Last night I went to a Tall Club house party (a regular Saturday night affair to choose to go to).  It was a "Drive In/Fly In barbeque potluck.  The hostess lives on the outskirts of Canby in a private neighborhod of maybe 40-50 homes.  The road down the middle doubles as a place for planes to taxi, and behind Betty's house is the landing strip, bordering along a wheat field and Christmas tree farm.  It was too cool to see small planes pulled up in driveways to front doors, hangers out back behind houses.  We sat and enjoyed an evening of good friends, food, gab, and watching planes take off.  I wish I would have taken my camera as it was really quite an fun thing to experience.

On another note, 2 of the ladies have sons participating in the Olympics in China and are soon headed over there to watch and take in China.  One is in fencing and the other is in rowing.  I thought that was quite a coincidence!!

Between the squirrels/rodents gnawing into the siding on my house and PMS... it was a VERY expensive undertaking (a little here, a moderate amount there. . it added up huge and fast !! ) to attempt to stop the gnawing on the house.  I had already cut off the branches as high as I could reach, about 20-25 feet, but there were higher ones hanging over the house still.  And in addition to the gnawing there is tons of moss on the roof and on the fascia piece at the top.. pukey green color instead of white. 

I neglected to get before shots of the 3 fir trees that came down.  Here is a photo you can kinda see them over the top of the house.  Probably a good 40 feet high.  This is from the back of the house, obviously. 

These are post planting today but 2 college students I hired off Craig's List to do that back breaking work.

In front of the fence where the 2 are was 1 tree, and immediately behind it were 2 trees only 2 feet apart themselves.... MUCH too close, but still very tall and overhanging my house.  Looks like the one at the end of the line needs to be anchored to the fence as it is leaning out.

Here is a shot of them in the back yard.

They all seemed to be pretty much the same size and height.. obviously not.  Next photo shows how some straggle 3 or 4 inches over the top of the fence.  I think it will be many years until they provide adequate shade from the afternoon and evening sun as it faces west behind the arborvitae.

This is my sister Bobbie (aka Bonnettia Ruth Page).  Her roommate took this just after she ran a 7K in May somewhere in the San Francisco area.  Her sign is pointing to her knee that her physical therapist told her to ice after running, but somehow the kneed did not make the photo.

She became my sister when she was 6 months old back in Februay 1965 as a foster child, and now 43 years later she is still part of our family. 

I have a hard time fathoming people who take in foster children and then have nothing more to do with them when they age out of the system.  People don't age out of families.  People do OPT out of families, however. 

She was born with congenital cataracts and her vision growing up was 20/200 corrected in her left eye with shadows in the right eye.  Then 3 or so years ago she fell in the middle of the night when up on a mission and hit her right eye on a door knob and ruptured the globe and lost all vision in that eye.  Guess it was quite the bloody mess.  Painful too I would imagine. 

She has a sister, Annettia Kay ...  I always wondered about more children from her birth mother if there were..  Candettia, Donettia, Elnettia, Funettia, Georgettia.....

Here are some OLD photos of her

Quick note...

Vacation was BORING.. the cruise line cut nearly ALL of the fun activities I so enjoy, as do my aunt and the friends from Canada we cruise with.  I took puzzles to work.. but there were 2 other ladies there nearly all the time who chattered INCESSANTLY.. mind you there is room for 5 or 6 to work at a time .. so space not a problem. 

On another note...

I got a job with a new company.. doing straight typing ... NO MORE of editing voice recognition reports for pennies.  AND typing on an oncology account I typed 4 years ago.. Should FINALLY be making decent money again after 14 months of VERY reduced income.  I am PUMPED.  Except the last 2 weeks I have been working 36/8 (skip the 24/7) it seems.  Hopefully by the end of this week the new account I am on will be caught up and I can experience SOFA TIME once again!!

72 hours from now (7:30 pm) I will be in the midst of my first 5-course dinner ... appetizer, soup, salad, main entree, dessert... hope they have cheesecake for dessert... (like this body NEEDS cheesecake)...

I plan on a mile walk around the deck in the morning, then 3-4 miles around the ship during the course of the day!!