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April 11, 2008

IT'S FRIDAY, MY FAVORITE DAY!!

With several meetings to attend, working on the garden club plant sale and attending work parties for the Waterfront Park and the Upper Park, I have been one busy person this week!

We stayed in town last Thursday so we could celebrate birthdays for two of our granddaughters, Paige who was six and Jadyn who turned five. Since their birthdays are about a week apart, we have one family celebration. We met at Leslie's place in Silverton and Jason had gotten homemade tacos and tamales from the local Mexican restaurant and boy did they taste good. After dinner the girls opened their presents from us and we sang "Happy Birthday" and ate cake. Oh to be young again!

We must have been quite a sight getting into and out of Lara & Greg's car. Dave and I were going to drive our own car to Silverton, but with gas prices at around $3.50 a gallon, we decided to carpool. The girl's car seats are in the middle seat of their car, so the only way into the back seat is by climbing in through the tailgate! I didn't think I was ever going to get in there, and once in - didn't think I was ever going to get out! Once I was in, I was fine and it was a nice trip.

Since the game on Sunday between San Antonio and Blazers started at 3:00, we were finished up by 6:00 and on our way back home. I have only two more home games and then I am officially retired. Dave and I decided that since we were paying most of the money I made doing the games to Uncle Sam, that I might as well not do the games anymore. That is fine with me, I was beginning to get more and more stressed out and it seemed like it was taking me longer and longer to get rested up afterwards. I have been doing the games for over 30 years and it is about time I let someone else do it. Dave has asked an associate of ours to take over next year and he was more than delighted to do it. He has been helping us when we need a third person to engineer the Spanish language broadcasts so he is comfortable doing them.

On our way back in on Tuesday to engineer the LA game, we were driving on Highway 53 and came across a log truck that had lost it's load of logs. He had gotten them retrieved but he sure took out a bunch of trees by the roadway. Those log trucks use that narrow roadway a lot and drive too fast on the curves so it didn't surprise us to come upon the accident. Luckily no one was injured or killed. During the summertime, we see groups of bicyclists using this road and we just shake our heads as to why anyone would want to risk their lives.

Speaking of bicyclists, we see all too often cyclists that do not obey the traffic laws. For instance, the other day while we were waiting for the light to change, a cyclist came to a stop and then looked to see if anyone was coming and took off - against traffic - even though the light was still red. I thought they had to obey the same laws as automobiles. When they are in an accident with a car or truck, they usually get the short end of the stick and if they live to tell about it, they will complain the most that it was all the automobile's fault.

To get back to the rest of my week, I had four things going on Monday. After water aerobics first thing in the morning, it was reading to first graders at SMART in Nehalem, and then at 1:00 there was a work party down at Waterfront Park. We planted a tree and did some weeding. At 4:00, I met with the Emergency Preparedness Committee that I am on to discuss the results of the town hall meeting that we had a while back. Sometimes, I think my schedule is worse that when I was working full time!

Boy was it cold and rainy on Tuesday morning as, after my water aerobics, I headed out to Ginger's to help with getting plants ready for the Garden Club Plant sale in May. We keep hoping that we will get a little warmer weather because most of the plants we have are not growing very fast. There were about a dozen of us and we huddled under an open canopy trying to keep warm ourselves.

Yet another work party for the Park and Rec committee on Thursday and this time it was in the Upper Park. We are applying for a grant from the Oregon Park and Recreation Division and this will be Phase II of the Upper Park. They have playground equipment and a baseball park with a backstop but the new grant would pay for a trail around the park, some garden beds, a "quiet area" and a bike trail for the kids. This day, we planted more trees and pulled weeds and Scotch Broom that had taken over in the playground area. We spent about three hours doing this and there were about eight people that came to help so that made the job go a lot faster.

We will be home for one more day and then back to Portland for our next to last Blazer game on Saturday, but who's counting?