Poem for Friday and T-Mobile Park Sights

Wild nights - Wild nights! 

By Emily Dickinson 

Wild nights - Wild nights!

Were I with thee

Wild nights should be

Our luxury!

Futile - the winds -

To a Heart in port -

Done with the Compass -

Done with the Chart!

Rowing in Eden -

Ah - the Sea!

Might I but moor - tonight -

In thee!

-------- 

I had a fairly quiet Friday morning, then we did a bunch of grocery shopping because we're having our longtime friends Hildy and Tom -- who are also Haley's parents -- over for barbecue tomorrow night. It was a hot day for Seattle, in the 80s, so we ended up not taking a very long walk in the afternoon -- we went back out after 9:30 p.m. and it was much nicer! The ducks appear to have recovered from the fireworks and the frogs are singing. 

We watched the July 4th episode of The Boys, which I did not like -- outre sex stuff is fine, nonconsensual sex stuff is one of my huge turnoffs -- then we watched the Orioles beat the As. Now we're watching A Family Affair, which is pretty formulaic but Kidman and Efron have great chemistry and the daughter in this is much more a character than the daughter in The Idea of You, which in some ways this resembles. The city at T-Mobile Park:

Greetings for Independence Day

Happy Independence Day! Or, if you're in Britain, congratulations on your elections! We spent most of the day at T-Mobile Park watching the Orioles play the Mariners again, along with Adam and Haley, who arrived somewhat later than we did because we wanted to make sure we got the giveaway patriotic caps. The Mariners won this time, but the Yankees lost again, so the Orioles are still at the top of their division and most of the scoring was done by my two favorite Mariners, Julio Rodriguez and J.P. Crawford, so it's okay (plus we got to see another Gunnar Henderson home run, and Corbin Burnes' return after his wife had twins). 

So we saw our first fireworks of the day in the stadium during Seattle home runs and after the game when they won. Then we came home, I chatted with a few of my Thursday regulars, and we watched the west coast rerun of A Capitol Fourth, which shows the DC fireworks. After that, we went out to watch the fireworks visible from the dock all around Lake Sammamish -- some from the official displays in Issaquah and Bellevue, some from extremely unofficial and not entirely legal launches off people's boats and backyard platforms. We didn't eat much for dinner after a big ballpark lunch, but I did eat ice cream twice in one day, which is rare!

Greetings from Bellevue

Another quickie though tonight my excuse is that Flickr appears to be down, or at least half-down -- the web page loads but photos do not -- in addition to being slow/late from having watched the Orioles-Mariners game, this time on TV, though we're going to see them again tomorrow with younger son and his girlfriend, which we figured would be a fun Independence Day activity! 

I had a fairly typical Wednesday: chat with my high school friends in the morning (everyone made it this week, and I forgot to mention I did talk to my Voyager group last night though we didn't watch an episode), a trip to Bellevue to pick up a prescription and a jacket on a huge sale at Macy's before lunch, and watching the rest of Wakanda Forever with in the afternoon. 

We saw the successful end of the Nationals-Mets game, a bit of the Phillies-Cubs game, and all of the Orioles victory over the Mariners around this week's episode of The Acolyte, which I know the internet hates but I find intense and interesting (I will always take a story with female leads). Some more photos from our anniversary of flowers in bloom at the Bellevue Botanical Garden:

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.