So August has come and gone and we are still in a weird situation.  Mom is slowly, much to her dismay, fading .  She wanted to turn 97, which she did, and now she wants this process to end.  She sleeps most of the time because she simply has nothing left, but her body isn’t quite as ready as she is.    We made several trips up from Centralia, where we stayed at Bob’s old house as he sold it, to spend the day with her and give my sister a break.  But we have now started back towards Mesa as we have physicians appointments coming up in the a few weeks that we need to keep so we can get our meds adjusted.   

It was so nice of Bob to let us stay at his old place - the one he bought about 18 months ago!   Then he met Susan and about a year ago moved in with her and rented out his place.   His renters didn’t renew the lease, so he decided to sell it (which he did in August) but we stayed in his “RV Site” during the month while the house was in escrow.  

We made sure we had more than a few breakfasts at Berryfields Cafe in dowtown Centralia - including having a Creme Brûlée French Toast (think a thick slice of bread pudding).   It was very good.   We also spent time with Bob and Susan and helped do a little clean up as Bob did small repairs to the house before it closed.

It is September, so naturally we are making a few stops to visit wineries along the way, starting with our move down to Oregon.  This is Mark Girardet of Girardet Winery, in Roseburg, at their bottling machine.  We found them about 3 years ago and have been stopping every year, so I guess you could say we really like their wine.

Unfortunately, one of our very favorite winery, Misty Oaks, is now closed.  Steve and Christy have retired, but fortunately they sold the place to another favorite winery of ours, Hillcrest.  We found all of this out when visiting Hillcrest, but it gives us hopes that the excellent site for vines will be used by wine makers that we enjoy.

These two signs were both at Girardet - Dave thought they perfectly expressed our thinking about wine!

This is our newest addition in computers - or it will be after we get to Mesa and I can have it looked at.   It is a new MacPro 13” Laptop with Retina Screen, which is suppose to be very, very good.  But it is having problems, so we will have to have it looked at and either replaced or repaired.  Ugh!  Of course, since we have been buying Macs since 1984 and this is the first one to have a problem when new, I guess we haven’t done to bad.  

We head out to California next and are stopping on the way down in Lodi to try and see if the wineries in that area really do produce great Barberas, one of my favorite reds.