Paper jams

My boss today gave me a copy of the funnies . I guess she understands how frustrating paper jams can be.
its just as well we have 2 printers.

The Stairs

last week I had started sanding the stairs again. well i may have even started them about Christmas, but i finished them last week. I never seem to know how much sanding is good enough, does it need to be perfect ? whats OK and whats not- is the constant question. So lets define this, I finished sanding the stairs to my satisfaction, and then got some paint.
This is called burnt almond, i decided on flat so now one will slip.

Without primmer i thought i would try the new paint out that doesn't need primer from Behr. so here we have no primmer on really old sanded wood.
Now thinking about this i thought I would paint every second stair so i could get back upstairs, but while i was painting I figured out that this stuff has a really fast drying time. it was touch dry in about 10 minutes, no exaggeration, which was way cool. The following night I did the second coat, and just painted every step, but the time i was done their was only one stop that i couldn't stand on and came back up stairs.
so steps are done, the vinyl arrived on Thursday, or the other 1/2 of it.

Dishwashers

this was the week of the dish washer.

On Sunday it decided to not drain, OK, so the logical thing is there is just some junk blocking somewhere. Nope it wasn't that. i emptied it thought to try again, no such luck the blades weren't turning to swish the water, but it did fill up again. so I came to the conclusion that the pump had gone out. Now this dish washer was kinda old when i moved in here, so now its 5 years older than that.

It took forever during the week to got hold of anyone at Maytag to find out just how old it was . a time zone thing on to the east coast. My dish washer was 12 years old. Ummm not going to fix the pump , I will just get a new one. so did some fast shopping online, went cruising around Home depot, Lowes and Sears, to see what was in stock, My roommates didn't care how long it took me to get a dishwasher , but I do. I am way more attached to the dishwasher than I thought.

Lowes won, they had a dish washer in my price range, that was 10 % off and in stock, and they delivered and took the old one away.

This morning it arrived, My roommate Faith said she knew what she was doing, so i just handed her the tools as she needed them and hopefully learnt as she went along. yes she knew what she was doing. the dish washer is all installed in about 1 1/2 hours, and it is running its first cycle.

so the one new appliance for the house has been taken care of. Its black and all shiny and new.

for now its back to the other house projects.

Magnolia Plantation

one of the other things that i got to do, was to visit Magnolia plantation, this is a rice plantation almost in the city limits of Charleston. here they have a very fine house, a basement full of a gift shop and 500 acres of what was rice fields. Slaves built it from the swamps, low- laying areas of the Ashley river. today it would take someone with a engineering degree to build it all and get the water flowing as it 's supposed to.

The house was well restored and in good shape. there were daffodils out in the garden, and yes i photographed them.

In the holding ponds here they had some visitors, so these ponds are not for swimming in. i am not sure if the little turtle in front stayed to long. but i think he was rather game to stay there.

it was a beautiful day so when i was done looking around I sat in the sun and read my book for an hour, 68 degrees.
the magnolia trees were all covered in lot of Spanish moss. which made for striking looking trees for the middle of winter. One of the things that I noticed was that it was very dry, the people that i went to see and the neighbourhoods that i drove through, all the lawns were brown, apparently the grass dies when it gets too cold. i tried not to laugh when i heard that.

I spent an evening dancing on the Saturday, i found the Ballroom dance club of Charleston , they were having a west coast swing class where there were twice as many woman as men. so i just sat and watched. I will never complain again as to when we have on 2 extra woman. for the dance i just did my usual social thing and got up and danced. it was a dam wonderful day.

the USS Yorktown

so i caught up with Kerrie on the Sunday i picked her up after 4 days stuck in NY, ( in a snow storm) Hung out and went shopping on Monday and Drove to Charleston Tuesday.
Wednesday i went to the the Yorktown, Navel history is kinda fun. i thought i would look at the US stuff. ( since i am not in England)
USS Yorktown is a 1943 aircraft carrier.
the tours were self guided signed tours so you could see which parts you wanted, for my opinion they could do with spending some money on better signage around. The first place I want to was the engine room,wonderful to look and all the nobs and dials and very large engines, but not a lot of info. what size were the engines, how many gal of oil did they burn? dammed if I know. there was no signs.

Alongside there was a submarine the USS Clamagore from 1945. I didn't realize how small they were. this one had 80 crew, and quarters were tight. the movies you see don't show just how small they were.
the shop was pretty good , I always think that I am not going to spend money but I bought a photo of my self with the Yorktown in the background. ( which i hope to scan and upload ) as well as a little tall ship. they didn't have the HMS Victory so i got the HMS Bounty instead. (One day I will own a big HMS Victory)

Biltmore Estates

Biltmore estates Ashville NC
don't get caught taking photos

what an amazing house.

Charlotte

I know I have been on vacation for a week, and not a word, sorry about that, the lady whose House I was staying at, her computer was so slow. Anyway now I am in Charleston I can write a book.

Last Friday i drove from Charlotte to Asheville to go see the Biltmore estate. ( Van Der -Bilt fortune) a very large estate with built in 1895 with lots of rooms to impress the guests. the usual story is that you are not allowed to take photos, but that has never stoped me. there is an amazing collection of really old books and prints from that time period. and hanging on the walls are several tapestries dating for the 1540 s ( that could be better looked after). a large winery on the estate as well.the wine tasting was kinda fun. but I am not into shipping wine back to AK though. photos will be coming i am not sure when.

for some reason the weather gods didn't like me and while I was there it started to snow. Ashville is almost in the mountains, there was snow on the beautiful long drive down to the gate , i thought that once I was down lower the snow would stop. no such luck, some cars were driving at 30 miles an hour with the hazards lights on on the freeway. the 140 miles back to Charlotte was about 40 miles an hour so it took me 4 hours. it was wet slushy snow. with several cars in the ditch etc. ( that probably could have gotten out if they knew how) the drive up was only 2 hours 20 . on nice dry roads.

Thursday i went out to north Charlotte to look at a plantation from 1800. it still had some slave quarters, probably cleaned up a lot. They would have been cold to live in.

there has been some shopping of course, and on Sunday got to go pick up Kerrie and hang out with my nephews who run around really fast. Please remember that i am the child free auntie.

i definitely don't like big freeways, with large trucks and fast cars, i have managed better than I did on my last sojourn south to the lower 48. 80 mph and i am getting past. GPS systems are worth their weight in gold, i can still manage the odd wrong turn.

Monday this week I found a dance studio that had some classes in swing that actually taught me a new east coast move. I guess i don't know everything I thought I did in east coast.

yesterday Kerrie and kids came down to Charleston , I dropped her off at her friends and found my hotel which is down town, more on Charleston another time.