Wednesday, October 21, through Tuesday, October 27, 2015: The Last Week of the Countdown:

Wednesday morning, Becky started packing in earnest.  Our closet looks like a bomb has exploded.  A little later, I put in a hold order for our mail, and stopped at the police station to put our house on the watch list.  As part of that drill, I informed them who would be house-sitting and who would be visiting (like our gardener). 

And I had the weekly weigh-in.  We had started Phase Two of the diet last week, and the results were not good.  I gained two pounds.  Arrrrgh!  I will take it off this week.

The USPS tracking system revealed that the package finally arrived in Pasadena from Grand Rapids at 6:52 Wednesday morning and went out for delivery to the escrow company at 7:14 AM---Only five days late.

By Thursday morning, I had lost the errant two pounds, and I happily headed for Dr. Boettcher's office for my surgery follow-up.  He removed the cover he had sewn over the skin graft, and announced that everything was OK. 

Not great, but fine.  Because part of the new graft  replaced part of the old graft there were some slight imperfections in the junction (because the grafted skin is so thin), but he assured us everything would turn out just fine over time.  My only restriction on the cruise will be that I must wear a hat at all times---because the sight of my uncovered head will frighten anyone passing by, especially when I'm sitting down at meals.  I have great faith in Dr. Boettcher, and I am looking forward to my complete recovery---and the restoration of my head as a beautiful thing.  Maybe that's an exaggeration.

We decided to celebrate (a bit) by having lunch at Hiro's Sushi in Flagstaff.  As usual, it was delicious.

We learned in mid-afternoon that the escrow finally closed on Becky's father's home.  Hooray!!!!!  It took only four deals to get it done.  We can now go on the cruise with a clear mind.

Thursday night, UCLA surprised Cal and actually won another game.  Since Cal was ranked and UCLA was not (having fallen from being ranked #7 two weeks ago) it was a good win.  Maybe there's more parity in the Pac-12 than people realize.

Two days ago we started hearing a periodic "chirp" in the hallway leading to the bedrooms.   It sounded like a smoke alarm battery was wearing down.  But we have hard-wired smoke alarms, so batteries are not an issue.  Right?  Wrong.  After two minutes of research on the Internet, we learned that all smoke alarms have batteries.  On hard-wired alarms, the batteries act as a backup, not the primary source of power.  Since all of our alarms are near the ceiling, and all of our ceilings are of the "cathedral" type, and four of the alarms are within a few feet of each other, we couldn't quite figure out which alarm was making the noise. 

And it was necessary to use a ladder to get to any alarm.  I'm a little shaky on ladders these days (getting old is so much fun) so Becky was dispatched to learn which alarm was the culprit.  The alarm in the hall was the most likely candidate, so she changed that battery.  A bit later, the chirping resumed.  She then tracked the sound down to the one in a guest bedroom.  At 6:00 this morning, she changed that battery.  The chirping has not returned, so that apparently was the correct one.  Yea!

Friday involved taking care of more last-minute details, more packing decisions, more clothes washing, more puttering around with small home projects, and more getting excited about the impending trip.  This is exciting. 

Saturday involved a lot of football-watching.  Sadly, Utah lost (big) to USC, thus ending its position as #3 in the rankings.  And Stanford beat Washington, which is fine.  I like Stanford for no particular reason.

And we made more packing decisions.

Sunday and Monday were strangely boring.  We didn't want to start any big projects since we were leaving Monday night, so we just puttered around finishing last-minute details.  In celebration of our trip, Becky bought a bottle of Prosecco.  And of course, we enjoyed it!

I got obsessive about tracking the train every few hours.  It turned out that it was still almost on time late in the afternoon, so we prepared to leave for the Grand Canyon Railway Hotel---and its shuttle to the train---around 9:00.  We had a light dinner at home, then---at the hotel---a final adult beverage.  I had a delicious  Irish Coffee and Becky had a perfectly awful Lemon Drop.  We got on the train at 10:20, only 45 minutes late, and rather quickly went to sleep.  The next morning, we arrived at Union Station a bit early (Amtrak builds in a one-hour fudge factor at the Fullerton stop), Becky picked up our rental car, and we headed for the Pasadena area.  We ran some errands there and killed a little time before we met Terry Shelton for lunch at The Heirloom Restaurant in South Pasadena.  It's a pleasant, slightly funky sort of place, but the weather was nice and we ate outdoors. 

We had a very nice time with Terry, catching up on all the late family doings.  We then headed for the airport to stay at the Four Points Sheraton on Airport Boulevard.  The plan had been for Becky to drop me (and the luggage) off at the hotel, then, after filling the car with gas, return the car to Budget at its near-the-airport drop off place, then take the Budget shuttle to the airport and there pick up the hotel shuttle---to return to the hotel.  When we go to the hotel, though, we realized the Budget office was right across the street.  So, after dropping me off, Becky got gas, then returned the car and walked across the street to the hotel.

The room at the hotel was nice---except that its alarm clock was broken and the refrigerator was not cold.  (We had some Prosecco to keep chilled.)  The hotel replaced both the clock and the refrigerator.  Then Becky went to the front desk to borrow scissors to trim the bandage on my head.  There were no scissors to be had there.  She canvassed the hotel and finally found some in the accounting office.  She was having such a good time building up a hatred for the hotel that I didn't bother to tell her (since it wasn't important) but the bathroom door was missing part of a hinge.

Barbara Coad arrived at the hotel shortly after 6:00 and we started to celebrate the impending trip. 

After we finished the Prosecco, we went downstairs to the bar and had another beverage and some surprisingly delicious bar food for dinner.  We then crashed for the night.      

I had made a tentative arrangement to see my brother at some point during the day.  It was tentative because he had someone coming to see him around noon and it was not clear how long he would be with him.  He was going to call me as soon as he knew what his timing would be.  After turning off the lights for the night, I finally heard from him.  He managed some explanation about the guy he was meeting with had a medical emergency immediately after arriving, and my brother had to spend the entire day taking care of hm. That ended this portion of the saga.