Update and a Short Post

Before I head off into my usual brain fart, I wanted to update you on the fire in Southern California.  I have appreciated your concern for my friend Lisa, and I know she appreciates your thoughts and prayers.  This is what she wrote to me this morning in reference to the following map.

The biggest news is 25% containment, and there are reports of rain here and there. We pray that continues, but no lightning. The map today really emphasizes how the fire crews have been able to skirt the fire around our communities - those guys are incredible! Not only that, some have been helping in town with taking in, feeding strays, watching homes for security, etc. So awesome! 

It's a little hard to read the map, but her little town of Idyllwild/PineCove is almost dead center on the map. The red areas indicate areas still burning, while the other areas are already burned.  It's a wide swath of land, for sure.

No sewing for me yesterday.  I spent the morning doing housework (making up for the time I took going to the dentist, you know).  Then we spent the afternoon out on our boat on the Willamette River.  It was a perfect afternoon to be on the river.  I was wishing I'd taken my DSLR camera with the long lens because a Great Blue Heron hung around where we were for a good portion of the day.  This was the best picture I could get of him with my point and shoot.

There are always lots of ospreys cruising high above us when we are on the river, and yesterday was no different.  We seemed to be near a nest because we saw several ospreys and they too were around most of the day. 

A few summers ago, Mike and his buddies saw an osprey lift a fish from the river a little too heavy for him to get much lift.  He managed to fly/drag it to the river bank where he set it down while he set his table with a white linen tablecloth and his sterling silver flatware.  (I'll bet you didn't know birds did that.) While he was doing that, huffing and puffing after his hunting expedition, a great blue heron sidled up and stole his fish.  A fight ensued, which gave the fish just enough time to flop back into the river and swim away. Neither bird got the fish, but the fish had a good laugh out of the whole affair.  It made me wonder if the herons hang out where the ospreys do, and whether that sort of thing is a regular occurrence.

When we were completely sun-soaked, we headed back in.  Mike and I usually pick up something to eat on the way home because it's generally well past dinner time when we take the boat out of the water. Yesterday it was Chinese food.  They always give us four fortune cookies (I suppose because we order enough food to feed four people).  Since there are only two of us, we each get two cookies and two fortunes.  As everyone knows, fortune cookies really can foretell the future, and so I was quite pleased when I read this one :

Well that was good enough, but then my second one said this:

I wonder if that means, like, three calendar months or 90 days.  In either case, I'm thinking things could get interesting sometime soon.  What do you think?  Perhaps a trip to one of the local casinos is in order. Except, I rarely gamble, and when I do, I set a limit for myself of one nickel.  When that's gone, I'm done. As you might guess, my gambling expeditions are very short.

We have a dinner guest coming tonight.  I'm keeping it simple, but I still need to get to it.  Hopefully, I'll have some time to sew this afternoon.  I hope your weekend is getting off to a good start.