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April 20, 2007

IT'S FRIDAY, MY FAVORITE DAY!!

I just don't know where the week has gone. It seemed like I was busy every day.

After spending the weekend in town, we came back from our "brunch" with Leslie and Jason on Sunday afternoon. Jason is such a good cook. Since the weather was halfway nice and I hadn't had a chance to mow the lawn for a couple of weeks and it was getting a little long, I jumped at the window of opportunity and merrily mowed away. It was still a little wet and I had to empty the grass clippings more than I wanted too, but it looks a lot better. I also took advantage of the weather and planted some snow peas that I should have planted in February. Oh well.

Okay, I know it was nice on Sunday, but that was the last of it and it can stop raining for a while. PLEASE. It has been raining all week off and on and I am getting a little tired of it. You can just watch the clouds of rain come through over the bay. When it does hit you, it comes hard and fast. I sure could use a few nice days so I can get some of my yard work done. I just keep reciting, "April showers bring May flowers. April showers bring..."

Monday, we had the sheet rock delivered for our little project in the basement. Dave has gotten the wiring and insulation all done so it is now time to hang the sheet rock. That is going to be a heavy job with his Bursitis in his shoulder and I promised him I would help. We tried doing our own dry wall on a project we had on our place in Hillsboro several years ago. We were like the Keystone Kops on that job...I hope we do better on this one! We're just going to hang the stuff. We'll have Ray Hakala come in and tape, mud and texture. Ray's good at that and we know our limitations!

We also had SMART Monday afternoon. Earlier in the year, some people came in and took pictures of us reading with the kids. They gave us the pictures on Monday. We brought them home and made copies and will take them back to the school when we read next Monday and give the kids a picture to take home. They took a candid picture of Dave and caught him in mid-word. At least I got to pose for my picture!

After we were done with SMART, we had to hurry home as I had scheduled an appointment to have our windshield replaced on the Jeep. With all the driving that we do during the winter, we had caught a rock on our windshield and it was starting to creep across the glass. This happened in February, but since they were still "sanding" the roads every time it snowed, we didn't want to replace it until the weather got better. The guy came right on time, and of course it was pouring down rain, so we had to rig up some shelter while he replaced the window. It took him a couple of hours and he had to leave the windows opened a crack until it sealed. During the night, the shelter blew away and the next morning when I got up to go to my aerobics class, the seat was all wet from the rain coming in the window. Nothing better than getting up early in the morning to go exercise and getting to sit in a puddle of water in the car!

I have been busy on Tuesday mornings helping our Garden Club to get ready for the big plant sale in May. We transplanted a bunch of plants and made tags for them. We hold this big operation at the home of one of our members who has a couple of greenhouses to store everything in. She also has a huge pile of treated cow manure that was purchased by the Garden Club for the members to use. It is great stuff and I use it all the time in my flowerbeds and vegetable garden. Anyway, I was running low, so since I was going to be out at her place helping with the transplanting, I brought along my garbage can to refill with manure. I was only able to fill the can about half full as I had trouble lifting it into the back of the car. It took me quite a few tries to hoist that can up and I pulled a muscle in my back trying to do that. I didn't realize that wet manure weighed so much!

We worked our last Blazer game of the season on Wednesday. It has been 30 years since the Trail Blazers won the NBA championship and they had a celebration Wednesday night that extended the length of the our game by about 45 minutes. Then after the game, in addition to our usual dismantling all our broadcast equipment, we had to pull dozens of cables and store them away for next season. Those cables have been down on the floor gathering spilled Coke, being walked on by dirty shoes and just generally getting really grungy all season long. What a nasty job! It took us about an hour to do all that, and we really had to wash up before driving to the apartment at Lara and Greg's. We had already decided not to try to drive home, as we knew it was going to be a late night. Sure enough, it was 1 AM before we got ourselves to bed in West Linn and boy were we tired.

After running a few errands in town, we headed home on Thursday. We had stopped at Fred Meyer because they were having a "buy 2 get 1 free" sale on board games and I wanted to stock up for the grandkids. They're getting to the age when they have an interest in those games. In fact, all Sunday morning, Paige was bugging us to play "Candyland". When we got home I decided to get the stored toys out of the attic and take inventory. We now have quite a variety of stuff for them to do. Between games, puzzles, books, chalk and colors, they shouldn't complain about being bored. I also managed to collect a large box of stuff that they had outgrown to take to Goodwill.

I know I have complained about this before, but I had a run in with the darn telephone company again. Wouldn't you think that the phone company would have an efficient telephone system? And you would think that the phone company of all people would have a more "user-friendly" service? I received my Mom's phone bill and noticed quite a jump in her total because of a "required" long distance charge. If you don't make any long distance calls, you get penalized for it. Anyway, I decided to dial the telephone number for the billing information and then had to go through this long and frustrating "voice recognition" computer menu. When I finally made my way through that, I was forwarded to another phone number where I was promised someone would help me. After several rings, a machine answered and informed me that the number was no longer in service! This is the phone company customer service forwarding me to a phone that doesn't work! What's wrong with this picture? After several attempts to get through - with my blood pressure rising at each attempt - I finally had Dave try for me. Of course, he manages to get connected with the first attempt. AUGH!!! I was so frustrated by the time a real person came on the line that I wanted to scream. I needed some chocolate after that was over!! Oh yeah, and a "mandatory" charge for long distance service that she doesn't use? They don't have to worry about that one any more, because we're canceling the long distance service. She can call Dave's cell number if she needs us; it's a local call in Portland.

I had also managed to push a button on my cell phone and had it "lock up" on me. Now why is there a single button that when pushed, locks the phone so it can't be used? I understand the feature. It could be helpful if you were walking through some dark street where your phone could get stolen and the thief make unlimited calls to 900-RENT-A-GIRL. But that is a feature I'm not going to use, so why is the button right there where it can get accidentally pushed when the phone is in my purse? Of course, since I don't use the feature, I don't know the "unlock code" either! There again, I was unable to reach the telephone company person to get the information and Dave had to come to my rescue. I don't know why I have so much trouble with these technical things.

Now that the basketball season is over, we're going to be home a lot more. In fact, other than a day of appointments I have in Portland next Wednesday, we should be home for the next couple of weeks! YIPPEE !