Raincharm’s Weblog

Fridays are interesting days. Supposed to make you happy that your work week is almost over. That, of course, relies on the expectation that you will know it is Friday.

I think I really knew, but there was a moment in the morning as I was leaving my office for a meeting, when I questioned what day it was. I decided I thought it was Friday, but asked somebody else to be sure.

On to the afternoon. Finally the work day has ended – actually it did not. Most people left. A customer came in late, but was helped by others, who then opened the gate so he could leave. We worked on – trying to get to a point where I could continue a task on my own.

5:30 and it is raining and windy out, but still time to go, finally. Call home to let Carl know I am on my way. But the phone call doesn’t go through. Try again, and a third time. Finally walk over to another remaining workerbee – her’s doesn’t work either.

Now, non-working phones might seem like a reason to leave – no can communicate. But in our field, if something goes wrong it is really important for people to be able to get in touch with us. Imagine a geyser of water squirting into the air, and threatening to wash out a road. And nobody answers the call – or the call just doesn’t go through.

Call to the telephone provider and our IT geek. No ready solution, and the provider had no idea how long the service would be down. So we called the cops and fire and told them how to direct dial to our on-call – just in case something went wrong. Over-reaction? Maybe, but I don’t think so. And the dispatchers actually took the information without too many questions or loud sighs.

Monday will be the day we find out why our phone system is so easy to take down, when it is imperative that it works through a simple windstorm.

And we all finally got to drive off into the sunset, with leaves and branches flying through the air.

Food for the day (so far).
It is only noon and I have had:

• Breakfast in bed with an omelet, bacon, toast (no crusts) and coffee
• Cherry cheesecake tarts (homemade)
• Almond-Espresso bars (homemade)
• Soup in a Pumpkin (made in the office for lunch)
• An Easy-Bake Cake. Actually have not eaten this yet. It is cute enough that I have to take it home to share with Carl, and I couldn’t fit it in right now anyway. It is a double-decker cake, with chocolate icing with sliced almonds. Rex was given an Easy-Bake Oven last Christmas, and has become quite adept at baking now.

More later, when I have had more.

• Went to dinner at Atlas, a restaurant in the University Village. First time for us, one of Carl’s parents recommended it. Great food. Carl had the halibut, and ate every bite, so I am assuming it was good. I had salmon cakes with new potatoes and spinach cooked with garlic. I am sure they had better names, but mmmmmmmmm. They gave me a free sundae for dessert, which was refreshing, and not so large that we had to be wheeled out on a dolly.

Today was voting day in our house. It sounds like Rey voted too, as did Carl & I. Ashlan? I imagine she will be waiting for mid-term week to be over. That is assuming her ballot made it to her.

This means that we have permission to congratulate ourselves or complain about what happens in our fair city over the next few years. One thing I can not abide is folks that like to complain about every little thing, but don’t take their opportunity to have a say in their future.

A few really important items on the ballot, and a lot of open positions.

Voting was OK, but I still miss voting day at the polling place. I miss the excitement and the buzz, especially in the presidential years. Voting by mail is just too removed. I also think it is more open to abuse of individuals secret ballot. But that is just me.

The weather cooperated, but my body did not.
If I had gotten up earlier,
If I had done physical labor first,
If I had left financial figurings until later,
I might have played with dirt before the soccer game.

The soccer game was fun,
We won 3-2 or 4-2,
I played reasonably well,
But near the end I kind of strained my foot/ankle.
It was on a high goal kick, coming my way. The best way for me to deal with tall, 20 year younger men is to get to the ball before they have a chance to make a fancy move that reveals my 50+ year old tendency to change directions slowly. So I did. Only I didn’t hold my ankle stiff enough, and caught the ball enough in the toe direction that it sort of straightened my ankle into a perfect ballet point. Only I don’t do ballet, have never done ballet (except for a brief introduction in Kindergarten), and don’t straighten/bend that far. At first it felt like a sprained ankle. Now it feels more like a foot issue. Advil & Ice, and wait until next week.

But – I don’t feel able to go out and walk amoung the wet, loose mounds of dirt that is our backyard, begging to be raked around into a more level pose. Yesterday when it was pouring rain I would periodically check where the biggest puddles were forming and to see if we had any rivers finding new courses. It had all soaked in by this morning, and the sun even shone this afternoon – but too late for me to make use of these last tanning sessions.

****WARNING – SPORTS BLOG*****

The Seattle Sounders beat the Kansas City Wizards tonight 3-2.
That is enough to put them into the MLS playoffs, in their first year in the league.

I did not think they controlled the game as much as I would have liked, but when they got behind in the score, they wasted no time in coming back to tie, and then take the lead.

More fun – and the reason for the post, is that we are watching, and at the end of the game they pan to the Sounder’s fans behind the goal. And there is Rey, amoung the other die-hards. He was easily recognized thanks to Pooh’s creation (his hat). Saw him several times.

Spoke to him afterwards and he said his feet were freezing. He was going to enjoy a bagel while he tried to warm his feet in the car before heading back to St. Louis.

Woo-Hoo. Carl & I have tickets to the MLS final championship game in late November. [It is in Seattle regardless of what teams are in the final.] It would be great if Seattle could make it all the way.

Baseball note: Angels & Yankees are currently tied 2-2 in the bottom of the 9th in new Yankee stadium. I know my dad is pulling for the Yankees, but I find myself routing for the Angels in this one. [Carl is routing for 7 games.]

Thought of the moment. It was raining – hard. Hard enough to stop and watch. For several minutes. And go look at our 10 yards of mud dirt waiting to be spread about – another day. And now, just a minute later, the sun is shining. Must be a heck of a rainbow somewhere.

But earlier this day we held, or helped put on, a 50th birthday party for a good friend. This was held at a batting cage, with other more than 40’s in attendance to remember that age is only a number. A little pizza, a little cake, and voila – a party.

Earlier than that we were puttering around, dishes, starting split pea soup to put the ham bone to good use. That was until two things conspired to stop the soup. 1) Realizing I could not fit the suggested cooking time in before said 50th party. 2) Power outage. We never lose power at our house. Well, almost never. There was the time the crow committed suicide on our transformer. But the rain was only lightly falling, and the wind was almost negligible. Still 1-2 hours without power.

Bad news from the north. Ashlan has the flu. Send your good vibes her way.

I have worked late a few days this week.
Last night, my carpooler came down to my office between 6 and 6:30. He scared the bejeebbers out of me. I thought I was the only one left. [We had not carpooled in that morning.] So I took that opportunity to go home greener and finish my task at home.

But that means that I have not had the opportunity to work on the backyard without use of a headlamp. I decided that the work at hand really needs a broader view, so have stayed warm, dry and clean inside. Since it has been raining, and is projected to rain through the weekend, I guess the dirty work will need to be done. The goal of getting the dirt to the yard before the rain was met, but we just couldn’t quite get the leveling out of the way.

So I am wondering if I really had to stay late, or if I am going slower at work to make me have to work longer hours, thus avoiding any question of stepping in to the backyardmud.

Speedy trip to Canada and back.
Birds – Of the birds commented on during the drive, the most frequently seen was Great Blue Heron. Ashlan will only remember the one that I pointed out to her by yelling, “Bird, bird, bird, bird, bird.” The other two were seen on the trip back, the first sitting on a guard rail, and the other in the grass just behind a guard rail.
The other bird of note is of unknown type. There are a lot of unknowns. We both saw it only for a second, as it passed by Ashlan’s window moving vertically. What was special is that is was moving vertically down. We did not see it “land.” It could have been diving to catch a morsel. That was my guess. But Ashlan thought it was moving too fast too close to the ground, and it didn’t swoop up anywhere that we could see. So – if it was not “flying” any longer, but falling, what made it fall. Carl asked if birds had heart attacks. I wonder if it was a victim of another bird attack.

We started the drive listening to a new CD that I had. We listened to it through twice. [It was the only CD in the car.] After that Ashlan spent time going through the dial trying to find acceptable stations, listen to a song or two and then move on. After the highway goes into Canada and almost into Vancouver proper it goes into a tunnel under a slough. When we submerged Ashlan was in the midst of looking for the next station and we discovered a new game, Radio Roulette. This is where you push the Scan button when you enter a tunnel or other non-radio-friendly location, and see where it lands when you exit the other side.

I think that was about the time we landed on a country station. This after listening to country music through the month of August. The lyric that stands out from todays journey is a pickup line. (The singer and his pickup are having trouble picking up girls as they get older.) These are probably not the exact lyrics. “Are you from Tennessee? Because you’re the only ten I see.”

The border crossings were quite different. Going up we had to wait for 1 car. But the guard was almost grumpy. Maybe he was missing his Thanksgiving dinner. On the way back the time for both crossings (Peace Arch and Truck Crossing) was 40 minutes, so I opted to stay with I-5 (Peace Arch). My luck, I got to be the first car at the red light that separates those that are waiting with engines turned off, and those that are inching their way up the line. I really was lucky. You get to sit and watch the scenery and not waste your gasoline. When they are ready to turn the light green again they have a 2 minute count down. Then you get to drive up to the back of the lines – about 8-9 vehicles long. This crossing guard was in a good mood, but questioned why my daughter wanted to go to school in Canada when Seattle had a perfectly good school. As I drove away from the booth I noticed 4-5 guards crawling over a car, with at least two of them under the car to their belts.

I drove to work after the trip, and got to sit through a 3 hour meeting.
Tomorrow it is supposed to start raining.
From the description above you can tell no work on the 10 yards spreading adventure, it may have to wait for the weekend unless we want to spread mud.

Our house is full of people who are just tired.
Well at least 3 of the 4 here.
Over the last two days we have cooked a Thanksgiving dinner for 13, washed the dishes associated with cooking and 13 eating dinner and dessert (no dishwasher here), moved 10 yards of topsoil from the front yard to the back (97 wheelbarrow trips), raked around the edges of said backyard dirt pile (the middle majority is still in wheelbarrow hummocks), gone on more than a few shopping trips, and listened to a few baseball and a few football games.

Dinner is due in 10 minutes, so I need to move. Three of us are going to a play tonight, the fourth is playing a soccer game. I think there will be some good sleeping going on tonight.

Since I have only spent one Thanksgiving in Canada, and had turkey sandwiches, I am not really sure what all of their traditions include.

Our T-day looked very much like a traditional US celebration.
We ended up with 13 for dinner.
The table set-up looked like a J or an L. We sat 11 at the tables, and the 2 smallest shared a little table on the side.
Food included roast Turkey, stuffing (on the side), Soup in a Pumpkin (like french onion soup in a pumpkin), garbanzo bean salad, cranberry-orange relish, mashed potatoes and rolls. Pumpkin pie with fresh whipped cream for dessert.

Entertainment started with a very harmonious version of Oh, Canada. (Really, we sang the whole thing through – and most of us knew most of the words.) This inspired the three youngest, who then proceeded to put together a parade. The first parade included several adults as well, but the many others were just the three youngest with various musical implements.

Other than that it was just chit-chat and talking.

My day centered around shopping and kitchen work. The bookends to the pre-dinner portion were ordering 10 yards of topsoil, and it finally arriving. 10 yards doesn’t always land nicely on the planting strip, so Carl & Dennis (who arrived late yesterday from Amsterdam) moved probably 2 yards of topsoil from the street into the back yard. The remainder will have to wait for tomorrow.

My tomorrow will focus on dishes in the morning. We pretty much cleaned out the silverware, plates and used enough of bowls and glasses to ask if cleaning the cupboards would be worth considering as well.

Good company, and a good day.