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Lebanon, Oregon, United States
We are Terry & Cathye Kinkelaar. If you've followed my blog in the past, you know that Lydia, my beautiful wife of 52 years, and I made the lifestyle choice to move to Oregon in 2017. You've seen my posts about losing her in May 2020 to cancer. Although I was left alone, I am pleased to say that I have found happiness again. In April 2021, I met Cathye, who also lost her longtime husband in 2020. Well, we fell in love and were married in April 2022. So, if folks are still interested, I will continue to post here as we move forward with our lives and adventures!

Sunday, February 24, 2019

Oregon Living 2019 – Blog #18 – Running Errands and Dealing With Weather


 

Thursday, February 21st, 2019…...   We had errands to run today. I got up and got ready for the day. While I was out with Rylee, Lydia got going. The weather is really nice with blue skies and no sign of rain! We loaded up the truck with the dog fencing as well as our four trash bags of recycle (glass bottles/cans/plastic bottles). We left the house around 9:00am. First stop was for breakfast at Rogers Restaurant in Albany. After that, we headed to the recycling facility close by and we split up and took a couple of machines. We each fed our two bags of bottles through pretty quickly. We walked out with a total of $61.00 cash. Next up was Lowes. When I was in Lowes last week, the clerk was telling me that corporate has recently gone through some re-structuring, including expanding their existing military discount program. Before, it was just for active and retired military, with id. Now it is open to anyone who has been in the service. Under her guidance, I was able to go online and use my DD-250 discharge papers and register with them for the 10% military discount. I wanted to test it today, so I bought some drywall screws and a couple more fasteners for the bathroom cabinet - and we got the 10%.  Given my medical discharge, I’ve never considered myself as having ‘served’. But I do have the discharge papers and that’s enough for them – and I’ll take it!  Not much saved today but it will come in handy down the road when we buy something expensive. Next stop was Target. Lydia had two gift cards and we found a small accent rug for the bathroom and a large decorator clock for the dining room. Now we just need to spring for the dining room table! Next, we drove to Corvallis and found Burst, the specialty candy shop downtown. Our realtor, Aimee, had sent us a Valentine’s gift card for free chocolate from there, so we just had to go check it out. I was a little disappointed to find it was only good for one piece of heart-shaped chocolate.  But they had a nice plate of samples out and the clerk was nice enough to let me eat most of it!  We bought a couple of other items and left. We heard they had a Walmart in Corvallis and we have never been so we drove by. Turns out it was just a Walmart Neighborhood Market so at least now we know. We also made another stop at Kmart. They are down to their last 11 days. They didn’t have a ton of stuff left but I bought a couple of watches to add to my collection and a drop hitch for my truck. Everything is 50-80% off. On the way home, we stopped by to drop off the dog pen and visited with Terri for a while. She’s finally picked out a name for her new little puppy – Meisha. She is only about the size of Rylee’s head and is so cute!  Once we got home (about 2:00pm), we fed the super pooper. You’d think she’s ok to miss a meal now and then. NOT!  Later, Lydia fixed fish and I cut up some of those little new baby potatoes to cook up with them. With some green beans, it was a nice quick meal. I cleaned up the kitchen and then we relaxed and settled in and watched tv until bedtime.      
   
Friday, February 22nd, 2019……  The weather is nice again today. Something of note - we were watching our local (Portland) news the other evening, right after we had that really brief light snowfall. We wanted to see what was going on in other areas. They had reported that they had graupel falling in some areas. Huuh? Ever heard of it? Neither had us ex Californians either! Ok, now we were interested. They explained it and showed pictures and sort of compared it to hail. Hail is usually hard pellets of varying size, that can come down with force and sometimes will do serious damage to cars and such. Graupel comes down about the same size but it’s lighter balls of snow. If it’s heavy enough, it can still cover the ground, just like snow. So, now we know what to look for and we’ll know it if/when we see it!
But, back to today. As I said, it started out nice. So, I thought today would be a good day to go over and install the two ceiling fans she bought last week. They go in her two guest bedrooms. Once we removed the old light fixtures, we discovered that her painters neglected to drop the lights before they painted, so she found her ceiling paint and got a couple of coats up there that we had to wait on to dry.  But once that was done, the ceiling fans went up quickly with no issues. I went home and relaxed for the rest of the day. Lydia said she was going to Walmart for a few items for tonight’s dinner and something for tomorrow. I went to the auto section and checked to see if they had a battery for the Honda, and also to see if they had time to install it. They told me, “Nothing on the shelf but we might have one in back, but we are busy today. How about tomorrow?”  I hate fighting crowds on Saturdays but I might come back. I stopped by the electronics section and bought a couple of printer cartridges and then went and found Lydia, who was about done. She told me we needed to go to Costco so I will wait on the battery until I check there first. We got home and she started dinner early since neither of us had lunch. The rains came later in the evening so I’m glad we got all of our running around done for today.  
     
Saturday, February 23rd, 2019…... It rained most of the night and into the morning. I waited on Rylee’s walk until the rain stopped, which was about 9:30am. While I was out, Lydia was up and dressed and when I got back, she had me get out the crockpot so she could get that going for dinner tonight. She said she was trying a variation of her pork chop and mushroom soup crockpot mix. This time it was chicken breasts and cream of chicken soup. Something new is always good! After that, we were ready to head out to Costco. I took out the battery in the Honda and loaded it in the Acadia. We texted my sister, to see if she wanted to go along with us.  We stopped by and got her and drove to Albany and once we got in the store, we separated and got what we needed. Lydia and I checked out and I got our stuff loaded up and then went to the tire section and found my battery. It was a better deal! They sell Interstate batteries, which I like better, and the price was only $73.00 ($27.00 cheaper than Walmart!) so I made the exchange and we were done. We dropped Penny off and headed home. Once we got the car unloaded, I had the new battery in the Honda in a few minutes. I had one more task - to put up the clock in the dining room. 


It is 26" wide but looks small on the wall! We have plans to add more pictures when we find them, so that will help. That was pretty much it for the day.  We relaxed and lounged around the house for the afternoon. Lydia cooked up some noodles and also some peas and carrots to go along with the crockpot chicken and it was really tasty.  Another keeper!  We settled in and binge-watched three taped episodes of The Blacklist before splitting up and watching our own taped programs before calling it a night.     

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