Raincharm’s Weblog

Got up at the usual time yesterday, went out for a 13 mile walk, small cup of joe and home.
Had some lunch (I think – it seems that it should have happened then)
Little computer time and then out to a movie (Up).
The movie is really good. I don’t get out to many first run movies. Ashlan was going out with a friend and wanted us to wait another day, but sometimes plans like “wait” don’t pan out so, … off we went.

We walked, of course, to the theatre. Sat through the show with several others. SPOILER ALERT.
Carl accused me of knowing it was a tear-jerker and not telling him. Well he never asked!
SPOILER OVER

After the show we went home via the grocery store and picked up some food that could be used for dinner.
Made dinner. About halfway through my body started to shut down.

I think the last few weeks of work finally came home to roost. Not just the physical part, and probably more the mental part. So – off to bed. I was planning to do another long walk this morning, but I needed to allow for some catch up time in bed. So I will try to get a shorter walk (5-6 miles) in this morning.  Time to train is still 5-6 weeks, but it is starting to feel shorter.

Having a world class symphony in town is one thing.
Being able to afford tickets is another.
We managed to score some $17 tickets. They get you in the door, they get you right up close, really close, look out for musician sweat close.
The interesting part is that while you could see the musicians right in front of you, the rest was just bits and pieces.
The first half had soloists and a chorale. We saw pant leg and skirt bottom of the soloists. I saw the hands of one person in the chorus. A pianists hands came into sight for a brief moment when two violinists moved their legs briefly.
Nevertheless, music is about listening more than seeing.

The second half of the program was Holst’s Planets. It was great.  I love the music. In the last movement – Neptune – the Mystic – there were singers in the very back upper balcony. It was a mysterious sound. My personal favorite is Mercury, although Mars and Jupiter are close to the top as well.

Time to sleep – planning to walk tomorrow AM.

The first half was a new piece called “Meditations” by a composer whose name I can’t remember (and am too tired to get up and find).
It was OK, but it didn’t grab me. I followed the words (all about God and how could he think much of me) I actually was counting columns of lyrics to see how far we had to go until intermission.
At one point I flashed back to a twin bill at the Soo Drive In. Carl & I suffered through Blind Date with Bruce Willis and others, whi;e waiting for George Carlin, Bette Midler & Shelley Long in “Outrageous Fortunes”. I believe we had baby Rey along as well.

Sometimes – Yesterday work was consumed by 3 projects.
Well 1 (actually 2 now that I think) meetings and 2 projects.
Well 2 meetings, 1 incident and 1 project.
Scary when incidents are treated just like projects.

Meeting 1 – presenting – have to be there. Did OK, although I did refer to accounting as mundane, which got a follow-up reaction from our accounting department.
Meeting 2 – short, training, we’ll see.
Incident 1 – teenagers (I assume), school is just out, beer, smokes, mostly secluded location with two 4 million gallon tanks. Don’t know what their goal is, but have cut locks, fences and caught the attention of one of the few neighbors, who has diligently worked to get the attention of the police. The police were not initially too interested, although they did manage to contact the individuals and warn them. But we wanted MORE response, since if they did manage to get into the tanks we would have to consider boil water, draining, many thousands of dollars of time. Climbing tanks may be a time honored tradition, but these days – not a good idea.
I explained our position and told our finest that we wanted/needed to go further, and could I have the names, and what did I need to do. And – they are at least doing some investigation! We’ll see.

So – that was the morning.

Project 1, which has dominated my last 3 weeks had a letter that had to be written, attachments that had to be prepared, and it had to go out. It includes notice of a meeting in less than a week which was just scheduled and another in less than two weeks, and this is way off of our 2 week notice period we like, but ………. Post office closes at 6. 12:30ish – GO. Write, edit, edit, write, edit, edit, edit, labels merge, edit, letter merge, edit, attachment print, fold, stuff, postage, out the door at 5:15.

Drive – TRAFFIC JAM – into town, home, walk, bus, Ball Game.
Friends, food, fun and a WIN.
Walk, drive, check e-mail, bed.
Alarm, up, drive, eagles – 2, school buses no longer and issue, but garbage trucks are, back to work.

Yesterday had a frustrating end to the work day.
As I was driving in this morning I thought – I have an opportunity to be depressed, and people would understand.

But I don’t like being depressed, so I thought I would choose my attitude to not be depressed. And I’m not. But perhaps instead of choosing what not to be I should have focused on what to be. I was thinking that not depressed would be happy and energetic. 1/2 right. But it has an aggressive and slightly evil edge to it.

Let’s just not talk about work for a change.

Let’s talk about the weekend walk.
13 miles, 12 on a training walk and 1 to get home from said walk.
298 steps was the HIGHlight. That is the number of steps from the Puget Sound at Golden Gardens park to the top of the ridge and back into surface streets, or maybe not.

The walk started at Green Lake, up to Phinney Ridge, down into Fremont, over to Ballard, along the sound to Golden Gardens, up said steps to Crown Hill, back through Greenwood, north Ballard and back to GreenLake. – and then home to the UDistrict.

Start – the walk leader was late-ish. She had been at a bar the previous night selling Jello shots as a fundraiser. (My fundraisers seem so lame now.) Ended up spending the night at a friend’s apartment in Seattle instead of driving the 20 miles home. But didn’t sleep (well). The alternate leader, who was supposed to be helping out at the bar, but couldn’t because he got called in to work, showed up to walk as well – just off of work so no sleep either. An interesting start.

Up to Phinney Ridge gets the blood pumping. Then an easy walk down hill into Fremont – the Center of the Universe. This was the weekend of the Fremont Arts Festival, including the (in)famous Solstice Parade.

We walked through set-up for the fair and some floats, but who was thinking of the parade. I was in the middle of getting acquainted with a women that was in her 3rd year of recovery from breast cancer. We have many commonalities with kids, etc, so it was fun getting to know each other, and for me – I learned a lot about the recovery side of the disease. So – on we walk. One woman with us noticed a bunch of bikes leaning against each other and thought someone was having a swap meet. I noticed a man in a wet-suit, and we were fairly close to the water …. Then the woman I was chatting with said, “Is that just body paint?” – Oh yeah – the Fremont Parade, as all of the bicyclists poured out of the warehouse where they had been getting decorated! (see the link if you need more explanation.)

On along the Sound to Golden Gardens. Beautiful walk, nice temperate day, sailboats out, but not too crowded down here. A rest, snack, and then the stairs beckon. It is reported to be 298. I did not count them myself. I found it easier to focus on whatever was in my view at that particular moment, and not look up or down. The stairs are certainly the fastest was up, and in the end I would not have guessed the almost 300 number. But there are a few breaks of 30-50 feet where it traverses across a road, or dog area, or to the next logical location to go straight up again.

Lots of people out and about as we wended our way back towards Green Lake. There was a walk for epilepsy, the Fremont festival, and the first weekend off for most school kids and their parents. A great respite from everything else. I called Carl at the end, and then thought better of putting him into the traffic – and walked home, alone. Time to check out the flowers and fauna in the neighborhoods.

No great pictures like the Marquis. I have got to get used to carrying the camera again. Enough of my babble for now.

To all fathers and dads everywhere – have a happy day.

Louis, Almida (Anita) & Harry ~10 years old

1906 - My Dad's Grandmother Rebecca, Uncle Joel, father Joseph (8 yrs) & Grandfather Luji (Lewis)

After breakfast, Ashlan is taking Carl to the ball game – with seats 2 rows above the dugout. About 350 feet closer to the infield plays than our usual seats.

I was out looking at the raspberries today – actually watering them a bit.
This is what they look like now.

June Raspberries

Growing, growing

The other fruit in our backyard are Rainier cherries. We didn’t know we had them for a while due to animal thievery. These were out of my reach, and you may be able to tell they are already partially eaten.

Rainier cherries - good if you can get to them before the birds and squirrels

Other than watering and dreaming of fresh fruit, I walked 13 miles and Carl & I are going to see the Seattle Men’s Chorus tonight, with M-Pact

I opened the front door and MMMM, something smelled good. Meatloaf.
A little comfort food is always good. Carl makes a great meatloaf.
It is made from ground turkey.
I have heard others talk of turkey loaf, but it’s still meat isn’t it?
I certainly wouldn’t want to call if fowlloaf.

Now it sounds like it will be popcorn for desert.

Such is life on a working day in the RH household.
My life is still very much being dictated by others, although I am going to stage a walkout and go where I can’t be found or stage a shutout and close my door and block it with extra chairs.
Carl’s life is very much dictated by the whims of very short people with extreme and unpredictable mood swings.
I am not sure if Ashlan’s life is dictated or whether she is being a dictator – it is hard to tell and she is not (telling).
From what I can figure Rey’s life is dictated by his chosen form of work slavery internship and the whims of the weather gods. Rey says it was raining so hard at the ballpark yesterday that you could not see the scoreboard. [He also did not get to share in the meatloaf.]

I am in pause right now. (No – not meno, well yes, but that’s not what I meant.) I am in the period of time between the first half of a Board meeting and the second half of the Board meeting.

I have done some work work, and am pausing to take a break before going back to get just one more letter drafted at least. As long as I am here, I might as well accomplish something (or try to anyway).

I was going to take a 5-mile walk with some workmates, assuming 1st half ended early enough. It did, but in the meantime they had decided to go SHOPPING instead. Can you imagine? Shopping instead of walking (with me). I can’t, but then I hate to shop.

After a week of general bitc grumpiness, I have generally been better behaved today. It is that short period of time when you have more or less completed one task and not submersed yourself in the next. Pick off a few shorter gigs to get a good vibe going before hitting the hard stuff, which was put on hold for far too long for other’s projects.

Time to hit the PLAY button again.

Today started with a 3-day Crew meeting. Getting to meet a few of the people we will be working with in September. One juicy tidbit – last year the Susan G. Komen 3-Day Breast Cancer Walk raised $100,000,000 dollars for research. They say they have a bit lower expectations this year since money for donations is a bit tighter.

So following that it was time for a walk. Shorter today because we had to drop off and pick up a car for a little service, and they have short Saturday hours. We decided to walk down by the UW Stadium where graduation was being held to check out the festivities. We realized that we probably knew some kids walking the line today – it is Rey’s graduating class if they did the 4-year thing.  So this is in honor of all those graduating that we have not been able to cheer on through the ceremony – including Rey.

CONGRATULATIONS – Job well done!

Rey's Diploma

 This is the first time Rey has had a chance to see this as well.

closer