Barbara J. Hamby

Another Day

Today I had lunch with an old friend I hadn’t seen in several years who now lives in Salem. We had a great time catching up on things we hadn’t reported by email.

She met me at the newly reopened Village Inn at the I-5 exit near Tualatin. She was astonished at all the changes in the intersection. A new shopping mall is going up there and it seems as if, every few days, a new building pops up like a mushroom. I hadn’t been by there for a week or so and discovered a McCormick & Schmick’s I hadn’t seen before.

After a small lunch and a lot of conversation, she followed me back to where I’m living now and we talked a short while longer. She has lived in this part of town before, so is more familiar with the area than I. But she does notice a lot of changes.

This evening my daughter brought over the television set that was her father’s before he passed away. It was surplus for them in their household so she asked if we could use it. Since it has closed captioning and the one we were using did not, we agreed to take it. We have several, older/smaller sets, but the closed captioning helps Al when he can’t hear or understand what’s being said. So many shows play background music that distracts from dialog, or have characters who talk fast and/or mumble.

In every spare moment in between I continued to clean computer files. I am making some progress, but it seems awfully slow.