A Few Small Jobs And A Visit To Fisherman’s Wharf

In my blog yesterday, I noted that when I was writing it at 9pm Saturday night it was raining.  I said that “I hope it pours all night”!  Well, I got my wish as it was still drizzling a bit on Sunday morning just enough to put the kibosh on any work out in the yard.  Just as well because since it was Mother’s Day it was only appropriate that Paulette took a day off from any weed pulling and gardening.  The lawns were in good shape so I didn’t have to worry about mowing them either.

I asked for some rain, so what do we get?  Lots of it!

Since, it was going to be an inside morning, I set about doing a couple of very small maintenance jobs I’ve been putting off for unknown reasons.  The first was installing new ink cartridges in my Epson Stylus NX530 printer.  As usual, I got the ink cartridges direct from 123 InkCartidges saving a total of $54 in the process.  The extra high capacity ink cartridges from Epson were $96 but I only paid $42 from 123 InkCartidges.  The print quality is identical to what I got from Epson!

To prevent clogging inkjets, it’s a good idea to turn them off at night

Here’s a little tip to avoid print head clogging for those of you who own Epson InkJet printers – turn your printer off at night!  Epson printers do a "mini-cleaning cycle" when the printer is first turned on. This is to get the ink flowing through the print head. If you never turn the printer off, then these mini-cleaning cycles do not take place.  This might apply to other printers like HP, Lexmark and Canon as well but I’m not sure.  Printing a color page at least once a week is also a good idea.

After I finished up with the ink cartridges, I moved into our family room to get the pilot light lit on our natural gas fireplace.  I always turn the pilot life off before we head south.  The control knobs are not labeled all that well on the control panel so I always need to get the manual out to make sure I’m turning things clockwise or counterclockwise as required.  The pilot light lit up right away and I tested the fireplace with our remote and we had an “instant fireplace” burning away!

After lunch the skies lightened up a little bit so Paulette and I thought we’d better take advantage of it before the next showers moved in.  It was quite cool as well so for the first time this month I brought a light jacket with me as we were going down to the Cowichan River Estuary.  With a wind whipping in off the water, it can get downright cold there even on a warm day.

We did our usual walk out to the end of the Estuary Trail and back.  I was sure glad I brought my jacket because the wind was biting cold even though away from the water it was a very pleasant 65F.  On the way back home, we stopped off to take a walk along the piers at the Cowichan Bay Fisherman’s Wharf. 

There’s always a huge variety of boats tied up on the wharves.  Everything from commercial fishing trawlers to sailboats and big cruisers.  I’ve never owned any kind of boat but from what I’ve heard owning a boat is a lot more expensive than an RV.  Maybe someone who has owned both can chip in on that because I have no real idea – just repeating what I’ve told by a few boat owners.

Sitting in our family room last night watching a couple of TV shows, we were glad we had the fireplace working.  It was a cool night but the fireplace did a great job of keeping us toasty warm!

Have a great Monday, and thanks again for visiting!