Back to reality

Man oh man, life can really throw some curveballs at you. Healthwise I am fine except for losing my mind thanks to this remodel. First, the quote for the doors we want came in this morning, almost double what we expected. Ouch. Then our general contractor showed up and told us we really needed to move out of the house for 3 ½ months, ASAP. It seems nobody anticipated shifting the bearing of a shear wall (CA earthquake code) from the North wall to the East wall, and that means demolishing our bedroom wall and kitchen NOW. I suppose we could all move into the boys bedrooms and cook in the microwave in the bathroom, but ……..

The timing couldn’t be worse, either, as I start a job with an engineering company this Friday, and have to spend next week at the main office in Reno. That means finding a house and moving into it this week, on top of Saturday's yard sale. So if anyone reading this knows a rental or housesitting situation, call me NOW.

Yes Mac, you hear right, no more golf for me, at least until I get a new bionic hip. I am trying to finish off this osteo-arthritic left hip by playing racquetball, and I need to do that to save Mikey from a life in a chair playing computer games. I can actually win a game a month, during steroid week, but he and uncle Barry are pretty good and Mike likes the game. Golf is just too damn painful, and I can't drink the necessary painkillers needed to play and not care, so it will have to wait.

I was anticipating a relaxing last 4 days of retirement – not to be. I will be Director of Operations for the SLO office of this company, which they opened over a year ago and now need some help running. Should be interesting. Friday will also be Johnny’s 18th birthday, holy smokes.

He went to the prom Saturday night, and he and his girl looked like movie stars. He says he had a great time, so that’s good since it cost him a pretty penny including dinner at Café Roma. The prom evening started out as classic Johnny. We started to drive him out to his girl's house in Varian Ranch (that's right, still no license) to get some pictures for us and for her parents, and realized we forgot the corsage and her phone number (just in case). Soon we are driving through Varian Ranch and realize John does not know where the house is. Of course, we cannot get a signal in the hills and valleys of Varian Ranch, and they have a dinner reservation at 6:00. I can see Dana getting a little anxious in the rearview mirror, and John is trying to remain cool, so I knew I had to remain cool. John finally gets through on the phone, but it cuts out twice before he can get street and number. We find their house, which happened to be Dana's dream house, Tuscan with arched doors and windows, great gardens, just beautiful. We are greeted by Jessica and her mom Susan and find they are having a shoe crisis - the strap on the brand new shoes has broken, and there is not enough material at one end to resew it. I ask Susan if they have any duct tape, and we effect a repair that looks like it might hold and doesn't look too bad if you don't look. It lasted half the night. Cafe Roma was happy to move the reservation to 6:30. Then as Dana is pinning John's boutonniere, the pinhead (not me) breaks off and Dana is stabbed. So, bad luck comes in threes - lost in Varian Ranch, broken shoe, stabbed by pin - and the rest of the night was a great success!

Randy and Donald came out last Thursday, and Mike B. and I picked them up at the SLO airport at 3pm. We were pitching tents at Limekiln State Park at 6pm. We hiked up to the falls and the kilns the next day, but then had to break camp and move to Plaskett Creek campground ten miles south. We were lucky to get a site as it filled up. I probably should’ve brought bigger steaks and a grandiose salad, because I think Randy left hungry on the fruit and nut CA diet. We fixed that on Saturday when we came back and had lunch at the Hofbrau and then dinner at the Big Sky Café.

Randy and Donald were troopers, dealing with jet lag while we ran them through the paces of poker and bocce. Donald wiped us all out in 8 hands, winning seven of them by obviously cheating, though we didn’t catch him. Randy and I dominated in bocce. It was steroid week (Mon-Fri) for me, so I was last to bed and first up at 5am, but I flat out ran out of gas Saturday night and was pretty wiped out all day Sunday, steroid withdrawal. Donald and Randy left at 6:30 am Sunday, a whirlwind trip. It was great that they could come at all, and it was like old times instantly. We filled in all the blanks quickly and got down to ranting and raving. I remembered the tent poles this time!

When we tromped down to the beach at Willow Creek I noticed a car that had a license plate frame that read 'One Gallon Club - Blood Donor', and I saw these people walking to it and asked if it was their car. They said yes, and I asked who the donor was and went over and hugged her. I would have hugged her even if she wasn't good-looking, and I told her I may have some of her blood and thanks for helping to save my life. She was B+, but if that meant some B+ took her blood and left some O+ for me, she helped save my life. It was cool.