Leon Turnbull Photography

I have been laid up in bed all week long with illness. I haven’t even wanted to look at a computer, let alone touch one. It started out as a nasty cough/cold. Then it turned into the flu. Now, just as I am getting over that, I think I now have an ear infection. I’m gonna have to go back to the doctor today. Argh. When it rains it pours.

This is a different viewpoint of Shingle Falls from a couple weeks ago. I had to climb over the fence to get the angle I wanted here, but it was quite safe enough.

It was a tough weekend in the Turnbull household. Our 12 year old family cat, Jordie, had to be put down due to severe kidney failure. He had a tough life, but at the same time a wonderful life, mostly thanks to my wife Tara. She found him on the street when he was a baby, almost dead. He had everything you could imagine: worms, fleas, covered in dirt, pneumonia, infection in eyes, malnourished. Yet he purred the whole time when she picked him up and took him home. That was his signature in his life, his purring no matter what the situation. Tara nursed him back to health. I “inherited” him (or vice-versa), when I married Tara in ’99, and although not a cat person, I became one because of Jordie. He was a very loveable cat. In later years, he developed kidney problems. Twice Tara nursed him back to health again, but this third time was just too much for him. He will be missed.

Now on top of this sad news, I also learned that I will be losing my job in a few months. Our entire team and most of the I.T. department in our company, will be outsourced, and we all will be losing our jobs. I will either be laid off outright with severance, or possibly offered a job with the oursourcing company (which I will not likely take). This whole situation is troublesome. We employees have worked hard for 10 or more years, to make the company into a great company. And then they turn around and do this to us, treating us like crap. They are making billions in revenue each year, and they only want more. I’m not too concerned about getting another job. God has always provided for myself and my family, and I believe He will continue to do so. Nonetheless, this is all very upsetting.

And to make matters even more grand, I have an extremely bad cough and cold this weekend, and really feel crappy. Ah, yes, what a weekend. Hope yours was MUCH better.

Just below the main waterfall at Shingle Falls is this 29 ft. high beauty. When I was here 7 years ago, I missed it completely. I don’t know how that could have possibly happened. I had actually thought that the lower falls was just a small set of rapids further downstream from here, which is probably why I didn’t give it much attention. This time, however, I noticed it was indeed much more. Making my way down to see it did involve a bit of scrambling. But it was slightly easier than getting to the bottom of the main Shingle Falls. I was quite impressed with this waterfall, mostly because I wasn’t expecting it to be very much at all.

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