Greetings from Marymoor

We spent Saturday morning reading and doing household stuff, then we went to meet Daniel, Cahaya, and her parents for a walk in drizzly Marymoor and then to lunch at the Original Pancake House. The park had bunnies and the restaurant had eggs benedict, and the company was lovely too. We stopped in a couple of stores together before heading off to our cars. My late afternoon involved some baseball while folding a lot of laundry: I missed nearly all of the Orioles win, but saw most of the 11-inning Mariners victory. We had PB&J for dinner because we ate so much at lunch. 

Then we watched Mountainhead, a wildly messed up movie from the Succession creator about wildly wealthy tech assholes destroying the world from a magnificent $65 million ski mansion with its own indoor basketball court, climbing gym, and bowling alley. I enjoyed the Peter Thiel-Elon Musk sociopathic fuckwittery of it all, but Adam used to say his goal in life was to upload his brain to the cloud, and one of the major storylines involves one of the characters desperately wanting to upload his brain to the cloud, so that was the part I appreciated the most! Ducklings out back after dark:

Greetings from the Sammamish River Trail

I spent Friday morning backing up all the photos and scans from the past month to my external drives, we had acai bowls for lunch, then I went to get a measles titer test because I was born during the questionable years. Since the lab is near the Sammamish River Trail, we walked a couple of miles along the water, where we saw goslings, ducklings, and various other birds; afterward, we stopped at QFC to pick up a couple of things.

 

Around dinner, we watched a couple of episodes of Star Wars: Rebels with Cheryl, interrupted by a Teams meeting with Paul's youngest brother to set up a new computer for their dad so he can get on Teams with them. After that, we went out to see the local baby ducks at dusk and came back for the season finale of Your Friends & Neighbors, empty and enjoyable, and now we're watching Murderbot, which is great.

Poem for Thursday and Seattle Sloth Bears

Low Tide 

By Ruta Mohapatra 

Like a sloth bear,

Life moved, slowly, steadily,

And stood still at times.

Nothing seemed to change,

Neither the sky, nor the horizon,

Nor the tree-line!

Only the grey in the hair,

Spread from roots to the end,

From the temple to the neck;

And the skin lost its lustre,

The eyes, their sparkle,

The voice, its genre,

Till she turned into a stranger!

-------- 

I finished my latest scanning project Thursday morning, merged and uploaded a bunch of files, then in the early afternoon we went out to get haircuts so we will look presentable at Daniel's wedding. We also stopped at Safeway for a few necessities and ate Mediterranean leftovers for dinner before my Thursday evening chat with fannish friends, after which Paul and I watched some Rebels with Cheryl. 

We took a walk at 9:30 to see what animals were hanging out, since there was a crescent moon and the sky in the west wasn't fully dark yet (lots of ducklings in the weeds every night!). Then we watched the season finale of Hacks, which is always going unexpected places -- in this place very far away -- and now we're watching an episode of Veep. Here is the Woodland Park Zoo's baby sloth bear and her mom:

Poem for Wednesday and Camlann Sheep Shearing

How to Shear a Sheep 

By Barbara Kingsolver 

Walk to the barn

before dawn.

Take off your clothes.

Cast everything

on the ground:

your nylon jacket,

wool socks and all.

Throw away

the cutting tools,

the shears that bite

like teeth at the skin

when hooves flail

and your elbow

comes up hard

under a panting throat:

no more of that.

Sing to them instead.

Stand naked

in the morning

with your entreaty.

Ask them to come,

lay down their wool

for love.

That should work.

It doesn’t.

-------- 

My Wednesday was fully booked -- chat with my high school friends in the morning, The Emperor's New Groove with Kristen and Laurie after lunch (we're missing a couple of weeks due to scheduling issues so we figured it was no time to finish The Hobbit nor start any new MCU), and an afternoon shower because I had to go to a 4:45 p.m. semiannual checkup (fine, but my doctor of the past year is moving out of the area in the fall so once again I will have a new doctor in a few months, sigh). 

When we got home, we had a family Google Meet for my father's birthday with my parents, Daniel, Cahaya, Adam, and Haley, then Paul and I had veggie burgers for National Burger Day and caught the sad end of the Orioles game before we watched some Rebels with Cheryl. We went out looking for the muskrat but just saw ducklings before we came in to watch some more Veep, since the Mariners were losing horribly to the Nats. Some photos of the sheep shearing at Camlann on Sunday:

Poem for Tuesday and Alki Animals

The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls 

By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 

The tide rises, the tide falls,

The twilight darkens, the curlew calls;

Along the sea-sands damp and brown

The traveller hastens toward the town,

      And the tide rises, the tide falls.

Darkness settles on roofs and walls,

But the sea, the sea in the darkness calls;

The little waves, with their soft, white hands,

Efface the footprints in the sands,

      And the tide rises, the tide falls.

The morning breaks; the steeds in their stalls

Stamp and neigh, as the hostler calls;

The day returns, but nevermore

Returns the traveller to the shore,

      And the tide rises, the tide falls.

-------- 

Tuesday was the day I had to catch up on everything I didn't do the past four days of the long weekend, so laundry, cat fur removal, sink cleaning, and thrilling things like that got done or at least got started. I also did a bunch more scanning and cropping those files. We had gorgeous weather yet again, so we took two walks -- in the afternoon to the beach, where we saw a new family of ducklings, lots of geese, and several eagles, and in the evening because my neighbor had sent me a video of the muskrat behind our apartments, where in addition to seeing the swimming mammal we saw bats and a pair of herons having a debate. 

My Trek group watched Deep Space Nine's "The Nagus"; Ferengi episodes are never my favorite, but this one has one of only two appearances of the Corvan gilvo, my son's favorite creature to appear in the franchise (it was also in Next Gen's "New Ground"). We caught the horrible end of the Orioles game after they had several good days. Before the evening walk, we ate eggs and waffles, then we watched some Rebels with -- the events are finally overlapping Andor -- and afterward we watched some more Veep. Here are some of the starfish, crabs, sea cucumbers, and anemones we saw at Alki Beach yesterday:

Greetings from Alki

Memorial Day was a bit chillier and more overcast than the rest of the weekend, but still a lovely day. We got up early to drive to Alki because the tide forecast was very low, and managed to find a great parking space a couple of blocks from the beach, where there were lots of people peering in tidepools and a few naturalists from the Seattle Aquarium talking about the animals there. We saw lots of starfish, sea cucumbers, anemones, barnacles, and shore crabs, plus a few kelp and red rock crabs, chitons, gunnels, and various shore birds including a great blue heron. We had brought a picnic and ate it on the wall overlooking the beach before walking past the neighborhood's beautiful gardens to the car.

 

We drove from the city to Issaquah to get a new Discover Pass for Washington State Parks at REI, where we also got sun shirts in their anniversary sale; we also stopped at Fortunato Chocolate for very obvious reasons and at Safeway for food for the week, for us and the cats. When we came home we walked on the dock and saw two families of ducklings, plus the goslings. Then we chatted with Adam and Haley about summer and fall travel plans. We had leftovers for dinner while watching a couple of episodes of Rebels with Cheryl, and now we're watching Veep because Max and Daniel both suggested it to us and we never saw it when it was first on, nor in all the years afterward.

Greetings from Camlann

Another quick note, tonight because we're watching Mickey 17, which like most Bong Joon Ho movies has heavy-handed allegory, actors who are better than their dialogue, and a thriller plot that's both fearless and often hilarious in spite of itself, especially Robert Pattinson -- definitely worth watching. We put it on after getting home from dinner with our next door neighbors at Water's Table in the Hyatt Regency in Renton, which has excellent food and spectacular views over Lake Washington -- we ate on the heated outdoor patio and afterward walked to the bird sanctuary loop at Gene Coulon Memorial Beach Park. 

That was only part of the Sunday fun, because earlier I put on some Renfaire garb and we went to Camlann Medieval Village for their annual sheep shearing. We got to hear some baaaing complaints, but mostly the sheep were surprisingly relaxed and the villagers who work with wool started cleaning and carding it right away. I also got to use a bow and arrow for the first time since elementary school and we talked to the scribe, the potter, and several of the other craftspeople in the town, plus the Gate Shop was open for the first time since we've been going. Also, Daniel had wedding planning and Adam ran a 5K with his brothers-in-law!

Greetings from the Woodland Park Zoo

Quick note because we're watching Fountain of Youth, which is a not-great Indiana Jones-Da Vinci Code-National Treasure-type faux history/archaeology movie but I like Natalie Portman and John Krasinski enough that it's entertaining, especially since she gets to be a mom as well as an art expert. This after watching this week's quite good storytelling-themed Doctor Who and the start of the third season of Star Wars: Rebels, which has overall been excellent. 

The earlier part of our day, though, was all outdoors, driving downtown in perfect weather and parking several blocks away to walk to the Woodland Park Zoo, where in addition to lots of great cats, African savannah animals, reptiles, birds, and a surprising number of bunnies not strictly invited to live at the zoo, there's an exhibit of animatronic dinosaurs in the Habitat Discovery Loop. We got to enjoy popcorn, and mountain views, but these photos are us being goofy with the dinos: