I’m very glad my Toastmasters meeting this morning was on Zoom and not in person, even though it meant my speech for the “Effective Body Language” project was less effective than I’d’ve liked. We had sixteen attendees. Two of them had had the worst headaches of their lives this week. One of them was Covid-positive, and the other was waiting for PCR test results; we also had at least one member who was unable to attend due to a sudden health issue.

After the meeting, we took our usual walks, and then I tackled the Traeger grill. Replacing the fire pot was easy after I watched the videos on this page; the igniter looked like it was in good shape, so I plugged everything back in and fired it up. My infrared thermometer showed the igniter heating up well over 250F within just a couple of minutes, so I added pellets – and nothing happened.

So I took it apart again to replace the igniter. The official instructions tell you to remove the control panel and the pellet hopper, but the unofficial video I watched suggested taping the wires of the new rod to the old one and using the old one to fish the wires through the holes as you remove it. I couldn’t make that work, so I followed the official instructions and removed the hopper – it took less time than I’d spent trying the other method. And it let me vacuum out a ton of pellet dust from otherwise-inaccessible areas, too.

Finally, I buttoned it all up again and turned it on; this time, the igniter got up over 500F, so I put in the pellets and let it rip. A couple of minutes later, I had fire in the hole!

Not only did today have fire, it had ice. Well, Björk liqueur from Iceland – we’d bought a tiny bottle from the duty-free shop at the Reykjavik airport on our way home, and we decided to have it tonight. It’s made from birch syrup and sugar (and alcohol!); we were surprised to discover a little birch twig in the bottle, too.

It was odd and rather sweet. I’m glad we only bought a 5cl bottle. It’s not the last Icelandic delicacy left from the trip – we still have a few chocolate discs, which are pretty good (even if they are milk chocolate). And Cost Plus had some Icelandic chocolate bars the last time I looked, but that was a few months ago. We may just have to plan another trip!

I am pleased that I didn’t have to deal with any airlines or shipping companies today. Instead, we took a 5k walk on the Campbell segment of the Los Gatos Creek Trail with the South Bay Striders, enjoying the beautiful weather (though we need rain).

This part of the trail has a few pedestrian bridges over the creek as well as an underpass to get walkers and bikers beyond the bridge that carries the San Tomas Expressway over the creek. You can see some of the other walkers in the group and a reflection up ahead of one of the pedestrian bridges we crossed on the walk.

I was really surprised to see a poppy in full bloom already – they’re usually not out for another few weeks. There will be more poppies soon, but it was nice to see this one today!