We arrived at Soledad Canyon at 1:00, after an easy 95-mile trip. But it soon became apparent that
Soledad had not solved its electrical problems. After setting up in a nice site, the electricity suddenly failed, and we had to break down and move to another site---where we saved the bulk of the setting-up process until the electricity had been working for a while.
As soon as we were fully settled-in, Becky left for Pasadena to see her dad. She was prepared to spend the night there if it seemed appropriate. I promised the dogs would survive without her. After a few hours, she called to say she was coming home. Three minutes later, she called to say her father had passed away the moment she left, she had been called by her brother with the information, and she would be returning to his home for a while. She finally came back and we spent some time grieving and making short-term future plans.
Sunday morning, we dropped Ramsey and Kelsey off at Jill's Second Home kennel in Acton, and headed for an all-hands meeting in Pasadena. The whole family was there and plans for a memorial were discussed. Peter had drafted a lovely obituary that he shared with the group. And family members shared some of their favorite memories of times with Bill.
As an outsider, I was impressed with how controlled they all were and yet how obvious it was that they cared very deeply for their father. We all then met at Central Park, a nice restaurant in Pasadena, for an early dinner.
Becky and I spent a quiet and somber night, without the dogs. The next morning, Monday, I started to repair a problem with our bed. As had happened before, the bed split from its mooring to the slideout mechanism and had deposited itself about six inches from the wall. An earlier repair had failed and it was time to do it again. I determined (from my superb professional experience, of course) that the problem had been caused by our having recently stored two cases of wine in the storage area under the bed, causing an undue strain on the mechanism.
Before I could finish the repair, we decided to go to an urgent care facility in Palmdale to follow up on my back pain. I had been called Sunday night by the doctor I had seen in Santa Barbara who advised me that they had re-reviewed my x-rays and decided I should have a CAT scan because they suspected something was odd about the film.
Donna (a Bruin, by the way), the person at the place in Palmdale, conducted her own appraisal after reviewing a new set of x-rays and reviewing the conclusions of the Santa Barbara doctors, determined that I did not need a scan and sent me home. Frankly, I am feeling a lot better and the bruise is almost gone, so I couldn't argue with her.
We picked up the dogs on the way home and, after arriving back home, I finished repairing the bed and we spent a nice evening with our complete family and a properly-located bed. Tuesday it started raining and did so all day. A bit depressing. After waiting for several days to reach Jensen, the manufacturer of our living-room TV (they were closed Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and were so inundated with phone calls on Monday that they did not return my call until Tuesday),
Wednesday, it drizzled all day so the dogs and I mostly played indoors while Becky ran to Los Angeles to get her hair done. There was not much to do, anyway, since we were going to leave for the desert on Thursday.
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