The family has spent the last week at
Black Butte Ranch
hanging out in the semi-desert of Central Oregon amid golf courses,
miles of trails and houses that are worth more than most houses back
in Portland.

I haven’t been here all week because of work.
But I made it for the last few days –saddly, we go home tomorrow.
I’ve been cramming in as much hiking and bike riding as I can.
My rear hurts in ways it hasn’t hurt in a long time (that’s another
topic — why the heck haven’t bicycle seats been figured out?).
Now, I’m sitting on the back deck, looking out over green grass and
off to snow covered mountains and enjoying the good life for
one more evening.

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After finishing all the work on the
rental, I today had some time for chores around here.
So, a quick trip to the
transfer station to drop off some garbage and old pesticides.
A stop at my mother’s followed by a stop at the
comic book store
(what I read is a subject for another entry)

The afternoon was filled by putting fertilizer on the lawn.
Well, more than just fertilizer — it need lots of help so it
got clay breaker-upper, root growth enhancer, bug killer
as well as the nitrogen.
Then some putting around the house before cooking steaks
for the family and dog.

Now I’m here filling in my blog.
Live goes on.

I haven’t put pictures up in a while, so here are my pictures from the
Forth of July
and pictures out the plane window from a
trip to California.

We’re going to
Black Butte next week, so I’ll have lots more pictures.

I haven’t been on much as you might tell — I’ve been
under the gun at work (BIG project with lots of visibility)
and our renters moved out.

The latter is what’s been keeping me off the computer the most.
The last few weeks we completely repainted the house (ceilings
and walls), re-installed linolium, replaced all the light and plumbing
fixtures and cleaned, cleaned, cleaned.
What a lot of work.

I will now have my evenings back and can spend some time
on the computer. And with my blog.