Do you want to join the DAR or SAR?

The DAR - Daughters of the American Revolution, and SAR - Sons of the American Revolution, are both ancestry-based organizations. Membership requires that you prove descendancy from a participant in the Revolution. The DUP - Daughters of the Utah Pioneers is also such an organization.
To all my children: If you want to join any of these organizations you CAN.
My bro. Jim sent out an email some time ago with information on John Kennedy Jr. who was captured by the British and confined in a prisoner ship. People in those days were pretty casual about caring for prisoners, and Jn. died of starvation in 1781, a common fate.
So, I have verified that this is indeed our ancestor, the father of Josiah Ashurst's wife, Rebecca Kennedy. This image is one of three images containing an application for membership in SAR based on descendancy from Jn. Kennedy Jr. It was approved and can thus be used as the basis for further applications. You just have to prove your descendancy from Jn K. and you will be IN. I can help with that. The important thing is that the document lists the source of the short narrative about his service.

"John Kennedy was a soldier of Virginia in the War of the American Revolution and was at the Battle of Guilford Court House, North Carolina, where he was taken a prisoner and he died aboard a British Prison Ship of Starvation."

It also states that his wife was Esther Stilly ( my records show the spelling as Esther Stille, but spelling was quite variable in those days, so that is no worry.)

Beekeeping

I've been pretty busy with bees for the last week or so. I set out last Tuesday to retrieve honey from my two hives at Honey Grove. One hive had died out. The other had lots of nice honey. I planted sweet clover out there a few years ago and every other year it blooms copiously, and this honey seems to have clover mixed in with the wild flowers. I also picked up several frames of honey from my friend, Dan's, hive so I could extract it for him.
Then I stopped at my friends, the Hubers (sadly, Harold died last winter) to pick up honey from there. I had two hives there and both did very well, but one of them has become Africanized, meaning the bees were MEAN, violent, aggressive, persistent, unpleasant jerks! I was wearing a full bee suit and still got 15-20 stings. Some of them got inside my veil, which I need to be more careful about.
My intention had been to take all three of those country hives to a new place with mesquite (it starts blooming now when most nectar flow is over and lasts about a month), but I was tired of bees and left them there.
At home, I unloaded the honey and the one hive I'd brought from Honey Grove and hit the rack. Next day I rested until afternoon, then took the Huber hives out to the mesquite. I had another experience with the mean bees, but at least it was short - all I had to do was drop them off.
Thurs. I got all my equipment washed up, bottles out and washed, all the flat surfaces in the garage covered with paper, and started extracting honey. That is a messy job. Honey gets spread around in small amounts and pretty soon everything is sticky. The process is this:

• Pull out a frame and put it over a tub.
• Use a serrated knife to cut off the caps (thin wax the bees put over each cell when the honey is ripe).
• Use a scratcher tool to remove caps I couldn't get with the knife.
• Insert the frame in the extractor - a plastic tub with a cage that holds 2 frames and has gears to spin them around - with the opened cells facing out. Centrifugal force pulls the honey out of the comb and throws it against the side of the tub, where it flows into the bottom of the extractor.
• Carefully spin the frames until the honey is out. If you spin too fast, the comb can break and send big chunks of wax into the extractor where it tends to clog things up. This year I have mostly all-plastic frames which are not so prone to breakage, but I have a few all-wax, unreinforced frames of comb and I broke most of them.
• Take the frames out of the extractor, and cut/scratch the caps off the other side of the frame, and put them back in the extractor.
• Spin the second side. Sometimes I only partially spin out honey on the first pass because there is so much honey and the total weight might break the frame. In that case I have to reverse the combs and spin again, then reverse a second time and do the final spin on the second side.
• Put the empty frames aside and start two more.
• After 4 or 6 frames are extracted the honey level is up to the bottom of the spinning cage, which makes it hard to spin, so I open the gate in the side of the extractor and let the honey (which has some wax in it, too) flow into a filter, which is two 5-gallon buckets. The top bucket has a bag filter in it with the top folded over the top of the bucket and rubber bands holding it up. The top bucket has holes drilled in the bottom to let the honey flow into the lower bucket. The lower bucket holds clean honey and has a pouring gate in the side of it. When it gets full I carry it in to the kitchen and fill bottles, using the pouring gate.

This is a photo of the kitchen after extracting honey from the country hives and the 2 hives here at the house. The double bucket filter is at right on the higher level of the counter. Notice lids in the foreground, bottled honey on the lower counter, bottled honey on the far counter, boxes of bottled honey, and you can't even see all the boxes.

Liz made a couple of movie clips of me extracting, so I hope she sends those out.


I made a mistake this year. I left honey supers on the hives at the house last year after I extracted. Here in TX, the good honey is in the spring (and summer if you have mesquite), but honey made in the fall is very dark and smells strong like molasses with a bitter aftertaste. My mistake was that the bees stored some of that Fall honey through the winter and it was still there when they started making new honey this spring. This is a photo of a decapped frame with an area where Fall honey was stored. It made a lot of honey a bit strong, but still usable. Just not as good as I like it.

Missionaries and a surprise guest for dinner

The house is coming together nicely, which inspired Liz to test it by inviting the missionaries for dinner last night. We also invited Bill and Barb, and they asked if they could bring their house guest. It went off without a hitch, but the surprise of the evening was when I figured out that the house guest was none other than Quinn Gooch, a linebacker on the BYU football team from 2004-7. If you google him, you can see a video clip of him making a hit on an opposing team's receiver that is a real tooth breaker. After graduating he started a BLOG - deepshadesofblue.com - that has become the premier site for BYU sports.
We found Quinn to be very personable, unassuming, and the perfect guest. He recently went back to school and just finished his MBA at U. Texas. He is staying with Bill & Barb until his family arrives, after which they will live SE of Dallas.

Today, I am hanging a couple of curtains and a few other little things to complete the bedroom transformation. It has been a long, difficult project, but we are delighted with it.

The following photos illustrate what still needs to be done.
This is the sun room. The curtain on the floor in the foreground will go on the window next to our bed, and it is the same as the ones on these windows. I love sitting here watching TV with the view of the trees and bushes (and the occasional neighbor), but Liz says it weirds her out. This room is essentially done, but we are thinking of buying a big amoir to put in the corner where Mom used to have her desk.














This is the bedroom. Some of the fittings for the curtain rods are on the bed. This room will be done when the curtain is hung. We put all our Queen Anne furniture in this room and it worked wonderfully. Liz went to First Monday Trade Day in Canton a couple of weeks ago and got the little flower arrangement that is now in the nitch in the wall. Nice!














This is the sink area. I still need to put travertine marble under the mirror to tie it in to the marble vanity top. And I have some towel hooks to install.














I was standing in this area when I took the photo above of the sinks. Liz wanted the outlets where she could reach them as she sat here, but we've decided they need to go down under the table, near the window. That will give me enough room to properly hang the mirror.

Setting up PMs

PM = Preventive Maintenance = Maintaining equipment at a regularly scheduled interval that will allow you to find and fix problems before they become disasters. Actually, you can't prevent disasters. Things WILL break down when you don't expect it, but it doesn't happen as often on well-maintained equipment.
I currently have a nice little gig setting up the PM schedules for Varsity for two large commercial buildings, totalling almost 1.5 million sq. feet. It is a little bit overwhelming sometimes, but I am making good progress and everybody is happy with my work. That is good, because from what was already done, it is clear that none of them had the slightest clue how to get it rolling.
So, now I am obsessed with equipment and what has to happen to it. Some of it was converted over from the old system, but it's fragmented. For example, I already have a list of equipment in the buildings and the serial numbers. I also have a list of tasks that were done before. Part of my job is to match up the equipment with the appropriate tasks, and that gets a bit tricky sometimes. Most of it, though, is just grunt work. Just keep slogging away until you reach the end of the pile. Never mind that there are 154 Fan Powered Boxes to schedule. Just take the first one, give its schedule a name, give the PM you will generate a name (I always call it PM: whatever I called the schedule), assign it a task (usually a monthly task). Then, if there are PMs to be done on another interval, enter those and make sure they don't pile up in the future - there are monthly tasks, quarterly, semi-annual, annual, biennial, triennial and more and you can't have all 154 triennial tasks hit the staff in the same month, or even year or they will be overwhelmed. So you tell the system the triennial task happens every 36 months, but add 2 months before it is generated, and 4 months for the next one, and so on.
Confused, yet?
This stuff is rattling around in my head and it is making me a bit squirrely. I have been accused of being a little creative with how many hours I've been working. Somebody said I can't work over 100 hours for Varsity + 40 for Cabellas, + 50 on the remodel and fit it into one week. Well, I did say before that the 100+ hours were in a little more than a week, actually 9 days. It is still a lot.
So, yesterday, my good buddy and bro-in-law-squared, who has finally returned from California, and I went out in the woods and filled feeders. It was a delightful break. I even got to fire my pistol. I flushed out a monstrous big, well fed rat that had made its nest in one of our blinds and was eating our bait corn. Well, he won't be doing that anymore.
We talked about going back today for some actual hunting, but I have too much to do.

Cooling Tower #4 will have PMs monthly, starting 4/15/2011, which will take 30 minutes. It will also have a quarterly PM which I'll just let happen each third month, and that will take an hour. A semi-annual PM will be every 6th month, plus an offset of 5, and that will take 2 hours. The annual PM, every 12 months, plus an offset of 11, will take 2 hours. The biennial PM, every 24 months, plus offset of 20 months will take 4 hours. Check it all over, and BE SURE to save it.
And now I'm done whining, and need to get back to work.

SQUIRRELY!

Goodby Cabellas

I resigned from Cabellas Friday. It was a tough decision for me, as I do not like to give up on jobs, women, or overwhelming projects. But I had to do it. Here are my reasons:

1. I've worked the last two Sundays and they had me scheduled for the next two as well. Nobody asked me what I needed, they just scheduled it that way.
2. When Cabellas hired me as a Maintenance worker I envisioned what I was doing for Varsity, which is pretty high-end maintenance, HVAC, high voltage electronic systems, pumps, etc. Cabellas envisioned someone who cleans the bathrooms three times a day. They said that isn't what it will be long term, but they didn't give me any info on what it would be, so that's all I had to judge by.
3. I got a job with Varsity to enter maintenance schedules for all the equipment in two large commercial buildings into the new CBRE Work Order system. That pays a lot more per hour, and they are in a bind so they want me to work lots of hours. Last week I put in over 100 hours on that, in addition to 40 hours with Cabellas, and at least that many more trying to clean up the remodel project. That's too many hours for one person, which brings me to...
4. I needed a day off! I had to quit to get a day off?!?

On a lighter note, the bathroom looks great. Below is the tub. It is awesome! We got a Jetta brand tub that was special ordered but cancelled. Jetta has such tubs on a special part of their web site. This one cost about half what we'd have paid, and then it turned out it was a foot longer than we'd thought when we bought it, so it would have cost more than we thought if we'd ordered in the ordinary way. It is VERY nice, and the marble turned out nice, too.














This is the little chandelier Liz got to hang above her dressing table. I put in a couple of little spot lights for actual light and this adds a feminine touch to it. Gives me the willies.














I hate to post this photo with all the stuff piled on the sink, but it goes with the outlets and switch with no covers, yet. The plumbing all works, including a new hot water pump so there is instant hot water. We're making the paint guys come re-do a lot of the walls, though.














And this is the view into the master bedroom. Reminds me somewhat of tornado damage.

Where did the time go?

My last post was 7 months ago. Here is a quick update on what has happened since then.

• My census job ended in Oct. because it was all done.
• November: Harold Huber died while snorkeling in Hawaii, which may be one of the great ways to go. He was a great friend. I have 2 hives of bees at his place in Trenton, which Yolinda is happy to let me continue to keep there. She is also selling me his woodworking supply of walnut.
• December: Our friend, Krista Oakes, died after a 5 year battle with brain cancer.
• Also in December I got a new DROIDX cellphone, which is fun. However, I left it home while we had a fantastic family reunion in Mexico.
  
• I worried a lot about keeping everybody safe in Mexico, but in the end there wasn't anything I could do about it, and it wasn't an issue. I still need to post photos.
• As soon as we returned from Mexico, Joe and family packed up and moved to Holland for at least 1 year while he gets an MBA.
  
• Jan. 1: Liz's Mom died. We have very mixed feelings about this. Happy that she is reunited with the love of her life. Sad that she is gone. Happy that we can get our master bedroom back. Sad to walk in there and not see her. The construction is in full sway as I write this - the house is full of dust - the built-in vac. doesn't work because I am waiting on parts to re-connect it where we had to move a wall - the new Jetta tub is waiting to go in and that is exciting.
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• March 6 will be the first day on my next job. I will be doing maintenance at the new Cabellas store about to open near by. It is very low pay and only part-time. I expect to work hard and get a FT position with better pay after a short time.
  

Earl's trip to Utah

Here is Levi, all tricked out with his borrowed bicycle.
For a movie clip showing the uninvited guest - wind! - see the end of this post.







Dad and Jim converse while the dance starts out slowly.


















Charlie accompanied the dance music on his keyboard.








Joe's dog. It is black, white, and tan - making him a calico dog.












Dad recently received a medal for his WWII combat efforts. It was awarded by the governments of the islands of the Pacific.





My camera ran out of battery juice just in time for the parade, but a good time was had by one and all.



Afterward, we had lunch in the Capital park.















I managed to catch Angela and Mark being a couple in the dungeons of the Fillmore Statehouse.















Elizabeth and family live out at the farm and they used farmer's assets to make the World's best water slide! There was a carpeted walkway to the top, where an irrigation pump provided huge amounts of water to assist sliders going down the plastic slide.








We sure have a bunch of cousins! I couldn't get them all into one photo.















Mark wanted to see the lava tubes, which Logan had seen with me and Sam Allred a couple of years ago. This photo shows the kids about to climb down into the biggest tube, which is about 30' high.












In one of the smaller tubes, Logan is looking out at the camera. He was on his hands and knees at the time.












Jesse is crawling into the small tube.












And believe it or not, that is Logan's finger sticking out of solid lava rock from that small tube.











This is the kids going inside the tube.


















I tried to take photos of us in a large intact-ceiling lava tube, but the dust kicked up by our footfalls reflected the flash so badly that it was hard to see what was going on. This one was about 15' high. As is often the case, the floor slowly rises as you go deeper into the tube. They rarely drain out completely, so some lava cools and solidifies at the end of the tube, making the floor 'rise'.

























Mark helping Jesse over jumbled, broken lava rock on the way into the tube.




Logan wanted to sit in the cubby he is reaching for. In the end, he gave up on the idea. We did see two great-horned owls fly out of a hole very near there when we first approached the sink hole.















Here I am clawing my way out of the hole.















The kids wanted a photo of them standing on unsupported rock. A few minutes later, we drove the van over it.














We got to the fairgrounds just in time for the fireworks, which are spectacular for a little town like Fillmore.















And here is the promised video of the wind during the kid's parade.