Greetings from Marymoor

Another day with lots of walking but this time no rain! We took Pepper out in the morning, went to get Blazing Bagels again, then met Daniel at the Washington Park Arboretum and walked around admiring the rhododendrons, Japanese garden, and water features. Then we came back to Adam's house, ate leftovers for lunch, and went to Marymoor Park, which has an offleash dog area and a trail along the Sammamish River toward the lake with trees full of herons and the occasional family of ducklings. 

Cahaya had homework for her MBA program and Katherine was on call, so the former stayed home and the latter joined us later at the dog park. We all decided we wanted breakfast for dinner, so Adam and Paul made pancakes, eggs, and sausages for the rest of us. In the late evening we played Mini Rails before Daniel headed home and Adam went to walk the dog. Our flight tomorrow is in the afternoon so we're hoping for more good weather for the beach before we need to get to SeaTac. 

Greetings from the Nordic Museum

Quickie, we're watching Chip N' Dale Rescue Rangers with Adam and Katherine (we were not the ones who picked the movie, heh). It was already raining after we walked Pepper in the morning, so we decided to go to the National Nordic Museum, which has an art gallery on loan from Sweden's Nationalmuseum and Kosta Glassworks and two floors of exhibits on the history and culture of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, and the Sami people from the prehistoric era through the Viking expansion and emigration to America. 

Katherine had to work, but Daniel and Cahaya met us at the museum in Ballard, after which we went to the covered outdoor tables at Hot Cakes for, well, hot cakes with ice cream and hot chocolate, plus we stopped in Sweet Mickey's candy store before walking back to the car along the waterfront. We came back to Adam's house for dinner, for which we picked up Pagliacci Pizza. Some photos from the museum, from which I kept sending my Icelandic friend Hildy photos, and the restaurant and dock area: 

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Greetings from Golden Gardens

Saturday was mostly a rainy day in Seattle, but the temperatures were around 60, so we spent most of the daylight hours outdoors with our hoods on. We ate brunch and went to Golden Gardens, where we walked on the beach with Adam and Katherine's dog and Cahaya's two, and we saw a sea lion, lots of seagulls, several pigeons, and not a lot of people except the ones in boats. 

Then we drove to Green Lake, ate lunch at the tables outside the PCC Community Market, visited Daniel's new house, Skyped my father for his birthday, and walked the three miles around the lake, surrounded by geese and goslings, ducks and ducklings, bunnies, crows, and other dog walkers despite the weather. We all came back to Adam's house for dinner brought in from Jasmine Kitchen. 

Greetings from Twin Falls

On Friday we went to Twin Falls State Park, a Snoqualmie River trail which Daniel had visited and thought would be a good hike for us in terms of distance and difficulty -- about two and a half miles, stairs on the hardest elevations -- for a view of a beautiful waterfall in a rainforest. Adam drove and Daniel met us in the parking lot. We had drizzle on and off, but for the most part it was beautiful in the woods, and I know this isn't everyone's thing, but we saw lots of slugs! 

We came back to Adam's house to order dinner from Bangkok Basil, which we ate in Grass Lawn Park, where Daniel's girlfriend Cahaya met us (without her dogs, to Pepper's relief). It was a beautiful evening to picnic and we saw bunnies -- and lots of Pokemon -- when we walked around the park after eating. Now we're watching the first episode of Obi-Wan Kenobi, which is perhaps not the best-written Star Wars property I've ever seen but I'm enjoying these characters anyway! 

Greetings from the Woodland Park Zoo

Quickie after full lovely day, the longest stretch of which we spent at the Woodland Park Zoo, where Daniel met us at noon after we went with Adam to pick up breakfast from Blazing Bagels (Katherine and Cahaya had to work). We saw many awesome animals including a baby sloth bear, some tiny Asian deer, many kangaroos and wallaroos, an orangutan family, several lemurs high up in trees, and a silverback gorilla born at the National Zoo, though we did not see penguins as nearly all the birds were off exhibit because of avian flu in the state. 

Since we'd had a late breakfast, we had a late afternoon snack of cheese bread and drinks at Kitanda, a Brazilian coffee shop near where Daniel lives (because of covid, we still haven't seen his house -- we figured we'd give being indoors another day), and we stopped at the PCC Market to get fruit for later. Then we came back to Adam's house to hang out for a while before going out to dinner at the Lunchbox Lab in the pretty shopping plaza at Redmond Town Center after discovering that Cactus in Kirkland wouldn't seat more than four at their outdoor tables. 

Greetings from Redmond

I am at Adam's house! After morning packing and a quick chat with my high school friends, Paul and I went to Dulles, had a fairly uneventful flight sitting next to a man as masked as we were (the wifi wasn't working right on the plane, so I mostly read Unnatural Creatures), and was picked up from SeaTac by Adam, who is currently feeding us banana muffins made by him and Katherine with help from Pepper. Tomorrow we will see Daniel, who hopefully will have a negative covid test by then! A few travel pics from the airport and sunset drive: 

Poem for Wednesday and Rainy Cabin John

 I Could Ask, But I Think They Use Tweezers
By Aziza Barnes

the shoulder is       a complicated organ     femoral                artery lymph   nodes tendons a   those joints if      a bullet goes
thru you there’s also       the clothing        oh     yeah what did you think      I mean if it’s just this        then that’s different but
if it’s       two layers of that    those are other impurities the body                          does it’s job just one
                           function to release what can’t stay he walked into the ER smiled                       “I need a doctor      thanks
         man” blood stops moving to the big                 towns the brain is a big town the heart is a big town the kidneys are
                      hot spots like Vegas built                                to handle armies on vacation the blood learns    to bend another
way like the legs of a crane                     they make bullets different           now-a-days                  in the              good-ole-days
         a bullet went in and out and                        the holes matched now a           .22             a .38      expands in the body
absorbs like a tampon               function                         pull in all life        he was ordering drive thru food             McDonalds
food not               really food maybe like          french fries maybe like            a Sprite maybe like a #2
                                           things that don’t feel like food in the mornings down                         the street from my house
           from his mama house a clog                    at the 3rd counter this guy has a gun a gun has                                       an
operation has composition is orchestral                      is an organ of some complication ephemeral
                                         the bullets are small; a shoulder is innocuous until you become a nurse the only
                                                 reason he died was speed and proximity but if it’s a couple                      layers of cloth well you
have to get that out too

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Busy Tuesday with unexpected late-night visit by neighbor trying to figure out what to do with her rescue cat, who is not getting along with her own cat. It was rainy most of the day so everyone was apparently restless indoors, even our cats who decided to wrestle on the clean laundry. We had to stop at a couple of stores, so we took a walk in Cabin John Park once the rain had stopped (some of these photos are from our last rainy visit last week). 

 

The Texas news is horrific. After Avgolemono and crusty bread for dinner, I watched Voyager's "Nemesis" with my Tuesday group -- I only remembered the Darmok-and-Jalad-type universal translator language and that the good guys were the bad guys. Then, because I was trying to get laundry folded and photos uploaded so I needed something that didn't require a lot of concentration, we watched Age of Ultron and I refuse to be judged for how much I still love it. 

 

Poem for Tuesday and Split-Rocker Plantings

Song for the Festival
By Gretchen Marquette

At the May Day parade, my mask made of moss
and bark, my hair full of flowers, my friend beside me,
her pretty red mouth under the hawk’s beak
of her mask of green sage.

At the children’s pageant, music
died in the speakers. The shadow
of a crow passed over. My hair a crown
of flowers, yellow and red roses large as fists,
flowers on which I’d spent my last $20
at the mercado.

But beauty wasn’t enough. Being admired
by strangers was not enough.

I saw a girl, wandering, looking for her mother.
I knelt down, lowered my mask, showed her
my face. She’s looking for you too, I say.
She tries to spot her mother’s yellow dress.
A gold dog passes, happy and white-faced,
wearing pink nylon fairy wings. The girl points
and laughs; the hard part of her day
is over.

The people I’m looking for—I don’t know where they are.
I don’t know the color of their clothing. From across the park
I see the dark windows of my apartment.

Spring has arrived.
Let me not despair.

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I had kind of a hectic Monday but it was all things that had to be done at home, plus a neighbor stopped by to ask for help with a cat she's rescued (she thinks its family left it behind when they moved) and my mom stopped by to visit us and the cats. It was a cool, gorgeous day, so when we finally got out for a walk, it felt great to be in the woods. We had veggie sloppy joes for dinner. 

We watched way too much of the Celtics-Heat game waiting to see the new Thor: Love and Thunder trailer, which is a total delight and was worth it (Russell Crowe! Jane and Valkyrie! The tattoo!). Then we watched the first couple of episodes of Daredevil since we never saw it when it first aired because we didn't have Netflix. Here's Glenstone's Split-Rocker in early blooming phase: