Miscellaneous

It has been a quiet month interspersed with brief moments of busyness. And that is fine with me.

Colleen's concerts are over, and I very much enjoyed the performance I attended, Craig returned from the east coast and is now back again for a few days to help with his friends rehabilitation, Keith made a five-day whirlwind business trip to Australia, and our last exchanges with Brian find him keeping busy and looking forward to his next assignment in North Carolina.

Nolan just completed his SATS (and did very well), Warren and Nolan have finished track, Rachel is home after her first year at UMBC, and Keith and Sarah are both finished with classes for the quarter.

We loved having the Spragues here for a short time, and we did manage to convince them to stay one extra day so the boys could spend more time poking around Tacoma looking at such things as acoustic guitars and guns, and leaving Karen and I free to mosey off to a quilt shop or two. I don't know when we will get together again as our schedules are pretty divergent for the next few months.

I have been following the activites of Linea and Cinda with their involvement in NAMI and Bring Change 2 Mind, both mental illness advocacy groups. I joined them along with Curt and other friends of theirs for two fund-raising walks this month. Two weeks ago was the 5K in Seattle, and yesterday was the 5K in Portland. Seattle's weather was lovely, and Portland's was wet, cold, and breezy. However, we walked on both sides of the river near downtown Portland so that was a new experience for me.

Ken drove to Portland with me yesterday which was a good thing, because I was so sleepy on the way home I probably would have driven right into something. Portland is such a difficult city to navigate that running into something is always a bit of a possibility!

We are paring down the kitchen to-do list now that all the plumbing issues have been resolved. We are ready to have the floors refinished and then it will be July after Chuck returns from Alaska before the base molding is installed, and some revisions are made to two of the upper kitchen cabinets.

If you ever select kitchen cabinets, do not under any circumstances allow anyone to talk you into hinged 90 degree corner cabinets instead of a single angled door. I did and I regret it. I can't even reach the bottom shelf nor see anything that is on it, so we are purchasing materials to have Chuck revamp both the cabinets to allow for lazy susans. That is what I discussed originally and the kitchen designer convinced me that these are much better -- even though she is as short as I, and she doesn't have hinged doors in her kitchen!! Lesson learned.

We are experiencing days and days of overcast, cold, and drizzly weather, but it is bound to change soon. Enjoy spring in your part of the world. Ciao.