New Neighbors

 Last night after dark a moving van pulled up to the empty house next door.

I went to bed early though, as I've been doing lately, for some reason, means an early rise, and get up and there's a commercial big rig cab parked in front of my place.

I will not be happy if he has decided his commercial truck will be fine parked out in front of my window.   

I don't know who they are or anything about them.  The place has been up for rent for a few months and they finally dropped the asking price per month by $300 I think, so it was renting for about $2300 a month instead of the initial asking of $2600.   I have greatly enjoyed the darkness and silence of the house being empty. 

I went to a birthday party Sunday in Salem.  I didn't know many of the people there but soon did and I enjoyed it immensely.   I'd seen some of their names online.   I don't get out much, so I accept pretty much any invite to do something.   It was a place called The Yard.  Inside are long wooden tables with benches and they sell exotic coffee blends and alcoholic drinks and have a stage for live music.  Outside on both sides are food carts of all sorts.  I got something small from one of the Mexican food themed carts and it was quite delicious.  Its seems to be a very popular place.  Lots of young people came and went, crowding together to chat, drink and eat at the tables--a good easy place to get together.  I liked it.   

I had a chat, while there, with a woman who is disabled and now lives out near the coast with her parents.  The person I knew, whose birthday it was, is moving out there from near Salem, very soon, to become her caregiver.   The disabled woman had moved to Oregon with her husband and parents from N.J. over a decade ago.  Her father is from Oregon.   They wanted a change from the bustle and crowding in N.J.  She said the change to lots of quiet and dark, living in the country near the coast, was dramatic.  She said its much more laid back here than on the east coast where its crowded and life goes on at a frenzy. They almost lost their home to one of the wildfires here.  

Before I left for the birthday party, I worked in my yard all day, trying to get that cat shelter in the cat yard enclosed.  Just an hour before leaving for the party I got a terrible pain in my left side and felt a give.  I didn't know what that was about, and thought maybe I'd pulled a muscle. It did feel like when I pulled a muscle partly off my shoulder years and years ago.   Monday it was still there and I did nothing, trying not to make it worse.  I have a doctor appointment today, was to just be able to fill my one prescription for another year and get the flu shot, but now I have to ask her to make sure its a pulled muscle not divirticulitis, which I get.  I've barely eaten the last two days in case it is that.  I have no idea if it is, but I haven't felt sick at all, like I have with other bouts of divirticulitis.  It might be really hard to tell if its one or the other, but I think a doctor should know how to tell.