A Memorable Day (Whine Alert). . . My wife's sister was visiting from out of state, and→[More:] she and my wife do not get along. They do not like one another, and most of the time they are civil and friendly, but any little glitch could launch them into rehashing their respective versions of why the other has always been the evil sister.

So anyway, the visit went OK, with just tension but little more. Most of the week was spent in Portland at their brother's, and we went there for the 4th and then stayed at Daughter's for two nights whilst visiting.

Friday, Daughter decides that she will show off "her" Portland, including food pods, funky SE Hawthorne shops, and Mt. Tabor. 5 of us in her little Civic and her idea of seeing Mt. Tabor is to hike up from the street. Wife's sister and the brother's wife are very well dressed and coiffed, and have sandals which make this hike problematic. But my wife insists that Mt. Tabor will be climbed, so marches on with Daughter. I stopped with the sisters about a third of the way up, and it was actually kind of nice to sit in look across to downtown from just above the reservoirs. So a bit of tension but nothing horrible.

Then we are in the car, again piled in, and I get a call from a Dr. saying that my biopsy on my prostate is positive. (It turns out to be the kind of prostate cancer that will probably be so slow that I will die of something else, but more on that later.) But I felt like I did not want to not take this call so I am conversing in the car, my daughter driving, listening to all this without even knowing that there had been a biopsy, and my wife and the two other sisters in the back, listening. So then the call is over and I have to explain it all, and explain that yes it's cancer but probably the least bad kind, and not much of it.

We get to the food pod (Portland people go to Eurotrash. ) but I am sort of in shock walking around, trying to digest this news.

The visit winds down, and we take our leave from Daughter (which is always very hard) and drive back to Eugene, and we are just getting into town when the neighbor calls and reports that his wife has backed over and killed Tito.

So we get home, console our neighbor as best we can (Tito was stubborn and apparently was napping under their car and could not be bothered to move and she was in a hurry, etc.) and dig a hole and bury Tito, before even going into the house.

So I have had better days than last Friday. . .