April 29, 2018

 First - Happy Easter to you all!! We attended the 11:00am services and it was packed. This was a much happier and more "normal" Easter than last year, and I'm glad. I want to apologize that I didn't get any pictures, but I do know that Linda has taken a few these past several days, so it is just a matter of me getting time with her 'droid and then I can pull a few over here. It has been an amazing last several days... yet it all began a little over three (3) years ago. You see, Amber H. (I forgot to ask her if I could put her name in this blog) attempted to reach out to me, to ask if I was Jason's dad, and if he had lost his military dog tags. Well, as it turned out I didn't see this outreach until just a couple of weeks ago. When I did see it my first reaction was - "Is this some kind'a scam?" I decided to cautiously respond back to Amber, now 3-years later, just to see what kind of response I would get. As it turned out she got back to me rather quickly and we began to exchange communications. I went and asked Jason if he was interested in following up more on this and he said he was, and said the best way to see if it was his tag was to ask what the last four digits were on his service number. I'm a little embarrassed that I didn't think of that myself.  When I asked Amber she provided me the numbers and Jason said it sounds like they have my tags, or at least one of them.

We arranged for her to come over on Friday, April 2, and she brought along her two kids Emily and Jack and they delivered the tag. The story of how they ended up with the tag, in the first place, is pretty interesting in itself. It started as a result of Jack being active with the Boy Scouts and finding that he really liked having a rucksack to carry all his things. Well, Emily is also involved with the Girl Scouts and saw the benefits of having a rucksack, so she wanted one also. They ended up going to a place where there were several rucksacks were being sold and after looking at so many of them they found this one that had no name on it, other than the U.S. Marines. Once they got it home Amber decided to go through all the pockets, just to be sure there weren't anything in there that they shouldn't have. In doing so, she found Jason's dog tag, on a chain... but who is Jason Ross?

 In a recent discussion I had with Amber, she let me know that she really enjoys research, and it is actually a part of her job, doing research on different things. So now she had a dog tag and she decided to research it and see if she could find the actual owner of the tag. It took her several weeks (months?) to track us down and then she found the blog. She reached out to me and I responded back to her, 3-years + later. I guess I need to pay more attention to messages on FB. It was really a great opportunity for all of us to get together and for both Amber and Emily to get to meet Jason. Jack came along but most of the story was with Amber and Emily, though Jack and Jason hit it off pretty well and Jason had a great time showing all his collections to all of them. This is one of those stories you hear about but never figure it is going to happen to you, and this time it did. I knew I had to make an entry in the blog, so I'm finally getting an opportunity to get it done. 

As for other aspects of our lives - Jason is experiencing some issues with his right shoulder and we're going to be headed in to Balboa, this coming week, to have it looked at. His shoulders are vital for his ability to get around so we need to make sure they are in good working order. Also, this coming week, Jason is going to be getting a bunch of new chickens. He has 14 fertile eggs incubating and two of them have already come out of their shells. If they do all hatch we'll have a bunch of chickens living in the backyard and a definite flowing of eggs into the house. Right now it kind of waivers where some days we get 7 or 8 eggs and then other days where we will only get 3 or 4. We usually don't consume a bunch of eggs during the week, other than in feeding the dogs. Gracie and Kojak are being fed better than most people, and it means a minimum of 4 eggs each day for them.

Linda is dealing with a back issue right now and is also going to be going in to Kaiser to see if they can provide any kind of relief. Where she used to work around the house for several hours every day, now she is down to a few hours and needs to simply lay down. Sitting down doesn't provide much relief so she tends to lay down, when she can. We're hopeful that possibly some physical therapy or some along those lines will provide the help she needs, and get her back up to 100%. She has some travel coming up soon, and she doesn't want to have to deal with this while traveling.

I've been doing my best to stay busy and keep up with the things that need to get done around here. I've also been attempting to pick up some of the work so Linda can get a break. I do get out on my bike when I can and so far this year I've been able to log about 600 miles. The biggest challenge really isn't the time so much as it is the traffic. During the early days of the COVID pandemic I could get out on to the highway(76) and there wasn't much traffic to be concerned about. Now it is as busy as I have ever seen it and I don't like riding with a bunch of traffic. I will frequently drive down to a starting point, where I have to ride a mile or two on the highway and then the rest will be basically on a bike path. I can usually pickup to about 25 miles, and then go for a longer ride on the weekend. However sometimes it can simply be too busy and I just don't get out to ride. 

Okay, that's about all for the update right now. There is more, but I'm not ready to share just yet, but when I do it will be pretty exciting. Hope everyone is doing well and that you're all doing what you can to make this life as positive as you can. Take care and stay positive.