Wine Women and ?

This past week was a busy one. Colleen arrived on Thursday evening to join in the weekend's festivities for the Chick Fling. Friday morning had the hairdresser here for about 3 hours, to be followed by Colleen's birthday lunch. Then she and I jumped in the car and drove to Bellevue for the week end. I drove I-5 and I-405 on Friday, and drove I-405 round trip to the airport on Sunday, and I made it in record time every trip. Even on Friday, about five o'clock, we didn't have to slow down. Perhaps there are some folks who are driving less.

The Chick Fling was lots of fun. We enjoyed a lovely dinner Saturday night at the Metropolitan Grill, and spent Sunday morning reading the paper and noshing on quiche and sausage strudels.

We had briefly discussed transportation to and from dinner, but had not settled on anything. As we were getting ready to go, Cinda's collegue, Dennis, drove up in a rented van (Cinda's treat), and stood beside the open doors in his black slacks and white shirt. Dennis' profession is in education!! It was much fun. As he arrived at the restaurant, the valet handed him his claim check only to be told by Dennis that he wasn't staying, just dropping us off, and would be returning for us. So of course the valet folks recognized all of us when Dennis returned to get us.

Curt and Cinda have a lovely hot tub, so we jumped into that several times over the week end!!

After dropping Colleen and Lois at the airport Sunday afternoon, I headed for Indian John Hill rest stop on the other side of Snoqualmie Pass to meet up with Ken and proceed on to Yakima where Rod and Karen were staying. We stayed at Sportsman State Park in Yakima, and it was beautiful. There were lots of deciduous trees whose leaves had turned, but not all had fallen. So there was golden light in the trees plus a golden carpet on the ground.

There is a wine area between Yakima and the Tri Cities known as Rattlesnake Hills. Those dozen wineries have developed a "passport" and when 10 wineries have stamped your passport, you get a corkscrew or wine glass and are entered into a drawing for an empty wine barrel. Quite a clever marketing endeavor, and we did our best to visit all. The one or two we missed; we have visited before.

We enjoyed our time with Rod and Karen and spent some time discussing winter trips down south. They are going for the months of January and February, but are not inclined to stay for more than one week in any one place, so we will meet up with them occasionally throughout the winter.

Gary and Carolyn - your cupboard doors arrived today so if we don't see you before, we will have them with us when we get to Cocopah. Do we need to open the box to be sure you got what you were expecting?

Brian and Sheila gave me puzzle books for my birthday; a New York Times crossword dictionary and a book of Sudoku puzzles. If I didn't know better, I would think they were being cruel. Those puzzles are addictive, even though they are thoroughyly frustrating. You have probably seen them in your newspapers. They are simply based on the numbers one through nine, with each number appearing just once in each row, both horizontally and vertically. It is all logic, but when over half the numbers are missing, it is difficult to find the logic.

And a lovely box of cut flowers arrived from Keith and Janet today. My kids ease the distress of growing another year older!

And on a closing note: I am so glad Harriet and George took my advice!!!!

Ciao