Mayday! Mayday! (Or Beware of the Swine.)

Here we are getting ready to enter the month of May, which means that we should be getting some nice weather. We shall see.
We made it through the week of sitting for our Granddog Jake. I spent part of yesterday removing noseprints from windows, and tonguemarks from the hardwood floors. Jake licks EVERYTHING that dosen't move! Jake and Hairold (the cat) both made it unharmed. By the end of the week they pretty much ignored each other. But, the cat was still in charge. Last night we went to Josh & Brynn's for dinner and to visit. Jake seemed happy to see us.
I got a phone call from my old place of employment inquiring if I would be interested in working for a while this spring/summer. After mulling it over, I decided to work for 10 weeks. That is the most that I could do without screwing up my Social Security benefit. So, I will be working nights (4 tens) on the I-5 project through King County. Hopefully I will be able to get some decent sleep. Time will tell. I might have to miss a couple of baseball games, but I will try to set something up to work around that. It's hard to turn down when they tell me that I am at the top of their contact list. And besides, this can be our "traveling stash".
I could be starting as early as next week.
Joyce and Kristin are finalizing their Europe plans. They will be spending approximately 1 week each in England, France, and Italy. And now with a little extra travelling money in the pot, their is a possibility that I may meet Joyce in Munich for Oktoberfest. But who knows about anything with the flu panic.
My Mother has been occupying a lot of my time lately. She has had a series of medical emergencies over the last year or so. I believe that she has been to the emergency room 7 times in the last year. She got out of the hospital this past Saturday, and is now confined to the Health Center at Judson Park. She is anxious to get back into her independant living apartment, but we're not sure if she can handle that any more. For the past 2 weeks, I have been making daily visits. So I now have a valid excuse for not up-dating the blog sooner!! We have been so busy since our return from the "Valley Of The Sun", that I forgot we had tickets to the DooWop concert on the 11th of April. I did buy insurance on the tickets, and am in the process of recouping our $. And along that line, I just bought tickets for the Moody Blues at the end of July. One of my all time favorites.
With that all said, I will throw some random pictures up and say,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Auf Widersehen..........Ernst

Home Sweet Home?

It's been 2 weeks today that we got back from the land of sunshine. The weather here has not been too bad. It was 70'ish for the first couple of days when we got home, and it is about that now again for for the next couple of days.
My yard turned into a "moss garden" over the winter. So after applying moss killer, raking it , and re-seeding it does'nt look so hot. I pressure washed my decks in preperation for a new coat of deck stain. I plan on getting the 1st coat on the back part of the deck today while the weather is good. That way I can give it a 2nd coat in a couple of months, and be looking good for the summer. I still need to pressure wash the walkways, etc. to remove all of the green moss/algae that thrives in the overcast of Seattle. I should wise up and stain my decks green, and paint the concrete green. That way it would be self maintaining.
We had a small family Easter dinner with Joyce, Me, Kristin, Josh & Brynn. We had an 11# ham, so consequently we did a lot of leftovers. The final pound or so, along with the ham bone went into a big pot of split pea soup. We should have it all finished off shortly.
I went to the Mariners opening home game with Josh last Tuesday, and Kristin and I went to the game on Wednesday. Both were Mariner wins! Joyce and I will be going to the game tomorrow.
I hosted a poker game on Saturday for a group of retired State Highway employees. I joined the group last summer, and this is the 4th game that I have attended. So far so good. I've managed to come out ahead 3 out of the 4 games. We play with a $1.00 limit, so you would need to have a really bad day to lose more than 30 or 40 dollars. We start play at 11:00 a.m. and play until 4:30 p.m. We break for about an hour for a pot luck lunch. Some of the player's drive about 100 miles each way.
We are Dog Sitting for Josh and Brynn this week. They are headed for Montana as I write this . Jake is almost a year old, weighs about 85 lbs. and is totally scared of our 10 lb. cat! But then, the cat has every other dog in the neighborhood fooled too. Jake will be accompanying us when we take our daily 2 mile walk this morning. We shall see how that works.
At this point, we have no firm plans for another "adventure", but we are talking about a couple of weeks in Montana sometime this summer. We should nail something down soon so we can make the arrangements. Joyce and Kristin are putting their trip to Europe together for September some time, it will just be me and Hairold (the cat) holding down the fort.
I will try to post some pictures later, so please stand by..........Ernie

Spring Training Wrap Up

We left Seattle on the 27th of February, and returned on the 6th of April. We were in Apache Junction from the 2nd of March until the 2nd of April. During that time frame our average daily high temperature was approximately 80 degrees with a high of 91 and a low high of about 65 degrees. Back home the average daily high was approximately 40 - 45 degrees with a fair amount of rain, and an occasional snow shower. I think we made a good choice. My legs weren't covered by "long pants" until we got to Nevada. By the time I wear shorts again, my tanned legs will be just a memory! The weather in Arizona rates a 10.
We saw 10 Baseball games at 3 different ball parks. We saw the Mariners play 8 times. They lost 6 and tied 2. But hey, it's Spring Training. The Ball Parks were great, our seats were fantastic, and there is nothing like the intimate feel for the game that exists in a small park. Just don't forget to duck when that line drive foul ball comes your way. The baseball rates a 9, and that's only because we never saw a Mariners win.
We put approximately 2000 miles on the car sightseeing in Arizona. We saw a lot of amazing sights from the wide variety of cactus in the desert to the Grand Canyon.
The Scenery is dramaticaly different from the Northwest and we find it extremely interesting. Our favorite plant, the Saguaro Cactus only grows in the Sonoran Desert.
There are Ghost Towns to explore and many miles of scenic secondary highways.
Patrice and Paul hung out with us for a week in mid March, and we discovered that the motorhome doesn't work real well for sleeping 4 adults. Fortunately for them, we only did 2 nights of trying to sleep 4. Other than that, we all had a great time.
We met a lot of nice people at the RV Park that we stayed at. Most of them are there for 4 or 5 months. They are from all over the nortwest and the midwest. There are even a few from the Northeast. Everybody was very friendly, and helpful since we are new to the RV experience. We learned some new "tricks" to make life on the road easier.
I guess that the only negative during the entire trip was that we both got sick the last week that we were in Arizona. We got bit by the cold/flu bug, but it was a lot easier to deal with in the heat of the desert than if we were in the cold rain.
We talked with the folks who run the RV park about getting a spot for March of 2010.
We will call them in October and see if there is anything available, as right now they only book annual reservations.
In the interim we will probably do a couple of short trips in the summer. We would like to spend a little time in southern Oregon, and it's been years since we spent time in Montana.
So now it's time to clean up the motorhome in anticipation of the next journey. Our yard needs several days of help to get it back in shape. I have several other house projects waiting, and once the weather gets good, I want to spend more time perfecting my barbecue. I found a sauce in Arizona that I like a lot. The strange thing is that it's from North Carolina.
Later,,,,,,,,,,,,,Ernesto

P.S. from Joyce

Ernie forgot to mention we had an Elvis sighting. More than a sighting, he was performing 'on stage' at Harrah's with the 'Legends' show. How did he leave that out??
By the way, he also forgot to clarify that my friend Vinnie (not spelled with a 'y' at the end...) is a female. She manages the food service at the 4 Queens and has been there for 20 years. Even tho she is part Italian, as far as I know she has no 'connections' (if ya' know what I mean). We see each other about every other year for a brief visit and to catch up on our lives.
We arrived in Fallon, Nevada late this afternoon. I guess the highway we were on between Vegas and here is referred to as 'the lonliest road in America' and I can tell you there is nothing much out there - it resembles a moonscape. We drove thru what were probably boom towns during mining days and a lot of the original buildings are still standing altho falling apart. Looking at the harshness of the landscape, I realize the people who headed West and inhabited this area had to be tough cookies to survive.
I want to wish Chandler (now 14!) and Skylar(now 4!) a Happy Birthday today. Hope your day has been fun.
Till next time....Joyce

On the Road

We pulled out of Apache Junction Thursday morning a little after 9:00 a.m. And arrived in Las Vegas about 4:30 p.m. They are building a new highway and bridge that will elliminate the need to cross Hoover Dam. The bridge is being built from both sides of the canyon, and is about 50% complete. It is quite spectacular. When we find our camera, I will post some pictures! We had dinner with Joyce's old high school friend Vinny, who works at the 4 Queens in downtown Las Vegas Thursday evening.
We were going to head out for the Reno vicinity on Friday morning, but high winds came up all along our route, so we opted to stay in Vegas for an extra day. The wind gusts were up to 60 mph. We went to the Orleans for lunch, then checked out the half price tickets outlet, and got tickets to see the Legends in Concert show at Harrahs.
It was a good show for the price. After the show we went back over to the Orleans and had dinner, and then made a small contribution to the Casino via a Poker Machine.
It is now Saturday morning, and the weather is looking good for us to hit the road. I think that we are about 30 degrees cooler than when we left Arizona, so the shorts and sandals are a thing of the past.(I brought my fleece to the casino yesterday)
We will update the blog one more time along the way, then do a recap when we get home.*************** Ernie

Winner! Winner! (April Fool)

We saw our final game today, and almost came away with a win! The game ended in a 14 to 14 tie. The Mariners missed a 30 yard field goal in the 9th inning that would have put the game out of reach. So, it ended up 14 to 14!! (humor)
It's quite amazing to think that we have seen 8 games, and not 1 win. I was really hoping for a win today to carry over to the regular as we have tickets for the first 2 home games. No Ichiro today, so that didn't help. Junior planted one over the right foot wall today, and he played solid in left field. Felix pitched but wasn't very sharp. Cleveland scored in each of the first 4 innings. Then the relief pitching sucked, as evidenced by the final "football" score. But then again, it is spring training. The scary thing is that it is the end of spring training. We didn't have any line drive foul balls today, but a broken bat went deep into the stands. It wasn't anywhere near us, but it was kind of scary.
Tomorrow it's off to Las Vegas and let's win there!! Ernesto