Friday 27th

Surprise! I am at Tammy's house. sitting here while she puts dinner together. Thanks Tammy! You are the greatest! The trip has been great to date, no rain at all until the 15th day on the road Lots of pictures and a great  time exploring Key West. Doggie is fine, fat and sassy.ya'll be good, hear?

Tuesday

Tuesday. . . . I drove into Longview and met the gang of ‘52’ for lunch today. We had a pretty good turnout. But then the weather was not so great either so they couldn’t find anything more exciting to do. At least it didn’t rain, I expected rain because I had washed my car yesterday. My radar picture shows rain about 150 miles west of here, perhaps I will be out of here before the rain arrives tomorrow.  .  .  . This afternoon I removed the passenger seat from the car and ‘built’ my bed in its place. I finished my packing and stuffed most of the items in the trunk. Looks like I’m ready to hit the road, folks. I cancelled my haircut of the 26^th because I have no plans to return that soon. I will add to my blog when and if I find a computer to use. Not a high priority though.

Monday

Monday.  .  .  Up early, the sun was shining for a little while, that is always nice to see around here. I was happy to drive to Vancouver and back in a rain free mode. It was cloudy and the temperature never did get above 60 but what the heck, it is Washington after all. The doctor report was as good as could be expected. The doctor said I was doing as well as most of his 77 year old patients. The prostate is enlarged but we already knew that. He claims I’m lookin’ good. Can’t beat that!  .  .  .   I returned via Caren and Ron’s place for a short vast. All is fine there, Ashton, age 5 has discovered that games can be played on the computer so he is now excited about spending more time there. Ron is enjoying his Mothers Day Present. A brand new John Deer lawn tractor. The problem is the yard is still too wet to do any mowing, the earth has to dry out a bit. Leonard phoned about 6:30 to check on me, I’m looking forward to seeing those folks when I arrive. This evening I ate the last of the potato soup Caren had given me  and watched TV until bed time.

Sunday

Sunday  .  .  .I was awake at the crack of dawn; that’s good because that is the way it will be on my trip. I do hope though that I awake to better weather than we have here. I suppose Cowlitz County will suffer one of the nicest May’s in history; since I won’t be here to enjoy it. I went bowling today, 146-143-141. I decided to stop there because it seemed things were only getting worse. I stopped by Safeway for a few things and a $52 tank of gas. I will use some of that gasoline tomorrow when I keep my doctor appointment in Vancouver. My laundry is now all caught up so I can start packing my clothes for the trip to Key West and Shreveport. {Down in South America}.  I produced my first ever stir fry tonight. I used a bunch of stuff I had around including a can of spinach. I think the spinach was a bad idea, next time I use it I will use raw spinach. I also used Kikkoman Stir Fry Sauce; it may be OK using a small amount but it is too strong for my taste buds. Next time I will try just a few drops of it. I have enough stir fry left over to make 6 more servings. I aim to freeze it and try it again later. This evening was commercials until bedtime. I have no idea what happened to my Saturday post, sorry.

Friday

Friday.  .  .  .  I lost two more chess games this morning, my score is down to 1731. That is not bad for an average club player but I have done better and hope to again.  .  .  .The rain fell most of the day so I made no effort to get out in it and go walking.  .  .  .  I watched O’Reilly then found the end of a NASCAR race to watch. Very quiet around here, lousy weather, Terri flew to Hawaii today, lucky lady.

Thursday

Thursday. . . . .I didn’t do well enough bowling today. I started off with a 90, believe it or not. I had changed my delivery and was hoping the change would work for me but during the second game, 136, I decided to switch back to the old way. By the time the third game started I found myself in the groove and finished that line with a 166. I think I will stay with this delivery until I get good enough to start experimenting again. .  .  .  I was home about 4:30 and nothing exciting happened the rest of the evening. I posted this about 7:30 with plans to watch commercials until about 9PM.

Wednesday

Wednesday. . . . I had breakfast [and cleaned up the mess] washed the dog and waxed the hood, top, and trunk lid of the car all by 11AM. I didn’t expect to get a lot more exercise today but by 2PM I was getting antsy so I took the dog down to the river again. We were down and back in an hour. He was panting as we walked along; it was fairly warm out and with his extra weight the ‘heat’ was telling on him. This afternoon I pulled my ‘RV’ bed out from its storage location under my bed and put it together. It is a week early but I wanted to know that the support I have for it is going to be strong enough to hold me. If it collapses on me I will have to stop someplace along the way and get a stronger box to put under it. I plan on installing it in the car next Tuesday afternoon.

Tuesday

Tuesday. . . . I began the day by taking a shower, ChiChi is next but there is not enough sunshine for him to properly dry off. If he is going with me on my trip he is going to have a bath before we leave. He is not going to like the bath idea and I hate to do that to him in cool weather. Such is life, doggie. . . . . I went to work on my first attempt at spaghetti sauce this morning. All of the ingredients I could think of were in the pot and simmering by 11:30. My base was Prego, I did add some salt and pepper but not much. I added no other spices, just hamburger and onions. Oh, yes, four cloves of garlic too... . . . There were two deer exploring outside my living room window at noon. ChiChi never even noticed them. They walked on up the hill past the pump house, minding their own business. . . .  After simmering the spaghetti sauce for about 6 hours I boiled up some noodles and sat down to a wonderful tasting bowl of my famous spaghetti! Wow! I really surprised myself! That is good stuff.  I had added a can of corn, large olives, and a can of stewed tomatoes during the cooking process. I feel the finishing touch was the dab of sour cream stirred in after the finished product was placed in the serving plate. . . . . After watching too many commercials this evening I headed for bed at 9:15.

Sunday

Sunday. . . . ChiChi and I left at 11:30 for our trip to the Oregon Coast with Terri. We had planned on meeting Ben and Jean at their yurt at 5PM so we were early enough to stop at Cannon Beach for a walk in the sand and an ice cream. We arrived at the yurt at five and Jean was busy preparing a stir fry for dinner. The weather was cool but we came prepared for that, the Oregon coast can be cold any time of year and this is certainly one of those times. We had a nice visit and left them about 8:30 for the drive home. ChiChi was very well behaved all day, never barked once. I was very proud of him. We dropped Terri off at church and 10:30 and arrived back at Pleasant Hill at 11:30. ChiChi had some dinner while I ate chocolate chip cookies and a glass of milk before going to bed.