Mr. Russell Wraps it Up!

The Portfolios Depart Long Creek

Well, folks, it has been a long time coming;  lot of work and a lot of missed dates; a final, 48 hour marathon with snippets of sleep and hazy memories of eating once in a while and drinking about a gallon of coffee; Gene’s portfolios are off to his graduate committee and there’s talk of a defense on Saturday, March 21. I’ve got to hand it to Geno. I damn near died and I was only copying, sorting, editing and so on. He’s been fighting the local school bug. It’s a nasty cold and he just worked right through it. He pretty much had a hankie stuffed up his nostrils. I’ll tell you, I have a lot of respect for anyone who completes this degree. The minutia of every little handout, slide, website…and a script for anyone who has to walk in and teach your class. My goodness. Anyway, Geno is looking pretty bad right now, but he’ll be feeling okay tomorrow after he gets some sleep.

Mr. Russell delivers!

So, for those of you in the valley, I’ll be over on Tuesday to get the room ready for Arwen, who will be returning to Oregon at least for a while, on March 19. The little Honda has to go in for extreme surgery, so I’ll be picking it up from the shop on Friday, late afternoon and zipping back over to Long Creek so that I can go to La Grande with Gene when he defends. Friends in Corvallis: If any of you know of a place coming open that will allow one well-mannered dog and one nice cat and my beautiful daughter, let me know asap. She really needs to find a place asap and it is really hard to do from Australia.  The degree completion marathon was accompanied by some really amazing weather. While ya’ll have been whining about temperatures in the 30’s (F), we’ve been going to the teens. The “ice bucket” bones litter the yard, since it is too cold for them to melt. But what scenery! Take a look.

The Sun graces the hills with a cold glance as one storms moves out and another moves in.

The Next Storm Brings Snow

Everyone was looking for food between snowstorms

And a single digit night as the moon moved towards full