a few days. They’ve nested in a hanging plant on the deck, making it difficult to water the fuscia.


I’m sorry to report that Annabelle the chicken has been missing for over a week now and is presumed dead. Annabelle was one of nearly 40 chickens from Jenn’s 4-H days. The chickens lived in a fully enclosed pen with a chicken house. One summer, Jenn noticed that a few chickens seemed to be missing, and a hole was discovered under the fencing. David filled in the hole. The next night, the hole was re-dug and more chickens were missing. David covered the hole with cement blocks. So, the predator dug a hole in a different spot. More cement blocks were added until the entire perimeter of the fence was protected. Then the predator found a weak spot in the fence. For each method of entry that we prevented, the clever predator found a new way in, until we had just a few chickens remaining.

At this point, we gave up, opened the door and figured the few remaining chickens would be gone in a few days. One chicken was clearly much smarter than the others. She figured out that the pets lived by the house, so she moved out of the chicken house and took to roosting in a tree by the house and hanging out in the porch and in the yard.

We eventually named her Annabelle. Annabelle was a very successful free range chicken, eating bugs from the yard as well as eating the cat’s food, which she particularly loved. But, after three years of life as a free range chicken, Annabelle is gone and her final fate is unknown.





In an earlier blog, I discussed my some of my feelings about Jenn being gone for the summer. But I think today was the day that I missed her the most so far.

Today was the opening of the World Cup Soccer tournament in South Africa. And, I know if she was here, we’d have watched that game together as well as many games throughout the tournament. (Along with the US team, Jenn likes to follow Portugal in particular, (which has something to do with the very cute Cristiano Ronaldo…) We always have a good time watching the multinational fans with their crazy costumes and wild hats. And of course, discussing and analyzing the various ref calls.

Jenn will have a tough time watching many games since there’s no TV at Paradise. I think she has to go into town to catch any of the games. Hopefully, she’ll be able to get time off to see the final.

We live in the “boonies” - the woods come right up to the house with only as small cleared front yard. As a consequence, most of animals native to east TN can be seen on our property. But, one thing I did not realize when we moved in, was how much of that wildlife wanted to live in or on the outside of our home.

Our welcoming visitor was a squirrel who’d climbed down the chimney, ate up quite a bit of carpeting, and chewed a number of crossbars from the windows. So, we added a chimney cap, hid the chewed up carpeting behind furniture and did without the window decorative crossbars.

Later that first summer, we learned about carpenter bees. These bees can “drill” very nice holes in wood. So now, we patrol the exterior of the house, looking for telltale piles of sawdust so we know where to eliminate the pests.

Through the years, we’ve also dealt with a momma possum and babies in the basement, a momma raccoon and babies in the shed, a snake in the bathroom, a bat in the kitchen (at Halloween no less!) , and flying squirrels.

Oh, we also have occasional mice too. I’ve spoken to the cat many times, trying to explain that it is her job to keep the house zone free of mice, but she refuses to focus on the house, and seems to prefer “woods mice.”

The flying squirrels have been a problem several times. We’ve had them get into the living room and swoop by me. We also had them get into the attic, run around all night, and store nuts – we’d here the nuts rolling down the attic.

The reason that I mention our wildlife now is that I have a birdfeeder off the deck. The type I use is a tipping feeder, so if a squirrel gets on the tray to eat, a door tips shut, and the squirrel can’t eat. The birds are too light, and the door doesn’t tip shut. So, the squirrels aren’t much of a problem anymore.

In the past, I also had problems with raccoons getting into the feeder which was hung from a Crossbar from a chain. The raccoon would sit on the crossbar, reach down, and grab the seed. So, I used a longer chain. Next, they discovered that they could use the chain to shake out the seed. So, we changed the change to a pole, and hung the feeder from the pole. Now they couldn’t shake out the seed. Eventually, they did manage to knock the feeder of the pole, and dented it so badly I had to replace it. So, I added a piece of plastic to cover the hook on the pole so the feeder couldn’t be shaken off. This has worked for many years. Till now……

My current battle is with a mother raccoon (and probably the babies in a few weeks). She’s taken the simple approach of climbing down the pole, sitting on the top of the feeder, and eating all the seed she desires. I’ll have to come up with a new solution as she’s emptied the feeder in 2 nights.

For those few who may have caught the news about the avalanche at Mt. Rainier, Jenn is safe and sound and no where hear where that happened. The avalanche happened yesterday on the main portion of the mountain. Jenn is stationed in Paradise which is well away from the avalanche zones. Several teams of climbers were impacted, and all have been rescued except one climber.

Imelda R. Marcos (the widow of former Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos) is often remembered for having over 3000 pairs of shoes. So, by now, you are wondering why I consider this significant or even interesting.

I’ve just gotten to the absolute bottom of the laundry pile, and found a few of Jenn’s T-shirts that got left behind. So, I folded them and went to put them in her room. I added them to the large pile of summer things that didn’t make the trip to Mt. Rainer. But, it seemed like there were an awful lot of T-shirts. Curiosity got the better of me, so I counted them – 78 T-shirts. Now, this is certainly a lot less than Imelda Marcos’s 3000 pairs of shoes, but realistically, Jenn has had much less time to develop her collection than Imelda.

I know Jenn will argue that a number of the shirts were “freebies.” The FL Alumni Associate provides Beat “Whoever” T-shirts to the first 2000 students for all home games. Jenn and her group stood in line in shifts to get the T.-shirts. So that accounts for 6 shirts in her collection.

Her collection also includes a lot of “high school” T-shirts, collected through the years, including numerous soccer T-shirts, Battle of the Bridge Shirts, etc. And, heaven forbid that she wear “high school shirts” in college. So, quite a number of new shirts were acquired pre-Florida last year. Anyway, I think in a few years, her collection of Tees will rival Imelda’s shoes!

PS - One More Thing to Worry About - I saw on the news yesterday about 9 tourists injured at Old Faithful due to a lightning strike, and I realized that I had not included lightning on my list of things to worry about (even though Jenn is no longer at Yellowstone).

Thanks to all those who’ve contributed additional fears to add to my list. These include:

• Trampled by moose
• Trapped in a remote restroom
• Shot into the sky by a newly formed geyser
• Engulfed by an avalanche/
• Hit by a piece of falling space debris or meteorite
• Chased by a deranged clown (read “Life Expectancy” by D. Koontz or Stephen Kings “It”)
• Falling into a crevasse
• Swept away by a lahar (a type of mudflow or landslide composed of pyroclastic material and water that flows down from a volcano – and yes, Mt. Ranier is volcanic!)
• Getting attacked by a giant, radioactive chipmunk (or other mutant-type critters)

David & I have gotten a lot of comments about Jenn’s trip west, with many expressing their concerns over her traveling so far by herself. And honestly, we both have our concerns, but felt that Jenn possesses sufficient maturity and intelligence to manage the trip.


Now that the trip is underway, I’ve noticed that David & I have different approaches to dealing with Jenn’s trip. David likes to know exactly where she is, what roads she’s on, what’s the weather, temperature, snow conditions, what mountain passes and elevations are up ahead, etc. I prefer the “ignorance is bliss” approach. I just don’t want to know the specific details – it only adds more fuel for me to worry about. And let’s face it, I can find plenty to worry about, including (but not limited to): falling asleep while driving, driving over a cliff, getting run down by a big truck or other accidents, meeting a “Norman Bates” type at some motel (see Psycho if you don’t know who Norman Bates is), getting eaten by a grizzly bear, run over/gored by a buffalo, falling into a hot spring, etc. And those are just the primary fears. Then there’s the “other” fears, such as a major volcanic eruption (Mt. St. Helens is only 50 miles away, Mt Hood is also nearby, as are several other volcanic peaks). Add in the fears for joining a cult, deciding to quit college to be a ski bum, zombie attacks, etc, and you can see that I can find plenty to worry about with all the day to day trivial details.

I’ve sort of looked as this trip as swimming, once you can no longer touch bottom, it really doesn’t matter if the water is 12 ft or 200-ft deep. Similarly, whether she’s at school in Florida or on the west coast in Washington, it’s still just a plane ride away!

Pictures of some of our local "wildlife".

We live in the boonies, surrounded by woods and open fields, with plenty of opportunities for the native wildlife. Spring is a wonderful time here, with lots of flowers blooming, everything going green, etc. We are fortunate to have a patch of pink lady slipper orchids on our property, with one in bloom right now. There are 5 plants, but we've only ever seen the one bloom. We don't know how long the flowers have been there, so maybe the others are just younger and need a few more years.


We had an unusual visitor at the pond - 4 great white egrets were spotted in the one tree. These large birds are not usually residents of this part of TN, but are occasional visitors. They hung around the pond for a few hours.

One of my favorite springtime sightings is the arrival of the hummingbirds. I've noticed that I usually see the first ones near April 15 (which is easy to remember). Right now, I'm seeing just a few, but the population will grow later in the summer.






Jennifer left a day ago. During her pre-departure preparations, she has continued the time honored tradition of pilfering the parental belongings and absconding with them (usually for college, but in the case for her summer out west). The dastardly child has stolen my only i-pod cord, a new jar of peanut butter, and 2 boxes of girl scout cookies (thin mints no less). And, that's just what we've discovered so far. My hairbrush is also awol, but will probably turn up somewhere. But, she did leave the empty box of bandaids. Retaliation will be harsh. (And, wait till she finds the rubber snake I hid in her camping gear.....)

Jen left on her trip this morning. And, my feelings are quite mixed. On one hand, I'm sad to see her go - a week of time between college and the start of her trip just wasn't enough. This is our first summer apart and I'll miss having her around. And, I'll have no one to watch the World Cup Soccer games with this summer. But, I'm also quite jealous of her upcoming adventure. I can't begin to imagine all the sights and activities she'll experience while spending the summer at Mt. Rainer. However, I am glad to not have her laundry all over the place, her belongings scattered across 4 rooms, etc.

As all parents can attest, time is non-linear. It seems like just yesterday, we brought Jen home from the hospital (8 lb 6 oz, 22-in long). However, the first time they take the car out on their own seemed like an eternity. Hard to believe that Jen's nearly 20 and headed off across country. But, she's always been and independent sort - her first words were practically "ME DO IT!"

If you're reading Jens blog (http://thoughtsofparadise.blogspot.com/), you've heard that we got the kid a new car. We picked it up about a week before she got home from college. But, until she got home from UF, I sent her a daily update on the status of her new car. Thought I'd post them now since I hadn't started the blog at that time. (Sorry if this post is a bit long).

Thur Apr 22 - Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but it seems that a helicopter was moving a bunch of port-a-potties. Unfortunately, the cable broke the the port-a-potties plummeted to earth. The good news is that they missed your car. The bad news is that they fell onto a pile of wood your dad had stacked for a new project and propelled the wheel-barrow 25-ft into the air where it unfortunately landed upside down on your new car, dumping its load of wet concrete. But, we were able to wash off the concrete and after the windshield is replaced, it will be as good as new.

Fri Apr 23 - Had a new wildlife sighting at the house - a good sized-black bear. The bear must have been attracted to the burger wrappers and fries that your dad dropped on the floor of your car. Unfortunately, the bear broke in through the driver's side window and tore up the seats a bit. Then, he must of knocked it into neutral and it rolled into the pond. Dad yanked it out with the tractor. I'm heading to Home Depot to get another roll of duct tape to finish repairing the seats and some plastic to cover the windows (after it has a few days to dry out).

Sat Apr 24 - Had a bit of a problem yesterday. Dad used your new car to run some errands. On the way back, he thought it would be nice to wash off all the pollen, so he stopped at the car wash. Well, it seems that the car wash uses an water conditioner additive for better washing. Unfortunately, the plant that makes the additive also makes glue. They had a new kids on the job who mixed up the labels between the glue and the water conditioner additive and the car got sprayed with glue. After realizing what happened, Dad headed up 321 to use a different car wash to remove the glue. On the way, there was an accident in front of him. A big 18-wheeler was hit and the back of the rig broke open, spewing its contents all over the place - there were feathers everywhere as the truck was carrying a load of down. Anyway, Dad couldn't get to the other car wash to remove the glue and feathers, but we think we can peel it off after it dries.

Sun Apr 25 - As I mentioned last night, there were all sorts of weather alerts for our area - hail, heavy winds, tornadoes, etc. So, wanting to keep your car safe, Dad moved it into the barn for protection. Unfortunately, weather wasn't the problem last night. A meteor hit the barn. But, the good news is that it missed your car, although poor uncle Harry got flattened. But. what we hadn't realized is that the barn was built on top of a pretty large sinkhole covered with a limestone roof. The meteor crash cracked the sinkhole roof and everything collapsed into the pit. We'll have a crane later today to fish out your car. (As a footnote, "Uncle Harry" is a Halloween decoration - a coffin with a body (Harry), who jumps up from the coffin via remote control).

Mon Apr 26 - We had quite a bit of excitement her in Lenoir City this morning. It seems that two PETA enthusiasts decided to rob the bank in order to get funding for their new advertising campaign. The LC cops responded promptly and a chase ensued. The guys ended up crashing into a truck, which they promptly stole to continue their escape. Anyway, the truck was one of those flatbeds carrying a vat of molten aluminum. The chase continued, and ended up going down Hotchkiss Valley Road. Desperate to escape, the guys turned down our road, hoping to elude the cops. As they headed up the road, the coyotes began to howl and respond to the police sirens. As the guys approached the front of our house, the whole pack of coyotes darted across the road in front of the truck. Being PETA members, they stomped on the breaks to avoid hitting any of the coyotes. Unfortunately, (you knew this was coming, didn't you), the molten aluminum sloshed out of the vat and coated your car. We're hoping that once it cools, we can remove the aluminum shell. (Footnote - We actually have a quite large coyote population which howls in response to any sirens).

Tue Apr 27 - Thought you might be interested to hear what happened to Randy and his son. Don't know if you know, but there's a cave on the Brewster's property. Randy and his son decided to go exploring, so they took a bunch of flashlights and ropes and explored the cave. At one point, they couldn't go any farther as the opening was blocked by some fallen rocks. They decided to clear the rocks to see how much further the cave went. As they cleared the rocks, they began to hear some "shuffling" noises, and these weird looking, sort of human-like bodies (maybe they were zombies) began to appear out of the cave. Randy and his son got out of the cave as quick as they could, but the zombies followed. Randy told little Randy to run home, and Randy began to lead the zombies away. He ended up going coming across our field and headed toward the barn, hoping to hide in there until help came. But, there were just too many and the eventually managed to get into the barn. Randy dove into your car as his last hope. The zombies swarmed the car, chanting "brains, brains." The zombies used the fire axe to break into your car and now poor Randy is zombified too. Finally, Dad got home and we managed to round up the zombies, chasing them with his propane torch, and we sealed them back in the cave.

Wed Apr 27 - I don't know if I mentioned that your father has decided to build another out-building. Guess the garage and barn isn't enough room. So, he's started to clear off a space in the field for the new building. There was a pine tree in the way which he cut down, but he also had to get the stump out. He tried digging around it, put pines put down deep tap roots. So, he tried to yank it out with the tractor with no success. So, I finally called one of my friends from ATI who has a TN blaster's license. He came over with a few sticks of dynamite to blow the sump away. He did everything he was supposed to. Put up caution tape, protective stuff by the barn, etc. Unfortunately, he hadn't realized Maggie was loose. Just after he lit the fuse, Maggie came by and stole the dynamite. The 2 men chased after her, and Maggie was just having a great time playing keep-away. Fortunately, Maggie got distracted by a squirrel, dropped the dynamite, and ran off. Unfortunately, she dropped the dynamite and it rolled under your new car. We were able to salvage a few pieces and one tail light. I'll contact the insurance company later today.

Last night, I experienced the return of my daughter following her freshman year away at college. Although she departed for college with a car only half full, on her return home, the car was packed to the hilt. I can't imagine how she fit so much stuff into her tiny dorm room.

Sadly, it now adorns my living room, scattered from one end to the other. There's tons of laundry to do as she hasn't done any laundry for 2 weeks. And, there's a deadline to get everything completed as she leaves in less than a week for her summer job at Mt. Ranier National Park.

It's hard to believe that in a few short days, she's departing for her cross-country journey. I'm excited for her, but the parent in me worries about the millions of things that could happen (like getting lost, driving in snow, volcanoes erupting, hoardes of zombies, etc). But, this is just part of the process, and I survived the 1st year of college, so I guess I can survive this. The hard part will be the limited communication as cell phone and internet access will be limited.

About Me

Although I've been thinking and writing as "freshman mom", I guess that technically, I'm now the mom of a sophmore as my daugher has just completed her freshman year at the University of Florida (studying mechanical/biomedical engineering).

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