Tuesday, August 7 -- House news, here and in Waterville

OK, so it's been awhile since I even thought about the house in Waterville. But my realtor called today, and the young couple who looked at it awhile back have applied for a loan. It actually looks as though I may sell the place at some time in the future! When that happens, Barry and I will have to trek back to Maine to clean out the rest of the cellar -- mostly tools and gardening items, the stuff that wouldn't fit in the truck we rented to come down here.

Speaking about "down here", the agent who is selling this house called today to ask for an extension on the sale date to August 31, and the problems with the title apparently are on the way to being solved. So about the time I sell the place in Maine we should close on the place in Kentucky.

After dinner and after the agent left, we took a trek around the knobs. We drove about 26 miles in a circle over near Gravel Switch, past Penn's Store (though we never DID find it -- that was our destination originally), then back around through Maxey Valley and Gordon Lick Road to home. As weird as it may seem, a "lick" in Kentucky is a place where salt has accumulated from the erosion, and deer are attracted to it, to "lick" the salt. It has nothing to do with licking Gordon, whomever he may be! Most of the roads here in the Knobs are barely 2-lane, and Maxey Valley Road was no exception. If I had encountered another vehicle anywhere along the 9 mile road, someone would have had to back up quite a ways! But all we encountered was a deer, a few rabbits, and three dogs which chased the truck about a mile. Kentucky doesn't have leash laws -- or at least in the Knobs, there are none.

I'm continuing to work on locating the cemeteries of Casey County. I have a very detailed road map that shows most of them, and I have a list of 180 cemeteries that are known. Now all I have to do is to see if I can match the list (which sometimes gives latitude, longitude, and a map) to the road map. Then I can check which ones have been transcribed and photographed, so I can help finish the project. It's quite massive, and I'd estimate that about 120 cemeteries are done already.

I said I'd get some photos of the fish -- here they are. The pictures can be clicked to see our "pets" nearly full-sized! The catfish are trained now and they vacuum the surface cleaning up about 3 cups of fish food in 7 minutes! Sounds like me at dinner!

We got a call from Bardstown this afternoon -- the heat index for tomorrow night's performance of "Stephen Foster - the Musical" will likely be so high they're moving the performance to the auditorium at Bardstown High School. Now that may not sound like much, but we decided to cancel, since the major "thrill" of seeing the performance, is seeing it outdoors, with cicadas chirping, people fanning themselves, and everyone singing "My Old Kentucky Home" and hearing it echo from the sides of the outdoor amphitheatre. Anyway, they're mailing the tickets to us and we can use them for any performance this year OR next! We will pick an evening when the temps aren't 85 degrees and humid.

It got to nearly 100 here today, but as the heat rose, the humidity dropped, so it actually wans't that bad as long as one only sat and read -- as I did -- "The New History of Kentucky" -- which I said I WILL finish this summer, though I understand the school buses are rolling now, here in Casey County, they began a week ago in Harrodsburg.

Oh how I miss the opening day workshops on 27 and 28 August -- NOT!

OK, bedtime now -- I'm getting silly.