The Help

We went to Gresham Ford this morning. They gave us a "deal" on a 2.5" to 2" receiver hitch adapter: only $50.03! They said the MSRP is over $65. We'll certainly be very careful not to "lose" this one. Until we find a locking pin, we're planning to keep it in the truck when we're not carrying the bikes.

We also got a replacement for the key I lost. It's just a key without the built-in remotes of the original, so it only cost $25 for the blank and $45 to cut and program it. Ouch! To program your own extra keys, you have to have two factory master keys. If you lose one, as I did, then you have to go to the dealer, always an expensive proposition, plus we had to wait 45 minutes or so. I sure hope my original key turns up.

While we were out we stopped at Safeway and then went to Home Depot to pick up some closet pole sockets to stabilize another one of the shower rods in our entry closet shoe rack. While we were there of course we looked around. Then we stopped at Camping World to look for a locking hitch pin (no luck). We also wanted to check out their sewer hose storage tubes. We ended up buying an insulated bike rack bag to try out on my bike.

After lunch we headed over to the duplex in time to get our final load of laundry started before walking over to Guardian Games so that we could walk home with Annie after her D&D camp. She was happy about the group's progress during the day. They had exploded a troll, I think, vaporizing it into thin air.

When we got to the duplex, Shawn was busy making chocolate chip cookies for her dad. They're one of his favorites (especially when extra browned and crispy), and she's leaving for Montana for the family reunion tomorrow. She did make some extras for us to sample--very yummy.

When Chris got home, he was ready for a nap--he'd gotten up very early. Shawn was starting to pack and planning to head out to cut someone's hair. Meanwhile, we put in the DVD of "The Help" (which Shawn had bought used at Movie Madness Video). It started out fine, but 12 minutes in, it froze. Chris tried to get past that point and even tried cleaning the disc, but it was too badly scratched. So Ken and Chris headed to the video store to rent another copy of the movie while I started fixing supper.

We ate supper before settling in to watch the rest of the movie. It was a powerful drama, with moments of humor--but more tragic moments. At the end, I don't think there was a dry eye in the room. I imagine that the book filled in some of the holes in the movie--like what motivated Skeeter and how she turned out so different from her peers. But the two central black characters are the heart of the movie, and they seem to have courage and dignity enough to carry the whole film.


Annie will be taking care of Coach (Shawn's dog) for the weekend while they are out of town. Coach seems to be healing, but still has to be kept quiet and off her feet most of the time, so she spends a lot of time in her kennel.

Chris leaves tomorrow for Silver Falls, OR. He'll join Shawn in Montana on Friday, and they'll both fly back Monday morning. We'll take Edie and Annie to the airport for their trip to Yellowstone and pick Chris and Shawn up. Chris will leave the next morning for Tampa. I think he needs a personal travel agent!

I'm a day late posting this blog entry, because when we got home last night, my laptop was displaying a serious error message. Just restarting didn't help things, so I ended up spending lots of time working on getting my computer back, including doing a backup and running chkdsk, etc. The backup was still in progress when I went to bed. Finally I tried going back to a previous restore point. The only one listed was for 7/18, when a critical Windows update was installed. The restore returned an error message, so I tried to run it again. In the middle of that process, the computer spontaneously restarted, and all was well. I immediately started a regular backup and went to bed. It had been nearly a month since I last ran a backup. Note to self: backup more regularly!