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May 21, 2010

IT'S FRIDAY, MY FAVORITE DAY!!

Last Friday, we took the day off from some of our projects around here and headed up to Seaside and Warrenton for an optician appointment, servicing the Chevy and a Costco shopping trip.

I had my eyes examined in March and decided it was time to get that prescription filled. I haven't had a new set of eyeglasses in almost ten years. My old glasses have been repaired many times and the UV protection has worn off, so I was more than due for new ones. Dave needed a new pair too, so it was double duty. I picked out a really nice pair and by the time I got all the bells and whistles (UV protection, self-darkening, scratch resistance, etc.), I felt like I needed to take out a loan from the bank! We don't have vision insurance and it turned out to be quite expensive, so I am glad I don't have to go through that very often. We also looked for a pair of reading glasses for Dave to replace the nine-dollar drug store ones he wears but they couldn't find anything that would fit his needs. How can someone who wears cheap plastic specs off the bargain rack suddenly become so picky? They are still looking for something for him.

After the initial shock of ordering new glasses, we headed for Costco and picked up various items that were running low in our supply room. We grazed our way down the various aisles, as they always have samples for us to try. I hate to say it, but we ate so may "freebies" that we didn't need lunch and weren't really hungry for dinner either! After Costco, we had an appointment at the Chevy place for them to look into the "Passenger Air Bag Light" that kept showing up on the dash. But, wouldn't you know it, the Chevy seemed to sense that we were going to have it looked into and decided not to display that light. How did it know? Anyway, they couldn't trace the problem because the light wasn't on so we had them change the oil while we were there, just to keep it from being a wasted trip. They also washed it! That evening, we were invited to the Kahrs' for dinner as their son, Devin was visiting so I got out of cooking.

This was a week of lots of driving back and forth to town. On Saturday, Dave attended the Hillsboro funeral of his college broadcasting professor, Dr. Scheller. He had been one of the influential people in Dave's life and he felt like he needed to make the trip in there for the service. He saw a bunch of his old classmates and was glad he made the trip. However, it was a "run-in-and-run-back-home" thing and so that took up most of that day. On Sunday, we turned around and went back into West Linn as we were celebrating a belated Mother's Day and birthdays for Jaysa, Leslie and Jason and also to watch our granddaughters Jadyn and Jaysa perform in their dance recital. It was mostly Jadyn as Jaysa got stage fright at the last minute and wouldn't come on stage to dance with her group. However, Jadyn was in her element as she is quite the "ham" anyway. You can't tell because we were in the back of the auditorium taking pics with the cell phone, but she's on the extreme left in the photo. After that, we headed back home again as we wanted to be able to catch at least one day of sunshine to work on the church and pull weeds in the yard.

One last trip this week into town on Tuesday for Dave to attend a Trail Blazer post-season luncheon and for me to take Jaysa out to lunch and shopping for her birthday. But that morning before we left for our trip, some steamboat friends called who were in the neighborhood and we met them for breakfast. We hated to rush through breakfast, but we had to get on the road because we had deadlines for the lunch plans. Jaysa had a great time at lunch and at the mall. I must have worn her out while we were shopping because she fell asleep on the way back to her place. Again, we drove back the same day as Dave had a city council meeting in Wheeler that night.

We had another strong windstorm on Wednesday with gusts of about 40 mph. It was blowing so strong that it knocked a small tree down and it bounced off the cable TV lines in front of our place. We have been having cable problems ever since and I finally called to have someone come out and look at it today. I also ended up taking down all my hanging baskets that I had placed outside because the winds were so strong that it was breaking the branches off some of my flowers! The poor birds were almost carried away to the next county! With the exception of a day or two, the weather has been terrible - more like December than May!

I received my notice in the mail from the DMV that I needed to renew my driver's license and they gave me a list of all the documents that I needed to provide to prove my identity. Good grief! So I took along my Social Security card, passport and an electrical bill to validate my residence. I failed to notice that on the electrical bill, our old address was still listed so I had to tap dance around that issue. We had our home address revised to show that we live on Gamble Street instead of Nehalem Blvd. but the utility company hadn't changed it on our bill. Anyway, I finally convinced them that I am who I am, and they gave me an eye exam and took a new picture. I failed the eye exam, but was able to convince them that my new glasses would take care of that problem. And then they took my picture. Good grief! That picture is enough to scare my grandchildren! After I left there with my new license, I decided to stop by the utility company and get the address corrected, only to find out that I had to go up to the County Courthouse and get a "written" statement from them that our new address was correct. When I got to the Courthouse, they tried to give me the runaround that I needed a letter from the City of Wheeler! I told them "no way" and that the utility company wanted something from the county, not the city. So they wound up giving me a photocopy of the information they had on file and that seemed to satisfy the utility company. I will make sure to check that they changed that address on my next bill. Oh, the bureaucracy hoops that one must go through these days.

We will be driving into Silverton to watch our granddaughter Paige play her last game of the soccer season on Saturday. She loves to play! Last weekend she scored seven goals in one game and then turned right around and scored three more goals in her second game. And in the second game, she was playing against girls two or three years older than she is! She is really fun to watch. We are dreaming of a college scholarship when she gets older.

There's not enough progress on the church to show in pictures, but the guys did get a lot of structural stuff taken care of in the two days they worked this last week. They managed to raise the roof enough to repair the top of the north wall and then they completely reinforced the wobbly old back wall. Now, they're just about ready to jack up both walls and replace the foundation under them. Once that's done, everything will be in good shape from the foundation up through the roof. It will be nice to get to that part of the project.