All clear

We were well prepared; we cleared out the yard; all after school activities were canceled. But the storm blew past by yesterday evening. The highest winds we had were around 37 miles per hour with heavy rain. The kids were surprised at how warm the rain and wind were. They are used to thunderstorms, which usually bring cooler air. The tropical storm brought warm, humid air.

It was a hot, clear day today. John and Patrick worked in the yard, and the kids played outside most of the afternoon. What a blessing our yard is! We have to work to keep it up, but it is very nice to have it there, with the fence to keep Matthew safe, and the space to let him run out with the older kids without being too far from Mom.

Patrick also got over to base for a run with the scouts who are working on the Personal Fitness merit badge. He needs to run every day anyway for cross country and figured it would be more fun to run with other people than all alone.

I did laundry. The boys' sleeping bags desperately needed a wash. Their Philmont packs arrived safely home this week--less than six weeks since we mailed them from Illinois. So I took a field trip to the Japanese laundromat and learned all about Kanji labels on change machines, washers large enough to do 35 kg of laundry (or 3 sleeping bags and a quilt), and dryer heat and timing. The washer was pretty much like the commercial washers in the U.S. Laundry goes in the front, soap in the top, money in the slot (lots of money: 1400 yen for the largest washer and 100 yen for 6 minutes of drying time--yikes!!), press the green button, and the washer starts.

Japanese laundromat dryers inform you of the temperature of the dryer at each setting: low is 60C, medium is 70C, and high is 80C. I'm terrible at Celsius to Fahrenheit conversions, so I took a guess and picked low. 60 sounded hot enough. Since I have no idea of the actual temperatures of American dryers on low, medium, or high, my conversion-challenged-ness didn't really matter anyway.

The bags dried in 48 minutes, so whatever temperature it was, it worked.

I washed Katie's quilt with the sleeping bags, but I was able to hang it out to dry in our sunny, breezy yard. I almost never hang laundry out, especially here with all the rain we get, but it was the perfect day to give it a try. The quilt was dry by dinnertime and sunshine fresh without the Bounce sheet ;-)

We had a pretty uneventful day when you consider the fact that yesterday we had a typhoon.