Here it is, almost summer already. Weather all over the country is going crazy, tearing up the mid west, and various other places, but here at home in Oregon, beautiful Oregon, things are just fine. The sun is out, it’s warm, I can mow the lawn at will, and we can have the doors and windows open all day and all night. We usually don’t do that because one of the neighbors is always mowing their lawns, or burning their lawn debris. Though it’s a pleasant smell, it’s one Diane cannot tolerate. So, we ban it from the house.

Today we got up bright and early at 0700 to ready ourselves for a trip to Gales Creek Campground. I actually got up the first time at 0505 for the dogs.

The campground is for children suffering from type 1 diabetes. Diane and I have never been there before so it was a treat for us. The purpose of our visit was to help get it cleaned up and ready for use this summer. The purpose of the camp is to give children a safe place to spend a week away from home, with other children who suffer as they do, thereby giving the parents a little time off from constantly monitoring their children’s needs. It’s fully staffed with medical personnel of all manner, day and night.

Some of the parents I spoke with have teenagers who first attended the camp when they were 7. As they grow older they became mentors to the younger children. It’s like an endless cycle when they continue attending the camp and become mentors themselves.

Gales Creek Camp is one of the projects our St. Helens Lion’s Club International support. One of our members, who recently passed, was fully engaged with the camp and had at one point singlehandedly painted every building at the site, so I’m told. I believe it. We intend to continue his legacy.

OK – enough serious stuff.

After today’s arduous activity Diane and I are tuckered out. She wanted to visit the hot tub, but the water was only 67 degrees. For some reason it clicked off. I coaxed it back to life, at least for now, and last time I looked it was up to 100 degrees. I like the hot tub on a hot day which, some might think, is odd. Diane loves it any time, but that’s because she wears a form-fitting swimming suit. If she would just let me go in naked I’d be OK, but she won’t. Maybe if she’d let me wear a speedo … that might work.

The problem is, you see, not that I don’t like the hot water bubbling all around me, it’s the getting out part I don’t like. Guys swimming trucks have evolved in to these long-legged shorts that dangle loosely around my little chicken legs and when I stand up to get out they turn to ice. It’s just a terrible way to end such a pleasant experience, don’t you think? I mean, that’s the only part of me that’s cold, my legs, where the frozen suit touches me. So, logic tells me that getting out naked would be better and I don’t see it as a big deal because there’s just nothing to see. My penis and gonads disappeared a long time ago. I think they atrophied and fell off somewhere along the line which makes me wonder if, perhaps, I could just wear one of Diane’s many suits. Or, maybe a nice frilly bikini bottom.

OK, this is getting away from me and I apologize, especially to my lovely daughter because I know she reads this. I’d take it all back if I could but I can’t so I won’t.

Oh, and Jack, I have this bag of Worx double helix weed whacker twin on my computer table that’s supposed to go to you. I finally found them on my work bench a couple of weeks ago and brought them to my desk. I think they’ve matured enough that they are ready to be released for work. Now it’s up to you to remember to ask for them because, although they are right in front of me, all the time, I’ll forget.

It’s almost 9 pm and we have early church tomorrow so need to quit and get to bed, even though the sun is still shining. Might have to wear eye shades but don’t think I have any so I probably won’t. I’ll just self medicate and call it a day.

G’nite

This morning I turned the tails on the dogs by getting up at 0500. They weren’t ready for their day, but I made them get up anyway, and go outside, in the cold and wet … it’s 45 degrees. Really chilly on bare feet, which all dogs have.

After I finish my Tillamook Marionberry Yogurt I plan to hunker down and continue reading Dan Brown’s “Inferno” which I broke down and purchased for my iPad. Knowing that I will be overcome with weariness from all this morning exertion, I plan to test my inner alarm clock to see if it will wake me in time to be at Bethany Memorial Cemetery by 1000 so I can help place flags for veterans, as we did yesterday. I suspect Diane will be up by that time, however, which will defeat my inner clock and spoil the experiment. We shall see.

My granddaughter, Lydia, plays softball in St. Helens. She’s done this for a number of years and has participated in all the raffles that garner a bit of money for the leagues. Never enough to really get anything done because the rate of return for these raffles is less than adequate. It’s a business that benefits whoever produces the product being sold. Take Girl Scout cookies, for instance. You pay $3.50 a box and the girls get about $.56. I think that’s typical for most of the promotions that little leaguers are pretty much forced to do.

So, when the St. Helens Girls Softball League board decided to raffle off an AR-15 rifle there was criticism and praise in abundance throughout the community. It’s not illegal, the girls weren’t allowed to participate in ticket sales, and the raffle was a done deal in about 3 days. On an investment of about $900, the league received a net profit of $2000. So, it’s my understanding that they’re going to do it again.

In my humble opinion, I think it was an excellent idea by the board. It’s a far bigger bang for the buck, so to speak, than forcing the girls to fleece their families and friends for products their usually don’t need, not want. They don’t really want to do it but, until now, there really wasn’t a lot of choices if the league needs to raise money for field maintenance. Cookie dough? Calendars? Beef Jerky? Typical fare for promotions but normally the only way it gets sold is when parents and grandparents take their sales sheets to work and play the old “I bought for your kid, now it’s your turn to buy for mine” game. That’s a little crude, but I think you get my meaning.

Maybe an AR-15 isn’t the proper weapon for such a raffle. Perhaps a nice little Baretta that the lucky winner can hide in their pocket, if they have nefarious notions, would be a better choice.

Bottom line for me is that, while watching Lydia play softball on properly maintained fields, I’m not going to be looking over my shoulder for the person who won that rifle. No sir. Odds are the person who won the rifle might be the one who saves the day from those who sell stolen weapons from their cars and those who buy them.

Having said all that I’m compelled to add that I’m 69 and have never owned a personal weapon. I didn’t think I needed to because all my friends have them.

Maybe that will change after I buy my raffle ticket.

Three days! I’ve only been gone for three days but it seems so much longer.

I was ‘Taken’ on the 26th. Spirited away, I was, to a secluded cabin on the dark side of the moon.

“A cabin?”, you ask. “Really!?” Yes, a cabin, and a very nice one at that. At the time I didn’t know we were on the moon because I thought I was just dreaming. Perhaps I was. Perhaps I still am. Perhaps the entire sum of my life is something that can be downloaded onto a 2GB thumb drive because “those” people who postulate that nothing is real, that we’re all just part of an elaborate hologram, are right. Perhaps one day someone will just turn off the power and we’ll discover that we’re really living in a desolate little debris strewn valley on Uranus.

Perhaps, too, we’ll learn that the purpose of the hologram is to prevent humanity from fleeing Uranus because the government doesn’t want to be the only remaining residents. If that happened, they would be reduced to governing each other. That wouldn’t work out very well.

I’ve ‘heard’ that one ancient Uranian civilization, Eugyptians, built pyramids. Their scientists determined that the planet was cooling off, sliding into oblivion, and the only solution to longevity was to  depart Uranus for warmer climes. After much discussion the scientists gave up trying to figure out how to escape and turned the problem over to the educational system, ultimately accepted a solution proposed by a non-descript  3rd grade student, Jose Ranana (like banana).

He suggested they simply build an upside down pyramid on top of the only active volcano on the planet. Since starting the construction inside the volcano was a patently absurd idea, Jose proposed an elaborate erection of supports to hold the pyramid in place above the volcano until it was finished. The eruption cycle was well known, so the addition of supports was totally feasible since the volcano was, oddly, in a deep valley. They could start building a cubit or three above the volcano and, once it was complete, cut the supports and drop the pyramid into the volcano a week or so after an eruption.

Each stone used in the construction would be a self-contained apartment housing one family with enough food and water to last for 100 years. There weren’t more than 80-90,000 inhabitants on the planet and most of them would perish during the construction, so they only had to worry about propelling 150 families from the planet.

After listening to Jose explain his ideas everyone looked around the room waiting for someone to form a more viable solution. There being none, one of them nodded his head in acceptance. In a manner of seconds, everyone in the room was nodding so it became a huge project to propel the entire population to a new location.

Construction began at once. Each stone, beginning at level 85, was hollow with room for either food, or residents. The pointy end stones were solid rock. All of the stones were sculpted ahead of time because completing the pyramid quickly was extremely important for those who drew the short straws and had to occupy the inner stones.

I could go on and on about the details of construction but I won’t. Just believe me, if you must, that it was built, occupied, and dropped on the volcano immediately after the last eruption.

The pyramid was a mile high and was enormously heavy so when it dropped, it plunged deeply into the volcano’s orifice. As designed, this began a process that caused incredible pressure to build up under the pyramid until the for was so great the pyramid was ejected from Uranus at very high velocity. So dramatic was the ejection that you would think everyone in the hollow stones would be crushed by the forces involved. But, you forget this is pretend. No one got hurt.

Shortly after the ejection began, one of the Uranian astronauts posed the question that no one had considered during this entire process … “where are we going?” he asked.

As luck would have it, the ejection trajectory was such that it plunked down on Earth in the middle of a desert. Since it was ejected upside down, it landed right side up, just as planned. However, upon entering the Earth’s atmosphere it split into three smaller pyramids that landed in the same vicinity.

How long the trip took is a matter for later discussion because I have no idea. I would suspect it wasn’t long, however, because everyone survived.

In honor of thinking up the plan for this momentous event, Jose Ranana was promoted to the 5th grade and granted god status. They named their new home Egypt and called him Ra.

OK. I must admit that this is  little far fetched, but there’s absolutely no one around who can refute what I just shared. Sure, laws of physics, as we know it, would not have allowed people to survive such an ejection, or a trip of that nature. But, perhaps the laws of physics back then were entirely different. How would we know? Things change all the time. Look at politicians.

Time to quit. If you have anything further to add, please do. Perhaps you have your own beliefs about where the pyramids came from.