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September 24, 2010

IT'S FRIDAY, MY FAVORITE DAY!!

Jan

Friday night, with more than just a little apprehension, I attended my high school's 50th reunion. I was a little nervous because I didn't know what to expect. But after arriving, I enjoyed myself and really got into getting reacquainted with a lot of old classmates. It wasn't too hard to recognize the gals from our class, but the guys had changed so much that I wouldn't have recognized a lot of them without their nametags. Fortunately, we did the same as Dave's class and included our graduation picture on the nametag. That was a lifesaver! Now here's where it starts to get weird. It seems it was also "confession" night with some of the guys coming up to me and telling me how they had a crush on me in high school. Huh? Why are they telling me now? Where were you guys 50 years ago??

Jan, Bob

The reunion continued with a dinner buffet at the Meriweather Golf Course on Saturday evening. Most of the classmates who attended Friday night showed up Saturday with their spouses and there were several others who didn't attend Friday night who did join us on Saturday. It was quite an evening and the committee who put the whole thing together did a great job. We were handed a "goodie bag" with a commemorative coffee mug filled with old-time candies, a memorial book with everyone's current information and activities as well as a ticket for door prizes. The organizing committee really outdid themselves with the door prizes; there must have been 30 of them! Now, I NEVER win anything, but because there were lots and lots of goodies, I was feeling pretty lucky. Well, they went through all the prizes and of course my number never came up. They skirted around it several times but never called that exact number.

I WON!

I wasn't too terribly surprised that I didn't win a door prize - as I said, I never do. We kind of thought that not winning was going to be a good thing, because they were going to draw another ticket for three days and two nights at a condo in Seaside. Since they had given away all the other prizes, we figured we had pretty good shot at that with only a few remaining tickets. Right? Wrong! They put all the tickets that had won door prizes back into the hat for that drawing! Naturally, I didn't win that either - although I don't know what I would have done with a condo a half-hour up the coast from us. Anyway, we thought it was all over when one more big surprise was announced at the very end of the evening. At each table - taped under one of the chairs - was an envelope. In the envelope was a certificate for $50.00 in cash and guess whose chair was the winner at our table?? I WON!! I'll take $50.00 over any stinkin' door prize anyway!! It made for a great ending to a very nice evening.

Leslie and family

I decided to skip the reunion picnic on Sunday. The weather was threatening rain and I had visited with all the people that I wanted to over the two previous evenings. I felt one more day would have been overdoing it. We decided to drive home by way of Silverton so we could stop and visit with Leslie and her family. I had a couple of souvenirs from Alaska that I wanted to give them and also to return the cooler we had borrowed to bring home the frozen pork. We hadn't seen them for a while and enjoyed our visit.

Monday, my water aerobics class began again. The instructor was pretty easy on us as we had been away from our class for a couple of weeks. I was huffin' and puffin' by the time we were done anyway. As the week went on, she slowly got us back up to speed. It feels great to be back at it again, although my knee has been letting me know that it doesn't like the activity. The knee has been stiff and sore for quite awhile and when the doctor took an x-ray, he couldn't find anything wrong. So I guess I will have to break down and have an MRI to see if anything shows up. I'm not looking forward to that! My middle name is "Claustrophobia" and getting inside that loud, confined space just isn't worth it to me. There is an "Open MRI" machine on the other side of Portland, and if I have to go, I'll go there.

Kubota

Fall returned this week. I don't like changes, but the seasons are always about changes. We didn't have much of a summer this year so I think Mother Nature cheated us a little. I am not ready for the change and hopefully we still have a few days of sunshine before the bad weather hits. The next few days look like they'll be sunny. We did have had a taste of what's to come this Fall with nothing but rain for the past week, and that kept me indoors most of the time. We had to have the propane guy come by and fill the tank so we can run the fireplace and get the chill off during these damp evenings.

Done

We did have a couple of breaks in the rain and so I took advantage of that. This has been a real busy week for Dave (five meetings, two doctor's appointments and one volunteer gig in three days) but I finally "scheduled" some time for him to help me rid an area in the yard of some Tam Juniper bushes. I call it "Phase I" of my project. I want to re-landscape the area with a Japanese theme, water fountain and some shrubs and rocks. I cleared most of the area so he could get in with the Kubota to remove the shrubs that I couldn't budge. Even the tractor had a hard time pulling those Junipers out, but we yanked and pulled and lifted with the tractor and finally got it cleaned out except for a couple of ferns that are growing out of tree stumps. "Phase II" will be to remove the stumps so I can start planting. There used to be four birch trees in this area but they had long since been cut down and all that was remaining of them are the stumps that were half rotten.

Nothing too exciting is happening this weekend, other than I volunteered to help with the "Buy a Blanket for the Red Cross" campaign on Saturday at the Fred Meyer store in Tillamook. Also, our oldest granddaughter, Ashtin is playing soccer in Hillsboro on Sunday and we think we might run into town to watch her play.