12 Oakdale

Wednesday morning, Hurricane Idalia (e-DAH-li-ə) came ashore and devastated Cedar Key, but only provided slight winds and 1 1/2” of rain at our house. The impact for me was that my yard lady CC could not come for our morning session of yard work. I had planned for her to move a wooden edging and mist system in the front yard to create a bed along the front of the house.  Ah well, the rains would give us an excuse to work in the garage. First, we moved the bikes from the north wall to the center of the garage. Then we hung a shelf for the rechargeable drill, their batteries and the drill bits. The rechargeable circular saw hangs on one side of it. Last, we put a screw on the wall where we can hang the chainsaw. Now we can get to the drawer and cabinets without having to lean in over all those tools on the floor. I’m quite pleased with our efforts. Sometimes it takes an ill wind to motivate us.  After that, Grant took to his bed with a nasty cold. He had rallied by Saturday, so ...

I have been wild and exhausted with anxiety. Grant’s passport was stuck in limbo at the US passport agency, and there didn’t seem to be any way to break it loose. We had applied for renewal of our passports back in October, using a new online process: create an account at MyTravel.gov, fill in the form, upload a headshot from our iPhone, and pay $130 by credit card. Easy peasy. I finished mine October 15th, and got an email notification the next day my application had been received. Grant could not create an account at MyTravel.gov. I’m still not clear why, but after several days of his being very frustrated by numerous attempts to use his normal email address, he just couldn’t seem to make it work. I suggested a different email address. I ended up creating it for him using my address at Yahoo. Not really a big deal, except I don’t use that one much, and I can’t remember the password. Fortunately, I have it open on my cellphone, so I could check for any emails that came in.  On Oct...