A few more koi pond photos - 

 

 And things just keep on changing - yesterday my boss emailed me and said my department would be staying after the purchase is finalized.....Yay!  Except...still too many questions (and a phone call would have been nice, but I will just have to assume he had no other information he could release and didn't want to talk about it???  Then again, it wasn't a particularly a good day yesterday, and he probably just didn't want to talk to me at all....)  The Loan Servicing Manager from Columbia  Bank will be here the week of July 19th to meet with us - so....more info to follow???  (And I'm on vacation starting the 21st....tickets purchased to fly out to visit Ronna in Kentucky.)

I had last Friday off, and had made a date with Kirby to go to IKEA - shopping for a new computer desk.  I almost cancelled, but.....I went anyway, and had a great time visiting with Kirby - we had an extra long visit - we were stuck in traffic for over an hour to go go 0.6 miles - to get over a bridge on I5 - a big rig had jack-knifed on the bridge and went partially over the rail...sometimes having the navigation  stuff in the car is useful - we knew exactly how far we were from the nearest exit....

I even managed to pick up almost everything that I wanted - a table top with adjustable legs, and two sets of drawers.  I put one set of drawers and the table together on Saturday, and the other set of drawers on Sunday (because I really didn't feel like doing anything else - we were 113 degrees here....)

I even had help reading the instructions.....thank goodness for You-Tube.  Watching a video made it  much easier to make sense of the instructions!

What a difference a day makes......yesterday at 5:00, the bank announced that we have been sold to Columbia Bank - a bank based in Tacoma, Washington.  More news to follow, of course, but I will probably be job hunting soon - back office managers are not needed after an acquisition.  Such a sad day - Merchants Bank of Commerce aka Redding Bank of Commerce will be gone - a great institution since 1982, along with who know how many jobs - 100+?  The new bank will keep the branches open, so some jobs will remain, but all back office support staff (aka me!) will no longer have a job.

I snagged a picture of one of the blue dragonflies by the koi pond, resting in the reeds.  We lost two of the koi last week - no reason why that I know of.  I tested the water, and the Ph was a little high, but not out of range, but obviously too high for them - that's all I can think it might have been.  The others are doing fine - we are down to 7 koi.

The computer room is painted!  It took me most of two days to do it (and I thought I could get it done in one!!!)  I did take advantage of taking everything down/out and cleaned/dusted/vacuumed/sorted, etc., so the room may be messing, but it's clean! I pulled a bunch of stuff out and reorganized too.  I had to have Alex move furniture around for me - working with his breaks at work.  I was okay on Sunday, but I was pretty sore on Monday (I need to do more squats - painting the baseboards got to me!) and had limited strength left in my arms after painting the ceiling.  I wasn't really up for moving large pieces of furniture after that!  I did find out why you  are supposed to cut in everything before you paint the walls.  Since I was dependent on Alex, I painted what I could while waiting, meaning I painted the walls and ceilings first.  I've wearing just a bit of Whisper White in my hair from the timing switch....good thing that's pretty close to my natural color now.

So it's too hot too work outside (80 degrees at 6:00a.m.) so what do I do?  Start painting!!

I'm not happy with the door - I used the wall paint, and it just isn't glossy enough.  (It's good for the other time, though...)  So - that gets repainted today.  I got 2 3/4 of the walls done, so today will be the last of the walls and the ceiling.  (Coordinating moving the furniture around is tough!!  Good hting Alex is around to help with the heavy lifting!)  I took today off work - hopefully I can get it all done and put back together again...

Here's the new color...

 

My newest quilt - another block-a-month.  I just started my first block this last weekend, and got the 2nd block in the mail today....better get busy!!!

Here is the progress so far on my block (or two or three)-a-month quilt with the local quilt club.  It's coming along!  I'm caught up on it, at least!

 

More garden harvest!  The first of the tomatoes - served drizzled with balsamic vinegar and salt - and more beans - sautéed with onions, garlic and mushrooms!  I have a couple of cucumbers set, but no zucchinis yet - and one bloom on my eggplants.  It's a weird year this year for my garden.  I'm blaming the early heat, since we don't usually see the temps at 110 until mid-July, and we got hit early in June this year.

 

I'm not looking forward to this week....but at least the AC is fixed in the office!

Robin and I made our first kayak trip of the season last week.  We had originally planned it for the week of scorching temps (109!!!) but had to reschedule - and the temps were in the low 80's, but very windy.  If we stopped paddling, we went backwards....

The lake was beautiful, and not very crowded - probably due to the wind.  The hillside are green, covering the burn scars from the Carr fire.

We found a family of ducks, and they followed us around for a while.  My guess is that other visitors have been feeding them - they got very nosy and very close to us.

Robin took a photo of me taking photos of the ducks...

So I took a photo of her, backlit!

 

Well, Lea didn't come home with Ralph - he took both our dogs over for a meet-and-greet, and it didn't go well.  Lea was very aggressive and assertive towards both dogs, and Cindy had had issues with her with her female dogs too.  I think Lea needs to be the only dog, or with a male dog. Cindy said she responded well to her male dogs - just didn't like her female.....bummer.....

Meet "Lea" - soon to be Ralph's new dog.  She's at Trinity County Humane, and he is going over today and bring her home.  Her name will change, I'm sure, since Lea is pretty close to Luna (not that I call the dogs by the correct name anyway....)  These pics are from Cindy K - my retired hair dresser, now heavily involved with rescue work.  She's been fostering Lea up to now.

 

New hair cut!  (not the best pictures - just ones I grabbed real quick on my way to do something else....)  I like it - it is much more wash-and-wear than I've had for a while, which is great for the summer.

 

The first harvest of beans from the garden!  It was only a handful, but I mixed them with other fresh beans from the store - sautéed with some mushrooms, onions and garlic!  

The purple beans turn green when they cook.  Here's one turning in the pan.  They've been know to turn green in the heat of the summer here - just saying that it's HOT here!!

 

Woohoo!  THE AC is fixed in the guest house/office!  The AC went out Friday night of Memorial weekend.....ouch!  Not only was it a 3-day weekend, we had a heat wave - 109 degrees last week.  The repairman couldn't get to us until this Saturday (he said they had never been so busy - the first of summer usually is busy for them, but jumping to 109 so fast made it extra busy), so the last week at work was miserable - 95 degrees in "the office".  Alex and I were jumping in the pool at lunch and right after work (and he took at least one cold shower on his break...) to cool off as much as we could.  Koori was determined to hang with us though, and her favorite spot was in front on the fan.

 

I walked by the couch in the computer/sewing room the other day, doing my usual "pick up all the dog/Alli toys that are strewn about" daily chore, and when I grabbed this "toy" it moved!  Indy was napping under the couch and his paw was sticking out - looking very much like the nyla-bone toy Luna had been chewing on.....

 

I added a new lily to the koi pond, and it's blooming!  I love the shot with the reflection, and the koi....

This was taken a different day - earlier, and different bloom.  I think I'm getting control over the algae - finally!  But....since we are running temps over 105 this week, we'll see if it stays under control.

 

Update on my friend's "nest in the door décor"...they hatched!!!