Busy busy - for me anyway!

We are just back from a quick trip up to Washington state.  The occasion was a memorial for my wife's late step-father who passed away last February.  It was his birthday and the family just got together to say a couple things.  It was quite touching at times.  At other times it was kind of painful.  Life goes on I guess.

We flew up on Thursday and came home on Sunday; not exactly a long visit but we had things to do.  We haven't been doing much flying lately and it was a pretty good experience.  We flew Alaska Airways where we've always had pretty good treatment and this was no exception.  The flight attendant managed to drop something out of an overhead onto me so decided she needed to buy me a drink to make up for it.  I've got to figure out how to make that happen more often!  The landing back here in Vegas was the smoothest I've ever felt.  It was so amazing I had to compliment the pilot.  Vegas is surrounded by mountains and often is kind of gusty but this time you literally couldn't tell when you actually touched down.

I did visit the surgeon who did my discectomy on a followup last monday and got official permission to go do things.  Good thing because we were just back from Washington!  Still, it's good to know he thinks I'll live.  Unfortunately I'm still an old crock so all my aches and pains won't be going away.  As they say though at least I'm on the right side of the grass.

We got home and now have a painter in fixing a couple cracks in the ceiling.  One especially is being a bit of a challenge.  The topsoil around here is pretty flimsy stuff so the builder will dig a hole 3 or 4 feet deep and fill it with compacted gravel trying to start the foundation on something stable.  Of course, stuff happens and a few cracks happen.  (There are homes in the valley that were not built on a gravel base and are in the process of collapse.)  Anyway, these cracks were in the living room and my wife wanted them fixed and she was sure she didn't want an amateur job.  From all the work, I'm thinking that was a great idea!  The guy had to take out a section of drywall about 3 inches by 30 inches; replace it and then resurface it.  He says part of the problem is that the builder didn't install the drywall in same direction as the joists.  I never knew it mattered but what do I know.  He is doing lots of fooling around to get it looking good.  My wife and I will get to take care of the ones in the spare bedroom but those are much smaller and won't require the drywall work.

We got home in time to find our cactus in bloom.  Well, one bloom.

You can probably imagine why we have always considered the cactus to be male.

And a very proud boy he is!

So that's most of the news from around here.  Hopefully I'll get back to nothing to say soon.  All this activity is quite tiring.  Thanks for stopping by though.  Have a good one.