09:43 – Barbara picked up Bonnie, our next-door neighbor, at 9:00 to drive her up to the Walmart Super Center in Galax, Virginia. Bonnie is almost 90 years old and doesn’t get out much, so this will be a real treat for her.
About two minutes after Barbara left, Lori pulled in the drive to deliver/pick-up the mail. Lori’s daughter is home from college for the week. Lori said she’d finished repackaging the current batch of LTS food, and volunteered that she loved watching the oxygen absorbers dent in the 2-liter bottles. I’m not the only one who takes pleasure in small things.
The Lowe’s delivery truck is supposed to show up today with our gas cooktop. Eric with the Blue Ridge Co-op called yesterday afternoon to schedule installation of the propane tank and connecting the cooktop. They’re kind of backed up this time of year. He said the next date they had available was the morning of December 9th, so we grabbed it. It looks like we’ll be cooking dinner that day on the gas cooktop.
I did look around for a gas oven, but the only ones I could find that could operate without electricity were commercial models that cost several thousand dollars. There’s no way we’re spending that much. If we do have a long-term power failure, we can use the gas cooktop for baking by using a Coleman Camp Oven or a large Dutch oven.
Barbara took Colin to the vet yesterday to have him looked at. One of his ears was bothering him, and he’d torn a claw on one of his rear paws. A week or so ago, we’d tried cleaning out his ear with dilute vinegar and cotton balls, but it was still bothering him, so we decided to take him to the vet. Their charges are extremely low: $12 for the office visit and another $12 to swab out his ear and do a microscopic stain/exam. The medication they provided was $38, so Barbara got out of there for just over $60. Down in Winston, it would probably have been $250 or $300.
While Barbara was gone, UPS delivered four cases of quart wide-mouth canning jars. When she returned and noticed them stacked up in the foyer, she asked what they were. I told her “another four dozen quart wide-mouth canning jars,” and she said there was no way she was going to be canning food. I didn’t tell her that I’d renamed our new 23-quart pressure canner “Ma Kettle”. To be fair, I also renamed our 9-quart cast-iron camping Dutch oven “Pa Kettle”.