It has been a couple of busy days in the 'hood.

 Mr. Z had the opportunity to "test drive" a 25 foot section of the new carpet destined for the acute care patient rooms in the new hospital.  First the "abatement" folks had to come, put up plastic sheeting on half of the hallway, chip up the glued down carpet and safely dispose of it.  The next day the vendors installed the new carpet.  I must say I like it, it has several tones of brown and will hide a multitude of coffee spills.  It has already passed the spilled coffee test with flying colors, the liquid beads right up and is apparently easily removed.  How 'bout that?



 Close up of the carpet pattern, nice.

Then we watched the cement truck dump stuff into the curb former machine and three guys walked it all over the parking lot pooping curbs.  They got it all done in about four hours.  Very impressive.



Then the paint guy got his quasi golf/paint cart all fired up and striped the parking lot in a couple hours.  They have "doctors parking" signs set up near the South end (close to ER) and it

may still be a little crowded and the employees are still going to have to park on the street, but it sure looks purty. I might get to park in the new lot on Sunday. 

POW RIGHT IN THE ASPHALT!!

Yesterday, because the weather looked promising and there was no surgery scheduled, they brought in what appears to be the cutest little asphalt machine, and a whole bunch of guys shoveling and raking the loose stuff into a uniform 6 inch depth. Then the dainty little steam roller machine zoomed over the surface like a demented Zamboni.  The weather continued to um degrade and during the especially damp sequences, great plumes of steam would arise from the surface.  It looked like they got most of it done by the time I left a 4 pm.   They have also installed light poles, very tall, will cast a nice bit of light on the parking lot.  Really looking forward to having it complete.  We will probably have to wait for parking space painting etc, but the weather man is predicting sunshine later this week end, that ougta help dry the paint.

Review of Porta Coos Bay

Onion Soup.   Delish!

My salad; spinach, green apple, feta cheese, toasted pine nuts, crispy onion, house pancetta.  Tasty!

Husband had steak salad, well done, on lettuce, roast pepper, tomato equally tasty.

My dessert was creme' brulee.  Fab.

Husband had chocolate decadence cake with mocha flavored gelato with caramel garnish.   Even better!  We will probable go back for a dinner.

Bathroom rating?  I give it an 8 out of 10.  Clean, well decorated, towels plentiful, hand soap available, handy trash can by door which opened with a lever.  Lever's are crucial for OCD folk.  Minimal touching of hands to surfaces and in today's presence of MRSA and other super bugs, best be washing those hands, people.

ER SOMETHING NEW TODAY...

The white lattice work looking structure is part of the covered walkway, it consists of opaque plastic sheeting and is to protect people who parked in the East parking lot and must walk around to the front entrance or go in at the emergency room entrance. 

I took the picture from the edge of the present parking lot.  As soon as we start parking in back, the front parking lot is scheduled to be dug down 14 feet to accommodate most of the 60,000 square feet of the new facility. 

They may be rain delays in paving the East parking lot as the pavement does not do well in a downpour. The cement cures rather well but not the asphalt,  phew!  I can almost smell it now. 

SIDEWALKS

This leads from the parking lot headed toward the emergency room entrance.

 This one had to be widened to standard width just past the emergency room entrance, see the orange cone?  One of the ladies from the business came back from lunch and was so busy avoiding the cones, she stepped right into fresh cement, her witness was one of the cute guys on the crew. 

This one leads to front entrance, which is where everyone will be headed to once they start parking in the East parking lot, the structure that looks like a covered patio?  That is where the outside table used to sit just outside the dining room, it is where the BBQ's are held,  the grill will go into storage for a while until they figure out where to hold the future BBQ's. 

IT AIN'T MOUNT RUSHMORE....

 The drillers spent Friday and Saturday HAND CARVING the rock face for our retaining wall.  Lots of dull gray granite look.

Sunday a crew showed up and sprayed white paint on the wall, looked a lot like snow.  Hmmmm

After the white coat dried they came back and sprayed on a more  dirt like look.  Ah, much better. 

My new Kindle arrived on St. Patricks Day, Slancha !

About a week after my old Kindle died, I ordered the 3G version.  I was delighted to turn it on and discover all of my archived books were there, all I have to do is highlight the title, wait a little bit and the book is loaded for me.

It took me 48 hours before I learned (by reading the manual) how to turn the Kindle OFF.  Hold on off button for 7 seconds.  Oy!

Didn't take very long to fully charge the battery. 

I rather miss the first generation roller ball that allowed navigation up and down the page to make notes, and I made a LOT of them particularly on POORLY TRANSCRIBED E-BOOKS.  Are you listening Amazon? 

So by process of trial and error I am able to make notes , open Symbols to make use of numbers which are not on the physical keyboard.  Most arduous. One must be really angry to go to the lengths to make a note.  One can also make highlights and these can be publicly shared.  Oh GAWD no, NO PUBLIC SHARING!!

I find it much more difficult to select a word to look up in the dictionary, unless there is a short cut I must select menu, select dictionary, type word and THEN definition pops up, I find that very laborious.  New Kindle I can select ONE word.  Old Kindle would look up entire line.  So, there is a trade off.

Also I can adjust type size to amazingly large, almost one word per page.

Apparently I have built in thing that will read to me.  I will test that as well.  I can load music and have background music while I read.  No thank you, I would find that annoying.

Under experimental, I can browse the Internet.  New Kindle much better, I typed in URL for my blog and there it was!  Not sure if I liked the navigation within the blog but I could view it quite nicely.

I also have the capability of "sharing" with my social network; face book, twitter etc.  NO THANK YOU!!  

Lastly I splurged and ordered the lighted book cover.  The cover is very clever, first generation book cover relied on a couple wimpy corners to keep the Kindle in place. Someone engineered a couple of little brass hook things that the Kindle snaps onto which affixes the cover very nicely.  It took me a bit to actually find the light.  It is located in the top right hand corner, looks like a reinforced corner, pull out corner, itty bitty light slides up and casts reasonable amount of light on screen.  Next power outage we have I will read in the dark and let you know if I find it beyond irritating or not.

What's shakin' bacon?

As it turns out my desk shook, rattled and rolled most of the day.  First the dump trucks brought in a good dozen full of nice large rock.

Then, the steam roller went over the rocks and flattened them into a nice compact surface.   It was noisy and shook the windows and if a real tsunami/earthquake had happened yesterday, I would not have felt it one bit.

Weather report for Sunday 3-13-11

Oh looky, it's the new sidewalk, must have been poured sometime Friday or Saturday.  This leads from back door down OB hallway and goes across what is left of the lawn.  Next step, probably more sidewalk and build up the parking lot.  East retaining wall still needs work.

Weather:  Weather man has been warning us that Friday was our last sun break for a week and boy did he ever MEAN it.  Today it rained, it hailed, it blew sideways,  it THUNDERED, and the power went out twice.  Don't forget your raincoat!

Oh dear a couple of VERY BAD THINGS happened last night....

First of all I downloaded a couple sample books from Amazon and turned on my Kindle to start reading.

Okay fine, page two...

um no go right,

no go left,

no go up,

no go down,

no NOTHING.  AND I can't turn it OFF! Creeps me out!

KINDLE. IS. DEAD. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Amazon help page for Kindle is obviously for third generation only, not antiques like mine.  I sent off an email and am encouraged to make a PHONE CALL to a real live technician.  Jeez.   I think it would be easier to just ORDER. A. NEW. KINDLE.



NEXT, I was awakened at 6:30 this morning by a phone call from my Idaho brother to be on the look out for a Tsunami due to an 8.9 earthquake in Japan.  Thanks, Bro!

Local TV coverage was very good, however, the most we got was some muddy surf.    Husband knew about the earthquake last night but he thought that since I was snor...um sleeping yeah sleeping that he would not disturb me.

HOLY MOLY! The backyard is starting to look like...like...

A PARKING LOT!

LOOK THERE ARE FORMS FOR POURING A CEMENT SIDE WALK.  Better get those "No skateboarding" signs ready.

I love work, I could watch it all day long....Part deux

The guys were shooting concrete this afternoon.  In the morning there were four great big shiny and not so shiny dump trucks carefully backing up right outside my window, the Orange Hitachi would put in four scoops of dirt and off they would go with a merry little toot.  There was a very clean blue one, a very clean red one, a dirty blue one and a dirty white and blue one.  They were very quick, they dumped their loads and were back in about ten minutes.  I asked Dave L. where the dirt was going since it was such a short turn around time.  He said he thought the middle school soccer field was getting the dirt because it always floods there. That makes sense.  I am sure the kids would have the dirt flattened in no time at all.  

Surveyor equipment making sure they don't dig too deep.  They also dumped a lot of larger pipe just outside my window, I am pretty sure it will be drainage system for run off etc.  I

NEW ARTISTS ON DISPLAY AT CVH

This series of three paintings are oil with a dab of pointillism.  The tree has dainty little dots on the branches. 

This one is a little harder to make out the color came out so very light and faint, the dots are the blossom, I think it might be a dandelion, with puffs dotting away in the wind.

Nice little tree branch, the dots are more marked on this one. There are other paintings, a large butterfly, a dragon fly.

This is water color framed under glass, so I had to take a picture slightly to one side to prevent getting a reflection of me taking the picture.  The artist has done a wonderful job of capturing the reflections in the glass and if you look closely you might also be able to figure out the pattern of the crochet.  Very pretty, one of my favorite.  The price tags are not up yet, and I may update with that.  As a guess nothing under 200 dollars here.