It’s so nice being here in Portland with Gabe.  Portland is such a.n interesting climate. Its been on and off cold and rainy with occasional sun. Despite the cold they stoll have flowers and vegetables growing. I found this tomato in Gabes garden particularly friendly
 

One thing we love about coming here is the small jobs we get to do to help him maintain his house.   We learn from these.. and build skills we can apply touour house. Today we did a mod to his fridge to clear the blockage that is causing ice build ups when the freezer goes into auto defrost. Its a bit like the problem we have on our fridge at home.. but it looks like Gabes is hopefully easier to fix. We took the freezer apart , foudn the defrost heater and crimped a length of thick coper wire aroudn it, with the other end of the wire going through the drainage hole. The internet says that will work.. we’ll see. 

Next job was to clean out the dryer vent.. . glad we did..w e know two freinds who’ve had house fires because of not cleaning their vents.  We used a very cool flexible brush you fit into a drill that gabe had.. Pretty fun. I felt like the chimney sweeps in mary poppins

Who knew xchores could be so fun ? 

nite all, nite sam
-me