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IT'S FRIDAY, MY FAVORITE DAY!!

Let me think, what did I do this week?

Starting off on Saturday - since I am on the Emergency Committee here in town - we had a meeting to discuss our upcoming Tsunami drill scheduled for September 22nd. The entire North Coast from Rockaway to Manzanita is involved with this drill and I will be helping with the evacuation exercise in Wheeler. I am the neighborhood captain and Leanna is the co-captain, so we went around our neighborhood informing our neighbors of the upcoming event and where to assemble when the "quake" starts. Our motto is "Be prepared, not scared".

After Saturday's meeting, I headed up to the Upper Park where the Park Committee and other volunteers were holding an "Ivy" work party. We cut English Ivy from the trees in the park and along the trail. It was hard work because those vines grow right into the tree bark and we needed crowbars to get them to where we could cut them. Some of those vines were the size of baseball bats! About 15 people helped so we were done by 12:30. The rest of the weekend I relaxed around the house and just enjoying being home.

The weather has been really nice, a sort of last hurrah for summer as fall is definitely in the air. Dave had purchased an annual parking permit for the Oregon State Parks and since it was warm, we decided to drive over to Nehalem Bay State Park and take a walk on the beach on Monday. It was absolutely beautiful without a breath of wind. The tide was going out and so the sand was really soft and I felt like I was walking on quicksand. We walked for about an hour and decided that maybe we should do this more often.

A few weeks ago I had purchased some heavy-duty insect killer to try to get the spiders under control. The place was beginning to look like Halloween haunted house with all the cobwebs around the eaves. I hadn't been home long enough to do this little task and when I was, there was always a breeze blowing. Finally, Wednesday was a nice, calm day so I brushed all the webs away with a broom and then climbed up the ladder with my deadly spider mix in tow and away I sprayed. No sooner had I started when the spiders started bailing out and they looked like one of those World War II movies with all the paratroopers dropping out of the sky! Some of them didn't quite make it and were dangling from their long webs half way to the deck. I have to say it was quite a sight. Unfortunately, I was only able to get the front deck and along one side of the house done and so when another opportunity comes along I will tackle the rest of the eaves. Watch out spiders! Speaking of spiders, we have been intrigued by this huge spider that has made a web on the outside of our living room window. Charlotte makes an appearance in the afternoons and checks her web to see if she has any morsels that she has caught for the day. I didn't have the heart of spray her.

The rest of the critters (squirrels, chipmunks and birds) have been getting ready for the change in the weather too. The Goldfinches are beefing up for their long trip south and are sure going through the seed. We had to laugh at one of the squirrels the other day. He is very aggressive and spends a lot of energy chasing everyone else away. The other day he sat in the middle of one plate of seeds and it looked like he was scowling with his arms crossed, just waiting for someone to challenge him. He wasn't eating anything but he was making sure none of the others was going to get anything to eat either. It is amazing how each one of these critters have a personality all their own. We also have a bunch of chipmunks. That population has really multiplied this season and of course there's not enough room for all of them at the food trough. So we have chipmunks nose to tail - chasing each other around like something out of cartoon. It's easy to stay amused around here!

I do have to tell the story of how I came to get Dave's birthday gift - or at least got credit for getting it. Ever since we were in Sweden visiting Sussie's family 20 years ago, he's been in love with a tool that Sussie's dad showed him. Ference was in the picture framing business and this old tool made precise cuts for assembling frames. I think Dave decided then and there that he needed to get one someday. He's been watching for one on eBay for the last three or four years, and has never been able to find one that met the budget. On his birthday, he was online and saw one that looked like it would stay reasonably inexpensive throughout the auction, so he told me he was going to go for it. Long story short, he got it and it arrived last week. He uncrated it and tried it out and came back in the house all smiles. He told me that since he won the auction on his birthday and I said it was ok to bid on it, that I could take the credit for the birthday gift! Fine with me - I was going to get him windshield wipers for the Suburban!

This weekend we will head back into the valley. Dave and I will be driving separately because he has a Portland State Football game to broadcast on Saturday and I have to stick around town for the evacuation drill. I'll drive to West Linn later that afternoon. We will spend Saturday night there before we start our trip on Sunday for Sandpoint, Idaho to visit with my cousin. There are still a lot of forest fires in the northwest, but it looks like we'll avoid them on this trip. We're hoping we will have time to stop and visit with Dave's cousin Connie on the way back. Her place was threatened by a big forest fire a couple of weeks ago, but it is no longer a threat. These will be short visits as we need to get back to West Linn in time for Lara's next Chemo treatment on Wednesday.

An update on Lara. She is doing great and is busy working part-time and bustling her girls around to various activities. Between dance and sports, it seems someone has something going every night. Last Sunday, she and her family walked in the Susan B. Komen Race for the Cure and had a wonderful experience. Lara has a slight cold but the doctor says that as long as she doesn't run a fever she will be fine. It is so hard for her to stay healthy with the combination of cancer treatments, three active children and a job where she is constantly in public contact. As I said, she goes to her third Chemo session this next Wednesday and will have only one more to go after that.

Leslie and her family remain incredibly busy. Ashtin just made the "A" team in volleyball and both she and her sister Paige are still playing soccer. Leslie is playing adult soccer, Jason is coaching football and the whole family attends virtually every community sporting event. I don't know how they do it. Well, I guess I do because we used to do it - I just don't remember how!