The First Day of September

It's somehow fitting that I turned the heat on in this room this morning when I got up. It's also fitting that I made my bed with flannel sheets last night. Our last few weeks of August around here in the Seattle area have been much the same as today: Cool and not in any way a real summer if you're a sun worshiper. Yep, the Labor Day weekend puts summer officially behind us. I even glanced at my wood stove in a new way yesterday as I walked through the living room--Like it was trying to catch my eye and tell me that it was proudly standing by when I needed it.

Anyone that reads my blog knows that it's been a non-blogging week. It's partly that I haven't felt like writing and partly that I didn't have much to write about. Let's see if I can stretch my brain--Back to the last time I blogged. Oh yeah, Nudestock! Now that was an interesting weather anomaly: Having one nice, hot day in the midst of two or three solid weeks of cool days in the 50's and 60's.

The big news this week was Suzie and her new business venture. She spent Monday out "cold calling" with her sales pitch and armed to the teeth with materials to support her new DVD service. Imagine her delight and surprise when she scored her first client the very next day! A few hours work over a couple days brought in just shy of $300. If things go that way it could be very lucrative. The best part was not that she got the new gig, but rather the excitement that was apparent. She was totally pumped! When she finally delivered her first "baby" to her first customer, the woman was overjoyed. She totally loved the speed, the attention to detail, and the personal attention she received from Sue during the whole process. After all, when someone dies, the last thing you want is cold and impersonal right? She was very happy with the finished product. Spread the word lady, spread the word!

Saturday was interesting. It got off to a bad start right off the bat when I introduced a virus (a trojan actually) to my computer. Yeah, I know the risks and knew what I was doing and gambled anyway. It took me quite a while to get my computer back to normal. When I finally had that functioning well again, we decided to go to Cabela's new store down south of us in Lacey. Cabela's is a huge seller of sports and outdoor equipment, and has always been the catalog of hunters and fishermen (of which I am neither). Recent years has seen them opening retail stores here and there across the US, and our area got one a couple months ago.

Back to the story. I should say we attempted to go to Cabela's, but the fact is we did finally find the place. We were starting to wonder though. Although we were technically not lost, Suzie and I drove in circles for over two hours trying to find a place that we knew was there. Did that make sense? I didn't think so. Their store is right next to the freeway and I've gone by it several times since they've built it. The trouble is, the store is between two exits. It's actually a mile or so past the exit you need to take to get to their store. You can't see it at all from the exit that you use. The next exit is 4 miles down. Add to that the fact that the city of Lacey seems to have gone nuts with traffic circles and we had a lot of trouble. We kept going every which direction. They have traffic circles in multiples in some places, and they're only like one block apart. That gives you several choices in direction. Normally that might not be a problem because all you have to do is look at which direction you need to go and exit out that side right? Well, because it's all growing and new out that way, those places with the traffic circles have the same thing on all sides: Evergreen trees. Kudos for the city planners to be anticipating the growth of the area by putting the traffic circles in, but they are extremely vague when they are out in the middle of nowhere and in multiples like that. Apparently they are trying to eliminate the need for traffic signals. At any rate, it was pretty embarrassing. Lost for hours in the middle of everything. Well we did finally find the place, and although it was a totally beautiful store, we didn't buy anything. Their use of wood in the place was breathtaking. I think it really is the nicest store I've ever seen as far as the construction aspect of it goes. They did go a bit overboard on the stuffed animals (real or not) that they had displayed. They were everywhere. At any rate, the bottom line is, just because you "know" where someplace is, doesn't mean you know how to get there...

Yesterday started out a little better. I went over to Sarah's house and yakked with them for a little while then stopped by Fred Meyer. I was in the market for sheets and hoped to find something on clearance. They always have items on clearance. Every week it's either 40 or 50% off last marked down clearance price, which in itself is a good deal, but this week they have 60% off last marked price. I found two sets of flannel sheets that ended up costing me $13 each. I also happened across a killer deal on a blender. They had an Oster blender on clearance. It was the model with the high-wattage motor, heavy-duty steel gears, and glass tumbler. In other words, it was made to excell at crushing ice (it said so on the package). It even had a different blade design to work better with ice. At any rate, I didn't own a blender and bought one. It ended up costing $12!

I ended up spending a little time out under the hood of my truck yesterday too. I did some more tweaking and tuning and got it running good again! Well, as good as it's going to run anyway, and that's not too bad. Let's put it this way: It's running good enough that I got online and added it back to my insurance. I'll take it for a drive today and see how it's doing. I really want to be able to use it you know? It's a nice riding truck and it hauls things. Sometimes it's nice to be able actually not worry about whether you can fit something in your car or not. It will also be nice to be able to give it a good scrub down and maybe even a wax (gasp!) job. Who knows?

We're talking about a hike up on Snoqualmie Pass somewhere today. Sue told me where it was last night, but I don't remember things too well. I think it starts with a T... How's that?