Raincharm’s Weblog

​That happy feeling of anticipation of Xmas as a small child.  Don’t feel it very often anymore, but this morning I am having a difficult time concentrating and staying on task, and there are little butterflies flitting around. The anticipation is not focused on presents although they can be fun (my requests nowadays tend to the practical). Rather it is people we get to see and spend time with.  
So here is our solstice time in pictures.

Notice the sun and the son.

Carl and friend 

Sleeping octopus 

Okay, this was from a bit before the solstice.  December 10th if I recall correctly. Notice the snowman is wearing the Sounders’ colors. [Snowman’s remnants are still gracing the front yard, and it really has not snowed since.]

We managed to finish the traditional Christmas Eve chores* on the 23rd, so today is free. 

*Standing in line at Larsen’s Bakery and the Honey Baked Ham store. About 100 in line in front of us. In the picture below we were still outside, with a light rain/snow mix.

Rey will be making Sausage balls later for our visit to the Shannon’s.  He said no Tennessee party is complete without them. 

Merry Christmas Eve 

Okay. That’s almost funny . 

I intended the title of the post to be , “The S Word.” I am typing on my phone, focused on the keyboard, and when I looked up it had chosen  SUNSHINE as the “S” word. In my mind it had been SNOW.

But the snow was yesterday. 

Today it is cold. And  SUNNY.

No plans today beyond work and a little decorating. 

Today we headed downtown to meet friends and see a concert.
The venue was Benaroya Hall, and the performers were the Seattle Mens Chorus.
A choral group of about 250 men. Quite good – as they already are.
Christmas focus, some serious, some funny. And their traditional Silent Night that they finish in complete silence, performing it in sign language.

There is a light rail station is right under Benaroya Hall, so we did not get too far into the shopping district and see all of the decorations. On the way home we did get to see the packed trains arriving from the north, full of Seahawk Fans. The game is being played just south of downtown, starting about an hour after the concert (a matinee) ended.

On the way to the light rail station we saw a raptor flitting from street light to street light. (Can raptors flit?) Here is my best picture. I am thinking peregrine falcon, it seemed a bit small for an osprey. But I could be completely wrong. Notice that it is sitting on this light in spite of the “No bird spikes”.

And in the Rey report – the fire was a lot closer to his apartment than I had imagined.
I had been looking at a Tennessee newspaper map that showed burned business, but it was not focusing on residences. Tonight Rey pointed me to a map put together on the Sevier County website. It shows that the fire essentially stopped at the road in front of his building. The trees across the road are charred. In the picture below – it shows in red the houses that burned.  Green had minor damage. Rey’s apartment is a blue dot.

Here is a closer view. He is not sure whether the road and gravel parking lot were enough of a fire break, or if it was active firefighting that saved his building group.

Tomorrow he is going to the work building in the area that was heavily burned. He will likely be driving in amoung a lot of damaged and destroyed houses. They are also having a full staff meeting at the Park Headquarters, where I am sure they will be given an update on park services. He had considered volunteering to drive supplies around this weekend, but they wanted people with pickups, not Corollas.

[The one day weekend is because I worked Saturday. I got a lot done, and can’t imagine trying to fit 8 hours of straight undisturbed work into the regular work week.]

And it is supposed to snow tonight.

I was a few minutes late this morning.
I had gotten up on time, washed my hair, got dressed, packed my lunch (prepared by Carl), poured a travel cup of coffee, and headed out to the car to pick up my carpooler.

But as I turned on the windshield wipers to clear the window I heard the unmistakable sound of sckrrrrch. Frost on the pumpkin windshield.

The minutes it took to scrape off the ice and let the interior de-fog, were the minutes I was late.

On a further update from Rey – he now has power AND internet.
He continues to work in the Townsend section of the park, at least for this week.
His normal place of work is in the Twin Creeks area. It appears the building survived, but the fire was all around and they have to make sure utilities are in working order (electrical/water/etc).

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.