Ow!!

Last Thursday my left leg started aching. I thought it would get better, but it got more painful over the weekend. I could hardly stand it. And I didn’t get more than a couple of hours sleep each night. We figured it was probably caused by me sitting here at the computer. I sit in my chair with my legs propped up on the ottoman and the laptop on a little lapdesk. I usually cross my left leg over the right at the ankles to get the computer at a comfortable angle. It felt like a charley-horse, but the calf muscle wasn’t cramped up tight. I could walk on it, and flex it, it just hurt like hell.

We thought it might be a blood clot — you hear a lot about that these days. So Monday I got an appointment at the local clinic. The nurse practioner gave me a prescription for Naproxin (high strenght Aleve) in case it was a muscle strain and sent me to the hospital for an ultrasound of my leg to check for a blood clot. The ultrasound was kinda cool. I could hear the blood swooshing through the veins. It sounded like the sound effects from a space movie. The technician poked and pushed and prodded with the transducer all the way down my leg from the groin to the ankle. And she foud no blood clots. YAY!! So I came home and am resting the leg as much as I can by staying off the computer. And I’m taking my pills. The leg is still achey, but it is no longer excruciating. And I have been able to sleep the last couple of nights.

I have a new desk on order for my laptop, so it won’t be pressing down on my legs. It’s called an Airdesk. You can see it here: Airdesks I will be able to adjust it to whatever angle works best for me. And it will disassemble easily when we get ready to move.

mj

Fourth of July

WOW!!! What a weekend! Where to begin?

For us, the weekend started on Thursday. Since the holiday was Friday, lots of folks headed up here to the lake after they got off work Thursday. We were busy all evening, checking people in, getting them into their campsites, and selling firewood and ice. At eleven we locked the gate and came into our little house.

Around 2 am the lady from site 24 came knocking on our door to complain that the people in sites 26 and 27 were being noisy and keeping her awake. Richard went down to sort it out. He found the people in sites 26 & 27 sitting out by their fire talking. They weren’t real loud at that time, but you can’t tell how loud someone was before you got there. So he told them to keep the noise down and came back in.

Friday night was the Fourth. Most of the people coming for the weekend were already here, so you’d think it would be a pretty easy night at the gate. Well, you’d be wrong. In amongst all the people getting firewood and ice, we had a guy ride in on a little 25 cc mini-bike. He said he’d heard that for $1 we would let him use the restroom. I asked where he was camped and he said he and a group were up the road in the nearby housing addition, Baterro Park. I had to ask, “and you don’t have a toilet?” He said they just had a deck. We let him use the toilet but didn’t charge him any money.

About an hour later, just after sunset, we were talking with Rick and Julie when the same little mini-bike came scooting into the parking lot, dodged around the entrance gate and tore off up the beach. Richard shone his flashlight on him as he whizzed by, and called out to him to stop, to no avail. Rick gave chase in his golf cart, but came back a few minutes later without having caught up with the tresspasser. We told him about our previous encounter with the mini-bike. Rick said he knew where the deck was on the hillside.

Things settled back down as it got dark. Rick and Richard both went out on golf carts to do continuous patrols through the campground to ensure there were no fireworks set off and that the “no noise after 10 pm” rule was reasonably enforced. We don’t expect silence, but outdoor radios should be off and people shouldn’t be talking so loud that others can’t sleep.  There were a couple of parties that had to be told to take it down a couple of notches.

Then, when Richard was makinge his rounds just before 11, he found a couple doing the nasty on the boat launch dock.  :shock:  He shined his light on them and told them they couldn’t do that there.   After they got dressed and headed back into the campground we locked up and went in for the night.  Around midnight, the lady from site 24 came knocking on our door again to complain that the people down the beach from her were being noisy and keeping her awake. Once again Richard went down to sort it out.  He parked on the upper level of the campground and listened for a while, but he couldn’t find anyone being noisy.  So he came on back in.

Saturday evening was much quieter.  One guy came up to buy firewood and was telling us how much they had enjoyed their stay.  It was such a nice, quiet campground.  We asked him which site he was in and we nearly fell over when he said “24.”

mj

A Little Drive

Yesterday we went for a little drive. Got your atlas handy? Go get it so you can see where we went, I’ll wait right here. Ready now? ok.

We left Prineville headed northeast on hwy. 26 up to Madras. The high desert landscape is relatively flat and arid. There are some irrigated fields of grass. But mostly it is scattered sage and stunted juniper trees. At Madras we got on hwy 97 and continued north. The road wound up hill and down dale, past more irrigated fields. Eventually the road split and we took a left onto hwy 197. Some of the valleys were quite lush and pretty, and then the road would climb back up onto the dry, bare desert. Eventually, the highway dropped down into Maupin on the Deschutes River. The river runs through a narrow gorge, and the town is partly located at the east bank at the bottom of the gorge, and partly on the top of the west bank. We had lunch at a little cafe in the bottom of the gorge and watched a train chug by.

After lunch we climbed up out of the gorge and continued on northward to the Columbia River at The Dalles.  I had been wanting to see the Columbia River for ages.  I imagined it as a huge, wild river.   Well, it is pretty good sized.  About as wide as the Mississippi - a mile or so I would guess.  But it doesn’t have much, if any, backwaters like the MIghty Miss does.  And it doesn’t look very wild.  It was as placid as a lake.  The mountains along the sides are very impressive with bluffs and pine trees.  We took I-84 downstream to Hood River, then turned south on hwy 35.  The countryside here was lush and green with lots of orchards and vineyards on the hillsides.   The roadside was dotted with fruit stands.  We stopped at one and bought some cherries and jelly.  The road then wound south along the east flank of Mt. Hood.

The mountain is a beatiful volcanic mountain standing alone as if striking a pose.  Unfortunately, the sky was obsquered by smokey haze, or hazy smoke.  I wasn’t sure which.  There are so many wildfires around right now.  It made taking pictures pretty much a waste of time.  Anyway, it was hard to tell the snowy mountaintop from the hazy sky.  :(  The road climbs along the side of the East Hood River up to an altitude of around 4500 feet.   We drove through beautiful pine forests, passing several Nation Forest campgrounds and hiking trails. Then we turned onto 26 eastbound and headed home.  Within a few miles, the pine forests dwindled and disappeared, to be replace by high desert once again.

We arrived home around 6 o’clock in the evening.  I was was pretty well tuckered out.

mj

Just a Note

Jamamakitty emailed me some pictures she took of the tea party. I posted them in the Tea Party album with the other pictures.

Visit

This has been a fun weekend for me. Jamamakitty, one of my online friends from ICHC came to visit. She drove down from Seattle on Friday, stayed at the motel, and will leave tomorrow morning. It was so much fun to meet someone I had been “talking” to online for several months!

We both agree that ICHC is addictive. For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, the comments section under the pictures on ICHC has evolved over the past few months. We talk in LOLspeak, which is a permutation of english. Mostly, it is achieved by phonetically spelling words. It also includes intentional typos, a little bit of text message spellings and lots of creativity. With all the dialects and accents of people from all over the world, it can sometimes be a bit of a challenge to decipher what people are saying. The comments range from the basic ‘I love this picture’ to conversations about what we are doing in real life (IRL) to wild fantasies. There are many wonderful things about the fantasy aspect. Anything is possible and we often have wild adventures. We can offer each other drinks or food, and the drinks have no alcohol and the food has no calories. We sing and dance, and everyone is a fabulous singer and a beautiful dancer ( I really like being able to sing without getting dirty looks from people). It is like being at the most delightful party. Some people have several identities — not exactly split personalities. but lots of fun for them and us.

Anyway, it was great to meet one of my Cheezfrenz in person. Each night Richard and I had to work, so she got to see how much fun we have here. We checked people in, and kept an eye on the partyers. One of the seasonal campers imbibed a little too much and for reasons unknown to any rational person decided to pour a jug of peanut oil on his campfire. We saw the flames shooting up and thought a camper was on fire! We rode the golfcart up and saw it was a giant campfire so we told Rick and let him deal with it. And we had a bunch of young gals having a bachelorette party at one of the campsites. They all had plenty to drink and had to be told to quiet down. And to get out of the lake after dark when they were out in a canoe with no lights.

Saturday was overcast and warm so Jamama and I went to a couple of nearby towns looking at antiques and crafts and other goodies. And while I fixed dinner, she made us matching commemorative bracelets. Oooooo. Pretty. Shiny.

Sunday was bright and sunny all day and we had tea. We called it our Oh Hai Desert Tea. Jamama had brought a nifty glass teapot with tea ‘blossoms’ that you put in the pot. When you add the hot water the blossom opens up and steeps, making a delightful tea. We wore our gardening gloves and hats and sat in the bright afternoon sunshine eating our tea. We had cucumber sandwiches, radish sandwiches, lemon tea cookies, blueberry bundt cake, Pepperidge Farms cookies, and zucchini bread. Pictures of us and our delightful spread are at tea party.

While she was here, of course, she met Rick & Julie and their daughter Arianna. She also got to see our cute little Bun-Bun and lots of other critters including a momma deer. The momma kept her baby well hidden. We did see it scoot across the landscape and out of sight, but we didn’t get a real good view of it. I added more pictures of the deer to the misc album.

I hope I get to meet more of my internet friends as we travel.

mj