Friday, November 4

What beautiful fall weather we are having! Whew...not sure I can take all this sunshine in November...better get used to the rain in OR. I checked out the temps and rain totals for Holland and Newberg. Newberg gets 3 inches more rain each year than we do here....BUT...their average low never goes below 35...Holland's for Dec - Feb is something like 16, 14, 15. The average highs are about the same. Interesting, this Willamette Valley place.

We have been doing more "favorites" here of late. Funny how you begin to enjoy some of the things you took for granted for so long. I talked about some past co-workers lately. I likely will have some more comments on people later, but Aleene and I have been doing coffee together at various times of the day at various spots. That must seem retarded...er, retired. We enjoy Saugatuck on these warm fall evenings. Strange people come and go at Uncommon Grounds after dark even when it is not Halloween.

I have yet to open up Way Cup at five in the morning, though which is a goal of mine. I could have a couple of times this week. My mind starts racing once I get into the morning sleep. Things like ordering a truck...now this is April or May we are planning on this...when, how big, all pop into my head. So, I get up and take the dog out and make coffee and read the news on line and catch up on what happened on the west coast the night before while I was sleeping (Amy and Bren's blogs.)

We winterized the motor home this week, too. Lloyd will be hard to replace once we are in Newberg. He drops what he is doing and shows me how to do things when I ask, "...Say, Lloyd..." That will probably cost me $50 someplace else. We are putting little things in there for the trip south. Aleene is good at thinking about what we might need near the end of our trip...before we even get started. We fixed a shelf so it wouldn't jiggle so much. Notice I said we. Aleene starts it and then she gets stuck and I have to get involved. Not all the time, but once in a while I do have a good idea. Rose usually goes along for the ride. (She is doing better this week.)

Wednesday we went over to Butch's at 5:00 to see off the newly fired Volunteer Coordinator from Habitat. She will bounce back. Anyway, we each drank a Happy Hour glass of beer, had some hor d'ourves (spelling check will no help me here, but my dad used to say horses douvers and laugh.) We talked to folks for about an hour until it was too loud to hear, then we went to Quizno's and split a chicken cabanera sandwich. Oh yes, then over to JP's for a cup of their dark roast. I tell you...it doesn't get any better than that.

There was a group of people at Butch's that went to Nicaragua with Aleene (Amy-Lynn, the fired one, was the leader of that group...) so she chatted with them. I talked to some guy who is on the staff at Our Lady of the Lake. I thought he said he was an assistant, but he is married, so he must not be a priest, but he talked like he was and he drank two glasses of wine to boot, so I thought he was a priest. (I got used to drinking priests when I was in the navy, so that fit my stereotype to a tee.) So we have been out and about.

Tonight we are going to a Taco Party of some sort at the Presbyterian church. John Saunders is on the board of an organization that is raising money through taco consumption of others. Sounds good to me. I will let you all know what that is all about later. We want to support John's efforts and eat tacos (or as Vera Bale would write on the school lunch menu...taco's. I always wanted to ask her what those tacos owned...glacamoli? That is a common error.)

Salvation Army came at noon to pick up my BIG desk and my first Lazy Boy. Whew...that chair goes back a few years. It is in good condition so it should bring a few bucks at resale time. The desk is in good condition too, but it is so heavy. Aleene and I took it all apart in the lower level and carried it up in pieces and reassembled it in the livingroom. They will not take furniture from another floor...got to be on the ground floor. But the one guy they brought in to pick it up was a weight lifter. He was not very tall, but his shoulders were a yard wide...I couldn't see his arms for the sweatshirt, but he must have looked like an NFL running back. He just hustled that thing right on out of here. The driver just sort of watched and grinned. The pick up people come from GR and they are from the adult rehab project there. So I always think like they are recovering from something. I think these guys were recovering weight lifters.

The piano goes tomorrow. Wes has that all lined up. First the piano from here goes to Lori and John's and then piano from there goes to Kara and Brent's in Allendale. Oh yes, their house got all put together this week. They are moving from their apartment tomorrow. I don't have to lift a finger on the piano. Which is a good thing. Their house sounds really nice. We will likely go up sometime to see it.

Next Saturday we haul the queen bed up to Jeff and Mary's....along with our old, big tv and the chest of file drawers that Wes made for me about 20 years ago. That is Jeff's inheritance from Uncle Wes. Amy will get the rest...

U-Haul was vague as to whether or not I would even get a trailer. They are scarce this time of year and especially on weekends...so I won't know for sure until Friday. But we are going up any way since the dog is staying there while we are in Newberg. I got the Jeep all ready to tow and now the trailer may not show up...bummer.

That is another story. Each time we tow the Jeep we have to turn the ignition key on to unlock the steering wheel so it will follow freely. When we do that, that charges the electrical system and sometimes the battery goes dead. So I did two things...well, one now and one later. First, I got a new battery...ready to tow...and second I resolved to disconnect the battery before we tow...no need for the thing, so just unplug it. Daaaa. I have a jumper battery thingy that I use for the brake buddy and that will light off the Jeep when the battery goes dead, but....you get the drift.

Enough.