Raincharm’s Weblog

We are here.
Beautiful train ride, lots of waterfowl and sun.
Men with machine guns and uniformed dogs accompanied us on the train.
(I have no idea what is going on with format, so just go with the flow)

Torch to start our experience.

Flags and the Olympic Athletes Village

Athletes Village

Crowd waiting for Hockey at Thunderbird Arena, this is across from Ashlan’s apartment, and where we will spend time tonight.

Thunderbird Arena

Time to get ready for our first event! Exciting.
Women’s hockey – Switzerland vs. Slovakia

Meetings stem to stern. Literally, almost. 8 AM until 6:45 PM.

There were a few minutes here and there during the day. Even took a walk at lunch – needed to get out in the air.
Between work, pre-sale Mariner ticket orders, figuring coverages for the next week, and meetings – it has been a long day. 

There is a buzz in the air that the Mariners may have it together this year. We can buy before the peasants, and instead of the normal 2 or 3 people who take advantage of early offers, there are 9 or 10. And they all had 2 days to get information to me because we only got the information on Friday. Big league, my eye. (We really had 1 week, except I won’t be around to take orders)

Now we are down to last packing. Ride is arranged for tomorrow AM. The train is sold out, so we want to be in line early. Can’t wait to see Ashlan.

We have made great progress on getting the clothes packed. It always feels good to know what you can fit.
Even took an hour to hunt down a request from our northern Olympic correspondent.
Now for the things that are not soft and squishy.

Is sounds like it is pretty fun to be in Vancouver right now. Lots to do and things to see.
Ashlan is getting acquainted with travel around town so we should have a good tour guide.

I worked today, and have a really full day tomorrow.
Carl, on the other hand, is already on vacation.
He has spent his time doing some cleaning and shuffling of stuff around the house.
I am almost in the mood for spring cleaning.

Well, it is finally here.
The day we have all been waiting for.
The last non-work day before a vacation!

My plans for the day are – work (because that always needs to be done before you leave), pack, try to finish taxes. I will be happy with two out of three. At a bare minimum laundry will be done for packing. Work needs to happen, and taxes still have a month or two, although I am so close to completion it would be a shame to wait.

My focus on the vacation was such that I really had not factored in Valentines Day, or Presidents Day for that matter. It just dawned on me that a lot of people were taking little trips on Thursday, and then my powerful brain put it all together.

Now we are giving a nod to Valentines.
Carl had at least two of his charges go to Paint the Town and make heart shaped trivets for their families.
Our celebration is a bit of a fall back to probably my best gift to Carl ever.

How do you celebrate?

First  things first – HAPPY BIRTHDAY JANE!

Jane - summer 09 - Ann Arbor hosts the 3-Day

No – Jane is not 884 years old. Because if she was I would be 889, and that is just not true.

Part 2: What is different about this picture?

Vincent Wydown

Wired from a combination of coffee and cinnamon roll.
I have been staying away from the morning sugar bombs.
But, it was a co-workers’ birthday, and a different co-worker made homemade cinnamon rolls.
They were warm.
What can I say, I was weak.
I did take a smallish one.

So a bit later I am suddenly a bit jittery. Useless energy that is harder to harness in a good direction.
I have been trying to balance out with yogurt and other foods I brought with me so I don’t crash.

I read somewhere in the past few days that sugar making kids wild is unsubstantiated, a myth.
Since I can feel what it does to me, I have to believe it is also affecting smaller bodies.

For a different kind of wired I got an un-requested visit from IT, asking if I wanted a second monitor.
I frequently multi-task with several windows going at once, so this would probably be helpful.
I don’t usually try to get to the front of the line, and I did ask him if there was anyone else who needed it more – he said I did more of this type of thing than anyone else. [Actually, I think our finance manager may do as much or more, but she is faster on the Ctrl-Alt combinations.]
He is ordering two new workstations, and we have an extra monitor already, that matches my current monitor. So instead of ordering one workstation sans monitor, he will just get two complete stations and I get more screen space.

Woo-hoo.

I do. I do this at work, at home, and in my mind all the time.
But even us “professional” planners slip up, or lose track of the details – or maybe just forgot what decisions we made earlier.

I was discussing Olympic event ticketing with a friend who also has tickets. In trying to figure out if we would cross paths naturally anywhere I realized that we were not travelling the day before our first event, but the day of the first event.

Timing? It would probably work, check with our resident Vancouverite. Hmmm – not so sure of the cross town travel time during the Olympics. So change from mid-morning train-bus to early morning train-train. A few more hours to play with. And it helps that our domicile destination is across the street from the event. In fact it helped Ashlan’s entertainment plans for the night before. She thought she was going to have to deal with getting us into said domicile while she was trying to get to a concert, between keys, cards and codes it appears to be well guarded – especially against people that do not look like students.

It is down to the fun planning time. Currency, tickets in hand, travel options figured, ideas for non-event time. 1 week and counting.

Saturday was spent deconstructing several growing things around the house. So Sunday was spent groaning and moaning when ever new movement started. I figure this is the plant’s way of giving back. If I am going to seriously deconstruct, I need to do it on a more regular basis.

I always plan to do things on a continuous basis, a little bit every week and there will be no big projects. Nice idea, hard to put into practice.

So my sore Sunday was spent filing, trying to get that much closer to finishing taxes, and Super Bowling. The filing was the big project, and figuring out what to eat with the Super Bowl a side event.

We decided on nachos and Greek salad. We started (well breakfast did happen earlier) with the nachos. During the immediate pre-game.

The NHL game started at 9ish, a good game between the Nationals and Penguins. It actually foreshadowed the Superbowl, with the Nationals overcoming a 2-0 deficit from the first period to eventually win the game in OT. And we were watching hockey. Carl eventually asked what time the Super Bowl coverage started, so I consulted the paper – 9ish! We didn’t join them until after the hockey game was over.

There are only two of us in the house, and we made the same amount of nachos as we normally did. For once the pan was not emptied right away. During halftime Carl chopped the tomatoes, cucumber, peppers and onions (rustically) for the Greek salad. But by the end of the game neither of us were hungry, so into the refrigerator with the feta, lemon and olives.

We will have Greek salad tonight.
And I am still moving slowly when arising from a sitting position.
Who knew I had to train to work in the yard. I will be adding squats to my routine.

First, I apologize to anyone that is suffering with a hard winter. Especially now, like in D.C.. (two periods?)

And if you like the real winter you are having, that is not suffering.

I spent several hours outside yesterday. No, not walking – gardening. Well de-gardening was probably a better description.

• Dug out some hyacinth bulbs that had somehow gotten underneath the new lawn, and were sprouting.
  (Much of the lawn is growing, and we are going to have to get the mower rehabilitated soon.)
• Pulled several volunteer “I am not sure what they really are” in the area adjacent to said lawn and fence where two planters will be placed shortly.
• Cut back the raspberries. It was easier this year because parts of the “fence” I have around the bushes had been disembled by our neighbor when he was fixing his gutters. (There is <5′ between the raspberries and his house, and ladders demand a bit more space.)
• Put the “fence” back together with a few new bits. The “fence” consists of about 10 plastic 1/2″ diameter fence posts stuck in the ground, and 2 levels of bamboo pieces held on to the posts and each other with zip ties (wire ties).
• Pulled, cut, dug out blackberry (invasive) vines wherever seen against the two houses.
• Cut off branches from some large tree-like bush pieces Ashlan had cut down last summer.
• Pruned a rhododendron to within a foot of its life. Don’t know if it will come back, but it was terribly leggy and just did not work in that form.
• Cut down parts of a “bush” that has overstayed its welcome and is 1) blocking the route from the front yard to the raspberries, brushing against our neighbor’s house. I lopped off 3 or 4 largish trunks, and decided I needed the saw to get the others.
• Cut up the parts of the overgrown bush.
• Washed the tools off.
• Washed my shoes off.

The end result – 1 96 gallon yard waste container full. 1 32 gallon yard garbage can full – to wait for next week’s pickup.
One really tired person. Who also noticed a few weeds in the new lawn (yikes!), and several other projects that need to be done.
And this morning I found my bend over hamstrings, lower back and various arm muscles are rather sore this morning.

But the work was needed and, most importantly, the raspberries should be ready for next year.
It was in the mid-50’s and sunny for most of the time. I was in a sweatshirt.

Our friend, the film archivist, sent us to an e-bay site to look at a movie with pictures from a baseball game.
It is a baseball friend after all.

But while on the site I noticed some other films – including one labeled Michigan Copper Harbor vacation 1955.
It is only on sale for 19 hours more, so if you want to take a look – do it soon. You can see several stills. I am sure it starts in Copper Harbor, but goes by Castle Rock, down Ashman, the locks. You can’t see much, but a bit. Scroll down to get to the list of pictures. If you click on them you get bigger pictures. (What am I doing here, almost everyone that will see this is more tech savvy than I am.)

Just fun.