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January 10, 2020

IT'S FRIDAY, MY FAVORITE DAY!!

Wow, we have sure put in the miles since last week! 750 of them to be exact.

The reason for posting the journal early last week was that Thursday we made a trip to Portland for a follow-up appointment Dave had for his neck surgery. After that, we headed east to The Dalles where we spent the night as on Friday we needed to be in Kennewick, Washington for Dave's cousin's wife, Sandra Nichols' funeral at 11:00 a.m. It was a very nice service and lots of people were there, a few family members but mostly people who knew her from the Tri-Cities area. After lunch we headed back to Portland which was a 3-1/2 hour drive. We made it to our hotel that night completely exhausted. We remember when driving for 3-1/2 hours wouldn't wear us out!

We stayed in town as we had ordered a 20-foot flagpole and arranged to pick it up the following morning because we didn't want to drive all the way to Kennewick and back with it strapped to the top of the car. After tying the flagpole securely on top of the car, we met Lara and her boyfriend at Crate and Barrel for "brunch". We really hadn't met Kevin long enough to visit, so this worked out for us. He seems like a nice guy and I hope they can develop a good relationship.

While we were in town, we did some shopping. Dave wanted to check out the Apple watches and didn't particularly like the ones offered at the Verizon store. So we decided to go to an Apple store to see what they had. We finally found the store in the Bridgeport Shopping Village, after driving around the blocks and side streets forever. We decided to get out and walk around as parking is so hard to find, especially with a 20-foot flagpole strapped to the top of our car! We finally resorted to using the GPS on our phones and even then we ended up going around the block before we finally found the store! Dave found a watch that was ideal and so now he has a watch with things that you can't image it can do! It's like carrying your iPhone on your wrist.

Saturday night, we attended a 50th wedding anniversary for some long-time friends of ours, Bob and Anita Perkins. The party was held at the Meriwether Golf Course in Hillsboro. We sat a table with other Hillsboro High School classmates we knew and had a really nice time.

Sunday, we got up bright and early and finally headed for home. When we arrived, there were two cats (ours and the neighbors) waiting patiently for us to get home to feed them! It was quite a trip with a 20-foot flagpole on top of the car and we gave ourselves high-fives for making it home safely.

Dave has mounted the flagpole in front of the house and it really looks great! I hope that it will withstand the high winds that we get. It is guaranteed for winds up to 100 mph. No sooner had we installed it than that was tested with high winds on Monday and Tuesday. And it looks like we'll be testing it again this weekend with more windy weather forecast - just before some predicted snow here at the coast this next week. Anyway, the flagpole passed with flying colors (no pun intended) and it is very nice, complete with a built in solar light on top which shines down on the flag during the night.

The rest of the week has been busy with meetings. I had a Wheeler Emergency Team Community Action Team (WETCAT) meeting on Wednesday night. We are trying to have a spaghetti feed in February to promote emergency awareness and how to prepare. Then two meetings on Thursday, the Park and Rec. meeting and that night, the Planning Commission meeting. So it has been a busy week.

We think our little corner of the world is just about perfect, but one thing that bothers everybody in town is the trucks that travel along Highway 101 and the use of their loud compression brakes. Dave has always maintained that while they may need those brakes up on the mountain, they don't need them on the highway and so we have been looking for a way to control their use in town. We finally found a City Ordinance that specifically outlaws their use in the city limits and so we had some signs made up so we can begin enforcing it. Dave has really been spearheading the drive to get this done and so when the City Manager needed someone to go to Tillamook and pick up the signs, he was quick to volunteer! We're hoping the new signs will do the job and we will no longer hear that BRAPPPPP of those compression brakes.

That's all the news this week. I hope all is well with you.