Monthly Archives: July 2012

Small World

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Yesterday, after Vern’s funeral, we attended a wedding for one of our church members, Bonnie. She married Mike. Both of them are involved with a massive classic car club here in the Northwest, so it looked like a cruise in at our little country church. Out front was Bonnie’s 1955 T-Bird. Very nice. Out in the back parking lot was a nice looking Winnebago of the 70’s vintage. Very nice, also. We thought it was curious, but left it at that.

Since we arrived fashionably late, as we are prone to do, and had to sit toward the front of the church. It was almost full and, being a Lutheran church, everyone filled the place from the back to the front. Had we been there a bit earlier, we could have sat in our assigned seats that we use on Sunday.

As we sat there, watching the crowd grow to six per pew, in walks Terry and Carolann, which explained the Winnebago … they are friends of ours from the Classic Winnebago Club, the group we pal around with at various events around the NW. They live somewhere around Gresham which is about a zillion miles from us. We were totally surprised, to say the least. I was speechless, something I’m rarely not. Turns out they are part of the massive NW classic car club, too, and know Bonnie and Mike. How interesting it was to discover this connection.

Making it even more interesting is that Bonnie is the ex-sister-in-law of another of our church members, Nancy. The story is that Nancy dumped the husband, but kept her sister. They’ve been friends for years. Go figure.

Now, a little about the weather …

Oregon has been really nice the past few weeks. Compared to everything east of the Blue Mountains, we’re living a dream. It was very pleasant … mostly because I was allowed to stay indoors all day. Actually, I wasn’t “allowed” to stay indoors, I was commanded to remain indoors. There was a fear, I guess, that I may crumble to the ground because of the heavy sunlight striking the earth, and there wasn’t anyone around to drag me back to the house should that happen. So, I stayed inside although it was my main desire to attack our weed beds with the weedwhacker. Since that was nixed, I ate ice cream and three red vines.

To pass the time, I disconnected Diane’s old DirecTV DVR, and hooked up the new one. It works just fine, and Ross, the guy in Alabama with whom I was talking as we set it up, suggested that I accept a 90 day offer for all the movie channels. Because Alabama is having such terrible weather I was compelled to acquiesce and accept. Now we have 23 movies channels from which we can record moviesd willy-nilly until there’s no more room for anything else we watch. To kick things off, we watched “A Big Year” with Steve Martin, Jack Black, and Owen Wilson.

We got almost to the end when a message popped up indicating there was an update available for the new DVR. Someone selected “install now” causing the DVR to reset thereby ending our viewing pleasure. We watched the little blue line at the bottom of the screen, that shows the progress, for about 10 minutes before we realized that, Hey!, we have a TV in the Man Room. So, we retired to the comfy couch in there and finished the movie. Who’d thought a movie about bird watching would be interesting? But, it was.

Now it’s getting late and I have to get up early to meet Doug for golf at 0830. It’s been a few weeks since I’ve been out so I shouldn’t have any trouble at all maintaining my 36 handicap. I’m at the point in my golf game where one straight shot makes my day. If I get two, I do the Happy Dance. I rarely dance.

Vern

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This is a short tribute to Vern, who departed this plane of existance last Friday, apparently shortly after we got home from our week at the beach. He and Marilynn have been our neighbors since we moved here. We noticed the increased traffic at their house, and suspected something was up, but didn’t know what happened for sure until Marilynn stopped on her way home and told us. I didn’t go next door to ask “what’s up” because I was truly hoping they were having a family reunion. Turns out they were … for a more and more common reason than just for fun.

I can’t say I knew him very well, just enough to say hello in passing, and to visit across the fence when we were mowing our yards. I did visit him a few times, but just to check and see how he was doing because I’d heard that something was amiss, or to give him some plums from our tree when they were ripe. I don’t think that qualifies me for the good neighbor award, but we’re relative new comers to the area and didn’t know the protocol.

I liked Vern. He was a good guy. But I don’t know anything about him other than he was quite a bit older than me. I always thought I’d get to know more about him, but too many things got in the way that prevented me from giving him just a little time out of my day once in a while. It makes me sad to know that I’m “one of those guys” who who didn’t take time to gain a new friend. It would have been so simple.

Vern’s funeral is tomorrow morning. In the afternoon we’re going to a wedding. It’s kind of a compressed version of my June trip to Connecticut for Lyle and Heather.

Now I’m going to be sitting around here wondering what the third event will be … wish me luck.

Independence Day Deferred

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This year St. Helens isn’t having fireworks on the 4th of July. Oh, it’s happened in the past, but rarely. Usually it’s a funding issue, lack of donations. This year, however, the City Fathers decided to defer fireworks until July 14th, to celebrate the Maritime-Heritage Festival that’s coming to town. Yes, it’s a big event, and it will bring a lot of revenue to the city, but I find it a little disconcerting that they didn’t consider the 4th important enough to expend at least a few token explosions.

Having said that, I must share a thought that Diane implanted in my brain, about all the veterans with PTSD, and how traumatizing the noisy festivities must be for them. Hopefully they will all make it safely, sanely through the explosions going off all over the place. It can’t be fun for them.

I wish you all well, and hope that you, and everyone you know, understands today is about freedom. Somehow that seems to get lost in all the noise and flashy fireworks.

So, perhaps not having a city sponsored event isn’t all that bad, especially since everyone else in town is taking care of that quite nicely.

Still … you know what I mean, right?

Bless you all.

Oregon ASA Championship Softball

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Greetings – this will be a short ditty to alert all you softball fans that Lydia’s team won 2nd at the Oregon ASA tournament. They were the only unbeaten team going into the final game in this double elimination tournament. They lost to Lake Oswego so had to play them again. The officials decided to forego the 2nd game and just do an international overtime thing. Interesting. Anyway, the girls played very well and they were fun to watch. They had to endure a 7 hour rain delay Saturday and didn’t finish their games until after 10pm, and didn’t get home until midnight. Sunday they won their first game in an overtime sudden death situation. The team they ultimately lost to, did the same thing to the same team, so it was a good match for the finish.

My Wireless Eyeball

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I don’t know what day it is … and I’m beseiged with flashes of odd things that don’t make a lot of sense to me. Like flashing lights that contain messages of some sort which I understand is pretty much the ‘norm’ for me. Ask Diane.

Except for the lights, the last cognizant thing I remember was laying down for a nap in Newport, at the beach, while Lilly Tomlin dripped hot wax all over me. For a short time I thought it was just a fantasy until I realized that my fantasies aren’t useually painful.

The next thing I know, I’m waking up in my bed at home. Oh … Diane just told me it’s Monday, so I’ve been incognito for the three days. She said I acted perfectly normal, for me, the entire time so there was no cause for alarm on her part. I even drove the RV all the way home last Friday without mishap. She also said I was a perfect gentleman to her the entire time which should have raised some danger flags, but didn’t. Considering all that, I found it curious that I have all these little red spots all over me, like someone dripped wax on me. It confused me a great deal until I remembered my last cognitive memory then it all made sense except I don’t know Lily Tomlin. I think it was someone else.

Sometime during my ‘unaware’ state someone replaced my right eyeball with a wireless one. I discovered this when I was walking down the hall and turned too soon for the bathroom and ran into the door jam. The sudden stop caused my right eyeball to pop out and fall on the floor. Initially, it concerned me a great deal, then I realized that I could still see with my right eye as it rolled across the floor. It made me very dizzy seeing floor, ceiling, wall, floor, ceiling, wall, dust ball, cat, dog, wall, and I fell down until it stopped short under our bed. At that point, I was more than concerned a great deal … I was concerning a great deal more!

I was freantic, laying there on the floor, face down, staring at the bottom of the bed with my right eye. I wet my pants which eliminated the need to visit the bathroom, where I was going in the first place.

Once my fear subsided a little, I got a little braver and learned that I could turn off my right eye simply by closing it. How handy. Once I figured that out, I went searching, and found my eye next to the rear wheel on Diane’s side.

I retrieved it, washed the dust off of it and gave it a serious inspection. Not only was it very freeky, but I quickly got over that and became more interested in the technology. Keeping my right eye shut, I checked it out with my left eye, the one with the astigmatism, thinking I wished they’d swapped that one out too, or at least instead. I decided that I liked it.

After fiddling with it for a while, I decided to see if I could reinstall it and discovered it wasn’t all that hard except for the part where I had to open my right eyelid to put it in. I briefly wondered if I had to put some sort of lubricant on it, like WD-40, or something, but it slid right in. As soon as it was in the socket, I felt it jiggle a little, as if it was aligning, then everything was clear as crystal. It was amazing.

I can take it out and hold it up to look around corners, see the end of my elbow in person, and check out whatever’s making my back itch. That last one is awesome because I’ve always wondered about what causes it. I still don’t know, but at least now I can look at it. And, I can look up my nose, and ears. to make sure everything is nice and clean. I have to do that at home, though, because Diane gets upset when I do it in public. It causes everyone to ask too many questions. It was OK for a while because I just told them I got it at Costco in Mexico City and they aren’t shipping them to the US, yet.

It’s all pretty nifty, and gives a whole new meaning to “keeping an eye out for you,” or “rolling your eyes.” I can actually do that now, and I’m learning to control the vertigo whenever I do either of those.

That’s probably enough about the eye for now, and I’m sure you don’t believe a bit of this, which is probably a good choice. So, I won’t go into detail about the little bump I found on the side of my head, under my right sideburn, that activates a zoom feature. Near as I can tell, it’s about a 186Kx magnification which means I can see individual atoms! How cool is that?!