The day before Tim's birthday

The fog that rolled in last night unfortunately decided not to roll back out, so even though when I woke up my phone said it was sunny in Arch Cape it wasn’t really. Eventually everybody else got up and we went to the Pig’n for an early brunch. As we knew it would be, it was a little tricky eating at the Pig’n since we couldn’t just order everything that looked good and let Tim finish it all off.  We did pretty well, although Ben left a couple pecan pancakes and about half his hash browns. We were talking about a radio show that Dave had heard about memories, and about how the memories we examine the most often tend to actually be the least reliable. So we’re trying an experiment here. I’ve said what happened with the hash browns, but we’re going to try to replace it with this story: Ben didn’t eat any of his hash browns and Joan got mad at him for ordering too much food and wouldn’t let Tim eat them because she was so mad. It’s improbable from several angles – Tim wasn’t there and Joan wouldn’t care if Ben ordered too much food – but it’s our new story and we’re sticking with it.

After brunch Ben headed to the pool at Nehalem for a swim, while Joan and Dave and I walked north to do some geocaching. While we were walking the sun was trying to come out and it looked like it was going to turn into a very nice day, but it didn’t.  We had a good time anyway. Joan found all 3 geocaches, even though they were ones that Dave and I had found already. She really has a gift for it – in fact we were joking in the Pig’n that she had already found the first one. The third one was the one in Haystack Park, and it was fun to be there again in the forest in the middle of town. After Joan found the cache we continued on the path which pretty much goes around the outside of the park. There would have been nice views of Haystack rock if it hadn’t been so foggy. As it was they were just so-so views.

When we got back to the car we were getting tired, so we headed back to the house. Ben had texted us that since the weather was so nice (he was on the other side of the Nehalem tunnel) he was going to go for a short swim and a run and he’s be home around 2. Once we were back at the house it was time for some relaxing. Joan bravely bundled up and sat out on the deck and did Sudoku until her nose froze (it would have been a much shorter time for any of the rest of us – her nose is very tiny and stays warm longer)  Usually Dave would have been out there but it was too cold even for him.

Ben got back from his run a little before 3 – about 1 minute after I’d told Dave I was starting to worry about him. As we’d suspected, it had been sunny for all but about the last mile of his run. He would have been back earlier, but apparently about a quarter of the way into the run he’d decided the car keys were too heavy and had hid them under some leaves by the side of the road. He’d taken some time to look around and notice some details about where he was – a curve in the road there, a tree there. Can you tell he’s not from around here?  Of course he couldn’t find the keys when he got back to the approximate location.  So that added about 20 minutes and a little panic to his run, especially since his phone was in the car so he had no way of calling us. Since I did say he got back at the start of this paragraph, he obviously did find them and also learned a valuable lesson about hiding your keys in a rainforest.

Meanwhile Tim was on his way here, but due to some confusion with apple maps came via Tillamook. He did arrive safely, and we had a nice hour or so sitting and chatting before it was time to head out to Castaways Tiny Tiki Hut for dinner. We were a couple minutes late, so Rhonda and Tracy were already there. They had stopped at La Luna Loca and gotten me the scarf that (unbeknownst to them) I had almost bought for myself earlier in the day. I love it being my birthday! We had a fantastic time at dinner telling stories, although an outbreak of Zephyrillis at the end of the meal did slow down the storytelling. Here’s what we need to remember : the two best drinks are the pineapple-chili margarita and the hurricane. A highlight for me was Ben telling the story of half-naked ken doll, which is my favorite story ever. Also Rhonda’s rendition of Lemon Tree was very nice although it brought back some bad memories for Ben. But we just told him she was singing a different song. We finished off the meal with triple chocolate brownies and ice cream all around, and then Rhonda and Tracy and Tim headed back to Forest Grove.

After a short time of spending time with our co-dependent electronic devices, it was game time. First we played 4 games of pepper. Ben would like everyone to know that he won the first game. Then Joan won two games in a row. Then the 4^th game was one of those games that just won’t end until guess what, I ENDED IT. Yes, me, birthday weekend girl. It has been so long since I won a game of pepper that I had to do two dances of joy, plus two complete victory circles in the swivel chair. It was so awesome. Dave was a very good sport about not winning any pepper, and since that’s usually my role I tried to be supportive in between my victory dances and circles. Then it was time for trouble. Although I had some amazing luck, like going around rolling sixes and clearing the board of everyone else’s pieces, Ben won. Perhaps it was the way he kept muttering “I’m going to honk you so hard” and “I’m going to honk you back to the stone ages” into his sleeve. Then he had to do the dance of joy. Then I won second and did 2 more dances of joy and two more victory swivels. Dave and Joan battled it out for the finish, with Dave having a very lucky roll to come in third. Joan was very gracious. It’s clear she did not learn her playing style from my Zady.

 Still waiting for SFO in CBs rebuttal about why he is less exercise crazy than I am.  I don’t buy the part about starting your own exercise class beating running an ironman triathlon. If you agree that he is more exercise mad than I am, like my BodyFit page on Facebook. Each like counts as 2 votes for me being less crazy.

Addendum:

At about 11 Dave and I were getting very antsy because Tim hadn’t called to say he was home, and he wasn’t showing up on Friend Finder. Eventually he did show up – just outside of Astoria, which is an hour away from here in the completely wrong direction, headed out on 202, an incredibly twisty road that would eventually get him home if he didn’t slide off into a ditch. We told him to turn around and come spend the night. It would appear that we haven’t done a good job of teaching our children how to navigate. Turns out he’d gotten all the way to the intersection of 26 and 47, about 15 miles from home. But he turned the wrong way on 47 and ended up driving through Vernonia and back to Astoria.  He got here a little after midnight, which let us wish him a happy 18^th birthday.

 

This is some outfit