Raincharm’s Weblog

That is day 3 at home.
I think Carl is starting to run out of ideas of how to keep me entertained. To that point we are currently watching “The Big Lebowski.” This is not the first viewing, but Carl was in the mood.

We did do some shopping today.
A bit for us, and a bit for others.
Not too much into the throngs of shoppers, except when we went near the Pike Place Market. That was to get a bit for us. Coffee to be exact. Seattle’s Best #4. I dropped Carl off to run into the store. With the large number of shoppers around, we did not think it was a good plan to spend 30 minutes trying to find parking for a 5 minute errand. So, Carl exited, and it almost took me 5 minutes to make the next turn onto the street that parallels the Market stalls. At the corner there were pedestrians crossing in front of me, at 90 degrees to me (where the turn would go), and then, when I finally made the turn, walking directly in front of me. (Must have a really quiet car.) Once around the block, and he entered the car again. Of course, I had to do the dance one more time to get away from the area.

Tonight’s entertainment is to be the Seattle Men’s Chorus, with Megan Hilty.
Our review of the show will come later.

So today had a bit less staying around the house.
Because it was SUNNY!

We started out about 10 AMish (Carl noted the time, I did not.)
Dropped a movie off at the video store (wouldn’t be a walk without an errand).
Tried to get on the sunny side of the street, as there was still frost around.
Walked an extra block in the shade to avoid one of the more odoriferous folks that habitat our streets.
[Honestly, I do not dislike this person, always polite and quiet, but he reeks.][[Maybe the cold air would have dampened the odor, but we still waited the extra block.]
Over the freeway, and up the hill, into the neighborhoods we went. Zig-zagged our way down to the north end of Lake Union, and across the Fremont Bridge. Followed the Lake Union (Cheshiahud trail) trail along Westlake, through the new South Lake Union Park, past the center for wooden boats, restaurant and yacht sales row (sort of like an upscale auto row), and onto the road that follows close on the eastern shore of Lake Union. Finally back to Eastlake Avenue to cross the University Bridge (no Occupy Seattle protesters in sight). Up Roosevelt to 45th. We did a little job to avoid walking where we had before (only doubled on one block). Home again.

Settled in to check out the end of a football game and browse the paper. Looked at the ads for all of the sales that had since ended.

Then time for a movie. This time it was Intolerable Cruelty starring George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones. A Coen brothers movie. This was a funny one. Moved along, and kept us laughing. A good flick to rest our legs.

Dinner is in the oven now. Turkey casserole.

Total mileage today – 9.5 miles.
Money spent. $0 on the Black Friday sales, but a few $$ on groceries (yogurt, bananas, etc.).

This is a report on our Thanksgiving.
And since we spoke with many most of my readers, you can probably skip this one.

We arose in the morning.
Actually, it was after 8 AM. I had woken up a bit earlier, but Carl was actually sleeping, and I did not want to wake him up. (Stuffed up nose and a C-Pap, make for disjointed sleeping.)
But we managed to roll out of bed, and it was not dark out.
This meant that there were not clouds completely obscuring the orb in the sky.

At this time of year in Seattle it is dark more than it is light. Combine the shorter days and generally normal cloudy sky, and sometimes it is hard to tell the time of day by looking out a window.

So we launched on a morning walk, albeit a short one.
Destination – Starbucks, for a morning coffee.
We chose the 1-mile Starbucks. There is another that is about 1/2 mile, and another that is 1-1/2 miles (maybe 2), and … (Well, this is Seattle.)
Upon arrival it looked like a cocktail party outside the door. People mingling in groups.
At first I mistook this for the line, but then realized they were all holding cups.
So we went inside, and got in the interior line. Not too long.
But what caught our attention was that this store was now only about 1/4 the size of the store we usually visit in this location. The barista said they were remodelling, and in a few weeks it would be back to full size.

Got our coffee and headed home.

Once home the food preparations began, and so did the rain.
Turkey with an apple, onion, cinnamon stick, rosemary and sage aromatic stuffing, and soup in a pumpkin – onions, breadcrumbs, sage, nutmeg chicken stock and Jarlsberg. And of course the pumpkin added its flavoring too. That was pretty much the dinner – followed by apple pie for dessert.

We spent some time catching up with our family flung far and wide. (Actually – I guess we are the ones that flung, and then ours did some further flinging.) And then a movie (in-house).

The movie was Somewhere, starring Stephen Dorff and Elle Fanning, directed by Sophia Copolla. I believe it won an Academy Award, and Carl thought it was quite good. I think you needed to have taken a film studies class, or just have been ready to look for symbolism. To me, it was OK, but I wasn’t properly prepared for looking deeper at that moment.

And so a bit later my altitude went from upright to slouched to horizontal to bed. I guess this was the nap I had been expecting earlier.

Today has dawned sunny, bright and frosty.
Our weather choices seem to be warmer (40’s) and rain or sun and cold.
I do believe we are preparing to venture forth. Report later.

Have you all finished your food shopping?
We have, and most was done Sunday.
One or two more items yesterday, but I think we are good to go.

There was the minor inconvenience of a power outage this morning, but not long enough to consider cooking the turkey early. And we never lose power. Well, hardly ever. (There was a crow fricasee on the transformer once.)

Of course, our original plan was to skip the day of feasting and take a long walk instead.
That is, if the weather cooperates at all.
We have had probably 2-inches of rain over the past day. I heard it was some sort of record. 
If we can’t walk (or don’t want to walk in the rain), we will just eat ourselves silly.

Either way, there will probably be some naps involved.

I heard from the source that Rey made it to St. Louis intact.
Fog and mist were his primary difficulties, and they sounded reasonable.

Safe travels to any that are traveling.
Over the river and through the woods ….
And if you are a salmon in the outlying Seattle area, over the road to follow the river, click below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEG8tfXb0VI

Update: I missed putting a title at first, but Carl noted todays date. So many were excited about 11/11/11. I think this is even better, even though it is not quite the same back and forwards.

Yesterday was sort of lost to me.
Not all bad, just lost.
It started following about a 12-hour sleep. Really.
I laid down to relax before dinner. And then I got really confused when Carl came to bed because I thought it was time to get up for work. Wrong on all counts. Time to go to bed, not a work day.

We did take a nice long walk with a few errands thrown in the mix. And when I took us further in one direction that we needed to go, by accident, it must have been so Carl could do a good deed for the day. There was a woman, probably in her 80’s or so, trying to carry a floor lamp to the lamp store. She was close, but stopping to rest, so Carl offered and then carried the lamp into the store for her. The entire walk was probably four miles or so. And we got a couple of movies. Watched The King’s Speech. A good movie. Still to come is My Favorite Year.

Today started after a more normal night, in which Carl sleeps several hours in a row.
He has been fighting a cold, and sleeping with a plugged nose and C-Pap machine is a trick.

We did a job that has been on our to-do list for some time.
Measuring the basement. This is associated with the remodel, and two people measuring is just not all that efficient. Add stuff piled everywhere against walls, and that little tape measure, pencil, clipboard balancing act can become just a bit much. And you would think we could remember 3 measurements without writing them down. But we finished, and now I need to translate these scratches to a drawing.

So we celebrated with a walk. Actually a drive-walk-drive. We have walked to the grocery store frequently enough, but with pumpkin and turkey on the list, I did not feel like carrying quite that much weight. So we drove to the grocery store, left the car and walked from there to do two other errands. Then the grocery shopping.

Bonus at the grocery store was two different fire trucks. One when we returned from our other errands. They were tending to somebody that was having a sinking spell (so it appeared). The second when we left the grocery store – a ladder truck, doing their shopping. [It takes so little to make our life more exciting.]

Now we are waiting for dinner to cook. (I am waiting, Carl was cooking. Turkey meatloaf to be precise. Mmmm)

We have two plans for T-Day. Plan A – Long walk.  Plan B – Cook a turkey dinner.
Plan A is the going in position, but the forecast is for rain. (Imagine that. Rain in November in Seattle.)
So we got a turkey and a pumpking. We are holding the trimmings to just a few. Since we are less than a few.
[If we go with Plan A, the second part of Plan A is cooking the turkey dinner on Friday.]

And what a week it has been.

I am an engineer, but I don’t do too much engineering any more.
I am supposed to do planning, but anything that I planned to do this week did not get done.

This week I did everything from act as a pseudo General Manager to Human Resources to Receptionist.

Really. I performed all of those functions at some time during the week.
Sometimes way more than I ever wanted to. (Receptionist can be fun.)
And that’s about all I can say about that.

Today’s work was a seminar.
About setting rates.
And I was about that excited about it.
It did have some interesting bits, and I managed to sneak in a review of some other work for a bit.
They provided a pretty good lunch, and there was time enough to take a stroll around the grounds of Bellevue City Hall.

Because it was in downtown Bellevue, I took the bus.
Carl gave me a ride to the starting point in the morning. Raining and cold, so that was a nice gesture.
Coming home no choice but to walk the less than one mile home.
Not a bad walk.
It was raining again, and then it turned into bouncing white rain showers.
Not sure I would call it “snow”, and it didn’t quite qualify as “hail”.

So Carl had the in-class part of his Excel class today and got 80%.
And there was one question that was on a subject he had never seen before, so maybe they will adjust for that.
I am a proud wife.

I spent a fair amount of time myself over the last few days playing with Excel, and Access.
And I learned something from Carl’s studies. Alt+Enter will insert a line break into a line of text in an Excel cell.
I did not konw that, and it is a bit of information that will be very useful.

So – for all of the pain and suffering, well at least suffering, I am causing Carl – there is good to be found.

Next – PowerPoint.

Tonight’s weather was our entry to the winter storms. We started by briefly losing power this morning. Enough to interupt the computer, but not close the gate. (Power failure default position.)
Leaving the cocoon of the building exposed me to the slush falling, really pouring out of the sky. The white was in contrast to the leaves blanketting the parking lot 1 day’s worth). I was actually happy for the slow traffic as we negotiated our way over the road white with hail.

Sun, a golden orb, fading to yellow as it rises in the east.
Mountain, skirts rising, majestic peak hidden from view.
Waves breaking from the south.
Clouds laden with rain encroaching from the north.

Leaves everywhere.

 Today.

As in that is what I have been doing.
And what I will be doing for the foreseeable future.

So I have been delinquent on this blog.

Did see the eagle driving to work yesterday.
And am fitting in this brief blog on the way to work today.

Thanks for driving, Jim.