Picking up from my August, 2016 post – what I didn’t say at the time was that I was writing from Coeur d’Alene, Idaho (CDA). My family had driven up because one of our nieces had a June wedding overlooking beautiful lake Coeur d’Alene.

In Coeur d’Alene (CDA) we socialized a lot with family and learned our CDA based family members had just decided after many decades to leave CDA for the Portland, OR area, a process they thought would take a year or two because of the thin real estate market around Lake CDA and the uniqueness of their property.  Since the relatives were the primary reason we visited CDA and my guardians could see the handwriting on the wall, they decided to place our CDA condo up for sale – we were there and had the time to prepare, list and, hopefully, sell the condo.

Northern Idaho is often hot (90F or so) on summer days so I was spending much of June-August indoors with the A/C unit, which was fine.  Mornings and evenings were cooler and better times to venture out for some walks and changes of scenery.

On the condo listing things moved more quickly than we’d even hoped for, and we had a deal to sell the condo and vacate in August!  All we had to do was decide what personal effects we wanted to haul to California, and outplace the REST through an estate sale or donations.  One of my guardians is an expert in these things and she soon and painlessly had us ready to head south.

This is my  last pose in Coeur d’Alene:

As best I can recall, after leaving CDA we caravanned the loaded U-Haul truck and our Subaru down  over to the Portland area and stopped briefly to see the relatives’ new homes in Silverton and Canby, and then continued on I-5 to Redding and over to San Francisco.

In San Francisco we first transferred the truck’s contents into the U-Haul self-storage near Candlestick. After returning the truck for about 10 days we did the normal things I enjoy in SF, especially walking, splashing, and hanging out with peers at Crissy Field.  Then it was into the Subaru for the 7.5 hour drive to Laguna Beach.

For the next 15 months or so, through 2017, I was an Orange County (OC) resident, travelling just a few times to San Francisco.  My home was in the historic Woods Cove neighborhood of Laguna Beach, 3 blocks from the beach and about a mile south of downtown.  Many mornings I visited Laguna’s Main Beach and enjoyed its wonderful attributes including the views, the dogs, and the people.

Above: I’m at University of California Irvine during finals week lowering the stress level.

I volunteered for the local chapter of PAWS (Pets Are Wonderful Support) and served the community in a variety of roles:  I was a therapy dog in a seniors’ facility; I served as a sympathetic companion to UC Irvine Law students during finals week;  and my most steady “employment” was as an attentive listener in library branches as children read to me as part of their reading education program*.  I was fairly busy with these chores as they were in several locations in southern OC such as Laguna Niguel, Dana Point, Irvine, and Newport Beach as well as Laguna Beach (map is below).

In parallel with my professional roles, I always had time to be a good family member – hanging out with my canine relatives, Oscar, Lily, and Cece, along with my two-legged nephews, William and Barrett.

*”You are the best dog ever born” is what one one of my students wrote me.