All of the younger generation left this weekend, leaving me as the youngest person still in residence on Curmudgeon Court. Anne and Bill threw one heck of a party last night that sent everyone off to all points with full bellies. Anne and I have begun the end of season cabin cleanup that is made somewhat difficult by a sudden lack of recycling facilities. The Soo’s center was knocked out by a busted boiler, but why you need a boiler in hot weather like it is up here, is a mystery to me. The Bay Mills recycling center was also closed, with their blue trailer gone walkabout. In Monterey the house sale is moving slower than we had hoped. This means that we have time on our hands and do not need to rush back to California to move the furniture.

This would normally give us more time to address the cabin’s electrical issues, but we have made zero progress on that front. Our resident electrician, George Maas, who lives two cabins down, is fully engaged rebuilding his own cabin after it burned last year. He did take time out to diagnosis our problem. Forty years ago, when the kitchen porch was built, the breaker box was wired for 100A, even though the exterior service lines are only rated for 60A. Why this was done, I do not know. We discovered the outcome of this decision last week, when the power company came out to replace the meter and found scorching everywhere around it. Getting a licensed electrician would be great, but George is busy, his recommended replacement, Roy, is unresponsive and is retiring soon. None of the other electricians are available either. Either their phone’s mailbox is full, they do not do residential, they live in Canada and do not work in the States, they live downstate and do not work in the UP or they are an untrustworthy (Grinch) joke (Cloverland). I thought that replacing the 100A breaker with a 60A one would be a good stopgap measure, but Anne nixed that idea, even if it kept the cabin from burning. One positive note, I figured out that I can get the fluorescent bathroom light to ignite by turning on the switch and then touching the bare bulb. I guess in this one regard, I am well grounded.