Raincharm’s Weblog

Tuesday evening report. After a day lounging in Knoxville on administrative leave, Rey was able to return to his apartment Tuesday evening. He had power but no Internet. 

I was relieved and happy for him. Then I was browsing news reports and found a link to a map showing where some of the buildings that burned were located. One is located just down the road from his apartment. On the map below the marker is a building that burned. Rey’s apartment is about above the word Spring in Spring Valley Road.

A bit closer than I had expected.

Tomorrow he is to report to work at the Townsend side of the park, away from Gatlinburg. 

You may have noticed a theme lately – mentioning the rain.
It has been fairly relentless, although I only barely used the windshield wipers during both commutes today. And fit in a walk at lunch with only spitting rain.

Rey, on the other hand, has not had much rain lately in Tennessee.
And there are wildfires all over the area from Georgia, North Carolina and eastern Tennessee. He called this evening to say that he had been evacuated from his normal work site at the Twin Creeks Natural Resource Center (in Smoky Mountain National Park). By the end of the day the wildfire was within 150 yards of the picnic area associated with the office. He did work at one or two other sites for the rest of his day.

From the parking lot as he was leaving his place of work.

Then he got home and after doing some laundry was evacuated from his apartment. Note that his apartment is in Pigeon Forge, about 15 miles from his work site. He has decamped to a friends apartment in Knoxville. We are hoping for the best. This map shows a possible route from Twin Creeks to Rey’s place, which is a bit south of Dollywood, which has also been evacuated. (Gatlinburg is under the part showing the travel time.)

On another topic completely, the Seattle Sounders have made it to the MLS finals!
We do know the final game should be on December 10th.
We don’t know whether it will be played in Seattle against Montreal or against Toronto in Toronto. Montreal currently has the edge, so we may have one more game to get drenched. (Not complaining!)

Black Friday. We slept in until about 8 AM , so no fighting crowds for the door busting sales. Instead some of the morning was spent boosting our emergency rations. 

After the requisite turkey sandwich we set out for a walk in the SUNSHINE. That’s right. We walked in the sunshine.

To the mall. On black Friday. We had one purchase on our list, and after a successful search and buy, turned and headed home. One more stop at 10,000 Villages- a store I try to support every year. It’s local to our house, found across the country and has goods from around the world. We picked up a little bauble that would not fit in a bag and had to muscle it the last 9 blocks.

The walk, probably 6+ miles and no rain. 

Can you tell we are excited about a dry day? I have not even looked at the weather for the next few days.

Ashlan spent at least part of her day absorbing culture at the Metropolitan. She found this in honor of her father.

Who knew the Met had a sports section.

In which new traditions are tried.

1. The much anticipated pick up of a fully prepared thanksgiving feast. This involves a holiday themed waiting on line. These are traditional for us around Christmas, including the Larson Brothers Bakery and Honey Baked Ham stores. Whole Foods was new for us.

When we arrived home we found the fully cooked turkey to still be frozen. A 30 minute COLD water bath seemed to solve that problem, and now we are wondering whether we conquered the thawing too early.

2. Detroit Lions football, on TV, and they were winning.

3. Thanksgiving power outage. A new tradition for us, although not uncommon for the area. But power outages at our house are just plain uncommon, so it caught us off guard.

Plan A is to drink the coffee before it gets cold and keep the refrigerator closed. The 2 hour projection to power is probably survivable for the food.

Plan B is to try to use the gas stove and cook away. Easy to light the burners, but not sure about the oven with no controls working.

Plan C is to call friends outside the outage area, hope they are home and have room in their oven or refrigerator.

Plan  D is to go to work where there is a refrigerator  (actually 3) and a stove, and a generator.

Plan E would include trying to get our old rarely used charcoal grill into operation in the rain. 

I am hopeful for Plan A as we appear to be the only outage in town.

This was our bathroom 5 minutes after we got home from last night’s Sounders game. Scarves, hats, socks, jackets, ponchos, pants, shirts  and shoes.

The weather report was for intermittent rain . It was not intermittent. It was consistent heavy rain through the entire game. The Sounders won, 2-1 over the Colorado Rapides, but the game is only half over. The second half will be played in Denver on Sunday. 

The start of the game was delayed about 30 minutes so the other semifinal game, Montreal vs Toronto, could be completed. Turns out they were delayed because the Montreal field folks painted the field lines the wrong width, and they had to wait for the corrected lines to dry.

Today was relatively quiet. Work as usual. Traffic was very light, and nice benefit for being one of the workers on the last  travel/errands/cooking day before Thanksgiving. We let most folks leave an hour early, so that is when the phone calls and counter visits picked up for Angel and I. including a man who informed me that our  “Doors were locked.” I left the counter visitor to check the doors, which were both unlocked, and finally located him outside of our old entrance gate to the parking lot. the new entrance gate was open, but I unlocked the gate and let him in. (Paying his water bill and setting up auto-pay.) The mundane bits of life.

Speaking of mundane, I am drifting off to sleep as I type  …….

No – no snow here in the lowlands. But it has been raining rather consistently for more than a month. And it will continue for the near future without a break in sight.

Traditions are interesting because of the way they arrive, stay, change, and leave based on so many different factors. For us Thanksgiving had developed a rhythm. Then the kids left for school. Rey came home the first year he was gone, but the transportation requirements (plane fare or driving over 3 mountain passes) made us rethink this option. [There was the year we went to Montana and had T-day there.] Ashlan’s departure brought an international impact to our decisions. Canada’s T-day is in October. Since she had a long weekend, we started celebrating on Canada’s calendar. While it is harder to find certain Thanksgiving foods in the stores, it is much easier to invite friends to join as they don’t have an October T-day tradition. The unintended consequence of the October celebration was that we did not always feel like repeating the large dinner a month later. So we started making turkey sandwiches and heading out for a long walk on the fourth Thursday in November. Some really good walks. [The biggest drawback was the difficulty in finding an open coffee shop in the afternoon.]

This year we are hoping to both eat a turkey dinner and take a long walk.
To that end Carl bought new walking shoes, and we ordered a prepared dinner – much less time spend in preparation, so more time available for heading outside. And yes, it is expected to rain – at least part of the day.

Last weekend we ventured out into the rain, and to ESPN’s GAME DAY at the University of Washington. It was damp, and at times downright wet. Some photos from that day.

So after staying up way to late crying in disbelief, and mourning the potential loss of so many gains over the past few decades, I went to bed.

And got up and went to work, because if you just check out – they win.
And I had a meeting.

In the end I was glad to have the normalcy of the workplace in my face.

In the evening we had a plan to go out to dinner with a friend in town on a work trip. Which we did.

Man is it hard to find parking in Belltown.
It did not help that as we circled the blocks looking for parking my stomach was growling, the one-way streets were making the circles larger, and I was getting slightly off where I was with respect to the target restaurant. And the incessant hum of a helicopter not too far overhead. [Finally our friend said, “Pick a parking lot, I’ll pay.”]

As we were finishing dinner a text came in from the east coast.
“I just heard about the shootings in downtown Seattle. Hope you guys are safe over there.”

!!?! At least three phones were consulted to try and figure out this news.

Obviously we were safe, and had assumed the helicopter was associated with the anti-Trump rally. The shooting was on the same block where we parked, but about 4 blocks south. 5 people hurt, 1 critical. Hmmmm, I wonder how much traction gun initiatives will get with the President elect …

But we had dodged the bullet.

And we also managed to dodge the anti-Trump march that wended its way around town, up to our neck of the woods, in and out of our potential routes.

Our ignorance of local events made the evening more blissful. I wish I were happier.

I guess we used up our happiness quotient for the year on the Cubs.

I can’t believe a p****y grabbing misogynist is going to have his finger on the button.

Depression looms. 

Two things are on my mind today.

1. Finishing leftovers
2. Kid Mail

1.  Leftovers.

We had folks over at our house for the last three World Series meals. All with food and drink. Mostly good food to boot. Sunday was chicken thighs stuffed with provolone and lots of other stuff. Monday was pulled pork. Tuesday was leftovers, plus a bit of new side dishes. Plus appetizers and desserts. And drink – wine, beer, water and champagne (x 3 for each day the Cubs stayed alive – and eventually prevailed).

Before these were sausage, local pizza style (Pagliacci), Chicago deep-dish pizza, lasagna, and some other entrees – not at our house. (It is actually difficult to rebuild the food – only a few days after the end of the run.)

We have managed to get through most of the entrees. Bits of appetizers remain, along with beer. I think we may have to cook a non-leftover meal tonight.

2. Kid Mail

By this I mean mail that still arrives at our house addressed to our kids. Neither have lived here for several years, but their legacy lives on.

Rey’s mail has been the most confusing – he gets pet food samples. Rey is allergic to both dogs and cats, and has never donated to the humane society or Paws as far as I know.

Ashlan’s mail is more of a demographic blast. She gets mail about babies. The first time we got one we actually checked in with her to see if there was something we should know. (No there wasn’t). She got one yesterday for Muchery – a meal delivery service. She is a bit of a foodie. It was addressed to Har Ashlan, a name variation we had not seen for awhile, based on computer sites that could not fit in all of her last name – omitting the ms.

The other mail that we always get for Ashlan is her ballot. She has still not informed WA that she now lives in NY. Don’t worry, we don’t vote for her, but we do use her ballot as a draft version with notes – and then transfer decisions to our ballots.  When she was still a WA resident, but living in Canada, we used to drive the ballot up so she could vote, and then bring it back. We did not trust the Canadian postal service to be timely.

For those not in WA, the voting in our area is all by mail (or drop-off). It is not absentee, it is mail. No regular polling places. I miss voting in person, especially during a presidential election.

And we have voted – dropping off the ballots today.

Carl did manage to get the lawn mowed yesterday. It needed some attention – the first since the grass was planted. This is the first day with a no-rain moment when somebody was available with the mower.

Between the Cubs run, vacation to Colorado, work and a work-related presentation yesterday (Saturday) I feel like this is the first day I have had to just do what I want to do for a long time. And it is not raining.

Time for a walk.

The 108 year drought is over. The game had a bit of everything, and the Series even more. We spent the last week with a stalwart group of friends. Started in Mark’s basement but transitioned to our house when the Cubs were down three games to one. Whatever it was, it worked.

Now we all have to recover from days in a row of good food, drink and champagne for the last three.

I am grateful we are on the west coast. The games were not short. And then they pulled out the tarp in the late innings. It was a mercifully short rain delay. And then extra innings! Free baseball! 

Again, short, only one inning and then the last bottle of champagne was popped, tears, and hugs all around.

Unlike the previous night, folks hung around to watch the post game and soak in the moment.

Today should be a good day.

And now for a real Cubbie.