This month's calendar Archives
March 25, 2011
IT'S FRIDAY, MY FAVORITE DAY!!
I am still trying to get back to normal since our vacation to Phoenix. My body still hasn't adjusted from the hot sunny dryness to the cold wet dampness yet. The weather has been so lousy that getting outside to get any kind of gardening or weeding done between rain showers has been a challenge. However, I did get out a couple of times to plant some sweet peas and pull a few weeds. I heard some discouraging words about our weather that we are going to be getting a wet spring.
Speaking of pulling weeds, our Park Committee had a work party on Wednesday and the sun actually managed to stay out for a couple of hours so we could clean out the small pocket park in town. We weeded and pruned and cut back some threatening barberry bushes that I managed to get a few scratches from. We have a load of mulch waiting for us to spread as soon as the weather cooperates.
This is spring break this week so I have no gardening classes to attend. But I have been pouring over our open book exam that was handed out last week. Have a nice spring break everyone! My brain has about frozen up with all the questions I have had to look up and write down. I finally got most of the answers and on Thursday a bunch of us in the class got together at the Extension office in Tillamook to compare notes. Don't you just love it when you go through all the efforts of finding the answers and then some of the students who haven�t bothered, just crowd in and get all the answers from the rest of us! I sure don't! At least I will know where to look things up if something needs to be answered and that is the whole point of this exercise.
The granddaughters are all on spring break this week too. Ashtin and Paige have been keeping busy with sports practices. They are both on the same soccer team this year. That should help their parents when it comes time to figure out which game they're going to watch! It also means Paige will now be playing with kids two years older than she is. That may be a bit of an equalizer and we may not see her scoring as often as before. Two of Lara's girls, Jadyn (7) and Jaysa (5) have spent the week "giving back" to the community. Each day of spring break Lara has had them helping out somewhere in the community, the local animal shelter, the Rotary Club, the Senior Center and their church library. It has been a great experience for them and they have enjoyed helping others. I guess the local newspaper heard about their "giving back" campaign and is going to do a story on them this week! That will be fun to see.
We also had our dreaded taxes done this week. After going through the figures, we ended up owing the state money but the federal owes us. We used to get our taxes done in February but we kept getting "corrected copies" of our financial statements from the investment firm, so we put off filing them until we thought it was all clear, but guess what? We came home after filing our taxes this time and there was another corrected copy! We just can't win, so next year we might wait until April 15th to file them. I'm sure the CPA doesn't want to hear that, but what else are we going to do?
It must really be spring as I spotted my first Rufus Hummingbird this week. He came to the feeder which was pretty low on food and managed to suck out some sugar water out of the bottom of the feeder. As soon as he flew away, I made a fresh batch and I noticed that he has come back to reclaim his territory. He is so beautiful with his bright shiny red throat and green wings.
An incident this week reminded me just how easy it could be to lose your good credit. We got a letter a few days ago (actually it was addressed to Dave) telling us we were delinquent in our payment to WinCo foods and that the collection agency wanted their money NOW! I contacted them and after exchanging some information, they concluded that they had the wrong person and promised me that they would drop the matter. Yesterday, we got a phone call from them telling us we owed money to WinCo! I gave the call to Dave to let him handle it this time (he can be a little more persuasive that I can) and he once again explained that they had the wrong person. The problem was that they had his social security number and knew that we used to live in Hillsboro. (WinCo is in Hillsboro). They did have a different date of birth on their record and the address they had was in an apartment that we knew nothing about. It seems that in an effort to come up with the right person, they just picked up his social security number and assigned it to the file since it matched the name they were looking for! After hearing that, Dave was less than pleased and went to a supervisor. It didn't take her too long to realize they had the wrong person and promised that the report would be destroyed and will not make it onto our credit report. Of course, that's what they told me earlier in the week too, so we'll see.
