Greetings from Salem

Quickie from Oregon with Paul and Cheryl, with whom I got to see lots of awesome things today including Mount St. Helens! Thomas Dambo's Portland-area troll at the Nordic Northwest campus! Dinner at Mod Pizza! Deadpool and Wolverine (which is satisfying in every way, hilarious, lots of awesome cameos, tons of Hugh and Ryan)! Tomorrow, the Renaissance faire!

Greetings from Redmond

Cheryl is here, visiting from Richmond! We picked her up in the evening after an unexpectedly hectic day during which Cahaya locked herself and one of their dogs out of the house, then realized that we had the only other key because Daniel had left it with us before going out of town last week, so we drove into the city to give it to her, then drove to Kirkland to put some things in our storage unit, drop donations at Goodwill, mail back my broken phone, and things like that. We have a busy day tomorrow too so I will be brief and leave these photos from Constellation Beach at Alki with Adam and Haley last weekend: 

Poem for Wednesday and Mountain Squirrel

The Ground Squirrel 

By Paul Hamilton Hayne 

Bless us, and save us! What's here?

Pop!

At a bound,

A tiny brown creature, grotesque in his grace,

Is sitting before us, and washing his face

With his little fat paws overlapping;

Where does he hail from? Where?

Why, there,

Underground,

From a nook just as cosy,

And tranquil, and dozy,

As e'er wooed to Sybarite napping

(But none ever caught him a-napping).

"Don't you see his soft burrow so quaint, lad! and queer?"

Gone! like the flash of a gun!

This oddest of chaps,

Mercurial,

Disappears

Head and ears!

Then, sly as a fox,

Swift as Jack in his box,

Pops up boldly again!

What does he mean by this frisking about,

Now up and now down, and now in and now out,

And all done quicker than winking?

What does it mean? Why, 'tis plain, fun!

Only fun! or, perhaps,

The pert little rascal's been drinking?

There's a cider press yonder all day on the run!

Capture him! no, we won't do it,

Or, be sure in due time we would rue it!

Such a piece of perpetual motion,

Full of bother

And pother,

Would make paralytic old Bridget

A fidget.

So you see (to my notion),

Better leave our downy

Diminutive browny

Alone near his "diggings";

Ever free to pursue,

Rush round, and renew

His loved vaulting

Unhalting,

His whirling,

And curling,

And twirling,

And swirling,

And his ways, on the whole,

So unsteady!

'Pon my soul,

Having gazed

Quite amazed,

On each wonderful antic

And summersault frantic,

For just a bare minute,

My head, it feels whizzing;

My eyesight's grown dizzy;

And both legs, unstable

As a ghost's tipping table,

Seem waltzing, already!

Capture him! no, we won't do it,

Or in less than no time, how we'd rue it!

-------- 

Much of my Wednesday involved complications getting my new phone, around chatting with two of my high school friends in the morning and watching the first half of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania with Kristen in the afternoon. For about the dozenth time since we've lived here, UPS had all our information and phone number to deliver an expedited package yet decided to report it undeliverable rather than, you know, contact us to tell us they couldn't find our apartment; I ran out and chased down the truck, whose driver at first denied that he had the package, then went in the back and found it. 

Most of my late afternoon and evening involved setting up the new phone, which required calling Verizon for activation and listening to multiple sales pitches as well as waiting for programs and data to transfer and getting rid of apps that don't work on the newer Galaxy models. The good news is that since they didn't have a replacement S22, they sent me the S24, so I have a much newer phone with a camera that gets ranked better. Now we're watching Deadpool 2 now so we'll be ready for Deadpool and Wolverine in two days. We got to watch this hungry ground squirrel on top of Crystal Mountain:

Greetings from T-Mobile Park

Extreme quickie just home from the Mariners-Angels game at T-Mobile Park! It was both Take Meow't day, with Mariners cats button-down shirts for special guests (though actual cats were not invited), and Topps Trading Card Day, meaning everyone was given a set of Mariners baseball cards, and it was a gorgeous evening with perfect cool weather. 

We went with our next door neighbors as a thank you for watching our cats, and walked around the stadium after getting our cats shirts before bringing dinner to our seats. Unfortunately the Mariners lost 5-1 after some terrible play in the fifth inning -- one run walked in and two scored on errors -- but we had a great time anyway! A few photos:

Poem for Monday and Snoqualmie Bear

Furry Bear 

By A.A. Milne 

If I were a bear,

And a big bear too,

I shouldn't much care

If it froze or snew;

I shouldn't much mind

If it snowed or friz--

I'd be all fur-lined

With a coat like his!

For I'd have fur boots and a brown fur wrap,

And brown fur knickers and a big fur cap.

I'd have a fur muffle-ruff to cover my jaws.

And brown fur mittens on my big brown paws.

With a big brown furry-down up to my head,

I'd sleep all the winter in a big fur bed.

-------- 

I was having a good Monday until half an hour ago when my phone fell out of my pocket as I was carrying recycling down the steps and crashed on the concrete walkway below -- the screen is shattered and the back is cracked, so it is pretty unusable, and I'm going to Oregon this weekend and it would have been really nice to have a working phone with a decent camera. I got a lovely late anniversary gift, an egg chair swing, which is set up on the deck, which is now free of mud dauber wasps, which were building nests at the top until the maintenance company for our apartment complex knocked them down. 

Adam and Haley have arrived in New England and he got yet another day of birthday celebrations with her family. Meanwhile, we had gorgeous weather, high 60s and breezy, so I found excuses to walk to the mailbox and office. We saw ducks and otters in the evening after eagles and geese in the afternoon when we walked on the dock. In between, we watched most of the Deadpool red carpet premiere interviews, then most of the Mariners-Angels game, which started well but ended badly for Seattle. Here are photos I keep meaning to post of the bear we saw from the chair lift and Summit at Snoqualmie: 

Greetings from Fremont

Sunday dawned overcast with some spitting rain, but that did not stop us from picking up Adam and Haley to go to Constellation Park, where the tide was extremely low, making it a great morning for tidepool viewing. After seeing many sea stars, anemones, snails, crabs, chitons, sea cucumbers, and other beach life -- even a bunny on the way to the shore -- we went to Cactus for brunch, then walked to the other side of Alki Point to the Alki Art Fair, where we looked at paintings and crafts before heading back to Adam's apartment to walk Pepper. 

It was probably our last time walking Pepper in Seattle, as we spent the afternoon preparing to take Adam, Haley, and Pepper to the airport to fly to New England to move her things to Ohio, while his things will ship in a couple of weeks. While they packed, I caught Tynamo for Pokemon Community Day and read the awesome Kamala Harris memes, which was the best way to process Biden dropping out of the race. We had cake belatedly for Adam's birthday, gave him a few presents, took some perishables, and got home from dropping them off at SeaTac around 10 p.m. 

Poem for Saturday and Larsen Lake Farm

Blueberries 

By James Lasdun 

I’m talking to you old man.

Listen to me as you step inside this garden

to fill a breakfast bowl with blueberries

ripened on the bushes I’m planting now,

twenty years back from where you’re standing.

It’s strictly a long-term project—first year

pull off the blossoms before they open,

second year let them flower, watch the bees

bobbing in every bonnet,

but don’t touch the fruit till year three,

and then only sample a handful or two...

Old man I’m doing this for you!

You know what they say about blueberries:

blood-cleansing, mood-lifting memory-boosters;

every bush a little fountain of youth

sparkling with flavonoids, anthocyanin...

I’ve spent all summer clearing brush

sawing locust poles for the frames,

digging in mounds of pine needles, bales of peat moss—

I thought I’d do it while I still could.

You can do something for me in turn:

think about the things an old man should;

things I’ve shied away from, last things.

Care about them only don't care too

(you’ll know better than I do what I mean

or what I couldn’t say, but meant).

Reconcile, forgive, repent,

but don’t go soft on me; keep the faith,

our infidels’ implicit vow:

“not the hereafter but the here and now...”

Weigh your heart against the feather of truth

as the Egyptians did, and purge its sin,

but for your own sake, not your soul’s.

And since the only certain

eternity’s the one that stretches backward,

look for it here inside this garden:

Blueray, Bluecrop, Bluetta, Hardy Blue;

little fat droplets of transubstantiate sky,

each in its yeast-misted wineskin, chilled in dew.

This was your labor, these are the fruits thereof.

Fill up your bowl old man and bring them in.

-------- 

Saturday was a gorgeous day, and it also happened to be Adam's birthday, though Paul and I didn't see him because he had plans all day with friends. Instead we did some shopping and went to pick blueberries at Larsen Lake Farm, where the lake overlook was closed because some kids managed to set it on fire on the Fourth of July, but we still got to see families of ducks, lots of flowers, and thousands of blueberries (we picked about four pounds).

 

We got home in time for nearly all of the Orioles game, which was great, and the Mariners game, which was fine until the seventh inning when they went down 3-2 and things only got worse from there. Now we're watching My Spy: The Eternal City, which like the first My Spy gets kudos for its female characters but its tone is wildly uneven -- too violent and crude for kids, too much teen drama for grownups. Hoping the girls save the day!

Greetings from Redmond

Another quick post, as we were out most of the evening seeing Six at the Redmond Academy of Theatre Arts, which mostly teaches classes and runs camps for young people. The first time I saw Six, I told Paul I thought it could be done well by a group of high school students who could sing and dance, and this production proved that -- some were stronger singers than others but they could all follow choreography and the two who really needed to be able to act beyond comic timing were very good.

 

It was otherwise a quiet Friday, chores in the morning when Effie would permit laundry to be folded (she likes to sleep in full baskets), a walk after noon to Idylwood Beach where the Redmond police department were handing out popsicles -- "Pops With Cops" -- to the people enjoying the weather. We ate leftovers for dinner and now we're watching the end of Young Woman and the Sea, which like many sports movies is formulaic but well-acted (lots of Brits doing lots of accents) and filmed.