February 25, 2011
IT'S FRIDAY, MY FAVORITE DAY!!
It's snowing! I woke up on Thursday morning and was greeted by about an inch of freshly fallen snow. That's okay; I don't plan on going anywhere. We have been so lucky to escape most of Mother Nature's winter rage and I guess our luck finally ran out. It seems like that is all that has been happening because that is all you get to see and hear on the television is snow, snow, snow. Of course every TV station has all of their reporters strategically placed around the areas of highest elevation to report on the first snowflake that falls. It really gets old after awhile.
Speaking of snow, last Friday I drove into Hillsboro to meet some of my high school classmates for lunch. We decided at our last reunion that we would try to get together once a month for lunch. I hope we don't run out of things to talk about, but at our age we repeat ourselves quite a bit and nobody seems to remember. Anyway, the lunch was at 11:30 in Hillsboro so I left early to allow for any bad weather while crossing the coast range. I decided to take Highway 53, which is a shortcut to one of the main routes, Highway 26. Well, 53 is a narrow, wind-ey two-lane road which a lot of log truckers use. There was snow all over the road and it was quite slippery. But I put the Jeep into 4-wheel drive and off I went. By the time I got to 26, my blood pressure was off the charts but I made it in one piece! Highway 26 was pretty dicey too and I thought several times about the tire chains I had left in the garage back in Wheeler! Fortunately the chains weren't necessary. The drive to Hillsboro normally takes an hour and a half and I made it from the coast in a little over two hours. The lunch was great and it was nice to see some of my classmates once more. After the luncheon I drove into Portland to attend the Yard, Garden and Patio show at the Convention Center. After I parked the car and caught MAX down to the Center, I made it just in time to attend the seminar on seed planting. After the seminar, I took in the rest of the show and then decided I wasn't going to stress myself out by driving back to Wheeler that night with the road conditions the way they were. I had packed my bag just in case and ended up spending the night at my daughter's place in West Linn. The roads were much better the next day and I was glad I stayed in town. I did miss the Nehalem Bay estuary clean-up on Saturday, but I guess they had plenty of people show up, so they didn't miss me.
While I was in town, Dave had his final two performances with the Reader's Theater group in Nehalem. All in all, it was a successful run and they had fun doing the plays. On Sunday, we all went to the director's home for the cast party and as usual, they gave out gag gifts. Dave ended up with a pair of reading glasses (which he really CAN use) and an address book (not sure why he got that - I guess it was something to do with the character he played). He also came home with a book of Ogden Nash poetry.
Since Monday was President's Day, Lara and her three girls came down on Sunday and spent the night. It was fun seeing them and they always enjoy playing with Grandma's toys and coming to the "beach" even in the winter time. The weather was half way decent so they got a quick trip to the seashore and some time up at the park. I fixed them my chicken and dumplings for dinner before they left to go home on Monday. The girls had Tuesday off from school as well and Lara was taking that day off from work. With the bad economy and the school's finances the way they are, the kids seem to be out of school more than they are in. As a side note to that, it's ironic that they were back in school one whole day before having to sit out a snow day on Thursday!
I went to my Master Gardeners class on Tuesday and we learned all about pruning and trimming. We spent a couple of hours at the learning garden but didn't do any pruning because of the cold weather. So we just stood out in the cold weather and talked about it. We also had a class on composting. In theory, composting seems like a good idea, but it sure is a lot of work for what you get in return. If you compost three yards of debris and keep turning and adding to it, within a year you will have one yard of compost. Besides, trying the keep out all the pests, I think it would be better in the long run to go buy a sack of compost (but don't say you heard that from me).
Dave headed into Portland for a few Blazer broadcasts on Wednesday. Since he had a game on Wednesday night and again on Friday night, he decided to stay in town and come back home on Saturday. With the Portland area expecting a snowstorm, he decided to just hang out in town between games and not to get stressed out about the road conditions. I am all for that - so I don't have to worry about him being on the road either.
Next week, we will hopefully find out from the doctors what they found out from all the tests that they have been running on Dave. He has appointments with both the Neurologist and the Cardiologist on Wednesday. He is feeling pretty good and seems to be back to his old self once more.
