Greetings from T-Mobile Park

Extreme quickie after very satisfying Orioles-Mariners game (Baltimore 2, Seattle 0) with crowd very tolerant of me in my orange and black! We got there early enough to watch batting practice, during which I got to see Cowser and Kjerstad up close in the outfield. The Kraken's top draft pick Berkly Catton threw out the first pitch. We had seats near first base, so I got to see Adley, Gunnar, Tony, and the rest of my favorite Os up close, plus JRod and the Mariners. We stayed till the bottom of the 9th when everyone was on their feet watching Kimbrel pitch the last strikeout!

Greetings from Bellevue Botanical Garden

Monday was my 34th wedding anniversary, so after a quiet early day of laundry and my semiannual full computer backup, we went out to walk at the Bellevue Botanical Garden. There are a few azaleas still blooming in the Japanese garden, but the majority of flowers are in the perennial border garden, where we also saw a bunny, several birds, and lots of bees. We also took the ravine trail over the suspension bridge and walked through the meadow and water garden. 

From there we drove to Redmond Town Center, where we visited the Utopia gemstone store in its new location before going to dinner at Thai Ginger. Then we came home and watched the rest of My Lady Jane, which is only slightly more historically outrageous than The Tudors and much more female-powered -- good sense of humor, lovely scenery and costumes, and if it's strange to have changelings instead of Protestants as Bloody Mary's victims, it's an interesting metaphor.

Greetings from Discovery Park

Sunday was more overcast than Saturday, but still gorgeous and not too hot. We went out early for a Sunday to Discovery Park, where we hiked the three-mile loop down to the beach and back, bringing a picnic for lunch. Because it wasn't warm enough to swim in the Sound, the parking lot wasn't crowded and neither were the trails. The tide was in, so we didn't see starfish or anemones, but we saw some crabs, shrimp, and clams (many eaten by seagulls and eagles, who were flying over the beach) and a variety of sailboats, cargo ships, and paddleboarders.

 

We stopped at Safeway on the way home for provisions, then watched most of the Orioles loss to the Rangers around chores and a walk on the dock. We just finished watching the season finale of Interview with the Vampire, which was emotional and intense and did a great job integrating material from the later Vampire Chronicles that Anne Rice hadn't written yet by the end of the first one. Now we're watching Orphan Black: Echoes, which is clearly trying to incorporate characters and actors from the original but it's too soon for me to tell if it's really working.