Grandma Sarah bought a print of Renoir’s Dance Bougival back in the 1980’s for a small apartment where I lived by myself that had nothing on its walls. I had few good going on in my life at the time and was, frankly pretty down, so it was a great act of kindness and I have loved and admired that painting very much. It is such an amazing work of art that has such an amazing reminder of my mother’s love for me and for the underdog. It was so very typical of the kind of thing she would do. The funny deal is that Grandpa Lauro and I, independently came to the conclusion that the dancing man reminds me very much of my brother Doug–even now.
Christian’s last day of work for the summer at Lincoln Labs was yesterday. He presented his research to the team, went out for ice cream with his church friends in the area–visiting scholars and students at the area schools from New Zealand, Toronto and Jamaica and went back to the dorm to pack for home. He knows about this picture. It is always the one we hang first. Last week he learned that he lives virtually across the street from the permanent home the original of our print.
Today, he texted me this photograph of himself by the painting. I had asked him to do that for me if he could, but he was so busy, he knew he was not going to be able to do it. Nevertheless, he found a few minutes and ran into the museum to take this photograph just a few minutes before it closed on his last full day in Boston. I am very grateful Christian was able to make the time to take the picture. He was surprised the painting was so big–bigger than our print by quite a lot. Lorena and I got the painting out and have decided to find an appropriate frame for our print as soon as we can.
We have been members of Amazon Prime for a number of years now. Amazon is convenient and has good prices. So, when Lorena returned from IKEA a couple of weeks ago, disappointed by what she believed were low quality offerings at not such great prices, we decided to buy a bed from Amazon. We found something that would just fit the bill: A 
We had a great time with Mark here yesterday. He did a lot of finish work on the kitchen including the adding of three missing can lights in the ceiling, undercabinet lights, cabinet door alignment and the placement of all the cabinet door pulls. He put the stove hood in his van when he headed home last night so the exhaust fan could be added “at the factory” instead of in the field. They have the tools and special skills to do it. He will be back next week to add all the drawer pulls, the moulding in the living room so we can paint and install the stove hood. We are getting awfully close to being done.
Our contractor, Mark P. came today and got a lot of finish work done. He looked at a couple of issues with the floor, installed the floor vents, and decided to bring the floor guy back for about a half days work. The floor vents are beautiful. In addition, Mark adjusted all the cabinet doors so they were aligned properly, installed all the cabinet door pulls (but not the drawer pulls), installed the remaining under-cabinet LED lights, installed the missing three overhead lights, and installed the replacement oven door for the one that was broken. I will put up pictures of all that other stuff tomorrow.
It gets no better than this. They were very, very sweet and there were many of them. She got a good batch, but she really needs to get two to three times more. If she gets enough we will plug in the freezer before the kitchen is finished and there should be good progress in the kitchen again this week. Mark has promised we will be done by mid-August. We appreciate his great work and are looking forward to it. The name of the U-Pick farm is 
I was pretty bad at consistently reading my Bible up until shortly before we moved from Oregon to North Carolina in 2006 when I started keeping track of my reading (
Well, we finally got the Washington plates mounted on our car. We retired our Texas plate to a place of honor in the garage. The only thing left now to make it official is for me to go down and get my license changed. That will have to wait until Friday or sometime next week, though because I am headed off to work in Canada for a couple of days. 
My long time buddy (closer than a brother) called me last night. I am totally envious of him because he has three grandchildren with a fourth due on August 1. Mari and Brian, Bryan’s daughter and son-in-law broke down in Chehalis on the way to a Birthday party for their nephew up in Bellingham. They were in the Walmart parking lot waiting for Bryan to arrive to bring another car. Bryan told me they were planning to get a hotel and wondered if they could park the broken down car at our house.
We found the power cable to the charger for Christian’s Nikon D90 Camera. We set it up to take pictures of stuff going on in the yard, the area just above the Chehalis river, the town behind it, the hills behind that, and finally Mount Rainier behind that. We cannot see the river, but that draws a ton of wildlife so we absolutely benefit from its presence. We kind of have not figured out the camera yet, but eventually I will find the time to figure it out and start to take some photos.
I know, I know, we will get tired of deer pictures before too long. We have lived in this part of the world and the reality is that you can get these kinds of pictures just about anywhere in the U.S. I remember going to Princeton, New Jersey to do some work at Bell Labs and we saw tons of deer out the window of the conference room where we had our meetings. Still, we like them and want to remember our joy in seeing the deer because after we plant our garden, we know everything will change. Lorena was only a few yards away from this little guy who spent the entire heat of the day under a small bush beside the deck knew we were there and knew looked right at Lorena when she was taking the pictures.
Kelly came home for the weekend to find out whether it is true we have the best seat in Centralia for the annual Fourth of July fireworks display. She and Lorena have been cooking and shopping up a storm. I actually have worked most of the time with a short hiatus for a visit from our friends Brent and Suzy along with their son Kevin.