Raincharm’s Weblog

And Thanksgiving, black Friday, saner Saturday, and chartreuse Tuesday.

We shopped on all of those days, except Thanksgiving. And they were all interesting experiences, but none of them were overly crowded.

Tuesday was a search for pants, in a very empty store. No line. Open dressing rooms. A low stress outing, as clothing shopping goes for us.

On black Friday we went in search for a new cover for our futon. The last cover was probably 20 years old. The store we bought it at has been gone for a while. There are really only a few futon stores around, so our choices were limited. Even more because we were determined to avoid the mall areas.

Next up was couch shopping, which may seem odd since we were updating our current “couch” with a new look. We decided since the kids both have college degrees that we could move past our college furniture. That and the futon seems to give my back fits. There will be a furniture merry-go-round as the couch boots the futon, the futon boots the trundle beds out of the study, and the trundles find a new home.

We even ventured to Costco. It was as empty as I have ever seen a Costco. Although we did get behind a couple at the checkout who split their haul into two of three parts and kept trying different gift cards to pay for them.

I think the key to a laid back shopping experience on black Friday is to go for items that are not on most folks Christmas lists.

The couch shopping continued into Saturday – at the mall, which was pretty empty. We did finally make a choice after sitting on more than I would have thought possible.

Our week has not been all about acquisitions. On Wednesday night we went to the theater and saw a fine production of The Sound of Music. Thursday we got to enjoy a great turkey dinner with friends. And tonight we saw the Seattle Men’s Chorus with Titus Burgess. A fine show. I really enjoyed their send up of Freddy Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody, with lyrics featuring Santa instead of Mama. I think you would have to hear it to fully appreciate the result.

All for now. I need to squeeze a bit more out of November before it’s over.

First frost of the season on Monday.

A bit of a surprise when I walked out the front door to go to work. In addition to scraping the windows I had to wait for the fog on the interior of the car to dissipate.

It has since warmed slightly and turned to rain and wind. I don’t think we actually lost power at work today, but some of our facilities did.

Click to view video.

You can see the smaller trees moving outside the window, but the more impressive show is the tall trees to the left. They were swaying at least 20 feet.

Trees down here and there made getting around interesting. Of course I was sequestered in a series of meetings and not allowed to try getting around.

When I finally left, I was stunned. No wind at all. Just the rain.
And even the rain has subsided for the evening. A beautiful moon now dominates. Or it did until it got too low to see well.

Yes. That spot shows the lack of clouds.

I admit I am tired.
So you will have to be satisfied with this weather report.

I know there have been periods when I missed the bus on blogging.
Lately I have been trying to fit it in while carpooling, and occasionally from home.
I had written three posts, uploaded, and just assumed they actually posted.

Oops.

Apparently I hit some wall for storage of pictures.

That has been rectified now.
And the last three posts are as written originally – no post post editing here.
Except that somehow I posted them in reverse order.

I hope to get this rectified today, and then move on to work.

Happy Veterans Day for all those of you that read this that are veterans (I am guessing about 1)

Morning is looking bright. Other than work my mind is on the neighborhood meeting I plan to attend tonight. In our neighborhood. To discuss whether we will have the pleasure to pay to park in front of our house.

This is a more complicated issue than it might seem on the surface. I was opposed to this in the past, although some other nearby blocks have had an RPZ for several years now.

Factors that will sway me towards another annual bill include the pending loss of parking on the arterial at the end of the block, in favor of a split off bike lane. There’s already a bike lane. Coupled with lots of new apartments with little or no parking, and being close enough to the university to have hide and ride parking. (Drive to our neighborhood, park in a free spot and take a local bus.)

This is largely due to the light rail stations currently under construction nearby, which I heartily support.

A few weeks ago I was home during the day and realized the 2 hour RPZ parking limit during the day meant lots of parking. Blocks like ours were full.

The other side is the proposal to add parking to both sides of our street ( currently just one side) which I oppose. Adding the RPZ would limit the results of adding parking, where parking hours are limited.

The restaurant on the corner would benefit because their patrons don’t usually hang around more than 2 hours. Maybe they should pay for the RPZ permits.

We’ll see.

Carl had a red letter day yesterday. O-negative in particular.

While he was out doing a public service, I was home sawing logs. A protracted session.

I came home early from work on Friday, not feeling well. It helped that I had not carpooled that day, and reached my 40 hours well before I snuck out the door. (I didn’t really sneak, I did tell customer service support (our new term for our receptionist).)

When the morning eventually dawned I was feeling much more myself. Made some coffee and settled down to do some family arithmetic. Receipts, checkbooks, a few bills. I have caught up with Carl’s Phoenix trip and we are on our way to having Mariners season tickets again. (Just try to discourage us with your losing season.)

By afternoon it was time to go out and socialize. I should preface this to say that I really did feel better than the day before. We met several of one of Carl’s old teams to rally for a teammate who is battling cancer. I don’t know his real prognosis, but he looked good and said he is tolerating the chemo, but very tired.

Our next event of the day was a Broadway traveling musical. It considered two life courses possible from one decision made in something like Central Park. Who knew that a central character could be a city planner.

Yes, the lead was that woman of “Let it Go” fame from Frozen. And she does have quite a voice. Perhaps it was the show being set in New York with young women finding their way, but Carl said he could not help but think of Ashlan during the song titled, “What the F**k?”.

It’s a rainy weekend in Seattle, baseball season is over and the Seahawks have a bye, I think a day of newspapers and soccer viewing may be in order.

My mind is a blank.
Not really, but it is crowded with things that just need to get done, both at work and home.

And with only so many hours in a day, it is hard to believe I will still waste time on unimportant diversions.

Oh, and I finished a book, The Martian. Great book, and now I can go back and read Mark’s blog on the subject. And to be clear, I don’t place reading in the unimportant diversions. But this book was of the variety that encourage me to read longer and later than is good for jumping out of bed the next morning.

And now too many to do items in my head means my mind is a blank. Unless you want to see the list.

On another list, we have several folks scheduled to stop by the house for an evening or two. One, then five, then two. Not in all that quick succession, just a cluster of scheduling.

On a read carefully noted, one (or five) wrote they were coming to see the Who. Until I followed their link, and it was Dr. Who, at the EMP.

Makes more sense.
We may even join that expedition ourselves.

Fall foliage

And now I must stop this ramble to look up when they are cleaning off the gum wall today.

Halloween was rather fun. We brought out the costume bin and tried on different wigs, ears and assorted combinations.

At the Women's Chorus

Here in Seattle it has been the dingy grey of winter accompanied by copious amounts of rain.

I tried to set the bedroom clock to the new time last night. This morning I realized I had moved it in the wrong direction. It’s all good though, no alarms.

We did rise and hit the road for the Purple Stride walk against pancreatic cancer.

Wage Hope

Over to Sagan’s house for soup and Seahawks.

Left before that game was over to head downtown. Dinner in a bar to watch the Mets and Royals. At least until it is time for the Sounders game.

More time in the sun rain.