Helping

The last few days Dar and I have been in the Portland area helping out our Son-in-Law Gage, Our Daughter Andrea, and their family.  I haven't written anything here about whats been going on.  The short story is that a few weeks ago Gage was involved in an accident between a bicycle and a Jeep.  Gage was on the bike. As you can imagine, (Jeep vs. Bike, Bike vs. Jeep, either way) he got the raw end of this deal. A number of broken bones and a long recovery is expected.  We're here to lend a hand.

As of a few minutes ago, he awoke from his third surgery.  All is good. Bones have been put straight.  He's now on the road to recovery. 

Clutter

We have too much stuff. 

It's time to de-clutter.

But where do I start?

Cheers

 Yesterday, Dar and I reserved the day for just the two of us. Far too little traveling lately, maybe too much community involvement, and over-exposure to stupid people who reject facts and science... and probably a few other factors that aren't jumping to mind right now... combined to motivate us to get out for the day and just get away.

A restaurant breakfast on board, and under a clear sky, we soaked in the views and relished the break in routine as we motored along. We checked out a few area campgrounds, but unfortunately, many of these are closed, or in the process of closing, for the season. Add that to the list of unfortunate things that don't make sense on the surface. Autumn can be the best time of year for camping and they're closing the damned campgrounds! But that's another story.

Both the miles and the hours melted away. One thing led to another and later that afternoon the truck was parked at PlankTown Brewing Company in downtown Springfield. Dar and I have always enjoyed these pub stops during our travels. This one, for me, more so than usual. A sudden feeling of happiness flowed through me as I nursed a pint of Sara's Pale Lager beside a background of soft jazz and just the right amount of people din filled the space. It was perfect. I've really missed this. Cheers.

Return

Today, September 22, is the Vernal Equinox.  Many strange and mysterious things have happened over the years on the Vernal Equinox. This is another one.

Now that pretty much everyone has moved from blogging to vlogging (for the uninitiated: video logging or video journalling) I feel comfortable getting back to the old blog.  It's so simple... words on a page for someone to read or NOT read, as they choose. It's really elegant when you think about it. And for a closet author like me, there's a certain amount of "purpose" in it too.  

For some time now, I've been feeling that something has been missing from my life. Sure, the Park keeps me busy at times, and we do still go exploring once in a while, but there's been a missing "thing" in my life that I couldn't quite put my finger on or identify. This morning, to kill time I think, I dialed into the old RV Sabbatical Journal. And spent some time going through old posts. There are almost 1200 of them. And I quickly realized how much I missed the process of generating regular posts that were then accessible to anyone in the world (!) with a device. It seems the number of readers or followers one has is almost secondary to the idea that anyone could stumble on these pages and read these posts. Anyone can be a published author.

While considering this relighting of my humble writing proclivities, I thought about Goodle and their blogging product called "Blogger".  With the turn from blogging to vlogging (Youtube), I wonder how long they'll even keep the blogging product around. "G" has a history of just shutting down services or products that fall out of favor. So it might be good to have a plan B if this blogging service is shut down at some point.  (more later)

Thom

wandering...  and wondering

A Table for the Ages

 A new picture.  The table was originally built by Dar's Dad, and was with us when our kids were growing up. Dar had them each paint whatever they wanted on a portion of the top. Now it's grandkids time... Andrea's boys have made their mark on one bench and now Justin's two have done their part on the other. So two generations of memories.  

Unfortunately, the table has spent too much time in the elements and is deteriorating to dust. Entropy in action. Photographs will preserve the memories even if the table is no longer with us.