Remembering C-Band

When I got home from church on Sunday, the husband said, “Did you see that I took down the satellite dish?”

No, not dish as in DISH Network dish—the satellite dish. We’ve had one standing in the front yard since we bought the place in 1994. I used it as a landmark when directing people to our house. We were probably the last people in Flathead County to have one still standing.

I had never seen or used a satellite dish system until we moved to Montana. The antenna on our 14 x 70 trailer picked up only two stations: the local NBC affiliate and the PBS station from Spokane. The satellite dish allowed for slightly more expanded viewing offerings. Thankfully, our neighbor, Mike—who lived in what is now our rental house—was friends with another guy named Norm, who serviced satellite dishes and sold all the cards, etc., for the receivers. Norm brought me up to speed on how the dish worked and let us know whenever we needed an upgrade.

We used that dish until it could not be used anymore, even moving the wiring over to this house when we built it in 1996. That satellite dish brought me FX, HGTV, football, HBO for the husband, and hours of kids’ shows for the girls. What did it matter that finding and locking in on the satellites took several precious minutes of TV viewing time? What if only one person (me) knew what stations were on which satellite? Who cares that I had to slog out there in boots and my bathrobe the morning after a snowstorm to brush the snow off the dish to get a signal? LOL.

The old satellite dish is in the dump trailer, ready to be hauled away:

And we have space in the front yard for another fruit tree or two:

That is the end of an era.

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I had an echocardiogram at 7:30 yesterday morning. The tech let me watch the screen while he worked, so I got to see the inner workings of my heart. I am no expert on echos, but I didn’t see anything grossly abnormal. I meet with the cardiologist again at the end of the month.

The craft co-op that I joined meets on Thursday, so I stopped in on my way home from town to pay my membership fee and pick up tags for the sale. The other members brought me up to speed on what to expect. The sale will be held at our church, in the fellowship hall. I have a minuscule amount of product compared to some of these women—they’ve had two years to amass inventory since the last sale—but I’ll take what I have and see what happens. If nothing else, this will give me a better idea of what to expect if I do this again. I’ve got four days blocked out of my calendar in two weeks to help with set-up, selling, and take-down. In between now and then, I need to get my stuff tagged.

I said to the husband last night that I am feeling a bit overwhelmed. This happens every year around this time. When the girls were in school, I was fairly adept at being in three places simultaneously, but I no longer have that ability. The months of May and September are always crunch times just from a gardening standpoint, and this year I’ve added a trip with Tera and a co-op sale to the calendar. Things will ease up by October; in the meantime, I just need to pay close attention to my calendar and to-do list.

The first task this morning is to go out and harvest all the Cherokee Purple tomatoes. I did Dirty Girls and paste tomatoes on Wednesday, but left the Cherokee Purples to ripen a bit more. Rain is in the forecast for this afternoon, though. They need to come in. I think this will be it for tomatoes. We have what we need. I’ll leave the vines for a bit yet in case any of my local peeps want to come and get some (coughMarciecough). I’ve got batch #3 of salsa underway, to be canned this afternoon.

It might rain tomorrow, too, in which case I plan to treat myself to a sewing day. I haven’t had one of those in a while.