9/27/06 (Wednesday): Coming into the home stretch here--just 12 days to go! We're still enjoying work, the weather and the great scenery.

Last night we said goodbye to some camper friends who have been here the whole season, Gary and Nina. We had them over for hamburgers and enjoyed some wine around the campfire. It's getting cold enough that we really appreciated the fire! Then we came inside and gobbled up the delicious apple pie that they baked for the occasion. We hope to be able to stay in contact with some of the wonderful people we've met while we were here. Gary and Nina are on their way to Texas.

Monkey is having some health problems that have us worried. We've had her to the vet twice now. She's in the early stages of kidney failure. The vet has us giving her IV's every other day and has put her on special canned cat food. If she's not better by the end of this week, we've made the very difficult decision to have her put to sleep. We don't want to subject her to the long trip back to Florida, and we want to remember her for the nutty, engaging kitty she's always been, not as an invalid.

We've been tearing up the carpeting in the bedroom today (in addition to doing laundry and normal chores. Tomorrow we'll put down some tile (same as the tile in the living room). We've been enjoying the way it looks as well as how easy it is to keep clean. I enjoy this kind of project, but poor Wiley doesn't--he usually gets stuck with the hard and dirty parts of projects. He's doing the bulk of the ripping up and removing staples part of the job. I'm the expert on the finish work. I'll cut, fit and stick down the new tiles and then put down the toe molding (trim). We make a good team--everyone who's seen the work we did here has commented that it's very well done.

No pictures this time. The leaves are just beginning to change and I'm sitting here looking at the evening light slanting through the trees and casting colored shadows on the sides of the camper. There are very few people here now. We pick up a few over weekends, and we'll probably pick up some more next week (leaf peepers). Our friends, Julie and John, will be here next Wednesday. We're looking forward to viewing the colors with them and making one last round of our favorite haunts.

I've got to get back to work now--we're trying to finish up so that we can go buy some trim pieces we need and then go to Pizza Hut for dinner.