"But I'm Not Dead Yet!"

Another very conspicuous and long absence, for which I have no legitimate excuse, but then again, you know what they say about excuses..."Excuses are like rear-ends; every one's got one and you know what they're full of!"  Since I have already played the "too busy to post" card I'll not go back in that direction except to say that the alligators that I have been up to my armpits in have been chewing on my head for the past week or so.

Let's go back to where we left off...shall we?  In our previous episode I was gearing up for the week of my impending birthday, and had just been rained out of my first attempt to fire up the barbecue grill.  Well...if the weather holds out today (a somewhat iffy proposition) I will be making another attempt at the inaugural grilling event of the 2011 season.  There are showers in the area, but today it isn't a solid shield of rain like it has been most of this month.  The weather remains typical of March, that means cool and wet.  We haven't seen that first warm stretch of the spring just yet, we have not yet made it passed the mid 50s, and it appears as if it will remain cool through the middle of next week.  There are signs of warmer and drier weather by the end of next week though, so we will pin our hopes on that.  As for the birthday, that happened on St. Patrick's Day, the 17th.  To my knowledge this is the 53rd one, at least if what my parents tell me about my emergence onto this earth is correct.  The highlight of the day was my birthday party with over 1000 of my closest friends, the vast majority of which I have never met.  Every St. Patrick's Day the largest law firm in town throws a big party at the Red Lion Inn at the Park downtown.  As a good friend is the business manager of that firm we are always invited.  There is always lots of food and drink, all free of charge, so who could pass that up.  After the party we went up to the top floor of the hotel to watch the NCAA tournament game pitting the hometown heroes, the Gonzaga Bulldogs against the St. John's whatever it is that they call themselves.  The outcome of the game was in the local folks favor, so all were in a good mood, although all were not really watching the game.  To top off the evening Kay and I had earlier decided to book a room for the night so that we could just have a relaxing time...we were very relaxed.

On Friday we attended the annual meeting and dinner for the Riverview Retirement Community.  No, I am not looking to live there...not yet...but I serve on the Board of Directors for the Riverview Terrace, which is the assisted living part of the campus.  There is the Village, which are the individual homes, the Terrace, and the Care Center which is the nursing home.  The annual meeting is simply and exercise that the by-laws of the organization mandates and a good excuse to get together to eat a lot and drink some wine.  The food that they serve is fantastic, prime rib with all the sides, so maybe I will be moving in soon.  On Saturday evening and Sunday morning the Concordia University-Portland Wind Ensemble was here at our church for a Saturday concert and to play in the Sunday service.  Now you would think a wind ensemble would be made up of trumpets and tubas, flute and bassoons, and there were plenty of them.  I was a little surprised by the tympani, string bass, marimbas and snare drums though, and had a hard time figuring out how they were going to get the wind into them.  In spite of that it sounded really good, and we had big crowds, especially on Sunday morning.  We totaled 166 attending the service which is significant in that it was 10 more than we had attend our initial service in the new church building that took place almost exactly a year before.  In the past year and a half our average attendance has grown from 75 to 130.



I'm going to stop now because if you are still reading this you are very likely to stop doing so soon anyway.