At the Beach House
Can you believe how BAD I've been about blogging this month??? I just really need to get back in practice and stick with it! This takes me back to the old days when I'd only blog a couple of days out of the month. Hahaha.
Actually, I was bad back in 2012, when we were getting this beach house! I was keeping it secret (we did for quite some time), so we didn't do any social media that talked about it. And as that was about all we were doing (aside from work, of course!), I just didn't blog for ages and ages...
As for this year, I was great in January (blogged daily), good in February (missed eight days), great in March (only missed one day), okay in April (missed ten days) and good in May (missed seven days). Well, not sure if missing a day can be called 'great' (maybe only months where I didn't miss any days should be great). And I missed more than a week in February, so maybe that can't be called 'good,' either. I've only had one perfect month this entire year, which is now half over!!!
As for June, I've managed to only blog half the time (I've missed 14 days, so far). That's pretty bad! And I missed the most important day of this year -- and one of the most important days EVER! Parade Queen Day! I still want to go back and blog for that day, though. I can't believe I let it slide all this time!!!
Anyway, my last day this month was last Thursday. Marilyn and I worked on Friday, which was a busy day. There had been some talk about trying to leave early, but we both knew that wouldn't happen! We were having our last day in the office before a week of vacation, so we needed to get a lot done -- and we did, too.
We'd also talked about maybe driving down to the beach house Friday night, but neither one of us felt like it. Especially after we heard about an issue with serious traffic on highway 30, which is the way we drive from Portland to Seaside. So we didn't leave until Saturday. Naturally we'd hoped to go EARLY, but that didn't happen, either. We were on the road by noon...
There was a lot of traffic on the way down. But this became CRAZY when we got to just outside Astoria! Suddenly we were in standstill traffic. FOR ONE SOLID HOUR, by the way! We didn't get to the house until past 3:00 p.m. Poor Colin was really suffering by the time we made it to the house (he hates the ride so much). But really, both cats were good on the drive. And Colin didn't throw up, so all was well, considering.
As for all those people telling us how much COOLER it would be here on the coast: We were watching the temperature from Astoria on. We kept pulling for it to drop, as it was 87' at one point. It did finally drop, little by little, until we hit 70'. So the first day here wasn't bad.
Still, we don't get decent air circulation through our house. Period. You can open as many windows as you want, but unless somehow a breeze would show up, it doesn't do much good. We've been lucky that it wasn't terribly hot here. But it doesn't take much heat to be uncomfortable.
We talked it over and realized it's MORE than just the heat of summer that bothers us when we're here in the summer. The TERRIBLE TRAFFIC is a part of it, too. There are cars everywhere. It's hard to drive, and hard to go anywhere and find a place to park. We really prefer this house the rest of the year, in all honesty. That's why we rarely want to be here in either July or August... (And obviously with our work schedule, May and June rarely figure in much, anyway.)
Regardless of all that, we've been having a very nice time! No, we haven't done much of anything at all. We haven't gone to a movie or eaten out. We haven't been hiking. Marilyn hasn't taken a walk or a run. But we've been RESTING a ton!!! Relaxing and lazing around the house. We've had plenty to eat, believe me, including some wonderful berries. Last night I made ice cream sundaes with vanilla ice cream. I heated some chocolate and used marshmallow cream. Quite yummy!
We finally tried Beach Burrito, which is next to Subway, right by Safeway. We've considered it for years and have never gone it before now. Hahaha. We thought the food was good. Like Subway, you 'build your own' burrito (instead of a sandwich). You pick out all the ingredients. It's more money than at Subway, but a LOT of food for the cost. The place was really, really clean and nice. We think we might even just eat there some time. You can get beer with your meal, which is appealing. Anyway, we brought home two huge burritos that we couldn't even finish. Nice.
We did go into Seaside last night and play some arcade games, including a little bit of Cover All at Fascination (we each won once). We don't do that all that much, really.
Today we went looking for a grave near the beach in Seaside. You get there off Avenue U, then Edgewood Drive to Sunset Boulevard. It's referred to as the grave of the unknown sailor. Marilyn had seen it posted at Facebook and wanted to check it out. I looked it up and read this: While there are no known records that verify the exact history of this small gravesite, it is believed to be the burial site of 3 sailors that had come ashore on April 24, 1865 in the search of fresh water, then returned to their ship before dark to continue their journey, only to be killed in very rough waters and wind that night. The account continues that their bodies washed ashore the next day and were buried just above the high tide line on the beach, where this memorial is now.
The name(s) of the person(s) buried here remain a mystery.
So, apparently we don't even know how many people are buried there. Anyway, there's a headstone that reads: KNOWN ONLY TO GOD
We'd never been to the beach in that part of town in all the many, many years we've been coming to Seaside. It's hard to believe! There are some seriously expensive houses over there, that's for sure!
The cats seem as happy as we are to be here. And something about the beach air makes our cats really horny. Hahaha. Henry has been rope-a-doping (dragging around his 'rope' from place to place -- then doing his little sex dance with it) a ton. Four times today alone! And Colin keeps mounting Henry constantly, which he first starting doing here at this house (and now also does at home). As far as I can tell, they enjoy this home as much as the other one and settle in fine here.
We never did meet up with Jessica and her sister. But that's just fine. They were doing their thing and we did ours. We hope they had a great time.
We did try going to the Rockaway Pirate Festival on Saturday. Supposedly they were open until 10:00 p.m., so we went there in the evening. There was only ONE vendor open when we got there! And no pirates around (we were told they were at dinner). There appeared to be far fewer tents for vendors than our last time there -- and less food vendors (none were open, anyway). There was no sign of 'rides' or 'games' (these were in the description we had). I'd already called it a non-event from the last time we attended, but if it could be even less so, that's what it was. This mainly bothers me because we pimp them out at our website! And we gave them special attention in the recent News item (we shouldn't have!!!). Oh well.
Needless to say, we were disappointed. But as we hadn't expected much, it wasn't that much of a disappointment. Hahaha.
Adeena and her mother and sister were close by camping, and we did sort of try to get together. We wanted to meet Adeena's mother for the first time -- and we wanted them to see the house. But they were tied up and we were trying to run some local errands, so it didn't really work out. At one point Adeena was going to be dropped off here, but Marilyn really didn't want to do that. She felt it was wrong to break up the family that way during their vacation. As it turned out, timing wasn't working out, anyway. Marilyn said we'd have plenty of time to spend with Adeena here at some point, so it was okay...
We've talked to sister Sue a couple of times. I think she and the girls (Nicole and Madyson) are excited about next weekend...
We head HOME to Portland tomorrow. Marilyn's got an appointment for blood work on Wednesday in town.
Our goal is to do a few errands at home, then head back down on Thursday. I hope the traffic won't be as bad! And I'm also hopeful the weather won't be too hot.
Marilyn is sound asleep in her room. Both cats are in there with her. I want to clean the cat boxes before I head to bed. Good night all!