Raincharm’s Weblog

That one word sums up my day.

Meeting 1: Carpooler. Surprised me on Monday (we did not carpool) when he beat me to work. He is not normally an early riser. Drove separately to work on Tuesday morning, and I drove him home Tuesday evening. Wednesday we agreed to a pickup at 6:50 at the coffee shop across from his apartment. I arrived at the meeting spot. Did not see him in the shop so called his domicile. He answered with that tone of rushed, late, grogginess, “I’ll call you back in a few minutes.” I explained I was on my cell phone, already there. He was obviously not, so I moved out of the coffee house and into the Park and Ride lot to wait. Ate the peanut butter toast Carl had prepared. It was about 7:10 when the meeting finally started. It was a rather quiet meeting, other than discussing the best route given signs regarding accidents…

Meeting 2: 8 AM meeting with others on our ER planning committee. Had time to turn on my computer before the meeting, and that was about it. Many discussions. I have been feeling opinionated as of late, and am letting it fly. 9:30 AM left meeting and headed toward my office.

Meeting 3: 9:30 AM Met my consultant/friend as I left the previous meeting and walked toward my office. She was coming in, and accompanied me to my office. I took a moment to fill a coffee cup (and hit the loo). This one lasted until 2 PM. The high point for me was figuring out why a rearrangement of a spreadsheet had not added up to the same numbers as before the rearrangement. Equations, sleuthing, like debugging a program, only not. Also got assignments, realized how horribly behind schedule this plan really is. At 2 PM I was ready to dive into my assignments while they are fresh in my mind (and the schedule slip as well). But…

Meeting 4: Took the reviewed and marked up HR manual into a review meeting. (2nd one – hope to cover more than 20 pages this time.) (Also took advantage of the venue change to use the loo.) Lunch during meeting. At 4:30 my carpooler appeared outside the room.

Meeting 5: Took about 1/2 hour to really leave the building, including adding a bit of air to tires. Carpooler drove the leg home. Wet, windy, crowded roads. Carpool lane helped immensely, and we ditched the freeway when we hit Seattle.

Meeting 6: Home – meeting with my partner, breakfast and lunch packer. Good hug. Dinner cooking.

Yes, of course. Want to take a walk?
Well, not so much today. My weekend warrior exploits are showing up all over me today. I can hardly stand up from sitting without grimacing. Even when I walk I look like I’ve been riding a horse.

I know the best way to recover is to do some exercise, like take a walk. I kept watching the weather in the morning. Windy, rainy, a typical Seattle November day. Figuring out whether I had it in me to brave the weather. I was saved from making that decision by a customer who arrived at 11:58 AM and wanted 5 minutes of my time. He and his friend left at 12:40.

I will have the same question tomorrow at noon. Except that there are very high winds predicted tonight. So much so that we have our power outage contingent ready to go if needed. (Can’t have those lift stations overflowing in the dark. It’s much easier to avoid the flow when you can see it.) So I may have other items to contend with through the lunch half-hour.

Grass day 3 – no extra watering, just what fell from the sky.

Trying to follow the directions so the grass will survive. We are watering in the rain. I doubt today’s rain will reach the required 1-inch on its own.

We are in recovery mode here at home. Creaky and sore.

I am a bit anxious about the soccer game this afternoon. My hamstrings are yelling. I know the moving about will only be helpful in the end, but it is the short term pain that concerns me now. That and the fact that there are teammates that could care less about why I am sore and will still expect me to do my normal meager attempts at defense. Much of this requires a few good sprints near the start so the opposing team thinks that I have a chance at making a play, and am not just a post to be run around at will.

We were also completely out of food (there was still oatmeal, but …) so we went out to breakfast. Then purchased a toilet part replacement and tons of groceries. At least the bags felt like they each weighed a ton.

The toilet part replacement job should be up on the list soon. I guess part of my job working for a water and sewer district means that I should automatically know how all of the plumbing bits work. And I have pretty much figured out the toilet thing. Just ask my kids. I always wanted to show them how to stop a toilet from overflowing or running, so when (not if) it happened to them they could react appropriately. But really, I can’t stand it when toilets run on, and this is not a simple flapper replacement. So – we will see how it all goes this afternoon,  soon, really – I will not look for other things to delay the task. Although, I have to make garlic bread for our soccer team get-together following the game. And the toilet is not running right now. Last night when I just couldn’t stand it, and couldn’t face climbing up and down the stairs one more time I tied the float arm to the towel rack over the toilet with dental floss. I can still flush, just have to reposition the floss link afterwards. (Ingenuity or laziness, you be the judge.)

If you have read many posts you might remember that I hate fences and that we took two trees out of our backyard.

So now we have removed the remaining grass and weeds – with much help from friends and neighbors.
Had 10 yards of topsoil delivered that we spread around the backyard- again with much help from friends.
Rolled the soil – with help of a lawn roller.
Tried to till the new earth – with the help of a friends roto-tiller that turned out to be the bain of one afternoon, after which I returned it to said friend, who had one of their neighbors check it out – and it worked like a charm for them…..
Waited three weeks for a “dry” weekend.

Today was the dry weekend. At least one day of a dry weekend.
So we borrowed a spreader, and re-borrowed the dreaded roto-tiller.
Spread 80 lbs of lime and 4-5 lbs of fertilizer.
Tilled said lawn.

Sidebar: I got the rototiller out, and started it all by myself, playing with the choke, throttle and pulling on the thingie that makes it go. It took a few trys, but I did it. And this is only special because this is the first small gas motor tool that I have ever used. Really.

Raked tilled dirt.
Laid down 81 5-foot x 2-foot pieces of sod.
Rented a roller and rolled said lawn.
Bought a sprinkler and watered said lawn. (We haven’t used a sprinkler in years, so we really did have to go buy a new one.)

So now, because of all of the fences and visual impediments in our backyard, and since we have a lawn that we can now sunbath topless without worrying about anybody seeing.

Topless Sunbathing

For me – it was just too cold out.

Too cold and tired to move

As I was crossing the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge, I glanced away from the drill rig to the north. I had suspected it was getting soil samples from the floor for piers for the new proposed bridge. I was wrong, at least partly. They are testing different techniques for drilling for the new piers to see what their noise effects on the surrounding neighborhoods will be. But as I said at the beginning, I glanced away to focus on a seagull. The gull was just floating over the southern rail of the bridge, about 30 feet in the air. Just floating. It looked very serene. Two thoughts came to mind.

1. Standing over the heating grate in our upstairs floor, feeling the warm air rush upwards. (Picture Marilyn Monroe without the voluptuous figure or platinum blond hair, and substitute an oversized T-shirt for the dress.)
2. Floating in Lake Superior. After one of the kids had been born I was still wearing a maternity suit, and could fill the extra material with air and lay on my back in the water. It would support me for several minutes. Weightlessness in the cool water is a wonderful feeling.

Two soccer games today. One professional, one very un-professional.
One loss, one win.
Nice fall weather – chilly if you are not moving – SO MOVE.

The Seattle Sounders lost to the Houston Dynamo today in the first round of the Major Soccer League Playoffs. It was a great first season for the team, and they should be proud of what they accomplished. But since they are professionals it is probably not that easy. We watched the game with our friends and some of their neighbors. Fun, good noshing, and close to where my soccer game was.

So 20 minutes after the Sounders’ game ended we were on a local pitch. I played OK, but can do better. For the first time in a long time Carl came to the game. He played with a players young son, listened to a bit of the Lions v. Seahawks game on the radio (Seattle tried to let the Lions win, but in the end it just didn’t happen that way), and chased some balls from our game that were kicked over the fence and into the woods. Oh, and he watched a little bit of our less than professional play.

Not a bad weekend all in all. Got some homework done, but not the big backyard project. [It did rain all day yesterday.] That will hopefully happen next Saturday.

You know that moods often reflect the weather, or maybe it is the other way around sometimes. It has been a very rainy few days (see previous post (and yes I did walk at lunch)).  I saw a number of roostertails on the drive home. Roostertails belong behind boats, or water skiers, on lakes. These were behind cars. But then again I was on a lake at the time, on a floating bridge, but still.

The rain has reflected the mood around town, grieving for a fallen police officer, Timothy Brenton. He was killed while sitting in his patrol car. This is not about that incident, but about the followup. The funeral/memorial was today. It started at 9 AM or so, with a procession from the University of Washington, through Capital Hill, and downtown to the Seattle Center. As if on cue, as the procession was to start, the sun came out and shown on the procession – which was several miles long. It was very solemn, and yet somewhat spectacular. They expected 1000 – 1500 vehicles. Many people lined the route at different points as well. I watched part of the service, playing in the background on the computer as I wrote a letter about sewer service.

Following the service, which was inside – it is Seattle in November – the rains returned. As I made my exit from the freeway the sky lit up with lightning once again. And a man who is a “person of interest” in the cop killing was wheeled into surgery after having been shot by police as they tried to arrest him this afternoon.

Last night we had a thunderstorm. A real live, booming, lighting up the sky thunderstorm.
We do have lots of storms, sometimes with a bit of lightning, and a bit of thunder.
But this was make me jump thunder, and it repeated itself several times.
Driving Riding to work today was a small adventure. One time when the tires were grabbed by the deeper than normal puddles. One total dousing with no visibility for that less than a second period that seems really long. A bit of thick rain, and just plain wet.

Will I walk at lunch today??? I am hazarding a “No” vote at this time, but will wait for the actual moment to arrive.

I don’t mind walking in the rain, but did not bring an extra pair of shoes and socks, or real rain jacket.
Oh – wait – I have extra shoes and socks here.
Still, no jacket.

And the internal arguments continue.

At least I am at work while I watch this, and not at home.
Our stockpile of trees with leaves to drop has significantly diminished this year. A few weeks ago I did a fairly good pickup of the to-be-yard area. I probably need to repeat the process again, before the to-be-yard is installed. That project has stalled. My ambition to work in a muddy area, in the rain, is limited. I keep hoping to get a good weather report for a Saturday. If I don’t get one this weekend we will have to just move forward regardless.

The leaves I am watching are all yellow maple and big-leaf maple. The parking lot had been pretty much cleaned yesterday, and today it was all yellow when we arrived. The rain today is probably helping to knock them down, and it might even be more than breezy outside.

Our local inhabitants made an appearance yesterday as well. (3 does and 1 buck)

young buck on his way to work

Doe, Jane - taking a break

Oh – and those d**n Yankees. Congratulations Dad – bragging rights for the next year. At least it went to six games. Maybe the weather will make them push it back into October, where it belongs. Regardless of the outcome, the Series gives us opportunities to get together and hang out with our friends.

so many things.

Dead – we have been to a celebration for Dios de la Muerta. It was very festive. We added our bit to our friends altar, and checked out several others there. I wanted to make a sugar skull, but the kids in line looked like they wanted it more.

Soccer game – we played. I forgot to tape my foot/ankle before hand, and it was OK. But I think it would hurt a bit less if it had been taped. We are a team of walking wounded. One of our most skilled young guys has a stress fracture and played goalie. Our other stressed player, who played goalie last game, played on the field for a few minutes here and there – moving gingerly. I have my rather disguised injury (the guys just run by me and don’t notice the change in speed), and our knee braced player blew a shoe. We picked up a few brazilian players from the game before, and one of them twisted a knee in the game. It was helped by the opposing team taking him down, but I am wondering if we are contagious. We won, I think, 3-2.

Baseball game – yet to be. Getting ready to head over to friends house for dinner and viewing on their big screen (with TiVo – choose your own replays).

Time change – we got up relatively early, and have changed all the interior clocks, and one of the car clocks. The biggest issue has been figuring out when to eat.

Arrival back in Knoxville – for those following the travels of Rey – he is back in town and looking for lodging.