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April 16, 2010
IT'S FRIDAY, MY FAVORITE DAY!!
First of all, please forgive the ragged appearance of this page. As those of you who checked in on Friday know, the page wasn't there. The long anticipated shutdown with our old host happened just before posting this new page. It took a few hours of scrambling by my procrastinating webmaster to finally get this page up on the new host. We're still working on photos, so if you don't see any yet, check back later. Hopefully by the end of the weekend, everything will be back to normal!
At last, a few days of sunshine and just in time too, as I was about to go crazy from all of the rain that we have had. I even got out in the yard and mowed the lawn and pulled a few weeds. The lettuce even got planted in the garden so things are lookin up.
Let's go back to last weekend. Dave had a Blazer broadcast on Friday and then he had to head for Seattle for a Steam Society board meeting on Saturday. I elected to stay at home as everyone else had plans and I didn't want to spend my time alone in the basement apartment in West Linn without transportation. Besides, there are always a lot of things I can be doing around this place. Dave got back from Seattle Saturday night just in time to turn around on Sunday morning after breakfast, to drive into Silverton to have a family birthday party for the granddaughters. Paige turned eight on April 9th and Jadyn turned seven on April 3rd and we always celebrate them together. While we were in Silverton, we got a tour of all the new critters that they had gotten since the last time we were there. We saw the two piglets (Boss Hog and Lulu) that Ashtin is raising for 4-H and will auction them off this summer at the fair and the baby chicks that Paige has added to her brood. I also got a dozen fresh eggs from Paige that are always a treat because the eggs taste so much better than what you buy in the stores.
We spent Sunday night in West Linn as Dave had another Blazer broadcast on Monday night. After the game, I helped him tear down his equipment and we headed back down to the coast. It was after midnight before we crawled into bed and then the next morning I was up early for my water aerobics class. It was a tiring weekend - we put over 900 miles on the car in four days!
Here is a progress report on the church stabilization. After about a week without any activity, Dave and Ray got back to the project on Thursday. They had just started to lift the roof off the building when they stopped last week. Yesterday, they finished lifting more than a foot in the air and then they demolished the rotted wall it had been sitting on. Once they started tearing things out, the wall came down pretty fast. They'll spend the day today building a new wall and then lower the roof back down on the new supports. By quitting time tonight, the entire building should be stabilized for the first time in years. There's still a lot to do on the project, but this gets us through phase one and now that we know it's not going to fall down, we can take our time doing the rest. Anyway, I spent the afternoon yesterday cleaning up all the mess that they had created so they would have a clean environment to work in.
We sold our old Chevy Suburban the other day. Dave had gotten a new/used Suburban a couple of months ago and we have been slowly getting the old rig ready to sell. The license plates were the main problem. Dave wanted to switch license plates with the new Chevy so he could keep the "STEAM" plates. It took a few weeks for DMV to get that taken care of. We just happened to mention while we were at breakfast on Sunday that we were getting ready to sell this car and the couple that owns the restaurant were looking for just this kind of car for camping. So we sold it to them. It was the easiest thing we have ever done. I hope they enjoy the car and it works out for them.
This has been a week of bad news involving friends and loved ones. A friend of ours here in the community lost her battle with cancer and Alzheimer's last week. We'll attend her memorial tomorrow. Yesterday, we found out that one of our steam friends that we visit with in southern Oregon each year died last week. We weren't even aware she had been ill. That was quite a shock. And then last night, Dave got a call from his cousin informing us that her mother had just passed away. "Auntie Babe" was Dave's father's sister and was a favorite of Dave's. She has been declining in recent months, but it's still a shock to lose her. I hope that's all for now!
Dave finished the Trail Blazer season this week. The team has qualified for the playoffs and so he'll be back in town for those broadcasts next week.
