News from my neck of the woods

From Cheryl's home page

I just finished a wonderful book. I first learned about it last week when one of my Senior Trailblazers, Peggy, told me she was reading the book and was enjoying it immensely. Although she offered me a chance to borrow it from her once she was finished, I was too impatient to wait and went online and ordered it from Amazon for my iPad. Although I first went to my local library, I learned that it already had 150 holds ahead of me! That meant it would be sometime next year before I had a chance to read it. For $13 I could have it right away. Amazon makes it awfully easy to order these things: in less than a minute it was downloaded onto my iPad.

However, it was a good move. The New York Times reviewer Dwight Garner had written a piece that made me even more impatient to read it, not to mention that I'm not exactly a patient person to begin with. Yesterday I finished it and will continue to think about it and read other things by the author.

Cheryl spent three months on the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) in 1995, and the book is about her experiences. She was lost in many ways, since her beloved mother had died at the age of 45 from lung cancer a few years before and her marriage had fallen apart. She decided to hike the trail alone, although she had never even spent a night backpacking prior to this. Her writing style just kept me on the edge of my seat, wondering what would happen next. Although I'm not sure why it took her so many years to finally write this book, I'm so glad she did. If you decide to spring for it, I don't think you'll be sorry, although it's only available in hardback and it's a bit pricey, unless you go the electronic route.

Yesterday here in Bellingham we had a weather record of our own. I've been watching the awful scorching and dry weather that most of the rest of the country has been going through, and I'm grateful for the cooler weather here in the Pacific Northwest. However, yesterday in Bellingham we had the lowest high temperature for the date, by two degrees. It only made it to 61 degrees F (16 C) and was downright cold. We are already a month into the summer season and have had below-normal temperatures for most of it. That said, it's still a better summer than last year. Who knows if this is because of climate change or just normal variation? Hopefully at least some of what we are all going through is not permanent.

And finally, the other news from my neck of the woods is that my fisherman friend Gene has returned from Alaska. He goes up there for around two months every summer to fish on his boat. We not only don't see him at the coffee shop, but his lady friend Paula and his twenty-year-old parrot don't visit us either. Now everybody is back. I sure enjoyed taking this picture.

Paula with Poop-Stain

Gene says that the bird has the best summer of his life, since Gene used to take him to a bird sitter's home and he didn't get a lot of attention. Paula put a cage for him in her place, and he grew quite attached to her, as you can see. Since they don't live together (Paula and Gene), the bird now has two homes and gets plenty of tender loving care. He's also getting on in years and sleeps much more than he did even a year ago. Both of them speculate that he might have had a small stroke, since he has rather abruptly lost his squawk and is much more docile. I don't know, but I am enjoying seeing the three of them reunited at the coffee shop.

Well, as they say, that's the news from Bellingham, the City of Subdued Excitement, my neck of the woods.

:-)