Just a few notes to catch up on the last time since I’ve
connected with you all:
The floors in our house are linoleum, all covered in fine
fake wood floor linoleum. It makes for a
slippery time for the dogs especially when they get excited, which is often. After witnessing Mace splay full out and hurt
his shoulder, we finally broke down and got 46’ rug runner that we could lay
out from the back door to the dining room.
No sooner had I begun to roll the rug out the dogs began to play on
it. They knew it was for them. They then began a game of chase and keep the
game on top of the rug. It was
delightful to watch.
I mowed the lawn on Sunday.
In all honesty, I mowed ¾’s of it.
We bought an electric mower. It
was on sale at Canadian Tire, the Target of Canada. I plugged in the mower to the extension cord
and began my task of mowing. I completed
the back yard easily. I began the trickier
task of mowing the front yard. I quickly discovered the shortness of my
extension cord. The front yard encircles
the house so my little 50’ extension cord couldn’t get to the entire yard. Ah well, I will have to figure out how to get
the 1/3 of the front yard I missed in this next week. I’ll
need an edge trimmer to help clean up those pesky weeds along the fence. That too will be a next week expense.
Both Jeff and I were surprised at how fast the grass grows
here. When we arrived, just three weeks
ago, (seems like 3 months.) the lawns were brown from a dry summer. I was disappointed to see the brown hills not
knowing what to expect. In just one
rainy weekend and boom! The whole place
turned a beautiful green.
Jeff started work Monday.
The dogs and I walk him down the hill to the train station. It’s only 3 blocks away. There is a crossing guard at the school that
we pass and she holds up the stop sign for us as we cross the ‘big’ street. (This
isn’t an LA big street; this is a small town big street. You know a car every 4 minutes or so, and big
trucks drive on it, come on) She
crosses for the school and church that is at the corner of 8th Ave
and 22nd St. It’s very
sweet.
Also people park around our house and walk down the hill to
the train station. Our street has no
restrictions in parking. Crazily enough
someone with my exact car, same color, same make, same year, parks right across
the street. Go figure!
Got my first round of flu.
I don’t know what came first the migraine or the flue but I was in bed
for three days. Whew, hope that takes
care of me for the rest of the season.
That’s it for now.
Miss you all
Brie
Sunday October 5, 2014
One day while Jeff and I were making the trek to Costco he
said, “If anyone visits us we’ve got to drive ‘em to Costco because the views
are gorgeous! “ Then we both realized,
any drive here is breathtaking. Mountains,
rivers, forests and the Pacific Ocean surround us. So, whoever visits first gets that cool
drive. Ha-ha.
Good News:
We got a new renter, Martha Jeannine Dominigue and her
daughter, they move in October 17th.
You may recognize the last name.
Stephen Dominigue owns the Rajin Cajun.
We have known ‘Jeannine’ for years.
We are hoping for a connection
for RC sauce. We don’t think she knows
that it is our condo she’s renting.
We are not sure of our rights in taking legal action against
the renter that signed and bailed. There
is a thing called a Buyers Remorse clause that gives people 3 days to finalize
any contract, but I am not certain if that includes rental agreements.
We are still sleeping on the $40.00 Target air mattress. (A dam
fine buy.) It’s comfy and easy to keep
clean just a little challenging to get up from the floor at 6 AM with my 61
year old knees. I guess it’s more yoga
everyday for flexibility so I can get up off the floor with ease.
I’ve lived in a few cities, St Paul Minnesota, Chicago
Illinois, briefly in Athens Ohio, and Los Angeles. (Well mostly the South Bay; Palos Verdes, Manhattan Beach, Redondo Beach,
you get the idea) I’ve discovered each city has a distinct personality.
St Paul is a community city.
I knew every one of my neighbors names, their children and grand kids, I
knew what anniversary they were celebrating, if graduated from high school or
college, when they got a new job or promotion.
I saw them every day either we were digging each other out from the
10-20” of snow in the alley or I was visiting the neighborhood mom’s house
Jackie McEiver. But also, if I went to
the downtown library some woman would walk up to me and say, “Oh, your Jack
Scott’s daughter. I knew your
grandfather quite well.”
Chicago is a city made for and by men. I’ve got no complaint about that, it’s just a
city of men, big men, men that look like Ernst Borgnine and could star in The Expendables with Sylvester
Stallone. These guys could be 20 years
old but had the faces of 45 rough lived years.
Chicago is fondly called the city of big shoulders.
LA is a city dedicated to hustle. Hustle is what’s
important, doesn’t matter what just hustle.
I worked for a small business
referral club called Leads Club. Many
mornings I was up and on the freeway by 6 am driving to Arcadia or Calabasas or
Burbank to give a presentation to a group of 20-30 business professionals about
best business practices or how to successfully connect with clients. No matter the time of morning or the number of
the freeway (the 405, 10, 134,101) traffic
was always cooking. People were busily
on their way to something urgent. It is
always urgent in LA.
I haven’t quite groked* Vancouver BC yet. New Westminster is friendly, kind and
compassionate. Except in parking lots, then a completely different beast rears
it’s ugly head. It’s crazy there. Downtown is like many downtowns; people with
a lot of self-importance wearing black and walking to something in a determined
clear-headed way which only singles out the new
in town as they do not know exactly where they are or how to get where they
are going. Consequently they hold maps
and study the sky train grid. But
mostly it’s beautiful views and clean air.
Anyway, Happy Sunday.
Miss you all,
Brie
*Grok /ˈɡrɒk/ is a word coined by Robert A. Heinlein for his 1961 science-fiction
novel, Stranger in a Strange Land, where it
is defined as follows:
Grok means to understand so thoroughly that the observer
becomes a part of the observed—to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in
group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion,
philosophy, and science—and it means as little to us (because of our Earthling
assumptions) as color means to a blind man.
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