Raincharm’s Weblog

Mom that is.
M is for the Million things she gave to me …
But she would not appreciate that song, so I will stop there.

I knew my schedule would make it difficult to connect today, so I connected over the weekend. And as it turns out I am at work – no pictures to post.

But here is to Bubs, otherwise known as, IGFR. My best mother ever.
(Note – my brother-in-law was not quite right with the real name. Just saying)

Which brings up a point about my family and names.
Many people have strong feelings about their names – and what they prefer to be called. There are names you are given. And sometimes names just kind of happen, and stick. In my life experience (as opposed to family experience), the variations of Sue seem to be most set on which one they should be called, or not called. Sue, Susan, Suzie, Suzanne.

Within my family experience names seem to ebb and flow. Some flow “naturally” from one name to the next. Others don’t seem to have much rhyme, although I am sure there is always a reason. Hum a little Gilbert & Sullivan tune …

Anne, Bananne, Emily, Pooh,  Edward, Grinch, Mike, Duke,
Elizabeth, Betty, Lizard, Liz, Joyce, Jay, Jerce, Jerk,
James, Jimbo, John, Jack, Donald, Mac, Inez, Gene and Bubs.
I thought of making a matching game, but anyone who reads this probably knows all the answers anyway.

I still like the Bubs story the best – and that it stuck from day one, all the way through the years.
When I was taking a walk around the Brimley area, Bubs suggested that I could stop in on an old school chum that lived along my route. She said I should drop her name if I needed to stop and use the loo. This was all well and good until I started thinking, “Which name of hers should I be dropping.”

Big man, pig man,
ha, ha, charade you are.

Pink Floyd, Animals

Pig Man

 

The Pike Place Market piggy bank was unceremoniously smacked by a taxi a short while ago. I don’t recall if it lost brakes and slid down the hill or just drove out of control into Rachel. Anyway, Rachel had to take a sabbatical to a spa to rejuvenate. She is now doing a comeback tour around Seattle. By the time the summer tourist season is in full swing, she will be back in her market location to welcome all comers.

Rachel, on tour

I work evenings on occasion. Usually events with people coming together.
But not usually on Fridays. The office does not schedule public events on Fridays, because people want to go out and have fun.

Except occasionally the work staff’s events where people are going to have fun.
Such was a night last night.
Three of us stayed late, and drove into the driving rain to reach the venue.
(A new church – that does not look much like a church from the inside.)

There was mingling from 5-7, followed by the main program – the SAMMI‘s.
This is one of the local community’s opportunity to take note of local do-gooders.
We were sponsoring the Environmental award.

So I dutifully staffed a table and gave away water conservation devices and temporary tattoos. The most popular give-away was our shower timer. It is waterproof, but we suggest to parents of teens that they place it in a location where you have to get out of the shower to silence the beeping. It will not stop beeping until the stop button is pushed or the batteries run out.

I saw a brief bit of the ceremonies while I was cleaning up the booth.
Our primary person was presenting the award, and I am sure she saw the entire show. (And then had to load the cleaned up stuff back into her car.)

While I was working, Carl was keeping tabs on the March Madness.
Our updated family bracket is provided below. You can see how we are each doing by looking at the colors (or clicking and making it a bit larger, then zooming in on your computer).

Ashlan is yellow, Rey is purple, Carl is green and Jay is blue.
We each have 7 teams left out of the 32, except Rey – who has 11.
At this point in the tournament the numbers are not that important.
What is more important is to not be all grouped in one bracket. If all teams are in one quadrant, the most you can have at the end is one. The goal is to have as many of the final four as possible.

Round 1 is done

Just heard from Rey, and will be Skyping soon. Always fun to talk with the kids.

Guess who?

Stylish

It’s an AIR cast.
It has bunches of pieces that fit together. Then after you are securly strapped and padded in – you get out the puffer device, and fill the air bladders with ………. air.

A bit of the tendonitis, on some big foot tendon.

And in the NCAA, we are watching the end of Michigan State. (Most of it we did not see – cable)
I will post the bracket update after the end of round one (can’t you just feel the tension).

Rain = Seattle = Rain.

That is the reputation, and this month/winter/spring has been one of the reasons for the reputation.

Today was the opening day of the MLS (Major League Soccer) Season.
It started in Seattle. Sounders vs. LA Galaxy.
We had tickets – and we went.

I don’t actually think it rained as hard as it did last year on opening day.

But it did rain. The entire game. Sometimes harder, sometimes not quite as hard.  We got wet. Not soaked – too many layers and not enough time for the  water to penetrate all the way through.

Afterwards we decided to go to the Space Needle. They do a picture of visitors there and we thought it would be fun in all of our wet rave green attire. We got to the ticket window at 9:27. It closes at 9:30 (the ticket window, not the needle). BUT there was nobody there! We were just a bit put out – and locked out to boot. You could see people in the gift store, but nobody would open the door.

So we went home and hung lots of clothes in the bathroom to dry.

[The Sounders lost 0-1. A very fast paced game. Entertaining, chances on both ends. The Galaxy was a bit faster, and had one rocket shot that got past Keller. But we enjoyed it – rain and all.]

The results are in, and other than fully boloxing up the bracket titles, here are the interesting results.

Ashlan got the overall #1 Seed – Ohio State.
But I will never be able to root for them.

Rey got Michigan – a favorite of mine.
They play against Tennessee – which is Carl’s team.

Carl got Illinois – his almost mater
Jay got Michigan State – her alma mater

Ashlan got Northern Colorado, and Rey hopes that Jay gets a win with San Diego State.

For local teams Ashlan got UW (whom she wanted) and Jay got Gonzaga.

Favorite Team name = the Saint Peter Peacocks.

I am just sure I have posted about this subject before – it happens once a year. But this year it snuck up on me.

The Set-up – Part 1:
I was at work yesterday, and when I called to say I was leaving for home Carl suggested I listen to the last 8 minutes of the UW Huskies vs Arizona basketball game on the radio. So I dutifully tuned in. And I got home in 8 minutes! (Fastest time ever. It is 25 miles, so my average speed was about 187 miles per basketball hour.)

And the game was not over. In the last basket the Huskies tied the game, forcing OT. At the end of OT they scored the buzzer beater to win the game. And as it turns out the Pac 10 tournament.

The Set-up – Part 2:
Rey has a new computer – with a web-cam. We Skype on occassion because the computer has a better connection in his apartment than his cell phone. And now we have pictures. So we were really calling just to see him, and catch up a bit.

The Bracketing:
We discussed the aforementioned game a bit, and then I asked when the March Madness tournament started. I was told that tomorrow (today) was Selection Sunday.

Brief moment of panic.

For many, many years we have done a family bracket. Each member has their personal favourite teams, but the bracket is built on pure chance. We used to make number slips, fold them and put them in a hat, and then draw them out one-by-one. College and careers have required a change to the format. We continued it for a while, with designated drawers for each person. Then it went high tech, using Excel’s random number generator.

But the goal is to still due it with everyone involved to some degree.
It does not have to be done before the selection, but finding out which team you get as they are called can be part of the fun. And Rey was planning to attend a Selection gathering in the afternoon. So it seemed that the time to do the bracket was NOW! (Then?)

No Ashlan – what to do. Called and left a message to join us.
But we resurected last year’s spreadsheet and cleaned to start over. Start the random numbering.

One note about random number generators. Since they are random, if you choose 64 random numbers between 1-64, you are going to have the same number show up more than once, and some not at all. So it takes a few – well several go arounds to get all 64 slots filled in. In the end I was trying to get the last two numbers to show up next to a name with a blank. Then Rey pointed out that both of the last two slots were his, so I didn’t need to keep being random. (The boy still has brains)

About this time Ashlan’s name appeared on the screen, and we added her to the conversation. The only thing with conferencing on Skype was that you lose the video. But, it was still fun to have the whole fam-damily together. I highly recommend it to all of those with far-flung folks.

The conversation only stayed on basketball long enough to note that Ashlan wants UW, she is not so enamoured of Duke this year, MSU is a maybe, UMichigan should make it, root against Northern Colorado if they get in, and I could send the bracket to them later that night. (As it turns out Rey got 2 number 1 seeds, Ashlan and Carl each got 1 and I am shut out of the number 1 slot.)

Concerts, school, upcoming travels and general goofiness filled the rest of the time. And then it was time for dinner, bed and going out – depending on who and where you were.

Today is a rainy grey day here, so we will probably be home-bodies most of the day. Our outdoor sports season is quickly approaching. I am ready for the sun-breaks to become more prevelant. Enough for it to be called sunny, with occasional clouds.

Ashlan=Yellow, Rey=Purple, Jay=Blue, Carl=Green

The name just shows up every now and then.

The first time I was aware of the name, it was really Jimbo (aka the Engineer).

Then on the family history trip to Canada there was James Finlayson, great-great uncle I think. The RCMP foot soldier. They were not M at that time. His diary is around.

Our friendly film archivist wrote a post today – Sauna Party – about his travels afar. It included

“Plevna (in Finland) It was part of an old cotton mill that had been established by Scotsman James Finlayson.”

This was followed by a reference to the film (Dennis is all about films) actor James Finlayson, who appeared with Laurel & Hardy.

Check out the link above, towards the bottom is a picture of Scotsman James Finlayson and a short reel of the actor James Finlayson.

And, just for amusement – continue down to the bottom for “Turn on the Heat”. Stay through the entire clip – it just continues to grow. Very amusing.

Please note that the title was chosen several hours prior to the Earthquake in Japan – not a good tie-in.

Today was a BLACK day for traffic.

That means that the traffic map you can check on-line showed major back-ups on most of the routes between work and home were full of cars going very slowly. My carpooler decided we should start on our normal route home, then divert up a highway we normally avoid, dodge off through some city streets, ending up on the other bridge (that we usually avoid).

The bridge we usually avoid would be SR 520. It is the narrower than I-90, and any little thing can bring it to its knees, and traffic to a crawl. The little thing today was wind (and some rain). The wind was up to 50 mph gusts. If winds are sustained at 50 mph they close the bridge. But with only gusts we got to ride the wild beast. On the high rises the car was just rocking back and forth. [I don’t usually dream of a heavier car.] Then on the floating part the waves were crashing over – all the way to the furthest lane.

The payoff was that after the bridge it was clear sailing. Apparently the black traffic was just trying to drive around the Seattle/Bellevue Block. (See the map) Less than one hour. Not bad for a bad black day.

This is for those of you that don’t get to commute 25 miles to work. I am letting you live vicariously. Check the map link during normal commute times. Then you can click on cameras and watch all of the cars trying to get where they are going.

Many of my relatives do all sorts of artistic work with fabric and yarn and beads.
My pursuits tend to be in frosting.
This is a small effort tonight, for one of Carl’s kids.
Guess how old he is now.

Count the Fingers!