Saturday, Feb 10th.

Not sure why but I woke up at 5:30 and was up and about by 6 or so.  It was in time to see the sun rise to greet a beautiful day.
  I went to breakfast in the hall this morning and had the usual.  The group I usually sit with were long gone as I never got there until 8:30.  I do that intentionally sometimes so I can sit with different people.  There are so many good folks in this park that you never get to know if you fall into the habit of always doing the same things with the same people day after day.  I ended sitting with Stan who had a visitor from S Carolina and then a couple other guys in the park joined us.  A very interesting guy and we had a good conversation on a number of topics as he was in forestry and his employer had a mill in Hinton that he had been to.  Marg was up well before I left but in spite of my encouraging her, she opted out of a big breakfast.  No surprise there!  Then she started brats in the slow cooker with some purple cabbage and small potatoes.
  She had a couple of conversations with the other ladies organizing the celebration of life this afternoon on some of the details and got them up to date on what she had done.  When  got back I fixed the light switch on the door of the freezer compartment as the light wouldn't come on.  When I went to the tool shed out back, I looked one of the glue traps and there was a tiny snake in it.  It was only about 3 inches long, so very young and looked to be an Arizona gopher snake.  I had found one of these a couple of years ago.  Crickets sometimes get in there, so I suspect it went in looking for lunch and got stuck and died.  It did bring to mind that with this warm weather the snakes are becoming more active.   Anyway after laying there looking up I had a bout of vertigo, so stayed quiet for a while.
  Marg went to Safeway and got some things both for the house and the celebration.  We elected to provide bottled water during the event and she also got:  ice cream, coffee cream, ice and whip cream in spray cans.  It seems there was a lot of pie left from the park sale and they offered it to use at the event.  It seems she was out of the ultimate breakfast food, so picked up some yogurt as well.  She just got back and one of her co-organizers was here waiting.
  At 2 PM we went down to the hall to get things set up.  The crib players have a 1 pm game time, so were still playing when we got there, that was the reason the celebration was not held until 3 pm today.  We had coffee to make and pies to cut, all kinds of chores to get ready.  When the appointed hour came, the hall was pretty full and we were fortunate to have the pastor from the Sunday services here with us and available to pay an important role.  Richard's son delivered the eulogy that was written by our resident author in the park.  There were also several people who spoke in glowing terms about how Richard impacted their lives and what he meant to them.  It went very well and was a fitting farewell to a great fellow.
  It took a while to clean up and then we went back to our place to try and catch our breath.  Kenny & Doris stopped by for what turned out to be the smallest happy hour get together in the park. Then it was supper at home tonight.