OH NO THE BIG FOUR "O" (bob turns 40)

Lina Returns Home

Lina is Home

Wednesday morning Lina was not feeling well at all. Carmen was off to work, Ceci was at school and it was decided that she needed to go to the Doctors Medical Center Hospital emergency room. It was thought that she may have had a mini stroke. The doctor observed that she had a twitching on one side of her face. They ran all sorts of tests on her heart and they all came back with good results. It really bothered me that they could not find a bed for her in the hospital until evening. She spent many, many hours in the emergency room and she is 79 years old. I was talking to my neighbor Karen and she told me that happened to her mom when she took her to the hospital as well.

The family brought her food from home, and were abruptly scolded by the nurse. So she ate the hospital food and proceeded to spend a very long night being sick.

She stayed over night and in the morning the remaining test results came in all looking good. Yesterday evening as Carmen had just signed her out she started to feel just as terrible again. So she was signed back in. This time the family brought her soup and was not going to take any lip from the nurse. That night she did not get sick. From what I can tell, they really don't have any idea why she felt so bad. I have truly lost all faith in our health care system.

This afternoon, she returned home. During that entire time, they never were able to find out what was wrong. This whole episode is shameful.

She is home and very glad to be home and we are all glad she is home as well.

One Pink House

Before

After doing quite a bit of work on our house, it needed to be painted. Rain came early this year, so with all the bad weather it took two weeks. When I got home on Tuesday, I was greeted with a PINK HOUSE. I was in shock. Carmen looked nervous and kept repeating "I picked the wrong color". I asked "What do you think of this color?". I had to ask several times before she answered "I'm not crazy about the color, but I can live with it." I responded "Well, I can't!". I like to think I'm confident in my masculinity, but a PINK HOUSE is too much.

Carmen got on the phone and contacted the painter. It wasn't going to be cheap, but he was willing to get the crew back out the very next morning and by the end of the day, I had my yellow house with white trim back and we lived happily ever after.

Bearfamily.com Goes Green

Bearfamily.com now has a new web page for the environmentally concerned. You can click on the link under our "Resources" section or right here at http://www.bearfamily.com/green.

Carol Bear will most likely take over this web page and should do a great job of providing us with some great content.

Visiting Carol in Chico

I had to go to Red Bluff to work with one of our programmers, so I called Carol to see if she would like to have dinner. After I finished my work for the day I drove up and met Carol. She took me for a short walking tour of Chico. It is especially nice in October.

There really was no choice for dinner. "Madison Bear Gardens". I could not find a website. It not only has a great name, but what a place. It is old and has a lot of character. It reminds me of Berkeley, but actually better and more spacious.

Carol and I got to talking about Green and going "Off the Grid". Don't be surprised if we had a "Green" page to the Bearfamily.com website.

We had a great time, Carol is doing very well. I checked into my hotel and drove over the Red Bluff the next morning.

MONTREAL, CANADA

Best Western Annual Conference in Montreal Canada

Each year I travel to the Annual Best Western Conference for work. This year it was in Montreal, Canada. Lila did some research and informed me earlier in the year that the drinking and gambling age is 18. Interesting how when this semester came up, Lila just happened to be taking all online classes. It is true that they have to meet one a week in person, but they are allowed to miss one week. Guess which week Lila missed. Lila was not only packed before any of us, I think she was actually packed several days ahead of us. You see, Carmen decided to come to Montreal as well. Unfortunately, they don't let high school kids take online classes, so Ceci had to stay home.

We arrived in Montreal, checked into our hotel and had dinner. I had a local beer with a Bear on the front of the bottle. I'm sorry, I don't remember the name of the beer. The town is very clean, very old and very nice. We settled down for a good nights sleep. Unfortunately at about 4:00am, we were woken by the fire alarm. I called down to the front desk to see what was up, but each time it was busy. We threw on some close and quickly made our way out of the room and to the stairwell. We were on the eleventh floor, but by the time we made our way to the seventh floor, we were met by billowing smoke making its way up and people coming up the stairs. They looked pretty scared.

We stopped, and turned back. I reached for the door of the closest exit from the stairwell and it was locked. I'm pretty concerned at this point and some terrible possibilities run through my mind. Carmen points out that Lila has her key and I make way so she can open the door. I lead my family and the rest of the people out of the stairwell. As we pass the elevator, I press the button just to see what would happen. The light blinked off almost immediately. I know you aren't supposed to use the elevator when there is a fire, but I wanted to know what all of our options were. We continued around to the other side of the building. There was only one more stairwell and we entered it and fortunately were able to make our way down to the first floor and out of the building to the street where there already fire trucks. We noticed there was a Days Inn across the street, where we checked in and stayed for the remainder to stay, on the fourth floor.



Tuesday evening we went out to the casino, where Lila ordered her first fancy drink. A pina colada.


Our friend Jan Misch taught Lila her method for working on the slot machines where Lila managed to win $2.75 Canadian (worth more than US dollars at the time of this writing). Lila's winnings naturally were enough to pay for her trip. Interesting thing about the casino. It is non-smoking and they do not serve alcohol to those gambling. They do stop by and offer drink such as soda, juice and coffee. Don't feel too bad. There is a lounge on every floor of this six story casino. The casino is owned by the government. All of the profits go to improving the roads. They sure have nice roads in Montreal.




Next morning we were eating that the lovely restaurant in our hotel. As you dined you could look out onto the street in front and see the fire truck and police. What? Yes, they where visiting again. No fire this time. Just past the restaurant where we could not see, a truck had missed it's address and backed up. Right over a pedestrian.



Our day in Montreal was October 17th, which just happens to be Lila's birthday. It was very nice of Best Western to hold their gala dinner in her honor. There we were with about 2000 of our closest friends.



One thing about Best Western is that I have been doing business with these people since before Lila was born, so there are many people that know her, but since she does not come every year, she doesn't necessarily remember everyone that knows her. This year Steve Wahrlich attended the conference. He has been to the last three, but hadn't attended in many years before that. Lila had missed the last three. He saw Lila, gave her a big hug and kiss as many who know here did and she freaked out a bit, since she forgot who he was and could not see his name tag. Once she saw it she remembered who he was.

The gala was wonderful, besides Lila, Carmen and myself, Jan Misch (her partner in crime with one armed bandits), Laurenne Douglas (We have a picture of her holding Lila when Lila is about an hour old), Betty (Laurenne's Mother, born and raised in France and is more French than France itself) and Carl Doughty who I have known since 1979 were all sitting together. There were lots of friends at the tables around us and everyone knew it was Lila's birthday.



The food was wonderful and was followed by entertainment. The first person was a comedian. I don't remember his name, but I will find out. I can't ever remember laughing so hard in my life. I was laughing so hard, not only did it hurt, but I decided it was better to just top breathing till I calmed down. He was so funny. "Salad is not a meal. It is the promise of a meal to follow." After the comedian, there was an impressionist that impersonated famous singers. That really didn't thrill Lila or myself that much, but at the very end he did Bill Clinton playing the saxophone. With his mouth, he made the sound of the sax and did an entire song. It was very impressive.



When that was all over, Laurenne took a white flower from the table setting and presented it to Lila. It was very sweet.


Next we went upstairs where they had a live disco band and we danced the night away. Above is a picture that Carmen took and Laurenne, Lila and myself on the dance floor.

The next morning, we flew home. Next year the Best Western conference is in Hawaii. Look out Hawaii. Ceci will be there too!

Jake Ate His Tooth

Friday after school Mommy and Jake went to Round Table Pizza for Lunch. Jake had earned a free pizza from the library Summer Reading program. After Jake started eating his pizza the tooth was gone! The mommy said, hey Jake where is your tooth? Jake tried to touch his tooth but it was gone. Then he started to look on the floor and all around but he could not find it. The Mommy started to laugh and told Jake that he ate it. It's in your tummy Jake! When Jake and the Mommy got home they wrote a note to the Tooth Fairy and put it under Jake's pillow. Jake fell asleep and was up supper early on Saturday. Mommy I got one hundred dollars from the Tooth Fairy, SEE! Jake the Mommy said that's one dollar. Jake was very happy. The mommy put on the TV for Jake and went back to sleep.