Raincharm’s Weblog

The western Washington region is in the midst of a four day mega quake response exercise. Our office participated with a few people on day one (communications blackout) and day two. It was worth the effort, but I am a bit worn out today. I was a facilitator, and it was an intense day.

So Carl and I relaxed by going to a play last night. Paint Your Wagon.

I had never seen this before, but I knew a few of the songs. A friend of a friend was in the show, and we are thinking one of the women leads may have played Glinda when we saw Wicked on Broadway.
Tonight we will be back with the Mariners. My plans for today are to work on anything but emergency response.
That said, do you have an emergency plan and provisions to take care of yourself for several days?

Rey is having a busy day today.

New job, new apartment, new age.

Smokies, entering UT, leaving UT.

And for the awww factor, one of his smaller apartments.

The calendar gives us a few more weeks but the weekend temperatures say summer has arrived.

Yesterday we waited for the temperature to rise and then set off to walk downtown. We took a longer than normal route to avoid a long trudging type hill and for variety.

Stopped by MOHAI for peppers and watching kids play in the water park.

This little boy was trying the bidet approach. We also watched the slalom and foot plug approaches to the fountains.

On through South Lake Union where we happened upon a graduation ceremony for the Seattle campus of Northeastern University. In a window. Or at least a room with windows to the world.

Finally at the stadium with our small clear bag of food, wallets, phones and a few sandwiches. Up to our seats. In the sun.

This was a free kick for Haiti (in blue). Peru won 1-0. The game was entertaining, even though Captain Obvious sitting behind us was a bit annoying.

Today is even hotter than yesterday, probably in the 90s. Carl did some yard work, and I did my small part around the raspberries. Including the first harvest of the year.

Mmmmm

So – I thought this had posted several days ago, but it did not. I discovered this on Rey’s birthday, and while it has a picture of Rey I did not want to double post on that day. So here it is.

I did not get a picture of the missing bridge section as we passed by on the new 520 bridge. In fact it reminded me of a family story where parents are trying to point out an elephant in the zoo to a very young child who will only look at the end of the pointing finger.

In response to, “look, look, look,” I was looking for a bird. Most likely an eagle being pointed out, and almost missed what wasn’t there any more.

I realize now I have not reported on the last bit of our vacation. I don’t think I really recovered until the end of this weekend, and it is a short week again, so running to get my feet under me at work.

Back to our vacation.

After graduating the boy, hugging the girl goodbye and vanquishing the powderpost beetles (we hope) it was time to move south again.

Lunch on the beach. We left on a beach day. Hardly fair.

Because it’s there.

Visiting with mom and dad, breakfast with sibling and cousins and we headed further south. Oh yeah, the exploding window.

I guess it didn’t really explode so much as popped and then continued to spit glass bits around every time it was jostled. And we discovered my parents have 5 different vacuum cleaners.

Met up with a childhood friend/neighbor of Carl’s, now living in Dayton. Good talks and he shared some old pictures of the neighborhood gang.

A short stay but fun. And then we roused Rey in the wee hours to take us to the Dayton airport. By the way, the Dayton airport is one of the nicest I have been in recently.

A Russian cargo plane on the tarmac.
The solar plane flying around the world was also outside the window, but underneath a tent type structure. (How does it get the sun under a tent?)

What I have not reported on here yet are the baseball games scattered throughout the trip.

Detroit tigers: Carl, Rey and Liz (one of the cousins, and one of the cousins Liz). I’m not sure how that game was, but I know Carl enjoyed the chance to chat with Liz again. And it was Polish night, with polkas.

Mariners and Reds, in Cincinnati. With Carl’s childhood friend, his wife and two sons. Felix Hernandez pitched for the Mariners and the Ms prevailed. A nice park. Rey caught a batting practice home run ball. He barely had to move, and I didn’t try to steal it from him. (He also went the next day after dropping us at the airport and spending some time at the Cincinnati Art Museum.)

Dinner with Carl’s friends at a place called Merinos (I think). Good food and a chance to relive more of the days adventures in Ohio.

Carl is second from the right, and brother Bruce is third from the left.

After we returned to Seattle we spent the afternoon drifting between naps and unpacking. And Monday it was back into the grind. I guess it’s good to be missed, but I wish they didn’t miss me so much.

And the Ms were back in town so we had plenty to occupy ourselves in the evenings.

Silly hats all over the place.

This included at least one walk downtown. And Carl caught a home run in Tuesday’s game. It was from the other team, but the score was 16-3 in favor of the Mariners at the time, so it was okay.

Realizing he has the baseball.

Chuck describing the finer points of the home run that he would have caught if he hadn’t been using a catcher’s mitt.

Enough for now. Good night.

It was a tough fight, and the true test will come later this summer. But we gave it our best shot and are starting the trek home.
The following pictures are furniture pods, provided here for future reference.

Two days packing and podding.
The cleaning, unpodding and unpacking took less time. But let’s just think of it as a chance to redecorate. And this summer will be known as the summer of, “Where is the … Fill in the blank?”

Since we are sort of on vacation, we started the day with a trip to Paradise. Paradise, Michigan that is, for breakfast. Then it was on to Whitefish Point. Rey got to talk with a few friends from his internship last year, and we got to wander the exhibits and the beach.

The biggest excitement this visit was the hundreds of blue jays that we saw. Apparently they are waiting for a slightly warmer wind to welcome them to Canada. This area provides the shortest lake crossing, so they are hanging out waiting for a weather window. It was remarkable to see this many together at one time. Here is one that sort of held still for me.

Since we are sort of here on task we also spent a good part of the day doing some additional packing and moving, sweeping and covering areas with plastic. We also removed all of the wall art. All of it.

Including the two hooked rugs that have graced the walls since before I was born. I need to get more information from Mom on their origin.

Now that they are down I am of the opinion that we should figure out how to gently remove dust and dirt, and then have them protectively framed for continued display. More to be learned about how this should be accomplished.

This one hung over the fireplace and the colors are only slightly faded.

And now the reverse view

The hanging from the wall near the kitchen has some serious color changes.

Dramatic changes

Tomorrow we will complete the move out, including ourselves, at least for the daytime.

And then of course, there will be the move back in.

Who knew that after owing a house for about 25 years we would still be such good movers. We got our skills honed during the remodel move-out (and move back).

This particular exercise is to provide a clean area for bug eradication.

The move started with today’s drive north from the LP (Troll-land) to the UP. Unlike a few days ago when it was snowing here and there, it sprinkled briefly, but not enough to turn on the windshield wipers.

We stopped at the Downtown Café in West Branch for lunch. Carl wandered around downtown looking for postcards while Rey and I found a Home Depot for some moving boxes. They sort of fit in the back seat with food, backpacks and me.

My philosophy is get more than you think you will need, because you don’t want something simple like missing boxes to slow down your packing.

Our only real error was getting medium size boxes instead of small boxes. Kitchen stuff can be amazingly heavy, and you can’t put too much breakable stuff into one box.

We are not wrapping and doing a real pack job as we would for a real move. Our move is about 150 feet, from the cabin to a cousin’s garage, and most stuff is getting driven over in a car. And no furniture.

My thinking is to move stuff that is easy to move out of the space instead of cleaning it later because we are not sure of how much bug stuff was around. We are covering furniture, but most everything else is out the door. We made pretty good progress, but still have to go through to small rooms, get decorations off of the walls, and on the last day the few dishes, suitcases, etc.

Wednesday morning is day 0. We got such a good start today we are planning to visit Whitefish Point tomorrow.

Of course, Jane got everything rolling during her weekend ahead of us, and we did not have to spend any time turning on water and electricity. THANK YOU JANE.

It was downright balmy (in the low 50s) when we arrived. It is probably below 40 now and heading into the 30s tonight. Fire in the kitchen fireplace, Tigers on the radio, and we are content.

Just entered Kentucky.
On our way from Tennessee to Michigan.

Today will be the lp, although I have never heard it referred to as such. (Lower peninsula).

We have been having some good family time. Graduation of course, a UT baseball game and a Smokies game last night. (Cubs AA team). Some good barbecue restaurants too. A bit of home cooking by Carl, and most importantly – cupcakes.

Rey’s Information Sciences graduating class of 2016. Rey is 5th from the right in the middle row.

My one attempt at a picture, an action shot.

Post ceremony, pre-dinner, courtesy of photographer Mark.

Pooh and Mark joined Ashlan, Rey, Carl and me for the aforementioned festivities. It is so nice to have family together. Pooh and Mark drove over from St. Louis. (And brought the cupcake pan.) Ashlan flew in from New York, with the most eventful trip due to delays arriving into Charlotte where she had to connect to a flight to Knoxville. Late leaving NYC, holding pattern over Charlotte, and then no ground crew to unboard the plane. We were actually contemplating a 90 minute drive to pick her up in Chattanooga or Tri City, TN. As it turns out her connecting flight was also delayed and she is a fast runner.

The return flight was looking as though it could be a repeat in reverse. They called her a few hours before the scheduled departure to tell her about a delay, that would have messed with her connection. Later flights didn’t work unless it was so late it was the next day. Luckily she asked about earlier flights since we were quite close to the airport. And they had very limited seats on the connecting flight to NYC, so she had to sit in FIRST CLASS!

Tonight we will get to see a different sister and parents, and then it will be on to cousin land, with possible snow. (I think the snow will have passed, but they did have some traces overnight.)

Rey, Carl and Evan at the Smokies game. Barbecue bacon grilled cheese sandwich, green goat salad and kettle corn.

Barge on the Tennessee river at the Ijams Nature Preserve. We took a one mile hike along the river and up over some homemade staircases and a tower trail.

Moving to the driver’s seat.

From kindergarten to grad school

Robed and ready

Real life action

This is what several days of short sleep and long Mariner games followed by a day on planes looks like.

Not bad, just ready to stretch out. But it’s a bit difficult to stretch in a Bdubs (buffalo wild wings). Rey had to go to Bread Bash, and we ate dinner and are cooling our heels waiting for his return (with the car and the apartment key)

Scenes from today

Rainier in the foreground, Adams in the back. Mt. Saint Helens was off to the right.

Spent an hour in DC, but the only sights we saw were on postcards.

And Carl missed his first Mariner game of the year. (They won)
This is from yesterday’s Mariners game.

No work today, and I left at 4 PM yesterday. Vacation is officially underway.

I know I am rambling, so I will sign off.