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August 18, 2017

IT'S FRIDAY, JAN'S FAVORITE DAY!!

This is going to be short and sweet this week. The main reason is: Jan isn't writing the journal, I am. This is Dave, and I got pressed into service at the last minute. I'll explain.

If you've been following the journal, you know that Jan's childhood friend, Patsy has been visiting. She drove straight through from Southern California and arrived last Thursday. The timing for her visit was to join us at a 75th birthday for Jan and her classmates from Hillsboro High School on Saturday. Patsy didn't attend Hilhi - she went to a private high school instead. But she knew many of those people because they had all been together since kindergarten. So, she crashed the party! We all had a good time, and Patsy received a standing ovation just for showing up all the way from SoCal when she wasn't officially a classmate.
We spent Sunday winding down prior to her leaving on Monday. She finally got away just before noon and promised to call when she got home in 18 hours or so. When she didn't call, we weren't too alarmed. We just figured she was tired from that long drive. The next day, however, her husband called asking if we knew where she was. Oh, oh - now we WERE alarmed. We spent a lot of time back and forth with her husband on the phone and at one time determined that she had evidently traveled from southern Oregon back north on I-5. The police know that because she got a traffic ticket while traveling north at Albany. That was alarming because that's 200 miles from the California border - going the wrong way! Long story short, she somehow ended up with car trouble and was located in a motel. Later, we think a concerned police officer checked on her there and - we don't know why - called in a doctor. Her family was finally able to trace her to a hospital near Eugene. We hear she is being treated for possible kidney problems, but that's about all we know. And that's why Thursday afternoon Jan decided she was going to drive to the hospital to check on her friend. The entire episode is a mystery and she wanted to support her friend and get as much of the story as she can. I don't have all the details yet, but Jan was able to spend about a half-hour with Patsy before the staff kicked her out. I'm sure we'll know more when next week's journal is posted. It's about a 350 mile round trip from our place to Springfield, so she broke it up by driving back as far as Salem and staying with Leslie's family Thursday night.

Jan usually writes this journal Thursday afternoon and of course she spent that time driving. So, her loyal editor gets the honors this week and will make sure we make our deadline!

Let's see, what else happened? Not a whole lot. Jan mentioned that the power company came by and ran an energy audit a couple of weeks ago. Trying to save us some money on our power bill. As a result of that conversation, we decide to invest in a ductless heat pump for auxiliary heating in the winter and to act as an air conditioner in the few days a year when we need one of those. We talked with a couple of company representatives at the county fair last week and selected one of them to do the installation. I've been wanting to heat my workshop too, so we're going to take advantage of some pretty nice discounts and get that done at the same time. They should be here sometime next week to do the installation.

And as if that isn't enough to spend money on - we discovered that we have a leak in the shower in our bathroom. The floor is warping from moisture that is evidently coming from behind the tub. Our long-range plan was to do a bathroom remodel next year when we have some money saved for that project, but now this repair can't wait, so we figured it makes sense to do the remodel along with the repair. Jan had already made plans for a nice new bathroom so she's already a step ahead of the game!

Coming up, Jan has a cousin's family reunion in Gresham on Saturday, so we'll be going to that. I think we'll make it a one-day trip because of the warnings about heavy traffic around the eclipse. Speaking of that, we were going to go to Leslie's place and be at ground zero for the event, but traffic warnings have scared us off and now I think we'll just stay home and hope our coastal August weather cooperates. If not, we'll just watch a replay on TV!

Jan will be back next week.