Sorry(for myself), I have no hiking updates of recent. I really haven’t felt very well, the past couple weekends(don’t know why), AND, the weather has not been very cooperative. This past weekend has been very windy again, a result of a “high” in eastern Washington and a “low” off the coast. The air rushes thru the passes from east to west. No trees down, fortunately, but I really don’t want to be hiking in the woods listening to high winds blowing thru the trees or being blown at the viewing points. Although the temps have been around 55 f. which is quite comfortable for hiking, I guess I’ve just not been “excited” enough to go out and join the throngs of other hikers. But I’m definately missing the exercise.
This weekend Wendy and I went shopping for a new range for the kitchen. Our current range was new in the house in ’93 when we bought it and its served us well for 16 years but the oven temps are 5 deg cooler than what it says and the coating inside the oven is cracking and flaking off now, and the middle rack no longer comes out because its warped. So its really time to get a new one. This will be Wendys birthday present, and she has picked out an electric unit with a smoothtop and a double oven, the large bottom oven being convection. Its a new GE unit that is rated pretty high according to Consumer Reports.
Our range now is a “set-in” or “drop-in” model, and the new one she wants is a freestanding model. So I will need to make some modifications to the countertop and cabinet trim around it, as well as install an electrical plug(hard wire is no longer code permitted), to allow the new unit to fit. It’ll take me a day or less to do this I figure. We thought about retrofitting the house for gas, but that would probably add a thousand dollars to cost, and with propane at $2.25.gal now and not likely to go down, electricity is cheaper, and should be for a long time to come. Consumer Reports also suggests that the electric smoothtop stove burners heat much more rapidly now than ever before so the effectiveness of gas/propane is less in our opinion. Anyway, I’ll post an update once its installed.