5 days until retirement!

Well, 5 more work days. I keep having lasts:  last Med-Staff meeting, last Quality Committee meeting, last Senior Leadership meeting, last time to do timecards, last performance appraisal to write,etc.  People ask if I'm counting the days.  I know I'm suppose to look sad and say no, but I smile and say 8, or 7 or 6. I tell colleagues my last day is Friday and we leave for Alaska Saturday.  Truth be told, it might not be until Sunday or Monday. We are thick in the middle of packing--piles to go in the camper, piles to go in the U-haul, piles to go to neighbors, piles for the dump, piles to go to Goodwill.  We had a moving sale last weekend and got rid of all but one truckload of Goodwill items.  It's deflating to have strangers paw through your best bought-at-Goodwill items and deem them not worthy of the $5 when we paid $30.  So we decreased prices until people WOULD haul some stuff away for us.  We were happiest to have a couple families with kids look excited about our LL Bean hammock ($5) and my electric keyboard. ($15) The goal was not so much to make money as to move merchandise.  We did.
We are even making piles to go in the blue car.  Friend Victor from Maine is arriving tomorrow and will fish/hot- springs/camp our car back to Maine for us.  That's a good friend.

If Judd makes enough progress by day when I'm at work, we find the last activities of Walla Walla to enjoy at night.  Wednesday we went to our first Walla Walla Sweets game.  Judd had his pic taken with the Onion mascot and the opening pitch is hitting a big Walla Walla sweet onion. The local baseball team plays in a stadium about 6 minutes from our house.  It's co-located with the water park--no parking traffic. For our $18, we ended up behind home plate in the "diamond section" where runners would come and take our order for beer or coolers or popcorn. In between innings, local businesses would give prizes away to kids who won the sack race with the Onion or the kid who won the pillow fight on the balance beam. It was really cute Mayberry RFD evening.

Thursday we went to the monthly "Sip and Stroll."  We had strolled in April when it was 40 degrees out.  It's a whole different experience when it's 95 degrees out. Ten dollars gets you a passport to visit  six of the 20+ participating wine rooms or brew pubs for tastings or repast, all within strolling distance downtown.  And that doesn't count the 20+ more non-participating wineries and restaurants.  We try to go somewhere new but, amazingly, we've been everywhere. So, we  replayed our favorites or could choose the less crowded rooms.  We did finally make it to the Big House Brew Pub as our last stop.  It's about the only place we have never visited and the owner was happy that by participating in the Sip and Stroll he got us in the door to make us a loyal customer.  We said we'd be loyal about one more week. We watched the end of the basketball game -- another first for us.

Today's diversion, after chores, is called  Love of Junk  ("Vintage market on the farm and in the barn.")  I know we're trying to downsize and purge, but when Judd heard food trucks he said we could go "browse." Judd seems to think shopping is one of his chores while I'm at work.  I DID put groceries on his to-do list, but each week I've been coming home to yet another map or book about Alaska or Canada. Now the spree has escalated to camping/hiking gear including the multitude of ways to deter mosquitos.  Even Sheldon has hiking poles now. We better hurry up and get out of here or we won't have any money left for the $50 a day of gas for the truck!