Linda made a tofu scramble for breakfast with sautéed onions, mushrooms, and asparagus.  Nutritional yeast, soy sauce, salt, and pepper rounded out the dish.  The texture and taste is very similar to the same dish made with eggs.

We resumed work on the fire pit at 9:30 AM and had it finished by 1 PM with the original burn pile raked out level.  I did not count the number of bricks we used but I think it was around 80.  The weather was much more pleasant for this work than the previous two days with highs in the 70’s, lower humidity, and brisk west winds.  I would like to get a six foot diameter metal fire ring and install it centered in the fire pit and flush with the top of the top course of blocks.  The space between the blocks and the metal ring would be filled with dirt and a top layer of rock such as egg rock.

We had a light lunch of apple slices and chickpea salad spread on rye toast and then got cleaned up.  I worked at my desk for a few hours, off-loading photographs from the Sony alpha 100 and onto my Dell laptop.  I edited blog posts going back to May 26 and uploaded the ones through May 31st.

Ed Roelle (Great Lakes Converted Coaches chapter) called and left a message while were working in the yard.  The message indicated that he had spent the last five days working on his Aqua-Hot hydronic heating system.  Apparently the fresh water tubing was clogged, severely restricting the water flow.  He attributed this to the extremely hard water in Florida where they have spent most of their winters in their Royale Coach bus conversion.  He knew we had just spent the winter there and wanted to make me aware of the potential issue.  I was vaguely aware of having read, or been told, that the Aqua-Hot units really prefer to have softened water run through them.  We have a portable water softener that I used to fill the fresh water tank most if the time we were in Florida, so I am hopeful that we are avoiding this problem to some extent.

We met Kate at The Pound in downtown Brighton at 6:30 PM.  The rooftop patio was being used for a private party so we had to sit downstairs.  They had the roll up doors open, so there was plenty of fresh air.  Kate brought her official certificate from the Guinness Book of World Records for her participation in the Rosie The Riveter event last year at Willow Run Airport.  She brought her iPad and shared photos of some of the places she and Brian had been in the last six months, including the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas.  Kate is a very good photographer, and SXSW affords unique photographic opportunities due to the stage lighting at the various venues.

Linda and I had large dinner salads that were excellent and Kate had a chicken wrap.  A few bottles of beer were consumed as well.  After dinner we went for a stroll on the boardwalk along the Mill Pond.  There were lots of Mallards and Canadian Geese with young but the highlight for use were the turtles and 30″ carp.  As best we could identify them the smaller and more numerous turtles were painted turtles, Michigan’s state reptile.  We also saw half a dozen common snapping turtles, a couple of them quite large.  We strolled around Main Street until we found ourselves in front of Two Brothers Coffee Shop and decided to have an after dinner cup of coffee.  By the time we finished it was after 9:30 PM and Kate needed to get back to Ypsilanti, tomorrow being a work day for her.  We got home and watched the next episode of Doc Martin on Amazon Instant Video.