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October 7, 2005
IT'S FRIDAY, MY FAVORITE DAY!!
We left early last Friday for Everett with the steamboat in tow. We managed to make it through Seattle before the dreaded rush hour traffic and up to our destination by 2:30 in the afternoon in one piece. That's still one of the worst drives around - with or without a boat in tow. From the time you hit Olympia until you pull off the freeway in Everett, it's just like one hundred miles in one big city. Four lanes of lunatics! We were so tired, we were wiped out by the time we got there. We dropped the boat off with the boatwright and then decided to make a quick tour around Everett as Dave used to live there. Actually, he was born there and moved to Oregon before his first birthday. He wanted to see if a couple of places where his parents lived were still around. One house was still there, although it was a lot worse for wear. The other house used to be higher up on the hill and had been torn down and replaced with something more suited to the view.
We had been invited to spend Friday night with some steamboat friends, Dan and Marian Martin, who live on Lake Stevens. Dan's shop is helping with the repairs. They have a real interesting home with lots of steam stuff around. When you come to their door, you don't push a button for the doorbell, you pull on this rope, which travels on pulleys through the wall and up to a ship's telegraph, which "gongs" in response to the pull. Sitting just inside the door is this huge steam whistle. I'm glad he didn't have the doorbell attached to that! That evening, we had a nice dinner out with them and a few other boating friends.
Dave is on the board of directors for the Steam Society and had to attend a board meeting in Seattle on Saturday. While he was doing his thing, I headed for the kitchen and helped the hostess with lunch preparations. After a delicious lunch, we headed back home. I felt like I was coming down with a cold again and we were really anxious to get the heck out of Seattle. On the way home, just outside of Tacoma, we witnessed a car doing a 180-degree spin in the middle of the 5-lane freeway, coming to a stop within inches of the car just in front of us. Boy was that scary! I am glad it happened on the way home, instead of on the way up there when we had the boat behind us! Luckily, she didn't do any damage to anyone. It just made us thankful that we don't have to travel this route every day. Anyway, it took us six hours to get up there with the boat and only 4 1/2 to get back. We got home around 7:30 that night.
Sunday, Dave went down to Ray's workshop and the two of them made sawdust. I just layed around most of the day and watched it rain! It was coming down so hard that I could hardly hear myself talk! There's a downspout just outside our office window, and the rainwater was shooting two feet out the end of that thing! I think Fall is definitely here to stay. Most of the leaves haven't begun to drop yet, but it sure is a lot cooler at night and it won't be long before the ol' flannel sheets go on the bed! Speaking of that, we have been turning on our electric blanket for the past couple of weeks, but it didn't seem to be doing a whole lot of good. Dave was checking things out and discovered that the controls had gotten unplugged from the blanket! We fixed that problem in a hurry! The question is; why did it take us two weeks to figure out that it wasn't working? Must be some sort of psychological thing that if you turn the switch on, you feel warmer even if the plug is five feet from the blanket!
The rest of the week has been pretty much "same ol' same ol'" with housework and aerobics classes. Since the weather has been pretty wet, I have been unable to do anything outside. So I got an indoor project to keep me busy! I have been sorting and putting my stamp collection together. These are stamps that I have collected for the past 26 years while I worked at Tektronix. The company has trademarks throughout the world, so we corresponded with a lot of countries and I saved all the stamps! There must be a zillion of them! At least it felt like it while I was sorting them all out. I put them in country order and then went through each stamp to create a page for each country. At one time I was going to make jewelry out of them and I might still do that as I have a lot of stamps left over.
Today we are heading back into Portland. Dave has to get his blood tested to see how he's doing while taking Lipitor. I have a hair appointment and am also getting a pedicure. I hope to go with Lara and the girls out to the pumpkin patch this weekend if the weather stays dry. Dave also will be announcing the races tonight and Saturday night. The end of this month will be the last of the races for the year, and we'll be done with that. But guess what? Blazer season begins next week and Sunday night he has to do a "dry" run of the broadcast at a public scrimmage game. The first preseason game at home is this coming Wednesday. ~~sigh~~ It never ends.
Have a great week!
