Memento Mori

Well, the Inevitable Toothbrush Incident has occurred.

My toothbrush is light blue. Dan's toothbrush is mint green. And, I might add, the bristles are splayed out while mine remain daintily erect.

I pick up my toothbrush to brush after Dan gets done and behold my toothbrush is wet and his is dry.



In other news, (fluff)Book, now offering a "trick or treat" type hunt, seems bound and determined to eat the rest of my life away, so I heroically stopped at 10 treats and a corner spiderweb and am thinking about a variety of things I could be doing like cleaning more stuff out of the way or going to bed.

Cleaning more stuff out of the way seems more logical. No word still from Warren when he'll be arriving. However, I have made an executive decision that he will have the couch. There's just no way we can all live in peace and contentment if he, being a person who likes to sleep until ten, is in the office where Dan likes to start working by nine, and where I kind of like to have constant access myself.

Today's bread:


I wanted to try challah, but since it requires many eggs and I have no eggs, I opted for pseudo-challah that actually is nothing like it except for the fact that it is braided. Mine is rye. It tastes fairly decent. We are thinking the caraway is a tad old, however, and maybe fresh caraway would be a good investment.

We were going to go to Bi-Mart for a new ironing board cover tonight, but Dan's installation of DC Mentors' new shopping cart has taken a good five hours longer than he originally anticipated.

I have a potential customer as well. My great-aunt tells me she's been wanting a black dress for her concert performances. She was nice and specific about what she wanted (princess seams, sweetheart neckline, long skirt and sleeves), I found a pattern that's about perfect, and so now she says she'll think it over and let me know when and if she decides to go for it. I think if she does decide to do it, I'll do her muslin test for nothing.

Anyway.

Let's see if I can manage to clear a few things away.

When people are old enough to move into senior mobile home parks, it seems they get into really tacky lawn decor. *cough*


Sunflowers right across from grandma's house.


Mountains on the way to church in Tahoe.


The church sign. "Heavenly Valley" rivals "Hope Valley" for sheer corn value. Especially considering that Tahoe is hardly in a valley in any case.


The sanctuary - so simple and so pretty.

I gave my Keno money to God. They had a potluck - imagine that. We didn't stay though. I hope that hasn't jinxed Dan's and my luck at visiting on the potluck Sabbaths. :-p The pastor was a very quiet speaker but his message was interesting, about building the temple in Jerusalem in Haggai.


We drove down to Lake Tahoe afterwards and ate some snacks and walked around.


Dan on a couple of rocks.


The lake. I have no idea where Nelson and co. were in relation to where we were. It didn't feel at all like Rose-Marie to me.


Yours truly about to step into the water. It was all glittery and golden with mica or something similar.


A pier


Donna and Arlene

We got home about three because Donna wanted to go swimming before the pool closed (7p) and she hadn't gotten her swim yet.

We had dinner which was yumness and scanned more photos. I do love old photos. This is a photo of me with a Smokey Bear that has been in the family for ages.

Photo of the day = FAIL!

We had a lovely morning at the bungalow. We made fried potatoes for breakfast and made a fire and s'mores while the laundry was laundering. Dan did the dishes while I started packing our stuff up, and we left Manzanita around two.

We stopped at a few art galleries in Cannon Beach, which was fun. Then we decided to check out Fort Stevens. We got there at three-thirty to see a sign proclaiming it closed at four. Joy.

Well, we made the most of our half hour. We saw most everything in the museum and halfway checked out one battery before we got shooed out by rangers. We drove out and looked for the cemetery that was supposed to be nearby. Of course it was closed. We passed another cemetery on the way back to Seaside and it was closed, too. Sad. So were they all.

We decided to stop in Seaside for dinner. Dan remembered a place he thought was called Donna's (it was Norma's), but we decided to eat at Pudgy's instead. Our waiter reminded me of someone, but I could not think who. We had halibut and rice pilaf with veggies and went wandering along the promenade and down a street or two to look at the old houses, which is always fun. On the way back to the car, we passed a Dreyer's store and Dan bought me an ice cream cone. I had strawberry cheesecake. Yummyness.

Then we headed home. I really had to go number 2. This is always a problem when your only option is a rest area. Specifically a rest area where none of the automatic sensing flushers have the sense to flush. One toilet did not have a heap of soggy toilet paper mounded up in it, so I very carefully lined the seat with paper because they didn't even provide seat covers and I went.

Oh, how I hate public bathrooms.

When we got home, Dan put his desk and chair together and we moved mine to make room for his.

( Photographic Appendages )

After a perfect wedding, we headed back to my place and dropped off our gifts at home. There were only about four actual gifts - the rest were cards with moolah and gift cards in. We raked in quite a bit that way. Very nice.

Dan sat down for a few minutes while I got online to check my mail. He stared at me for some time and said, "It's weird to think you're my wife now."

Which is true.

Then we got the directions to the bungalow Stevi got for us and headed out.

Dan was wired still from the excitement of the day - I was quite tired. We drove and drove and I read all the signs to keep awake. Of course, some signs just have a picture on them and leave you to interpret them. I assume a sign with a fire truck on it means something like "FIRE TRUCK CROSSING".

At about 10.40 we arrived in Manzanita Beach and blithely headed for the house, where the key was to be in the mailbox. We drove down the road. We saw we were getting close to the house number. Then the house numbers jumped higher. We drove up and down and made turns. No luck. Dan knocked at a door and the lady had no idea. We went to another brightly lit house and the people, who had a sick little girl, were very kind and let us use their phone. I called my mother - she gave me Stevi's numbers. Both of them were apparently wrong. So we got online and took a screenshot of the map and very slowly cruised down the street one more time. I might add it was pitch black and almost impossible to see anything.

And... there it was, up a hill and practically out of sight. We went up to see if the house number was correct. It was. We went to the mailbox and opened it. There was nothing in there but a web of spiders.

So we checked our rental agreement e-mail thing again and saw that it was the mailbox at the OFFICE that was to have the key. Sigh of relief. Soon we would be in the house. We saw a raccoon by a trash can on the way to the office.

I was really getting tired and wanted to cry. I refrained because it wouldn't have done any good. Dan looked at the copper-fronted mailbox where they specifically promised the key would be.

It... wasn't there.

So we sat there and tried to decide what to do. Nothing was open motel-wise in Mazanita, so we went to Cannon Beach which was the next closest place and cruised around there. Nothing was open there either except for the Hallmark Resort. It was huge. The cheapest room they had was a queen bed, fireplace, no view for $89 plus tax. Room 136.

It was really a beautiful room. I stuffed my face with egg salad on white crackers and turned on the fireplace. It was 1.30 when we finally were able to get in bed and we both just went straight to sleep.

We had the room until noon today so we pretty much hung out inside until then. I called the office in Manzanita and they were horrified to realise that they had forgotten to put the key in for us. I was very kind and diplomatic and she said for us to bring in the receipt from the Hallmark and they would cut us a check to reimburse us since it was their fault.


In the afternoon we drove back up the coast and hiked some trails and beaches and that was fun. We flew Dan's kite on Manzanita Beach and stopped in Seaside to buy stuff for s'mores, rent a movie, and watch the sunset, which was really invisible behind the clouds, but we ate sandwiches and discussed the many possible reasons the street light in front of the car randomly blinked on and off. We went back to the Microtel where we had a tiny room that in no wise could hold a candle to the Hallmark, but it was nice. I cleaned off my filthy feet and flip-flops and we watched our movie (October Sky - very good).

We were amused by the fact that the entire wall behind the bed's headboard was a dark-tinted mirror that immediately called to mind the legendary mirrors that the hotel staff can watch through. If it was such a mirror, we kept them vastly entertained. I mean, who drinks an entire gallon of cranberry juice in one evening? *cough* I might add that Dan only had like one glass out of that entire gallon.

( Photo-laden appendix to post here )