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September 30, 2005

IT'S FRIDAY, MY FAVORITE DAY!!

After a weekend of getting re-acquainted with old classmates at my 45th high school reunion, it is back to my usual routine at home.

It all started last Friday at our class reunion where we had a social gathering at a local park facility in Hillsboro. My girlfriend, Carol Stapleton Briggs whom I had hung around with most of my high school days was there. It was sure good to see her after all these years. It isn't that she lives so far away, but it is just that we were so darn busy raising our families and working, that we never kept in contact. Saturday night was the buffet at the golf course where more people showed up. We even had a couple of teachers attend. Most of the gals at the reunion looked great, but the guys were the ones that I didn't recognize. Everyone looked "older" than me of course! Ha! Ha!

We had spent the weekend at our friend's condo in Hillsboro so we wouldn't have to go back and forth for the reunion on Friday and Saturday nights. They weren't there, but left us in charge of their little dog, Oliver. I think he is a Lhasa Apso, and is a really good little dog.

Saturday afternoon, between reunion functions, we headed down to Salem to watch our oldest granddaughter, Ashtin play soccer. Boy did that bring back a lot of memories. Leslie, her Mom was quite the soccer player and we used to watch her play all the time. In fact, when she finally quit playing, we had withdrawals from not attending any soccer games! It was fun to see Ashtin play and although it is her first year, she is getting to play the game pretty good and seems to enjoy it. They won their game and she was a little disappointed that she didn't score a goal, but she had plenty of assists and we told her that was just as important.

We left for home on Sunday and are getting back into some kind of routine. My water aerobics classes started on Monday and it felt good to get back into an exercise program again. We also invited a good friend, Barb Matson for dinner the other night. She used to live here but now lives in Southern California. She is staying in town for a few months and it was nice seeing her again and getting caught up with her life.

The wildlife is sticking around the place. We have had a lot of Goldfinches on the feeder - the other day we counted eight of them on there at once. The other night, after I had gone to bed, Dave was telling me that there was a family of raccoons on the deck. One actually peeked at him through the window as if to say "Hello, anybody at home?" Dave was reading at the time and just caught some movement out of the corner of his eye. He looked over and saw the raccoon looking back at him and it scared the bejeebers out of him!

We also did some clearing out in the church so we could board up the old front door that faces the highway. It's been locked for years. Apparently, while we were away, someone broke the lock and tried to get in. I am sure they were discouraged once they opened the door and saw what a mess there was blocking the doorway! Over the years, the old entryway had become a small room to just throw stuff into from the inside. It was piled high up against the door. I am surprised that they could even get the door open! Or that when they did, they weren't killed in the avalanche! Anyway, if we keep chipping away at the mess, some day it will be all cleared up and we can restore the building and make Dave a woodworking shop.

Today we are taking the steamboat up to Everett, Washington to a boatwright to get it repaired. We were going to go up the peninsula and take the Kingston ferry over to Edmonds and then on up to Everett, just so we could avoid the Seattle traffic. But they wanted $66 to ride across on the ferry with the Suburban and the trailer. It would have been nice, but it won't cost us nearly that much in fuel to go through Seattle. We may be nervous wrecks after towing the boat through the Seattle traffic, but we won't be donating any $66 to the Washington State Ferry System! On our way back from Everett, we have to go into Seattle anyway as Dave has a board meeting to attend on Saturday. We will be trying to take care of a couple of things while we are up north. The price of gas these days, you have to do multiple tasks on one run. We don't know how much damage there is to the boat or how long it will take to get it repaired, or how much it is going to cost either. But it is something that we MUST do, so we are doing it.

Happy fall to everyone!