Home is Where we Hook-up

I hope everyone has a wonderful and special Thanksgiving tomorrow. Keith and I have so much to be thankful for – both of us are equally thankful for our good health and for each of us finding such a great partner in the other. Keith says that I should tell you here that he has more to be thankful for than me. For our family, and for our friends – thankful, thankful, thankful. The little three-legged, dog-earred, parvo dog totally makes it on the list, there is no other love like hers.

Seems like a short list, but it is everything that is important. We have more than enough of anything we “need”. We enjoy each days adventure. Often times we are asked “do you know how lucky you are?” And the answer each time is unequivocally YES – do you?

I am threatening that this is my last American Thanksgiving celebration. I do believe I’ll switch things up and will be celebrating the fall harvest and bounty next year with the Canadians. I fell in love with the holiday all over again when Keith and I lived in B.C. and celebrated Thanksgiving on the second Monday in October – a day we know as Columbus Day. Keith thinks this will hinder my attempt to have any fellow Americans join me in moving our holiday to match the more appropriate day in October, as it would mean one less day off work. But think of it, if we celebrate Thanksgiving on Oct 8th, 2007, we can all be decorated for Christmas by Halloween and not miss our chance to give thanks. Hahahaha, I promised I wasn’t going to bring it up again – I lied. It’s just that we have so much to be thankful for….well, judging by the responses from my previous rant, you agree.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone – enjoy the day and the people you share it with 🙂

My dad was a Bah-Humbug of the truest sense. I have a clear image of him reclined in his chair, pencil in one hand, crossword puzzle in the other and a tilt to his head – as if that helped in his efforts to ignore the festive spirit of tree decorating happening in his very own living room. We always had a Christmas tree, but I can tell you for a fact he couldn’t have cared less about it. I asked him last year which ornament was his favorite. He was unable to give me an answer “anything that doesn’t blink” was the closest he could come. He grumbled and griped all the way from Thanksgiving to up until the winter solstice. And you know what put him in such a foul mood about Christmas? I’ll give you one guess.

Commercialism. Buy, buy, buy.

I always understood his objection, I just thought he took it a little far. Well, guess what. I think I’m about to do my dad proud. I made a pact with myself a month or so ago. I refuse to do any Christmas shopping with any retailer pushing Christmas in any way prior to the Thanksgiving Holiday. Uh-Ohhhh, seems my gift buying is going to be made difficult this year. There is hardly a retailer that I have been in within the last several weeks that hasn’t exploded with the Merry Merry – and it just makes me SICK! I went out shopping for a horn to make a cornacopia – well, good luck, I guess I was supposed to get that done back before Labor Day. Finally I found one, without a price tag, the sales girl didn’t know what to do – what in the world was the “left over” fall decoration still doing hanging around? I was given a better than fair price for the thing, and for that I am happy, but man, it’s gotten ridiculous!

When it came time to celebrate Christmas, dad could always be counted on to get into the mood. We probably have a dozen pictures just like this one, dad smirking with his “silly face”, hunched over another gorgeous turkey, protecting it from grabby fingers that might sneak the delicatable scraps.

Just for good measure I thought I’d toss in a cutie picture of dad holding my brother, back in simpler time, just happy to be together.

I will find myself in the festive mood of the holidays, and I hate that this is the way I end up feeling about Christmas in the first place – but, what will be will be. My attempt to boycott shopping with retailers who have lost their minds amidst this push to get us to spend more earlier, will have little effect on anyone – other than I will feel better for remaining true to my reasons for celebrating. That’s my rant, I’ll not bring it up again!

My mom and I have a long standing inside joke about all things being a mother’s fault. Doesn’t matter which mother, or what things. Fair enough, I say. Well, it’s been a long time since I have blamed my own mother for anything other than excellent parenting, so if I’m gonna do it, I might as well do it publicly – right mom?

I am hooked on penny slot machines, and it’s all my mom’s fault! We went on a “shopping” trip to Reno this summer, and she enticed me to play the penny slots over poker. She’s a bad influence 😉

Because I am now an avid player, I have favorite machines. Believe me, I know how this sounds, but I’m going with it for now. Tuesday night Keith and I were in one of the nearby casino’s, and all three of our favorite penny slots were being played. Bummer. Unable to intimidate the blue hairs off their stools, we ended up chosing a couple nickel poker machines. This turned out to be the right decision, as my third deal resulted with a 10, J, Q & A of spades. Handed to me. I grabbed Keith’s kneecap (probably pretty hard), leaned into him and said,

“I just have to go for this!” As anyone would, he agreed. I couldn’t look, so I closed my eyes and tapped the draw button. Hehehehehe, imagine, just imagine my delight when the good old King of Spades nestled himself right in between the J & Q!!! I didn’t want to yell – I really didn’t have it in me, if you can imagine. But my grin, man, ear to ear doesn’t cover it. I just kept saying,

“A Royal Flush, I just got a Royal Flush!!!” then added “how much is 4000 nickels anyway?” ha ha ha. I sat frozen for a few minutes, just staring at the pretty Royal, and 4000 credits. It’s definitely gonna be hard to top that $200 win. Oh, alright, I did play the entire $20 I started with, so the winnings were only $180. Did I just say “were only”?

That’s my icing on the cake story, but have you seen these penny slots I’m talking about? Gone are the days of matching up cherries or bells on a 3 reel spin (well they still exist, but mostly they collect dust) . Oh no, now they are animated and interactive – and highly addicting. These cartoon like money grabbers have 5 reels with animated themes, you can play 12, 15, 20 or 30 different combinations of lines, so “penny slot” is nothing more than pure dilusion, I know this. And yet………

Right now my machine is DEAL OR NO DEAL – I love this game. Never watch it on t.v., but playing is great. Match 3 cash boxes on a spin and you get to go interactive. A bright light covers the screen, a door appears, opens and reveals a dozen cases. Touch the screen to choose “your case”, then begin the process of removing cases and getting an offer. Deal or No Deal. I am pretty good at this, and on Halloween night I walked out of the Sunset Station with a cool $60 to the good, laughing all the way. Keith and I have both developed systems, yeah, I know, I know, sounds dangerous, but so far they seem to work. We have some laughs, I mean come on, free money given out by little dancing cartoons? Winning hundreds of pennies has never been so much fun!

I have a love hate relationship with the Full Moon. Last nights moon, called the Full Hunters Moon, showed itself early – low over the mountains, massive, and in total competition to the sunset. It was the sunset that caught my attention, all the outdoor surfaces forced to take on the rosy color of the sky – yeah, that always gets my attention. I looked to the west, and gasped. Where’s the camera, where’s the dang camera??? Oh, the desert sky – usually so clear and uninterrupted was showing off it’s thin layer of hazy cloud almost entirely and brilliantly in red. Camera and car keys in hand, I stepped out the front door – and was stopped in my tracks. Another gasp.

Hello, moon.

Gigantic and putting it’s own spin on the cloud cover, showing off a wide circle of rainbow colors, haloed in more blues and greens than anything else, it was magnificent. That moment of the evening had me energized. I knew my pictures would never do the true nature any justice, and I only tried to take one……it could have been perfect, an impressive moon with a palm tree in the foreground, the last blazes of red on a nearby mountain….but you are going to have to take my word for it – it’s a blurry dark mess (I’m going to, as usual, blame it on the camera – and say we are shopping for a new one)

I approached Lake Mead (I was on my way to pick Keith up from work) soaking up every second of the rapidly changing outdoor scene. Beneath the moon a cluster of constellations began to appear, maybe ten or twelve flickering twilights on the horizon as the darkness took over the night. I had a good laugh when I realized they were airplanes on decent into Vegas, ha ha ha. We are always so completely amazed by the constant string of jets in the sky, all day everyday – but I’d never mistaken them for stars before.

The downside to the wondrous beauty of the Full Moon always comes with a restless night sleep, and dreams of the strangest variety – as if I’d pounded back a quart of habanero laden salsa.  Oh well, a little tired today – but glad to have enjoyed the moonlit night  🙂

I almost can’t believe it, today is October 31st, Halloween. Keith and I took Zoe to the lake this morning and giggled about wading around in bath temperature water – and it’s almost November! (Ok – Keith wasn’t really giggling…do I have to clarify that?) I’m not mentioning the gorgeous warm and sunny day to rub it in to any of you experiencing bad, nasty, cold, windy, rainy weather. I’m just stoked that we are here in the land of sunshine, hallelujah!

We are confident that we will not have any ghosts or goblins knocking on our trailer door tonight – so we are hitting the town to brave a haunted house. I have been wanting to go to a haunted house for years, please don’t ask me why, I really am a scardy cat, biggest chicken of them all – and yet….I can’t wait – I’m scared already!

In our last post, I mentioned that we’d flown from Boulder City to Fresno – an overnighter trip. I really should learn to send the dog to the kennel with more than just one day’s food – I know an overnighter is rarely any less than two or three days minimum, ha ha. We managed to spend a little bit of time in Bishop – for the most part (weather permitting) it’s enroute.

Flying over the Eastern Sierra’s is amazing, something I’ll never get tired of. We crossed the range just one day after a fresh snow. Gorgeous.

I even managed to cross off one thing on my list of “things to do before I die” Since in my mid-twenties, or should I say, from the time I stopped hating everything about this little town I was forced to live in, and began to appreciate my good fortune of being raised in such a pristine and special region, I’ve wanted to climb to the top of Mt. Tom.

Imagine the luck of flying over the top of this mountain of my dreams. My first thoughts as I noticed the switchbacks lightly covered in snow, traversing the back of the mountain were that I was going to get a birds eye on the best way to climb this mountain in the future. As we closed in, I realized those switchbacks, well, they just petered out – they do not in fact go all the way to the top. This concerned me, but not nearly as much as Keith telling me

“I don’t have enough power at this altitude to land”

With my left hand firmly jammed against the door, practicing breathing and trying to talk in normal tones through my teeth, I agreed that was fine, no problem, wouldn’t give it a second thought. From where we hovered over this jagged topped pile of rock, I couldn’t imagine where in the world he would set down, and I was terrified.

As we decended into the valley below, I sighed with relief, I am SO OVER my need to climb Mt. Tom – cross ‘er off the list! And boy wasn’t I glad to have found out this way, rather than spend an entire day hiking, only to find out that unless you have serious climbing gear – there’s no way to reach the top. Bust!

Sometime ago, well back when we were settled in Washington, I decided to look for work that I could do from wherever Keith and I happened to be. I don’t need to explain it to most of you, my job as the “cold beer, clean laundry wench” while on the road was one I mastered pretty quickly. Several people have asked me over the years,

“What do you do?”

And some have said:

“I could never live like that”

Yeah, full-timing is not for everyone. Technology has absolutely come to my aid – I am officially able to work from anywhere, anytime. As a matter of fact, Keith and I flew the helicopter from Boulder City to Fresno yesterday – we will make the return trip this afternoon, and I am getting work done while here. This, of course is another story, another blog post.

Last Thursday I flew to Dallas for an annual conference for Virtual Assistants. And now you are going to say “What?” The fifth growing industry in America, the #1 in Canada, and most people have no idea what it is. If it helps, think Executive/Administrative Assistant, Graphic Artist/Designer, Bookkeeper just to name a few – the visual you have is likely is of a person in an office, maybe even a cubicle environment (God forbid!). Take them out of the office – and voila – you have a Virtual Assistant. It’s the same work, just done remotely. If you are reading this thinking “I work from home, does that make me?????” Yes. But, anyway, that’s all information that will be on my business blog – not necessarily what I came here to write 🙂

So, Dallas. Texas is not one of my favorite states. As a matter of fact, it ranks right up there with Wyoming on the list of “States YOU can keep” Yes, I think the people are friendly, not neccessarily any nicer than most people I meet, but certainly they are hospitable. (I think my dimples really disarm just about anyone who would be any less than friendly….it’s just a theory) But, the freeway and highway systems are a wreck, and as nice as these people very well may be, they drive like maniacs. I always feel vunerable in the state of Texas – clearly I am used to being surrounded by gigantic mountain ranges, and in Texas, well, it’s not flat as a pancake like Kansas, but close enough.

For the fact that I arrived Thursday afternoon and with the exception of having to detour to our meeting room via an outside door and back in again (due to broken pipes and incidentally massive flooding) I didn’t go outside – much less around the city of Dallas, for three days. Meetings and workshops wrapped up Saturday night, my flight didn’t leave until 7 p.m. Sunday night. How could I not make an attempt to visit the JFK Memorial? Every trip must start with a plan. There were two other delegates of the conference who had a 7 p.m. departure that night, so we decided to pal around. The hotel’s courtesy van gave us a lift to the railway, the young woman driving offered to take us somewhere so we could buy an umbrella – and I don’t think she knew what to make of us when we explained to her that not one of us, one from Portland, OR, one from San Francisco, CA, and myself a refugee from Washington, were going to melt or (unfortunately) shrink in the rain. The afternoon was pleasant – we wandered the WestEnd taking pictures and getting to know each other. Laurie, from Portland has a friend in Dallas, and she came to pick us up, gave us a driving tour of the downtown – with a quick stop at the infamous Grassy Knoll. Time allowed only a few pictures of the area, including the Book Depository that is now the 6th Floor Museum, where Lee Harvey Oswald shot President Kennedy.

Since Sunday was “game day” (and in Dallas that means more than I could have imagined) we made our way to the airport a little early. Laurie was coincidentally on the same flight as me – and she was terrified of flying. I took her under my wing for the leg of the flight we shared, and when we neared Vegas she asked so sincerely,

“Can you go to Portland?”
I laughed and answered enthusiatically,

“Absolutely! You just have to get the last minute ticket, put me up for the night, get my return ticket for tomorrow and pay my hourly wage – I’m IN!!!!”

Alright, so we departed the plane, I walked her to the flight screens to check her current gate information, pointed to the gate, said my goodbye’s and walked away to find Keith to take me home. But, there could be a market for that sort of thing, don’t you think?

Keith and I take Zoe for a swim in Lake Mead at least four or five times a week, yesterday (Saturday) was one of those days. It’s all very routine – she jumps in her crate in the truck and whines (with anticipation, we think?) for a better part of the 5 mile trip. Well, yesterday I was the one doing the whining……as we rolled down the Hwy 93, passing the ever expanding housing tracts I spotted a road sign with an arrow – advertising the Lake Mtn. Garage Sale. No question about it, I knew what I would be doing this morning. Keith can’t help but ask me,

“What is it that we would need from a yardsale?”

I am ready for the question and always have a few items that, while they don’t qualify for the need list, are on the list of useful items I would not pay retail for. I usually find what I am looking for – and enjoy the rush of scoring bargins, aw heck, maybe that’s what the need is.

I was completely unprepared for Saturday’s yardsale, I didn’t get started until after 9:30 a.m. I followed the traffic into the tract, and like a good little lamb ended on a street that seemed a garage sale goldmine – no less than four houses with open garages and people pouring in and out. The first house I shopped was already doing a 25% reduction on all items, that made me laugh. This is where I met DeeDee, a cute little service dog (breed unknown) wearing a sign around her neck “NOT FOR SALE” another laugh -off to a good start this morning. I mentioned to DeeDee’s owner that I was looking for a silverware box and she quickly got the attention of her husband and asked “someone here has a silverwar box, don’t they?” I perked up at the question, he agreed he thought he’d seen one at one of the sales – a glimmer of hope for me! Then she asks,

“Would you like a map?”

A MAP?? Ummm, yeah, ok, a map’ll do just fine, thanks. I take hold of this 8×11 paper designating the entire tract and showing in color were the houses participating in this annual garage sale. Counted ’em up- there were 45 sales going on. Oh, yeah, pay dirt!

I sifted through other people’s junk for the better part of the morning, and into the afternoon. What bargins did I find, and did I score the silverware box? One lady admitted that she had just sold a lined box within the last hour. Another man had an antique box including sterling silverware for sale, but it was not what I was looking for (he did start cleaning the silver after my interest…..) So, no luck on the box. I did find a small piece of luggage – never used – that will be perfect for an upcoming trip to Dallas this month – walked away with it for .50 cents. Picked up a book on “Hidden Mexico” for a quarter and even that was only after the old guy sitting in the driveway said to me “You have to buy SOMETHING!” For all the entertainment I get from eavesdropping and people watching it was the least I could do, ha ha ha.

More stories on the way…………………………..