Raincharm’s Weblog

I think Seattle is going to be in the 90% of totality during the eclipse later this month. Carl and I briefly talked about heading south to the band of totality in Oregon. The discussion didn’t get very far. 

Enter Rey.

Rey and Carl had been scheming previously around a Braves vs Mariners series in Atlanta. Rey is now just a few hours from Sun Trust Park, the new Braves stadium.

And it happens that Chattanooga,  Rey’s new home, is just minutes from the band of totality. 

Travel plans came first, but they were quickly followed by eclipse planning. Primarily finding glasses for viewing said eclipse. The initial on-line search was disheartening, with sold-out all over the screen. I’m not sure how I searched differently, but some stores popped up with inventory. 

Success! With the all important I SO 12312-2 rating.

I bought a handful of the fine paper variety and one upgrade to plastic frames. My thought was that Carl could use them as a second pair of sunglasses. 

Thoughts are good. Reality is sometimes different. You can not see anything through these glasses. They could function as a blindfold. 

Except, of course, the eclipse. 

We’d scored tickets to the Kusama exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum on Wednesday, and spent a few hours wandering amoung Kusama’s art. It was a departure from our normal art exhibition visits and well worth the traffic we had to endure to get there.

There were five or six rooms to visit. Except for the interactive room and the face sized windows, they were limited time visits, with the longest time allowed at 30 seconds. I think that is so you have time to be immersed and look around a bit, but not enough time to start to look at how the pieces are put together. [Strictly my idea, I did not read that anywhere, but the docents did say it was the artist who set the times. ] The number of people in a room at one time was 2 or 3 maximum. 

Dots of love was Carl’s favorite. Reminded him of Gertie balls. 

From my colonoscopy?

The interactive dot room.

The last was my favorite. 

You could revisit the rooms as many times as you went through the line. I repeated this room and was allowed in all by myself. Amazing. 

I was checking the weather this morning and I saw high 70s and low 80s and no rain for at least a week. I was trying to figure out what layers I would need tonight for the Mariners game. As it turns out I will be reducing layers as I leave work. 

We skipped the Mariners game yesterday in favor of Carl’s most recent Senior League team, the Silver Foxes. I learned the genesis of the name yesterday. One of the original Silver Foxes played professional baseball up to the AAA level. His first professional team was the Columbus Foxes. The addition of silver just reflected the addition of that color to their hair  (those who still had enough to discern color).

It was great fun to hang out on the sidelines again, and then there was the steak potluck afterwards. Mmmmmm. The fellow who hosted has a lovely condo on the Sammamish Slough. We were treated to kayakers, canoers, bicyclists on the far bank, eagles, an osprey and even a few hummingbirds. It was a lovely afternoon. 

I was so involved in the day that there are no pictures to share.

Wait, here’s one.

Felix Hernandez just passed Rube Waddell on the career strike out list. 

Work, work, work in the morning. And it was good focused work. 

But all good things must come to an end. 

Rey wanted to Skype,  and his schedule meant that it was then or not for several days. And it was a great conversation with Rey and Becca. Good news. Great news. Fun news.

And then into the heat of a sunny day. Seattle in July. In the 80s. Heat and timing meant we chose the 2 mile walk to the light rail instead of the 6 mile full meal deal.

To Safeco Field. (Surprised?) Game 3 against the Yankees. Tied in the 10th, although we managed to get by Aaron Judge. [If you watched any of the All-star game it was all about Judge. 

He is a rather towering presence. 6′-8″.

I kept score for much of the game,  but have turned it over to Carl for the extras.

And the Mariners win in the bottom of the 10th on a walk off single. That single scored the long-haired, bearded Gamel, (and briefly a Yankee, who don’t allow long hair or beards),  For those keeping track, Judge struck out twice, flew out, walked. And there was that one home run.

Doe and fawn

And my own

Yankees currently up 2-0.

Top of the 9th

Elephant and Castle

Followed by Fun Home.

Certainly one of the best we’ve seen this year. Again we arrived with only a bare idea of what the show was about. [Compare this to H.M.S. Pinafore over the weekend where I knew most of the words.]

In a nutshell it’s about a family and their functional dysfunctional life, that happens to own a FUNeral home. That aspect adds to the story,  but is not central. Although there’s a very funny scene where the 3 kids have concocted a commercial advertising the family business. The story is told through the family daughter, sharing her life and perspective as a kid, college age and adult. 

If you have a chance to see this musical,  do so. Last night I kept thinking of people I needed to encourage to go.

Definitely my theme at work recently. 

I was working later than most yesterday, and thought I was the lone survivor. I was also deep into reviewing 669 lots, and wondering how far I could get before I decided to go home.

Then a voice saying,  “I’m leaving,” brought me back to the surface. Apparently Mac had been somewhere about the building,  doing whatever Macs do. I suggested he make more noise when approaching me. He said he tried, but the jingling of keys had not been enough to break through my concentration. 

Now surely alone, I settled back into the 669. 

Until I heard a thump that sounded outside. I stood up and leaned forward to look out the window. Only to be thoroughly startled by a deer leaping in front of my window. 

He had been between the salal bushes and the building and decided to leap to a more open space. 

And then the second buck arrived, a bit more sedately.

And after finishing about 15% of the 669 before I went home, the remainder before noon today.

Parker and Nate’s team won both their Saturday and Sunday games after losing Friday.  But it was not quite enough to get to the 4th game this evening, or a potential 5th game on Sunday. 

But it was enough. Nice weather. Time with friends and meeting some new folks too. As they all departed south to Oregon, we headed over the lake and back to Seattle. 

A beer and nuts (food and otherwise) on the back deck made a fitting end to the social weekend. 
On a completely different note, the film noir this morning was Gun Crazy. It was really good. Had us speculating until the end when the femme fatale was going to meet her end. In the discussion after the movie they noted that even the film producers weren’t sure how to end the film, toying with at least four different endings. [Neither Carl or I came up with the chosen ending. ]

When it rains it pours. But not today. Except that we had more activities in one day than we often have in a week. 

First up was the 3 mile Refuse to Abuse walk at Safeco Field. Except we did not attend. Carl’s heel has been quite sore this week,  so we decided to spend some time hanging out with our weekend guests instead.

That is until we left them to watch Carl’s baseball team from last year in a game at the UW. Another old player (80-some years old) that has moved to AZ was also in attendance,  so there was a lot to talk about in addition to watching the game. 

From there it was on to our guest’s soccer tournament. Their team is a U16 team from Eugene, Oregon. Their first game was on Friday. Unfortunately, several players were delayed by traffic on the trip north, and had to jump out of their cars and start playing with no warm up. The coach arrived around half time. The other team scored 5 goals before they were able to come back with 2. The Saturday game was much better, a 3-0 win, and a more cohesive looking team. Their game today will decide whether they play any additional games. Also whether we get any more house guests beyond the two players  (and one dad, Dan). Apparently some of the parents have to be back to work in Eugene on Monday. 

Parker, our friend Dan’s son, is number 9 in the black uniform. 

The evening found another spectator event at a Gilbert and Sullivan show,  H.M.S. Pinafore. It was quite good. The Lord Admiral was especially funny. There’s a song between the Captain,  Lord Admiral and Josephine where the Captain and Admiral got into a bit of a one-ups-manship with the Captain first ringing a small bell, the Admiral then going to his triangle, the Captain winning a struggle to ring the ship’s bell, and the Admiral coming back with cymbals. No justice done by my explanation, but it was funny. 

It’s shaping up to be an interesting work week. The big boss is gone for the week. This is both a positive and a negative. 

The negative is that almost all of Monday was spent filling in for said missing person. The positive is that I spent almost half of Tuesday working on my big project. 

I hope to repeat Tuesday for the rest of the week. 

A little time out with an office buddy.