"Why is Cloud 9 so amazing? What's wrong with Cloud 8?" - Mitch Hedberg

What a day.

I started at the coffee shop just for a cup of joe and a visit with George and then to NAPA to return some parts I got for the carb installation that I didn't need. As soon as I got home Pam left to do the laundry in town.

Ten minutes later Emily( Marta's daughter) showed up with Blakeley (the hero in the novel "The Scarlet Pimpernel). He's a 3-month old Nubian who was a bottle baby and is very tame and affectionate. He'll be our guest, our foster goat, for the next two-plus months.

Goats are herd animals and don't do well alone. So Blakeley, who is being weaned, will be company for Eclair up in the weaning pen, allowing him to move out of our home. It's fun to have a goat baby in the house but it's also work and sometimes crazy. With me leaving for two weeks it will be a lot easier for Pam to go up to the pen to feed each day's four bottles than to have to change diapers and keep Eclair out of (innocent) trouble. At 15 days old he's an adolescent full of energy and curiosity.
Neither Eclair nor Blakeley are very happy right now because the adjustment to new surroundings is stressful. And Eclair is now with a goat instead of the two people who have fed and cuddled him for over two weeks. But in two or three days this will be normal and they'll be best buds.

Pam got home right about noon and by 12:30 we'd had lunch and were on our way up to Gulbranson's Automotive Repair. We came home with this 1997 Chevy Blazer. The widow and her husband were the original owners. He died recently and she doesn't drive so she'd asked Ron to help her sell this.

Many of the 94,000 miles were in tow behind their big RV. It has all the options (a lot fewer in 1997 than are now standard equipment) and is 4wd, which will be nice the next time it snows on Baker Rd. Last time it snowed were were stuck home for four days because we couldn't get the Kia up the hill of our driveway.

The Kia has 159,000 miles on it, so we dropped about 65,000 miles and got more vehicle in the process. It's pretty clean and straight but when I get back from Brazil I'll give it a thorough detailing, add a back-up camera, and eventually do something about the split seams in the leather front seats.

By the time we sell the Kia we will be out about $1,000 so we think it's a good upgrade. Mostly, the circumstances of this transaction, from learning about the vehicle last Friday to buying it for a very reasonable amount, are so remarkable that we consider it God's gracious provision.

Went out to dinner at Baja Fresh. Good food, good company.

We'll leave MoHo for the airport in Portland about 9:00 tomorrow morning. I have a one hour layover in Chicago before leaving on a 10-hour flight to Sao Paulo. I have a four hour layover there before my two hour flight to Recife. Add in time zone changes and I'll leave Tuesday morning and get into Recife Wednesday evening. Uff-dah.
We're praying for no medical "events" en route.

I think I've got everything set up for Pam to take care of the animals. All the feed containers are full, the barn and coop are clean, and the animals into a routine that I hope will make things fairly easy for her.

I'm 90% packed and read for bed. The next time I lay down in a bed I'll be in Brazil Wednesday night.