Yesterday was a beautiful sunny day. Since it's my last weekend here I hoped to run into friends, and stopped first at the swimming pool (where Rye* was having a meltdown) and then at the Apple Pool. All of a sudden there was a sharp pain in my big toe, and when I pulled off my (closed!) shoe there was a sliver of glass sticking out from under my toenail! Luckily there was just enough sticking out to grab and pull - and yes it bled. But where did it come from, and how did it 'hide' during most of my walk before making its presence known?

I spent a few hours floating around at the Party Pool, where Addie was again having fun; not so much Rye, the friend she had been awaiting. Not sure if Rye was having a (very) bad day, or is always a cranky, crying kid. But if you're not happy playing in the warm water at the hot springs... 

Ilene and Mike (from Basalt) were back, and after our previous conversation Ilene went home and told her mother Julie that she should sign (and date) her quilts - and Julie has agreed to do that.

Yesterday was Doug's 66th birthday; he helped Neil and Terry build the hot springs, and is the current Executive Officer of the Orient Land Trust. He has lived here on the property since before I discovered Valley View 35 years ago, and is much beloved by all. So several of the staff organized a surprise dinner party for him down at the ranch.  The sky was quite threatening when we drove down around 5:00, and then the wind picked up. Next was thunder, and soon after that quite a bit of lightning. I saw lots of incredible bolts, but was stunned (and a little frightened) when one blue-white one hit the mountain a little north of the hot springs - with an intense red ball at the bottom! 

We managed to get dinner finished before the rain arrived, but decided to skip the cake and (homemade peach) ice cream when the party moved inside (to a very small space where Neil would not have been comfortable.) However as we were getting Neil into the car Noah appeared with a plate containing 3 cupcakes and scoops of ice cream for us to take home with us. We were driving right into the storm, and in the less-than-ten minutes it took to arrive home the weather got progressively worse. It was raining when I zoomed into the house to put the starting-to-melt ice cream in the freezer while Terry got Neil out of the car, but had started hailing when I went back out to help get Neil along the path and into the house; apparently he was aware of the crappy weather (yes we'd brought raincoats with us) and had moved faster than Terry thought possible! Good thing, because in the brief time I'd run inside the rain had turned to hail.

We played cribbage and then watched the third (last) episode of Grantchester on the Netflix disc. It was fairly early, but I was tired and went upstairs around 9:00. Did not have the energy to write my daily blog post, or even read for very long. Unfortunately it was another night where I woke often, though seemed to keep falling back asleep, at least until 6:00.

Looks like another beautiful sunny day!