Running Bear's November 2025 Coffee Shop

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Amazon, on their website, claims to not deliver to back doors here,
With 100 acres of property God knows where the back door is! ;)
the porch with the light on.
God Bless you!

I have been blessed with good night vision and as my grandsons says, "you are the scariest thing in the dark Poppy, but not to me" Many drivers from the city are scared to death of the "dungeon dark" rural areas, dogs and wildlife.
 


Good Morning All!
46F @ 92% overcast. To be 49F later.

I guess we are lucky, know the UPS/USPS/FedEx drivers by name. When I see them coming up the drive, I go out to the truck and meet them. Well, except for FedEx as they need that pix. If we are not here or don't notice, packages are placed inside the front door porch. Works great until we get a replacement or new driver.

I started sorting my chemical pix. Geesh, have over 1000 of them from all over the PNW into Glacier/Browning. I don't even want to think about the digital ones just now. Think that those are spread over 2 or 3 machines and have no clue to the count of those.

We got really lazy yesterday and did not do squat. Well, puttered around if you want to call that doing something.

More Chick/Goat house interior walls today me thinks. Gonna run out of either OSB, insulation or both.

L8r
 
Well, I've managed to put Humpty Dumpty together again--sort of. The RSD15 is back together and operating, though the shell has a chip in it along the top of the radiator section, on the corner of the roofline. Since it's a Pennsy engine, I'll probably put a little flat black paint there to cover up the damage. It's Brunswick Green, which is really dark, so I hope it doesn't stand out.
The other one is an F7A, and while technically not any lasting "damage", per se, both wires that connect to the front truck got torn off the pickup on the truck. I'll need to dig out my soldering iron, and hope I can re-solder the wires. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
 
I've noticed over the past couple of months around here they have now started using the white rental vans from Enterprise, and Penske.
All they say on the side is "delivery driver" but they do have the Amazon safety vest on.

They stop in front of the house, go in the back and may not emerge with the package for 10 minutes or more, so I wondered if it wasnt
all just thrown in there packed tight,

What you say explains a lot of what I'm seeing starting to happen around here.

Are they moving away from USPS?
Amazon uses everyone. Some of their stuff are their own but some are contracted out to companies who have a half dozen vehicles. They’re the ones who tend to rent Penske etc to add new routes.

We have a huge Amazon distribution center and a neighboring smaller but still huge Amazon on building about 2 miles from here so recently most of what we get are the electric Rivian Amazon vans now. We used to get a lot more of the people in their own cars and stuff. Still probably get that for the 5 early deliveries.

But I still get Amazon by usps occasionally and also by UPS. Probably FedEx too.
 
Many years ago, I got a Brita pitcher/filter, and have been using it for my drinking and cooking that requires water. This morning, I had a sudden need of a glass of water, and I simply poured from the tap into the glass.
I can assure anyone that doubts, the filter in the pitcher works.
Bleah...
We bought a Berkey filter system (table top) with the black filter and add in heavy metal and fluoride filter. Kids grew up with that. Once at a neighbors they were given tap water. They said “bleach, that’s not water”.

I would recommend a Berkey or similar system. While Brit’s works to get rid of chlorine and stuff the Berkey with the black filter with embedded silver plus the heavy metal add on gets rid of everything. You can take murky ground water and run through it supposedly. And drink it.
 


I mentioned yesterday or the day before that the weather forecast was partly cloudy or sunny for the next 10 days except two cloudy and 30% chance of storms.

I was wrong. I had switched my weather app to Amagasaki Japan to check temperatures there and forgotten to move it back.

I woke up to gray overcast (a few small blue patches) and wondered what happened to the nice weather. So I checked the weather app and saw it was set to Japan. I reset it to my location and the 10 day forecast was some chance it rain or storms every day except today. Today it’s windy and still mid 60s. The forecast still shows 50s most days so not super cold. We’ll see how it pans out.
 
Good morning, gang and happy Friday!

34° outside under partly cloudy skies, heading to a high of 54° later today.

Package deliveries are a little strange here as UPS will not deliver for some reason in our area without a signature. So if I order something online, I have to watch for shipping info so if it’s UPS, I can get it rerouted to the UPS store half a block from where I work. FedEx and USPS put everything on the front porch without an issue. I don’t understand UPS because we live in a very quiet neighborhood with no through traffic. On the bright side, though if I order Christmas presents for the wife, I can pick them up and leave them in my truck so snooping eyes won’t find out till Christmas.

Later gang!
 
Rough day yesterday. My wife's younger brother (67) has been battling Multiple Myeloma (blood cancer) for 17 years. He was admitted to Stanford med center on Wednesday. He passed away yesterday afternoon several hours after they took him off life support. He was told that he had 10 years, but he fought it for 17. The Stanford University Oncology Department and his wonderful wife supported his fight all those years.

Stu was a very successful finance guy in Silicon Valley. He helped take several companies public as their CFO during his working life. He was lured to Ukraine, for several years in 2006, by a lucrative job offer and the women. He became sick there and they could not determine what was wrong. He was flown to the UK where they made the diagnosis, before finally returning to the US.

He dated a lot of girls while he was in Ukraine, but ended up marrying a wonderful woman. They held their wedding in Santa Barbara, on the beach, at sunset, on 10/10/10. His wife has a daughter and SIL who escaped Ukraine 10 days before the war started and now live in Austin where his employer has an office. Stu has a son from a previous relationship.

Forgot to add this photo. I took it while out with the dog. I found out about Stu when we returned home.

View attachment 247930
So sorry to hear of your Brother-in-laws passing, may he now be at peace.
 


Sorry for your loss.

I wonder if it was due to the radiation. I keep hearing about the animals all being radioactive and spreading around.


We thought the same thing since he had visited Chernobyl. Nicki's older sister was diagnosed this year with Multiple Myeloma (stage 0), so we're pretty sure that Chernobyl nothing to do with it.
 
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