Raincharm’s Weblog

We live in Seattle and are used to rain. Usually the slow drip, drip, drizzle of a grey winter. But there are occasional very hard rains. I have learned while playing soccer that is never good to ask whether it could rain any harder.

Yesterday we had several hours of steady rain, punctuated by a few periods of dryness (during which we were in a power outage) and then some torrential downpours. I was admiring the hardest of these downpours, until I realized that two members of my family had just left in a car and were driving in the downpour. It turns out they were stuck in a bit of a traffic jam at the time, watching a river form in the road – but safer than 70 mph on the freeway.

They were on their way to a Tigers game – which went off amidst light rain or nothing. The Tigers were winning 6-1 or 6-2 in the top of the 9th inning with 2 outs. And then – there was a home run, a bloop single, a wild pitch, a pitching change and a HUGE downpour. (I am not sure of the order, just that my two were soaked when they got back to the house and many things were laid out to dry.)

Today looks much drier, and we are headed out to the Volunteer state.

Thanks to all that put up with us put us up in Michigan, it was great to see all of you.

I guess that is where I have been.
There was Internet access here and there.
But it wasn’t usually here with me and I didn’t always want to go there.
And when I did go there it might be cold or windy or wet or I spent my time looking at other things.

Anyway – back to the LP (lower peninsula) where we thought Internet access was going to be more predictable. However, we were wrong. The power was here, then not here, but there – where we were not. And now it is finally here again.

Rained like a son-of-a-gun, both earlier and then later. Maybe it had something to do with the power outage. Carl & I emerged from the dark house to try and score a loaf of bread from Paneras. After going past the work trucks and the “Caution – High Voltage” tape, we chatted briefly with the Whole Food workers and made it to Panera. However, they were closed. Guess why? No power. Same reason there were Whole Foods workers outside to chat with. We did manage to find a Walgreens still plugging away with cash only sales and hand addition. Scored some chips and orange slices.

Carl & Ashlan braved the torrential rains to go to Dee-troit to see the Tigers, assuming the rain takes a break. I am going to head over, with the help of Cousin Kayak, to Knights. Get to see what it is all about. Although I have been warned of at least two things.

Tomorrow we are on the road once again, for a bit more of the vacation. It is drawing to a close. I can tell because I have to pay attention to the number of days left and packing issues. But not so close that I actually know what the day of the week is.

But I do know that if all goes as planned, tomorrow I get to see my boy again. Even if it is only with him tending bar, or a concession stand, or running around doing who knows what, or all of the above. Word is that on work days time with Rey is limited.

[I may pray for rain – so maybe he can have more time with us.]

The walk is over. And it was HOT. More later (I hope) This must be a short post for a few reasons, not the least of which is I am kind of tired. But I met two women at 4:30 AM on Friday, and we were still together (with 1800 other men and women) at 4:30 PM on Sunday. They were wonderful. I was on the Kindred Spirits team, although I did not know any of them at the start. One that I met and walk many miles with knew my sister Pooh in High School.  The others I got to know through heat and pit stops and pit toilets (well porta-potties) and truck showers and pink tents and sore feet and road rash and just everything. Getting up readily at hours of the morning I only see when I have to get to work early for something.

Two short notes. 1. This is the fastest time zone change I have ever accomplished. It is done by getting up really early (4 AM) on the west coast, flying all day, getting up reasonably early the next day in the Eastern time zone (7:30 AM), and then getting up at 4 AM again, but Eastern time zone, the next day and then completely exhausting yourself walking 20 miles in 89 degree weather.

2. The 3rd day of the walk went right in front of the house I grew up in! It was exciting. I was hoping to see some familiar sights from my childhood, but I never thought I would get so close to the most familiar. We also went through my Junior High, next to my High School, a block from my grade school and past friends houses … It was a great third day.

Oh – and the Ooo! Cherries is from Carl and Ashlan. They went to many cheering stations (places where they tell folks the walkers will be passing, so they can come out and cheer them on). On the 2nd day afternoon and 3rd day morning they showed up with an old scotch plaid cooler (also from my childhood or maybe earlier) full of fresh cherries, watermelon and pineapple. At dinner of the second day, one of the women on my team was talking about the great fruit at one of the stations, and described Carl & Ashlan’s offerings to a tee. Carl said that he finally figured out what type of cherries they had, because people kept saying, “Ooo! Cherries.”

I was going to post a few pictures, but let’s just say we are having technical difficulties.

I am sort of getting ready to go to bed. Tomorrow will be an early rise.
For any that are close enough and have the umph to get out and cheer us on, this is a link to the Spectator information – it lists all of the “Cheering Stations” and other information.

For those that like to stay close to A2 – here is the information for Sunday (if you are so inclined) to join us for some celebrating. [Carl & Ashlan will be just a phone call away. Ashlan’s cell number is good, and you might get lucky with the phone at 1660 Glenwood.]

Sunday, August 16:
9:00 am – 1:00 pm
Main Street between William Street and Ann Street
4:30 pm
Washtenaw Community College
4800 E. Huron River Drive

I am excited, worried, nervous … This is the third walk I have done, but it will be hotter, more humid, I don’t know anyone I am walking with, and it has been well over a week since I did any serious training… I guess that’s enough. But it is a good cause and a really different experience. Later.

I am home. Funny how you can always say that about your parent’s house. Even if you never really lived there. There are so many familiar items around, that it is home.

One Many of the familiar items here are plants. The perk of staying at your parent’s house is not paying a bill, and being allowed to roam through many rooms at your leisure. The payback is having the chore dutyprivilege of caring for said plants. [I would post a picture, but I don’t see a means of connecting my camera to this particular computer, and I don’t have wi-fi (that I have found yet) to use with my computer.] Anyway, there are lots and lots of plants.

I am sure my Mother’s goal is for the plants to grow and florish. That is a good long term goal. My short term goal is to not kill anything. I read the instructions. Maybe this is where I get my verbosity from. Of course the instructions assume that you know the names of plants, and plant types. I know some of them. I do not know what a MONEY plant is, although I have an educated guess going at this point. And I don’t know what schedule everything is on, so I did water the twice a week, but not the once a week, and of course I did water the everyday. And mist. And I set up two plants (outside) that had gone head over teakettle. [Judging from the rather large branches on the walkway cleared earlier, I think there was a good wind through here a day or two ago.]

I even went beyond the instructions and swept the deck. My back actually got tired by the end of this exercise, although it was probably more from a plane ride followed by an unfamiliar mattress. 

After I was done clearing a deck and back inside, a chipmunk studiously was checking the deck from stem to stern. Maybe he had been storing his acorns out in the open, and now I have displaced them. They are still around, around the sides of the deck in the ground cover, so he can treat it like an Easter egg hunt.

Off to visit the city. Maybe I’ll report more tonight.

Well, it’s not tonight – but here is more. Small walk (6-7 miles) to get the feel for walking again. Took Jane’s advice and went to a hot dog stand to get the best lobster bisque I have ever had. (That said, there have not been many contenders, but it was really good.) And I took it half a block to a park where there was a concert going on. I do not recall the name of the group/singer, but it was a really enjoyable way to enjoy the soup. 

On the walk home I decided I really should find a grocery store and get a few things, like food for dinner and more importantly COFFEE. [You can take the girl out of Seattle, but you can’t take the coffee away.] So I am not having coffee today (risking the withdrawal headache) but am set up to brew a quick cup in the morning (4 in the morning, coffee will be necessary). I diverged from my known roads in the spaghetti bowl of streets around my parents to try and end up at a grocery store I recalled. I was actually doing pretty well, but I didn’t know that and asked a nice gentleman out in his yard for directions. It turns out the store is now a Trader Joes! I don’t think it was last time I was there, but that was fun.

The last bit of the walk was full of birds. Finches, nuthatches (I think), a female cardinal and some sparrows.

I have decided that leaving the west coast in the wee hours of the morning is a good way to change time zones quickly. No problem going to bed at the correct eastern time. And I know I was tired yesterday evening because I decided I had risen at 1 AM eastern, when it was really 7 AM eastern. And I could not remember how old I was – undecided between two years, and that happens to me all of the time, so maybe not a good measure of tiredness.

Going to do the final pack for the event now. Fit a sleeping bag and pad into the suitcase and check the earlier packing one more time.

Good neighbors are hard to find, and when you have them, cherish them.
My family shared a driveway with our next door neighbor when I was growing up. Basically, there was room for one car (width-wise) between the two houses, and then it split to two separate drives, about 1 car length deep, and into the respective garages. You had to get along well or at least be respectful of your neighbor for that set-up to work well. I don’t remember it ever being an issue, or considered that it could be an issue. Blissful youth. We even had a party line (telephone) with them for a while. (For the too young to remember, if they were on the telephone you could listen to their conversation, but you couldn’t call out – a shared line, with different telephone numbers accessing the line.) I do seem to recall that when my parents said they were going to move the neighbors decided to move too. I guess they didn’t want to break in another neighbor (this was after 10-12 years of living next to each other).

My neighbor went the extra mile for me this morning, and got up at O dark thirty. I really owe her now, two rides in recent memory. We do share our garbage, recycle and yard-waste space when it is available, but still … not quite the same.

And 80 degrees with humidity is a bit different than 80 degrees with some humidity.  Just saying.

Mine tend to be over-optimistic.
I set a goal to not stay too late at work tonight.
Some laughed at me. I thought it was a laudable goal.
Work technically ends at 4:30. I can rarely get out before 5 PM.
Today I managed to get out before 7:30, and considered it basically a victory.

They like to laugh at me a lot lately it seems. But really does appear to be in good fun.
At our board meeting last night, the Board members were trying to find a paragraph in my write-up, flipping pages. (It was on page 6 of 17 or 18.) One of my peers said it was on Page 87, and I thought our attorney was going to start crying he was laughing so hard. I guess they think I am verbose. Really I am just detailed. If they don’t want the information, don’t ask me a question. [This was a study session, I just wanted to give them something to study.][And that write-up was put together in about 24 hours (1 day that is, not work hours)]

So here is a joke I heard in April, maybe May.

100 years ago, if you had asked certain people if an African American would ever be elected President of the United States, they might have answered, “When pigs fly!”

100 days after Obama became President, swine flu.

(H1N1, get it?)

Well, I thought it was funny.
I almost got to be part of the vaccine test group too. But I don’t have the time at the right time to be checked out, so I will just have to wait my turn with all of the other older, non-compromised individuals.

What else is going on. Sunny Seattle has turned into Rainy Seattle, at least for this evening. It really has been a long stretch without real clouds. In fact, this may be the hardest rain since the switch to DTV. I am wondering if there is any connection between the somewhat spotty reception tonight and the weather. If so, it could be a really long winter.

Sometimes it just happens.
Especially if you don’t get up with the alarm.

My first decision, last night, was to not go on a training walk today.
They were going to be long enough to make me tired, and I don’t have all of my work done yet, so …

Without a defined time to be somewhere I thought I would sleep a bit past the alarm. It turned out to be more than a bit, but I guess that means I really needed to sleep.
This was followed by the great glasses hunt.
There are only a few places that I normally leave my glasses at night – bookcase, dresser, or most frequently the bedside table. But when I finally arose, they were none of those places. I have been known to knock them off of the bedside table, so I checked the floor. Nothing there. Around to some other locations – bathroom, etc … nothing.
And of course, for those of you that don’t wear glasses, this search is being done without said glasses, which means it is something like the blind leading the blind.
Finally back to the bedside table, feel the floor again – what’s this? They had fallen off the table, and around behind the bed. The only thing in this channel of space are electrical cords and some dust bunnies.

So – now onto getting things back in order in the house. Dishes, laundry, I still have work to do, … and so the day has begun, albeit a few hours later than expected.

… is so overrated. But I’d like to try it out sometime.

Mariner’s WIN! Mariner’s WIN! Mariner’s WIN!
(in the bottom of the 11th, after the Ray’s had homered in the top of the 11th)

So Carl & Ashlan were in a great mood when they returned at 10:30 +/-. A great, fun game, with a really exciting conclusion.
Carl’s stuff had been safely stowed into suitcases, Ashlan’s clothes were clean and sorted – ready for stowing, and I was ready for bed. OK it was about midnight by the time I trundled upstairs.

We (Carl & I) set 3 different alarms for 4 AM. 
The alarm radio clock – but the radio signal does not always come in at a volume that will actually penetrate the sleeping head.
The TV – since DTV (digital TV) the upstairs TV requires 3 switches to be in the correct position to see a TV program. There is the TV switch – must be turned on and up to an appropriate volume for hearing. Then there is the timer thingie that turns electric appliances on and off at the times you set. Most use this for turning lights on and off when they are gone. We use it as a TV timer, originally to turn it off if we watched at night and fell asleep. This TV is vintage 1978 and does not have a remote. Which brings us to the third switch – the DTV box (with remote!). With DTV remote we can now change channels and everything. But when it has been turned off by the timer switch the DTV turns off. So when the timer turns back on in the AM the DTV is off, which results in a lot of static noise from the TV, a fairly effective alarm. Turning the DTV on using the remote usually results in the morning news being heard. However, this morning I couldn’t get it to work until I realized I was watching the test pattern (haven’t seen one of those in a while).

But I am getting ahead of myself.
The third alarm was my cell phone. I have never used one for this purpose, so Ashlan gave me a quick lesson.

Alarms all set, off to sleep – for 2 of us.

2 AM or so: Door to room bursts open, light streams in and Ashlan announces that she can’t find her cell phone. Carl rises and helps the search which entails calling the phone over an over and listening for a vibration sound. Now, Ashlan knew she had the phone at the game. Eventually she came to the conclusion that is must be in our friends car (that had given them a ride home).

Back to sleep. RIIGHT – right away I am sure. Maybe by 2:30, maybe by 3. I’m not sure. I was going over scenarios. Find the phone and overnight ship it, don’t find the phone and they have to buy a new one on the road, having to call the Mariners to see if it is lost and found, stopping by our friends house to see if it is in his car…… I did fall back asleep. But then the three alarms (see above) did their job.

So O dark thirty we arise, weigh a few bags just to check (how much stuff can one girl need???). And we are off – to our friends house to check the car. I decided that was the most likely location of said phone and it could be dealt with prior to her leaving town.

It is safely found in said car, only we are on the outside and it is on the in. Over my daughter’s protests I called and woke up our friend. (She thought we should switch phones, and then I could retrieve hers and we could switch back later. But I don’t text and her friends do and it would probably have caused much anxiety about what messages I was reading, and they would text to the new number, and we would pay lots of fees for that, and …) Most people don’t appreciate the early morning calls (who died is usually the first thought), so we really owe are friends a big favor. But the phone was extracted, and the trip started with all pieces accounted for.

I am now starting the part of the day where I get to focus on what I want need to do. Happy day and safe travels to the dynamic duo.