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July 28, 2006
IT'S FRIDAY, MY FAVORITE DAY!!
Not a whole lot happening this week in my life.
I came back from Portland on Friday and when I headed back the car thermometer read 102 degrees but by the time I got home it read 72 degrees. It felt wonderful. The weather has been absolutely incredible down here at the coast while the folks in the valley have had stifling hot heat. Dave had to stay in town for the LeMans races and there was no way that I was going to stick around.
I managed to catch this beautiful sunset on Friday night after I got back home. It was about 9:00 p.m. and I was out on the deck in my nightgown trying to capture the moment. I don't know what the neighbors must have thought.
Anyway, to beat the heat, Lara and Greg came down on Saturday. The beach was beautiful and the girls really enjoyed playing in the sand. They spent the night and left Sunday evening for home. What normally is a 1 hour and 45 minute drive took them over 3 hours. They said there were so many people coming home from the beach that they just had to get in line. There was also a car that had caught on fire up on Humbug Mountain so that slowed things down even more.
We have a walker! I am here to announce that our youngest granddaughter, Jaysa - who is 14-1/2 months old - finally got brave enough and decided to take off walking on her own. I was getting a little concerned and didn't think she was ever going to walk. She has been walking around furniture for quite awhile and didn't mind being carried around the rest of the time. Last weekend while they were down here, she would stumble from one person to another - as long as it wasn't more than about four steps! Now that has all changed and life is really going to get interesting around that household!
I picked my first red tomato the other day. My garden is really coming along with carrots, lettuce, cucumbers and beets. I also planted an herb garden this year with rosemary, sage, dill, basil, parsley and marjariom. Since the weather has been unusually warm, I have had to do a lot of watering. We also get an ocean breeze that comes up in the afternoons that tends to dry things out quite a bit. There has been the on-going yard work as well.
In addition to the garden, I've been keeping all the planters going. There are several out on the front deck and right now, they're all looking pretty good. Again though, I really have to keep them watered, and if I'm gone for a few days, they don't like it! The front deck is where we get most of the afternoon breeze off the ocean and they'll dry out pretty quick if I don't keep them watered. As if we didn't have enough to keep us busy around this place, the Business Association is in the process of beautifying the city of Wheeler, so we have been helping with that. Last week, I helped plant ten huge planters full of flowers and shrubs to place around town to make it look nice while Dave roto-tilled the area uptown where some more shrubs will be planted later this month. I am on the Parks Committee, so we are now making plans to improve the Waterfront Park.
We still haven't got the Captain Bell in the water this year. We had some problems with the feedwater pump and Dave thought he had that solved and then discovered another problem with one of the boiler seals. He had just put in a new seal but discovered that it was completely melted. Apparently, they didn't use the right seal when they rebuilt the boiler, so he will have to replace all the seals before we can launch. He'll pick those up when he is in town announcing drag races this weekend. Hopefully, this next week should be it, but we will keep our fingers crossed. This has been a very disappointing year as far as the Captain Bell goes. We thought it would be smooth steaming after we got it back from Everett, but that hasn't been the case. We're supposed to leave for the annual steam meet in less than two weeks, so I hope we can get it fired up and in the water for a few days before then!
