The dishwasher fixed itself after Mr. Troutbend poked around inside it without pulling it away from the counter. Gunk builds up in the little nooks and crannies, and we cleaned out some of that, but when he put it back together, it was still making noise the next couple of times we ran it - a lot of noise, and we could hear something clacking around in there – like a loose part being buffeted by the water. Sometimes when it pumps out, water backs up into the sink, and I noticed some stuff – looked like minced onion in the sink after it had run. We decided him poking around in there loosened something that finally worked its way out, and now its working fine. That’s all a person could hope for. Now we rinse everything really well before we put it in there, even though we’re not supposed to have to.

I am working on an intense spreadsheet project – going on the county assessor website to find the assessed values of homes along certain parts of the river so we can show the value of the structures that will be saved is more than the cost to fix the river so it doesn’t wipe them out in a future flood. It’s grueling, but I’m slogging through it. I enjoy that kind of project, but doing 10 miles of the river would have been more fun than doing 21 miles of it. I might finally get done with most of it tonight, but will spend the next few days polishing it.

I have been getting lots of phone calls to reserve the rental cabin. Many of them are referred by the pot-smoker motel down the river from here. She advertises on the Marijuana-friendly website. We still have our usual guests, there are some motorcycle riders who come almost every year. They are from North Platte, NE. They left a bunch of food – they’d bought food for a ribeye steak dinner, and then ended up dining out. There’s 4 nice ribeye steaks ($44), 6 big ears of corn on the cob, and a packet of Knorr rice side dish mix. And about a case of beer – three different kinds of beer. I write it down in a book, and we’ll put some of that kind of beer over there next time they come back.

I prepare corn on the cob by leaving it in the husks and microwaving it for 8 minutes. I cut off the big end and shake the hot corn right out of the husk – all the silk stays inside there. It’s my favorite way because there is so much conflicting information about how to cook it water: add salt, don’t add salt. Add sugar, don’t add sugar.

We have so many mice there year – Eloise has caught a few inside the house. There is a live trap in the house next door, and we catch one just about every day. There was a spare trap in the garage, not even down on the floor and mice were getting into it. Caught 8 mice in 3 days.

Keeping the hummingbird feeders filled is a full-time job. We are going through 7 or 8 pounds of sugar a day. We buy 50 to 75 pounds each time we go to town, don't want to run low, and we rip right through them.