Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Ready To Sell



Earlier in the week I took advantage of a brief window of good weather...very brief...to get the yard looking all spiffy for the impending summer.  I certainly hope there is an impending summer out there somewhere!  I have finally got all of the weeds pulled and thanks to a sale on bark chips at the local Ace Hardware the planting beds have a fresh clean look to them.  Out back the garden is looking good and I'm sure that things will be growing like gang busters once the ice melts off again.  It sure felt cold enough to snow today...40 degrees and a steady rain to start things off this morning and it never got much above 50 this afternoon.

There's been a lot going on in the past couple of weeks.  On Memorial Day weekend Kay and I made a trip over to Seattle for a couple of days.  We took off right after church on the Sunday of that weekend and stayed until Tuesday afternoon.  We had a blast.  We did bring back a souvenir...about a 15 pound chunk of halibut.  We got it at the City Fish Market in Pike Place, they had the best price.  We also found out that they now sell fresh fish at the Spokane Downtown Market on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays.  While in Seattle we did a lot of walking, which resulted in both of us buying new shoes.  We didn't actually wear ours out, but we did walk to Nordstrom Rack to make our purchases.  I got a new pair of tennis shoes...yes...for tennis, which I had a mind to return until earlier today.  More on that below.

Since we've returned it has turned out that being around me is not good for one's health and life expectancy.  There have been 4 deaths related to people from, or formerly from, St. John's Lutheran Church in the past couple of weeks.  I had a funeral this past Saturday and I will be attending...not officiating at...another on Friday and again next Thursday.  None of the deaths were truly unexpected, but then again when is death really unexpected?  The death rate in this world is still one per customer.

Other than our numbers decreasing rapidly everything at the church has been going pretty well.  We plan on hitting the neighborhood streets this Saturday to introduce ourselves to those who live around us and to hand out information on what our congregation has to offer.  The way things look right now it will probably snow on Saturday.

While we were in Seattle my tennis posse-mate Bill was out on a backpacking trip to the Olympic Peninsula.  Now keep in mind that Bill is 83 years old!  Obviously he has no idea of his advanced age.  Upon his return, and mine from Seattle, he went on an unprecedented winning streak.  Between last Wednesday and today he and whomever he was partnered with had not lost a set.  During that span I had only been partnered with him once, in a tie breaker as we were running out of time last Friday.  Other than coming out victorious in that endeavor I had been on the losing end of everything during the same stretch.  Now today, as Bill was the last of the posse to arrive, we conspired to put an end to his streak.  The plan was for me to be partnered with him from the getgo...which would surely result in a crushing defeat for our octogenarian outdoors-man.  Things went right according to plan early, as Bill and I quickly lost the first two games.  From there things went horribly wrong!  We reeled off wins in six straight games to claim the first set 6-2.  So much for a good plan.  In the second set I was paired with my good friend John...also on the downhill side of 80 and the Happiest man that I have ever met.  Once again we quickly puked up two games and trailed 0-2...mostly due to my ineptitude.  From there we made our move and ended up winning 6-4.  That was the end of Bill's winning streak.  I hope that he wasn't driving any heavy machinery today!  As time wound down Mark and I took a 2-0 decision from Bill and John making for a clean sweep.

Well that's all I have time for tonight...I'll probably have another update in about a month or so.

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