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March 23, 2007

IT'S FRIDAY, MY FAVORITE DAY!!

It's officially here! Yes, spring has finally arrived and so have the "partly sunny" days and "light" rainfall. It is still too wet to do any yard work so I must be content at looking out the window and watching the weeds grow. I did manage to put some lime and fertilizer on the grass. I discussed this with my son-in-law who is an expert on lawn maintenance and he told me what to get. His lawn always is the envy of their neighborhood. So we went to the nursery and bought this special lawn stuff and with the advice from the proprietor, we hauled a sack of lime and fertilizer home. I ran out of lime because I put it on too thick so had to pick up another sack when we were in town this week. My nursery plants are coming along, but not as fast I as would like. Maybe by the end of summer, I will have some marigolds to plant. The cucumbers are doing a lot better and I transplanted them into their containers that I will place outside by the garden when it gets a little warmer outside.

Even though it still has been too cool to work outside, we have managed to work on some of our inside projects. I put a second coat of paint on the nightstand that I will use between the bunkbeds in the supply room. Dave moved the refrigerator and freezer to the supply room so that he won't have to wrestle with them after he has the walls up. They got their annual defrost and cleaning so they are looking good again. It is amazing what you find hidden in the back of a freezer when you don't defrost very often! We also got the shelving up on the walls and got started on framing the room. It is beginning to look like we are making some progress. I had decided I wanted to put vinyl flooring in that room, instead of just leaving the bare concrete floors. But when we contacted the people that did the flooring in the adjacent bath and hall eight years ago, they said that pattern is no longer available and besides, even if it was available, they can't do anything until May. So I'm not sure what we're going to end up with, but for now, it looks like concrete floors!

I have to tell a story about what happened while cleaning up the work area downstairs. One of the tools Dave has uses .22 caliber ammunition to shoot nails into concrete. Somehow in all the mess, one of the "bullets" got dropped on the floor. I mean, one of the live rounds. When I was vacuuming, I sucked the thing up and as soon as it hit the canister - BANG - it exploded! There was no damage. It's not a real bullet, it's more like a blank, but it still scared the daylights out of me! Dave is vacuuming the work area at the end of each day now!

We had a nice corned beef and cabbage dinner for St. Patty's Day. Des and Donna invited us down for the occasion and it was a lot of fun. We ended up making some plans for a motorhome tour next spring down in the Canyonlands in Utah. We were discussing how we wanted to explore that part of the country and of course the Kahrs have been there many times and were excited to share some of their experiences. In fact, they want to meet us for a few days on our trip. It really would be a lot of fun. It started by telling them of a trip we would like to take and all the reasons we couldn't take it. We would like to go south through California, over to Arizona and New Mexico, then back north through Colorado and Montana before heading back home through Idaho, Washington and Oregon. It would be about 5000 miles and if we stayed in hotels, would be way too expensive. When D&D asked why we wouldn't take the motorhome, we said that it was too old and not that trustworthy. They didn't want to hear anything about that! Actually, what they said was that breaking down is half the adventure! By the time the evening was over, we pretty much committed to doing the trip! A lot of things have to come together in the next year for us to do that, but at least it sounds like a possibility!

We had to go into Portland on Sunday for a game and since we got to leave our equipment in place after the game, we headed home a lot sooner. But we had to turn around and come back into Portland on Tuesday for another game. Again, we drove home after the game. One of the guys Dave works with on his broadcast noticed that Dave was singing along to some Credence Clearwater Revival that he was playing down the network. So he offered to burn a copy of the CD and bring it to a game for us. Both Sunday and Tuesday nights, we were keeping ourselves awake singing along to CCR all the way home! Thanks Rich! Tuesday, it was after 1:00 AM before we got into the driveway and it sure made for a short night. Of course, I wanted to get up early and go to my water aerobics class because this is the last week before Spring Break.

We are looking forward to next week. We will be making our semi-annual trip to the Shakespeare Festival in Ashland to see some plays, so we will be leaving Monday afternoon for that. We will only be there a couple of days because we have a Blazer game in Portland on Thursday night, Dave has a lacrosse broadcast on Friday night, and then another Blazer game on Saturday night. It'll be another of those "whirlwind" weeks; nearly a thousand miles on the car in 6 days! Because of that hectic schedule, I may be a bit late posting next week.

Since Jadyn will be 4 years old on April 3rd and Paige will be 5 years old on April 9th and throw Easter in there too, we are going to combine everything on Sunday before we make it back home again.