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News From Tualatin

Karen calls this "the land of the speed bump." To be fair, there are as many speed humps as speed bumps, the difference being that a speed bump causes your suspension to bottom out and your frame (not to mention that of your car) to scrape bottom for each axle, whereas a speed hump doesn't affect your rear axle because your car is in flight as the rear axle passes over the speed hump. This seems to happen no matter how much I speed up prior to going over the speed bump/hump. It's almost as if it would go better if I slowed down first! Ha! That would show 'em! But there wouldn't be any sparks!

We've had a couple of chances to baby-sit little Benjamin, and we've been having a great time. Ben is pulling himself up on tables and chairs, and stands there with both hands occupied with his toys, unaware that he is no longer leaning on the table edge. He's close.

Ben's not talking yet, although he is aces on sign language. He also has an onomatapoetic (sp?) language of his own ... he absolutely loves trucks, and makes a great low growling truck sound when he sees one, or a toy of a truck, or a picture of a truck, or his shirt that has trucks on it. He loves to make the truck sound while driving around his little wheeled toys. At dinner the other day, he was driving around little slices of peaches on his dinner try, making the truck sound. This is a level of automotive obsession most males don't achieve until age fifteen or so. I'm so proud!

Ben stayed at our house the other day for several hours while his mom went to do some errands. There was a certain amount of fear, anxiety and crying, but she was okay once she got back to our place.

The pace of paint-up / fix-up at the Riley house here has slowed considerably. We have had some time to go for walks in our new neighborhood. There's a little woods across the street with a "nature" path (sidewalk) through it; it has a couple of ponds with ducks, and we saw a blue heron yesterday. We're only about ten minutes' walk from a shopping center with a Starbucks, so life is good. Also in that same shopping center is a grocery with guess what inside? If you didn't guess "another Starbucks", you're not really tuned in to the Northwest lifestyle: jittery.

Aaron has been forcing me to go on test drives of new cars with him. If there's one thing I have always hated, it's riding around in great-looking, high-powered luxury automobiles. Well, that's not really true; the only problem is that Karen keeps saying "for Aaron and Morgan. Not for us!" What a spoil-sport. What are credit cards for, anyway?

Fifteen or twenty years ago, I bought a nice set of household tools from Sears for our place in Colorado, and we brought most of them here to fix up our condo. While trying to persuade a particularly stubborn screw, I snapped off the corner of the balde of one of these old screwdrivers from that set. I took it back to the local Sears today, and true to their word, they replaced it immediately and without question. The new one looks exactly like the old. Unsolicited endorsement: Craftsman tools are the bomb.

From the second story of the Tualatin Greens Condominiums, overlooking the Sweek Trail Nature Area in beautiful downtown Tualatin Oregon, this is Mystified Mike saying -

Love You Guys!

Mike and Karen Riley