12 Oakdale

Sixteen days ago, I resolved to swim every day. Back and forth, back and forth, breaststroke over, backstroke return. Not fast, nothing fancy. My goal was to get the habit restarted. First for 5 minutes, then add a minute every day. I’m up to 22 minutes. It was fairly easy. Granted my right shoulder is really sore, and my left hamstring still aches, but I just stand on the second pool step, turn, and fall in backwards. Once wet, I swim until my timer goes off. All good until the temperature dropped three days ago. From the 70’s at night to the 50’s.  Even though the air was cool, the first day the water hadn’t cooled very much. I’d struggled into my wetsuit top a few weeks ago when the first fall days came, but I deemed that too much trouble for the little extra warmth it gave. Now, shoulder ache be damned, I would have to start wearing clothing as I swam. My first time was with just the top, next day top and my swim pants which aren’t thermal, but help a little. Yesterday I tried ...

Many months ago, our neighbors were having their septic tank pumped, which they seem to do regularly. I didn’t understand why. We only had that done a couple of time in our 40 years in Fort Lauderdale. True, they have 4 kids, but so did we, some of whom who took very long showers. Perhaps it’s because up here we have sump pumps to get the outflow to our drain fields. How do non-gravity fed septic tanks work? I toddled nextdoor and asked the worker to come see me when he was done pumping their tank. His take on our situation was that it all looked good, except that the water level alarm for the pump tank was shot, its electric box completely rusted away.  And so things stood. Occasionally I’d say we needed to get that looked into. Yep. But we didn’t. However, a few months ago, I decided this needed to be fixed. I didn’t want to come home from vacation or even the store, and find a house full of water or worse. My inclination was to install an alarm that would alert us on our phone. ...

I think I’ve recovered from my race driving school weekend. Jamey said I’d be tired after it, but I scoffed. He was right. The week started off stressful, because I was determined we would choose which Rocky Mountain train trip we are taking next year. We have been talking about it for months. Plus, we could get $825 off if we put out money down before September 30th. Originally, we decided on a 3-day train ride with 7 more days touring the Canadian Rockies, and that it would be at the Gold-leaf level, because this is the only time we are doing it. After inviting Peg, who was enthusiastic, and Betsy, who said it was too expensive, I reconsidered. Perhaps it would be just as fun on a shorter trip. Okay. I narrowed it down to 4, checked the dates of the new moon in May and June, tossed a mental coin whether to go from Calgary to Vancouver or vice versa (C > V won), made a spread sheet of prices. Then Peg said she’d read that we could have Silver-leaf level hotels and get the Gold-lea...