Rocky Point Sunday

No, I still haven’t put together the rest of the stories about our cruise.  Hopefully I can get motivated on that project before I completely forget all the little details.  Instead, we arrived home last Sunday night and Monday morning I immediately went to work at my “real” part time job, the one that needs to have 40 good hours of attention every two weeks. Working from home is great, as long as the home computer does its thing without hitches.  Instead, my old Dell computer running XP (for the government software) decided to burp and then basically throw up.  So it was off to town for me and a couple of days working on the reliable government computer at my official office.  I am lucky in that my bosses have all agreed that it is smart to have a real workstation available for me here in Klamath Falls, even though I technically work for Portland, Oregon, for Davis, California, for Sonora, California and for Klamath Falls, 30 miles away from my home in Rocky Point. 

After some serious time with my computer guru in town, we managed to get the Virtual PC XP operating system working inside my new Windows 7 Dell.  I only barely understand what is going on here, but with this system, I can actually install the government (XP only) software on my new machine.  Good thing, since my old machine is still at the computer guru’s house getting gutted.  Possibly too much information here for anyone but Rick, but what the heck, I need to have an excuse for not writing about the cruise yet! Back home with a working system and functioning software the rest of my work week went just fine.

I didn’t write, but managed to try to keep up at least a little bit on the blog world.  Something interesting appeared that I thought would be fun to check out.  It seems that several RV bloggers have dogs that are some kind of blue heeler, or blue heeler mix.  We have figured out that Abby is mostly blue heeler with cocker spaniel overtones.  Check out Travel with the Whippets and read their stories about the ability of their dog Bandido to disembowel any toy in a matter of minutes.  Hmm.  Abby does that.  Check out Pheebs over on Al’s website.  Al has regaled us with stories of the Pheeb’s energy repeatedly since she became a part of the Bayfield Bunch family.  Abby. Another story, that I seem to have lost track of, talked about another heeler’s separation anxiety and panic attacks when left for even a moment in a car or a house.  Again. Abby. Could it be possible that all this energy, toy destruction, separation anxiety and absolute complete devotion is a characteristic of the blue heeler breed?  Just a thought.

The colors have changed here in Rocky Point, just a bit later than last year, but still beautiful.  In fact, the aspens seem to have more pink and orange tones than usual.  I thought that the pink color in an aspen was related to the variety, but some of these trees are usually just yellow and this year are many shades of pink and orange, so I guess my original thought is completely wrong.  Back to aspen research, I guess.  In the mean time, I am just really enjoying all our fall color right here at home after traveling clear across the country and missing out on most of the seasonal brilliance on the east coast.

The burning season has opened again for a short time and yesterday Mo raked some pine needles while I cleaned out the greenhouse.  Mo also tore up the old boards on the back cabin deck that need replacing and built a very serious bonfire with them. Just one whiff of that wonderful wood smoke reminded me of hot dogs.  Yes, hot dogs.  I said, “We have some dogs and buns in the freezer, let’s do it!”  Within minutes we had defrosted the dogs and buns in the microwave, skewered the dogs to the end of the pitchfork, drug the chairs to the bonfire and had ourselves a quick, impromptu perfect hot dog supper.  I’m not on the diet officially any more, but still doing the maintenance thing, so Abby lucked out and got 2/3 of my bun.

I noticed as we were enjoying  this wonderful home moment that I had no desire to run for the camera, to turn it into a blog moment, fully documented.  I just wanted to enjoy the bonfire, the fall leaves in the background, the smell of wood smoke.  So, no photos, but still worth writing about so I don’t forget how wonderful simple moments can be.  Last night in the hot tub there was no moon to dim the brilliance of the stars. 

Today we will continue a few outside maintenance jobs and start to load up the MoHo for the short trip to Brookings.  This year the snow has held off for us, unlike the east coast and unlike last year.  We as yet have no snow at home or on the passes, so our journey to the coast will be in time.  With night temperatures dropping into the teens and the MoHo un-wintered, we will be glad to get her safely to storage where the temperatures don’t go below freezing. A couple of nights at Harris Beach and some days walking the sands will be fun.