Seattle through a Fisheye

SIL living room with her own art work to the left

Only in Washington (and Colorado)

Brother holding on for dear life in megavan

Pike market

Not a fisheye but pretty: sunset at Alki

glass demo

Glass Bridge sides: all Chihuly

ceiling

ole Union Station Tacoma

Glass Museum

not a fisheye but telephoto lens

in the barn

oyster beds

Can I land a helicopter on your land?

Steve's photo of a butterfly on my marigolds

new barn swallow babies ready to fly

cleome grew large while we were gone

Maya paid us a visit yesterday

rainbow salad at the cooking class: lima beans, nectarines, corn, orange peppers, tomatoes and avocados. Lesson: the more colors: the more nutrition

my harvest: rainbow chard and yellow squash

more sunflowers

bought a shadow box today of a miniature violin

The nice young couple next door came over yesterday. The woman's father flies helicopters and would like to land on the area between our houses which is about the size of two soccer fields. Maybe our grandsons would like to watch? (Sunday 3-4 pm) Should be interesting.

 

Gradually getting back to normal. Delta will give me my miles for my late luggage. Deadheaded flowers, pulled weeds including 2 poison ivy plants (where do these come from?), picked vegetables. My flowers survived thanks to Naomi watering them as there was only one day of rain. The birds seem to have deserted us faced with a week of empty feeders but the hummingbirds quickly returned and resumed their wars. A few stray finches are making their way back to the thistle holders.

 

It is so different running on a deserted country road versus facing half of Seattle even at 6 am running around Green Lake. It has been cool and the biting flies have not been out but I am sure they will return with the heat tomorrow. I even got out of the bike combining exercise with garage sales. I was able to get that shadow box, roughly 12x18 inches, and a pretty glass dish back by threading the bag to my fanny pack though I assume I looked silly.

 

Not much action on that house though we have a viewing coming up. This house is the bane of our lives. We went there today to mow, water and weed. I noticed that the new buyers of the house across the street have continues the tradition of no lawn work whatsoever. Three foot high weeds cover their front yard, trash fills their front porch: why does this house attract such slobs?

 

So sometimes magical thinking works.  Things don't get done around here in the hopes that things will magically take care of themselves especially concerning the cars. Two months ago, Steve backed out into the driveway forgetting that Naomi's car was there. Big dent followed by a much smaller dent when that crazy old lady hit me (and then said it was my fault because I wasn't there when she first looked) just a few days later. Well the big dent magically disappeared while we were gone. Go figure. Steve didn't even think the cars was ours without the dent when he went up to it in a parking lot. And the rattling heat shield on the other car? Haven't heard it either since we returned.

 

I will take my friend to chemo tomorrow. The chemo prevents her leukemia from getting worse while they dicker around with insurance approvals. She was finally approved to get the bone marrow transplant but then they told her they would not cover the donor's expenses. I have no idea what it costs to screen the donors and then let them sit as this system sorts out the stem cells from their blood but I know how much it costs for the 3 doses of Neulasta they give the donor to encourage stem cell production: $10K a pop, even more in a hospital setting. After much protesting and appealing, now the insurance has agreed to cover the donor expense. So far her brother has not been excluded as a donor (only 25% of siblings match) so here's hoping he passes the next round of tests. Much better outcomes for sibling matches versus unrelated donors.

 

Back to my cooking class for cancer survivors. I was surprised and happy to see a classmate return who 6 months ago, had a third cancer (all completely different)diagnosis. This one she was told, was untreatable and she had only months to live. When they irradiated her to relieve pain, the tumor surprisingly shrunk to a manageable size and it hasn't grown since. Plus a new drug targeting her cancer just has been approved should this monster start growing again. I had been feeling guilty about not visiting her. Her chief friend is gone a lot (who gave me all the information). I did give her number to various classmates and they called so at least she has that. But she looked happy to be there. I tried to give her a ride home but her walker would not fold up small enough to fit in my microcar. A really bad design. I did make a new friend last night with a woman who loves to bike. Her husband has a theoretically treatable cancer but the treatment itself nearly killed him. What things people go through. It makes my petty concerns seem so......petty.

 

Our teacher tried to incorporate as many colors in our dishes. Dessert was easy: raspberries and blueberries over almond milk ice cream (dairy seems to be considered evil). Then these rosti, sort of like a potato pancake with zucchini instead covered with a carrot, corn relish. And the multifruit and multivegetable ceviche pictured above. Yes as someone recently pointed out, I should be eating these things every night instead of once a month. Baby steps.

 

So what is in the future for itchy foot Sue. Babysitting Allie and then attending a Pig Roast in Kalamazoo with former co-workers, having a helicopter land near me, celebrating Daniels's birthday, finding a way to display my new glass pretties from the trip. I do want to go to the east coast this fall but most of all, I want that house gone. Hard to plan when we constantly have to check in on it. I also need to fix my blind eye (no I haven't called the eye guy yet) and decide whether I want to have my breasts fixed..appointment is coming up in 2 weeks

Bits of pretty

The UW arb

Pike Market: very crowded Ate a humbow there (roasted pork bun)

Kid art converted to glass piece with the former train station in the background in Tacoma

dahlias at the market. My dahlias die. Seattle must have the best climate for them

Mt. Rainier from the reservoir. I could see it sometimes from Green Lake but my photos of it didn't show it

sunset at Alki

more Chihuly

fused glass for sale

flower baskets in Kingston. Every little town had impressive baskets

sunrise at Green Lake

from a different side

Light fixture at Jewel box, the crepe place for breakfast Monday

oyster beds from Chuckanut

pretties in Fairhaven

glass Tlingit art

Chihuly ceiling of Glass Bridge

water fountain in Tacoma

more Green Lake sunrise

 

Alki Beach

This is a chain of French fry stores. Spud was the name of my last pug. At Green Lake (this is Alki) a Spud shop was next to Zoe yogurt. Zoe was our pug before Spud

more Arb

interesting rocks on beach at Larrabee

Olympic Peninsula and Chuckanut

Glass in a cute shop in Fairhaven.  Yep I bought some.

Steve on the beach at Larrabee State Park

Lots of big trees

Oyster beds

Tasty crepe for breakfast

Beautiful sunrise for Monday's run around Green Lake

Sunday's concert at The Barn on the Olympic Pennisular. We sat on the lawn listening to a trio play Beethoven and Mozart.  very nice. perfect weather and nice wine to drink

Ferry ride from Edmonds to Kingston. then a drive across the Hood Canal got us to the Olympic Pennisular full of rain forests and mountains

I am sitting in the airport as the sun comes up. got my exercise walking from one end of the airport to the other. but despite having no TSA precheck, things went smoothly though I am mad at Delta. They have a heavily advertised policy of your bags in 20 minutes or free miles. Our luggage took an hour to come but according to their records, it came on time. Right. Only 400 witnesses to the contrary. Lying airline.  I will deal with this upon my return

Sunday I took a break from running.  We took a ferry to the Olympic Pennisular to attend an outdoor concert. extensive grounds and gardens. people picnic while they listen to the music, pieces I hadn't heard before. I sat in my lounge chair and drank wine eating local fresh goat cheese. A nice time. We had a long wait for the ferry home but walked around the cute town of Kingston. 

 

The next morning back to running as the sun came up over the lake. Many stopped to take photos of it    We had planned to go to Mt Rainier but unforecasted rain and clouds appeared. No use going to it when you can't see it. Anyway, we had seen it before back in 1986. I have a photo (on the 4th of July) of Josh stuck in snow crying. Instead we went on Chuckanut (yep that's the name) drive, Washington's answer to Big Sur in that the road is high on a cliff hugging the mountains with the ocean below. Much more trees however. Below in the southern part of the ride, were the oyster beds. Oysters need firm sand to bed down on. A new invasive species, the ghost shrimp, are killing off the oysters indirectly by burrowing holes in the beds sinking the oysters. They can rake up the shrimp so that the fish swoop down  and eat them all but that is labor intensive. There is an oyster restaurant high on a cliff that had a huge line of cars parked along the road for almost a mile on a Monday. Either very good views or good oysters though to me, I agree with the early Gilda Radner that they are cold balls of phlegm.

 

Going there, three goats peered out at us from the back of a van. It seemed so funny that they were giving them rides as if they were dogs. Why do goats have horizontal pupils versus the vertical pupils of cats and foxes? Better peripheral vision for the prey versus better means of judging distances for the predator. Recently discovered phenomenon: their pupils are always parallel to the ground so the pupils tilt as the goat's head tilts. Have to see this for myself the next time we are at a petting zoo. Round pupils are for large prey and predators. (and some animals have hyphens and crescents). We made several stops at overlooks and took a walk down to the beach at a state park. Even though we were there during low tide, we were unable to find anything interesting in the tide pools. The road ended in Fairhaven, a cute town on the outskirts  of Bellingham. Beautiful flower baskets, several art galleries (where I bought another vase) and cafes. We chose our lunch place because it had a very high rooftop patio overlooking the harbor. Fat Pie featured pizzas in three styles: Brooklyn, Chicago and a very surprising Detroit style. Wasn't aware that Detroit had its own pizza style. When I asked, the crust was midway in thickness between Chicago and Brooklyn. The Detroit pizza itself was also called 'Sicilian' though in Detroit, the pizza palaces are run by Greeks, not Sicilians. We opted out of the pizza for salads and sandwiches.

 

Back to Seattle to visit my mother-in-law one last time and then to a local alehouse where I had Ballard beer (a trendy section of Seattle). One last visit to the reservoir to see Mt. Rainier (back under the clouds). Then to try to sleep early to get up at an ungodly hour for our early morning flight. Was sleeping fine until the Delta app went off to tell me that my flight was going to be on time at 1:30 am Delta continues to annoy. And our plane, the oldest in its fleet with none of the updates. When I asked where the usb port was, the attendant snorted. But on the plus side, the plane was built before they learned how to shave every inch of footroom away so my legs didn't go numb like on the way there.

 

We are home. I spent an hour repairing the garden and filling feeders. The birds gave up on us.