Finally have time to discuss last weekend.

Here's a couple of pictures from our weekend trip to Lincoln City, Oregon for the turkey holiday. We had lovely weather, and as you can see, the sunsets on the beach are darn near to spectacular. The mist over the water picture is from Thursday morning, we drove over Wednesday night and had to hang out till we could get in our room at noon. So, we sat on the beach and watched the waves and the mist. The wind was blowing out to sea as the waves were coming in, so we got these NEAT shots of the mist over the waves, and if you look close you can see a rainbow in the mist. Awsome, huh?

So, we had sunny and warm on the coast, beautiful 50's and sunny. That was Thursday and Friday. Saturday it was cold and rainy and on Sunday early we left for home.

Oh - by the way - on the way down there Chris had to stop at the Indian Casino, he won enough there in about 2 hours to pay for the room, and I was happy about that. Then while we were in LC he decided he was bored and needed to go gamble, he spent the entire night at the casino, and lost $150, oh well, its his money to do with as he pleases. I WAS NOT happy about him spending the night gambling and WAS NOT happy about him coming in stinking like a smoke-filled casino. Made him remove his stinking clothes and I tied them into a garbage bag, would have been happy to throw them out onto the balcony, but the seagulls eat anything that's tossed out.

Meanwhile, we're getting snowed upon here in the Northwest. About 3" on the ground today and one of my clients called to warn me that there's a B I G storm coming, we might get a foot here by Monday and I shouldn't worry about making it to her house if the roads are icy. Lemme fill you in on something here: NOT ONE CLIENT is so important to me that I would risk death for them. Besides, I checked the forecast and only supposed to get up to 5" before it changes to rain on Sunday night, no problem!!!

Now if my daughter, grandchild, or a select couple of friends needed me in a storm, I'd very likely do my damndest to get to them, but not some client with a dirty sink that needs cleaning. Granted, the loss of $120 would make me unhappy, but living to see an0ther smile and hear Fay call me Nanna is so much more important to me.

We're coming up on a year anniversary of the BIG windstorm of Wenatchee, blew over some 500 trees and the roofing companies still don't have all the roofs repaired. Amanda's guy John works for a roofing company (though he'll be switching to Mr. Plow through the rest of the winter). She's still working at the pizza place, and doing OK with it, though she wants to go into Dental Hygenics and just has to talk herself into going. She'll have to drive 6 hours a week to go over to Seattle to take the classes - for 10 weeks, plus gas and food, etc. She can get a student loan to cover it, but hates to think about having to pay it back someday.

Also it's been just about a year since the "BIG BREAKUP" between Amanda and John. Boy was that a flop. They had a cute little 2 bedroom house running them $650 a month. John had a dinner date with some floozy that made him feel alive, so he went home and broke up with Amanda, told her he was moving out, and bye-bye. Well, she called mommy and needed moving money, which I loaned her. She found a little tiney itey bitey place, one bedroom, and the bathroom is off the bedroom, so anyone going pee has to go through their bedroom to get there. Anyway, supposedly (and I don't know if this is truth or not), the guy that John was going to move in and room with made a sexual pass at John and so John freaked out and decided he better stay with Amanda and his daughter, so he moved into the itty bitty apartment with them and now they pay $350 a month rent. Personally, I don't believe about 3/4 of what John says, but he's a good Daddy and Fay loves him completely. I'd love to see him GROW UP and spend more time with her than he does getting stoned and hanging out with his buddies...but that's another days complaint on the GET OFF THE PHONE blog.

Oh, by the way (again), I'm going to Seattle in February to see Jeff Dunham in person, I'm excited to go. He's a ventriloquist and pretty darn good. Not quite the level of Sherry Lewis and Lambchop, or Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy (both of which I have seen on stage), but Jeff is really funny - his puppet Walter is someone (some ONE??) I could see working as the greeter at WalMart- he says his greeting would be "Welcome to WalMart, get your shit and get out!" You can visit Jeff Dunham's website at http://www.jeffdunham.com/.

Meanwhile, Bud isn't doing well, he's stopped eating about a week ago, he's drinking water and urinating, but he's really dehydrated. I can't justify taking him to the vet for torture and fright, if I could just take him in and have the vet say "yep, you're right, it's his kidneys, or it's his teeth or it's his bowels obstructed", and fix the problem without putting the poor cat through blood, urine, and probing tests. I don't believe the vets need to do all those tests anyway, he sees 500 cats a month, surely he recognizes signs when he sees them? WHY do they need to run up a $1,000 bill to tell me the cat is sick? I know he's sick!!! He's not eating, not pooping, and he's dehydrated. CU-CHING says the vet, needs fluids and IV's and intubation, and, and, and (which translates into he needs a payment on his Ferarri), so I think that me and Bud will stay home, I'll force water on him (which he hates, but he's taking) and long as he's urinating, we'll take this far as we can. The only reason to take him to the vet in my opinion is to put him down. If he gets to the point where he REFUSES water and his kidneys shut down there's nothing to be done for him. I poked around his belly and he didn't complain, I looked in his mouth and his gums are red and his breath is NASTY and his tongue is dry, but again he's taking water and urinating, so I'm not UTTERLY worried about him, yet. And I do have a bottle of antibiots, I'll start giving him tomorrow, didn't want to push them tonight after I finally got water down him.

Here's a good picture of Bud on the couch, and Ben doing his flattened cat impersonation.