5/8/2015 to 5/15/2015

Not much going on here.  Heard from both the kids and had a quiet Mother’s Day.  We’re still busily working on the place and trying to get things done as our time here is running out.  Beans (Lexi’s Dachshund) has been in the hospital for over a week and they’re still wanting to keep him longer.  They have been wonderful and are only charging for a very small amount of what they are doing while trying to help him walk again.  Not sure what’s going to happen with him, but that will be up to Lexi.  Speaking of Lexi, she knows how much all this will be and got another job at a local sushi place.  She’s a tired girl but working hard.

Michael has been working on the porch, a funny smell in the studio, and other small projects.  I’ve been putzing and pulling weeds, cleaning, laundry, that type of stuff (we call them pink and blue jobs).

The weather has been okay – it even rained twice!  So needed.  We’re on a well here and worry about it drying out.  We’re thinking we should sell the place before the water is gone.  Such a hard decision as the place has been in my family since the early 1960’s.  We’re still mulling it over and trying to decide.  It gives us a really good income as long as we have water.

We got to have dinner with Rodrigo, his wife, Ana, and their son at Phil’s Fish Market.  Rodrigo is the most amazing and fun handyman we met when he worked on our place two years ago.  We became really close while he worked so hard for us.  After he was finished with our place, he went next door and worked with the neighbor’s home.  Great worker and good work.  Was so nice to see them and see how big their son is getting.  We went to Phil’s Fish Market and Restaurant and were quite surprised that we were able to get a parking space and a table.  Glad to see it back like it used to be.  When we got home from dinner, we also got to visit our old renter, Greg, who came by to get his camper (he keeps it on the property, which works for us because we still get to see him occasionally).  Was so nice to catch up and see him.  He said he’s going to Italy next year.

We go up next week to Santa Clara for two months (AirBnB), then on to Oregon and Canada.  After that we’re going to be house sitting in the Santa Cruz area for almost two weeks.  We have no plans firmed up yet after August as we’re kinda waiting to see what happens with Beans.  Lexi might be needing help so we don’t want to make plans for anything very far from this area (yet).  We’re very interested in going back to Europe, so we’re kinda doing research on that.

That has been our time.  Hope yours has been great!

P.S.  Mike here, Edie forgot one really cool thing we did this past week.  A little background though, Lex worked very briefly for a fellow trying to sign people up for Direct TV.  I learned from her that if I sign up when she is at Best Buy, I get a Visa card for $100.  If I sign up while she is at Costco, I get a $200 Visa card.  So, I concluded that companies like to get Costco folks as customers.  Next background point, Edie has not had a phone for almost 3 years.  The woman lives under my armpit, I always have my phone.   In the 3 years there has been maybe 5 times I wished she had a phone, usually so I could find her in a warehouse store!  My wonderful Commando has been doing weird things and acting like it is going to need a new battery.  We went to the Verizon kiosk in Costco.  I believe we got perks (car charger, windshield holder) because we were in a Costco, that would not have been made available to us in the local corporate store.  We each got a Samsung Galaxy S6 edge.  Edie’s white, mine black.  We are totally confident that as of this writing, and for perhaps as long as 3 months, we are two of the coolest people you know.  The phones are so cool and do so much, and are so very fast.  They are really cool,  And, by association, so are we, until the next new model comes out.  We plan to hop to “old school cool”.