Convention Coming Up!

Wow, here we are in the second week of August already and our district convention is coming right up! Before that there is an open house at the Adult Day Care where I work, the Pioneer School lunch is on Friday, there is still invitation work for the convention and an assessment to do in Carson City, bla, bla, bla.......but I'd rather be busy than just sitting around!
We have done a few things to our Chateux A Go Go lately. Ripped out the ancient carpet and put down stick on tiles. Now we will at least know what we are putting our feet onto! Also painted the walls in the tiny kitchen bright orange! Livens it up a bit.
Oh yes, our little doggie Kobe ran away yesterday and was probably out on some dangerous streets for a couple of hours! A very nice young lady and her mother stopped and coaxed him into their car so he wouldn't get run over and called us because our phone number is on his dog tag. They even brought him to us. Thanks again to the unknown ladies!
The weather has been so pleasant lately. Only in the low 80s and 40s at night. "They" say it's going to be 100 by the weekend though. Hope that's not accurate!
We found out that instead of our hotel in Sacramento being 3 or 4 blocks from the convention center, it's 10 blocks! We will check it out Thursday when we get there. How far is 10 blocks, a mile? We may or may not have the energy to do that walk morning and night for 3 days. :) Maybe there will be shuttles!
Hope everyone is well. I will write again probably after the convention.

To the Sierras and Back!

We got back a few days ago from our 8 day camping trip in the Sierras. It was a lot of fun; especially seeing Brooke and Carl and having Mike and Jess join us for a couple of days.
We have traveled the 395 hwy. for decades between southern CA and Reno but haven't really spent the time to go off towards a lot of the camping areas. Now we're getting down to business!
Our first two nights were at Twin Lakes campground, 10 miles off the 395 at Bridgeport. This was a last minute reservation and it turned out to be our favorite spot of the trip. We had an awesome site right on Robinson Creek and we could walk just a short distance to one of the lakes. Next time we have to get a fishing license. People were just standing on the shore reeling em in!
Then we went to a private campground on June Lake. It's only redeeming feature was full hookups. Carl helped us a lot to learn how to make things work on the motorhome. By the end we were taking hot showers in our miniature bathroom!
The private campground had trailers packed in so tight it was amazing. It took some people 15 min. to manuever their units into the spots! Why do people want to cram into little "camping towns" like that??
From this campground Brooke took me on a hike that was supposed to end at a lake in the Ansel Adams wilderness. At about 2 miles we were supposed to come to the lake but after 2.5 miles we still weren't there and decided to turn back. It was very pretty any way and I was quite proud of myself for going 5 miles!
Our last campsite was at another area called Twin Lakes but it's at Mammoth. That was very nice. More spread out. Right on two little lakes. There was a big waterfall gushing into one of the lakes. You could hear it all the time. We kayaked on these lakes a bit.
Kobe is a trooper at camping although it was pretty cold at night and he would end up in the sleeping bags with us!
When we got back to Reno we unloaded the camper in 100 degree weather.......shades of Palm Springs! Yuck. It's cooler now thankfully.
I put up some pics of our trip on flickr. If you click on the slideshow to the right it will bring them up.

Countdown to Camping

Tomorrow morning we're off for a week of camping in bear country! At least we will have 4 aluminum sided walls and a roof around us. Kind of like a tin can! We will just ask directions at our campgrounds as to whether we need to put our food in the bear boxes or if we can keep it inside. We will also watch Kobe so he doesn't become an appetizer!

We had a very good meeting today. The talk went right along with the WT and everyone was getting into the discussion. By the way, does anyone know what the center picture was in the WT study? Everyone was having fun guessing.....tubes with smoke coming out of them, a book, ?? Just shows we don't do very well with pics of stuff we shouldn't be looking at anyway!

OK, I will write after our week of camping in the eastern Sierras (Bridgeport, June Lake, Mammoth) and hopefully have some pictures too!

Assembly and Misc. Observations

Our Circuit Assembly was excellent this weekend. Our C.O. and D.O. are very different and very motivating. The C.O. is rather loud and emphatic and tells it like it is and the D.O. is more mild and emotional. A good combination. We heard about 9 ft. tall blue people and vampires and how they are not our friends. Clubbing and "girl's night out" are not good ideas either. I concur and always have! Although the 9 ft. tall blue people are something new :)

OK, then.....on to my gripes. What is with supposedly "professional" people these days??? They haven't learned the common courtesy of returning a phone call or an email until you get their supervisor involved? Or maybe they are the supervisor which means you will never get a call back! Unbelievable what's going on in the business world these days. If we had run our business like people do now we wouldn't have lasted 6 months.

Today I had to force someone to communicate with me by going to the corporate office and reporting her. This person is a regional manager for a big company but has gone 2 weeks without getting back to me on something important! I have had two calls in to 2 different business owners since last week on other matters with no replies. Also we needed to set an appointment to see something last Friday. This was agreed upon in advance. It is Monday; no call about that either even though I've left a couple of messages. Crazy. Maybe it's because they don't want to tell you something you might not want to hear, I don't know. But get over it. Conduct business, keep things moving. Sheesh.

Kobe was a very good boy over the weekend when we were gone at the assembly. It was nice out so we left him with all his toys, bed, food, water on the back patio. He did great but was quite overjoyed to see us at the end of the day!

Hope all is well with everyone.

Strolling With Kobe

Yesterday it was about 70 degrees out (today it's about 55) and we decided it was time to take our new little doggie on a walk downtown by the Truckee River. A lot of other people had the same idea! We probably walked a mile or so up one side, over some bridges, down the other side. Sat on a few benches too.
Kobe is a very pleasant companion on a walk. He doesn't try to choke himself senseless on his lease, he just trots along beside us and meets humans and dogs with much interest! He met various big dogs who were busy jumping in and out of the river, two Beagles who were very sweet, a Boston Terrier and at least 4 fellow Dachsunds! One was a baby miniature Dachsund! Probably the cutest thing I've ever seen! Of course my camera was in the trunk of the car :(
When we got back to the car, Kobe got in his bed in the backseat and was asleep instantly. Really! One mile on those little legs must have been like 10 miles at least to us. He slept very well last night!
Next time we do the river walk we will be equipped with tracts with our names and phone number. We met lots of nice people and we will probably see them again.
Today we decided to try doing some RVs between 2 and 3 pm. 4 out of 5 were home! Everyone was very pleasant too. So afternoon RVs and dogwalking are our new plans for service this summer. :)
I have gotten a few nursing assessment jobs in the last couple of weeks. A company hired me without seeing me.......they don't know how old I am! Unfortunately, that seems to make a lot of difference these days. But I'm happy to be doing something at least.
Tonight we are going to Virginia City to see a music group that we actually last saw about 1968 up at Tahoe. Ha ha.....they will probably have their walkers propping them up!
Hope it's actually springtime somewhere and that everyone is doing fine!

New Family Member

This week we welcomed a new family member! No, no human babies......a 6 month old male Dachshund! He had another name but Mike wanted to call him Kobe, so Kobe it is.

I have to say this little doggie is smart! He already knows he is to stay in his bed all night and sleep. His bed is in our room so he can see us. We don't have the potty thing perfect yet but almost. One funny/smart thing he did this morning was to jump up in a recliner we have in the living room. How he jumps so high is another amazing thing. He wanted to be more comfortable so he pulled the blanket that was hanging over the top of the chair onto the bottom of the chair so he could snuggle in it!

Now when we go to parks to take walks it will be more fun with Kobe running and leaping beside us. :) A good way to meet people too. People who are never home, if you know what I mean.

We already took him to Portola because we had to deliver something to an old friend of Mike's over there. Mike's friend also has a Doxie, so Kobe and Surf are now best of buddies. Kobe is the black and brown doggie in the picture. He traveled very well; just slept in his bed in the backseat.

Our weather is getting better. Maybe now we are over the 80 degree thing with snowstorms the next day and it will just gradually become summer!

Coldest Ever!

We had a very nice Memorial celebration at the Grand Sierra Resort here in Reno last night. I have to say though that it was the coldest weather we remember for the occasion of the 37 times we've gone! It had snowed off and on all day but was just plain freezing when we left the house and was a total Arctic blast when we got out! Forget the pretty spring dresses......wool with heavy winter coats was the order of the evening.
We met with our congregation, an English cong. from the center of town and the ASL group. A total of 430 in attendance. Our speaker was from Brooklyn Bethel. Lots of interested people were there!
It would be nice to hear about other Memorials if you'd like to drop us an email. :) I recently lost a lot of email addresses so it's up to you now!
We have a couple of short camping trips planned for the summer. One in June and one in July. Then our district convention in Aug. So those are some things to look forward to during the summer. If we ever get summer!