I'm sorry that it's taken me so long to tell about my vacation with Jean. Mostly, the length of time has been because of the graphics--editing videos, making maps, editing photos. I took about 500 photos and videos. I will continue explaining my vacation later. Right now I just want to catch up on all the news since Jean and I got back.
Like every May in Montana, we've been really busy. It seems incredible that May is already gone.
I went to a couple of Jared's baseball games April 30. It was pretty funny because he won the first game against Gardiner 6-1 (if I remember right) and then they played against each other again, and Gardiner won against Big Timber (Jared) 6-2. I was rooting for Jared, but I was still a traitor to all the Gardiner kids. lol
Dad wanted me to install a new monitor on his computer, but that has proven to be difficult when it shouldn't be. My thoughts are that the BIOS (the programming installed on the motherboard) needs to be updated because of some problem with multiple monitors on earlier versions of the programming. Unfortunately, the BIOS doesn't want to recognize the new programming so that it can be installed. I've tried going online for help, but so far they've only made suggestions for things I've already done. That's been a bit frustrating. I'm going to have a little change of pace on his computer. This week when I go to Livingston, I'm going to install Windows 7 on his computer.
Jean and I have been fostering kittens at our house for several weeks. We got them at the end of April and have been raising them since then. Someone left a mother cat with six kittens by the side of a road near Big Timber as I understand. Tim, my uncle, brought them to Jean. The cats are flame-point Siamese crosses. They could already eat solid food by the time we got them, so the kittens were between 4-5 weeks old. We've had a lot of fun with the cats, and it's been a new experience for me. I haven't had to foster so many cats before. I know what you're thinking--I'm just like the cat lady that lives down the street from where you live. In any case, I had fun. It's a lot of work to take care of them all, but it wasn't too bad; it worked out.
All six kittens had homes accounted for before they were even ready to leave the house. One of the boys and one of the girls went to different friends of Jean's. Mary, a friend of mine, took a little girl which she named Willow. Jean and I are keeping two boys. We've named them Thunder and Storm. We already have a female named Lightning--though she's not the brightest cat I've ever had. Our other female is Butterscotch. Tim and Zana are going to take the mother and a little long-haired girl. I think the mother's name is already given - Lily.
Tim and Zana aren't ready to take their two cats yet because they're in the middle of a move, but they'll probably take them in the next week or so. It's probably a good thing since Lily has been shut in one of our bedrooms most of the time to avoid cat wars with Butterscotch and Lightning. There's no point in mixing the cats when one of them isn't going to be a permanent resident and it would only cause trouble. We've allowed their little girl to mix with ours since she won't be starting any fights with our other cats though.
This is completely off the subject, but is certainly interesting. Since I got back from Hawaii, I spotted an albino mule deer one morning. I didn't get a picture of it in time. When I saw it at first I thought I was seeing things. It was less than half a mile from my house. I haven't seen it since, but I'm always on the lookout for her.
Also, I've seen the bobcat a couple times since I originally photographed it on April 1. I've only seen it crossing the road at night near my house. It's a good thing I don't let my cats out in the dark!
We've been slowly working on remodeling one of our bathrooms since before we went to Hawaii. We're almost there. I painted the room recently, and now we're waiting on a man to do the tile job. He's been really busy in Gardiner lately so the project's been postponed a couple weeks. We're almost finished with the bathroom, and we're very excited to see its completion.
Our oil furnace hasn't been working very well lately. It hasn't been firing within its allotted time (I think it's 30 seconds) and so a breaker on the furnace has been switching off on a regular basis. At the Valentine's Day dinner at Evergreen (the nursing home where Grandma and Betty live), Dad suggested that since we're doing work on the house, why don't we replace the furnace? For goodness sakes--it's the original furnace that was put in when the house was built in 1958. It's about time that we replace it, huh? Before we went on our trip, Jean and I discussed our options. When we got back, we decided to have a combination heat pump and propane furnace. We have the two installed now, but we've hit a snag--we either have to add a 220 volt breaker to our already crowded circuit breaker box or replace the breaker box (which seems to be the better option considering all the factors we have looked at.) At the moment the propane furnace works, but the heat pump is not going to work until we can replace our circuit breaker box. We knew that we needed to replace the circuit breaker box sooner or later in our renovation, but evidently it's going to be sooner rather than later.
Oh, the joys of living in an older house!
Since we're working on making the house more efficient with heat and other things, we're also going to replace the doors and windows. Our windows have already been ordered and should be here next month. We're going to order our doors soon, but we already have everything figured out for them. Next on the list of efficiency renovations is the roof. We already have three layers of shingles on it, and we need to replace it soon. We're thinking of a tin roof, but we haven't got any bids yet.
Also of note for the month of May is our unusual weather. As many of you have seen in the news, Yellowstone Park received a lot of snow this winter. It's still pretty bad for snow, and even Dunraven Pass is still closed (it's usually open by Memorial Day weekend). Sylvan Pass is only open at night and early morning for fear of avalanches, and Craig Pass recently closed because they got dumped on again. The road between Tower and Mammoth recently closed because of a rock slide including a boulder. Business is a little slower in Gardiner than in past years, but I think it's because of some of the road closures and bad weather. I called West Yellowstone today, and they seem to be doing better than Gardiner tonight for tourism.
