Greetings from Woodland Park

Guess what I did all morning and most of the afternoon? If you guessed packing books, you're right? All but one shelf in the living room are finished, then I get to tackle the bedroom bookcases. It was a lovely nearly-60-degree day, so we did walk to the park -- there were big flocks of geese and ducks completely segregated on different fields near the beach -- and we were serenaded by an eagle. 

My DS9 group watched the excellent "The Collaborator" before dinner, after which we watched the first episode of Black and Jewish in America: An Interwoven History, which had some excellent, informative interviews, though it also had Cornel West, ugh. Afterward, we finished up Lower Decks, which was never great but had a lot of fun moments. Great cats we saw at the Woodland Park Zoo:

Greetings from the Zoo Bird Houses

Despite packing, I got to have a fairly social Wednesday starting with chat with 2/3 of my high school group in the morning. Then I did some packing, ate lunch, did some more packing, and watched some Rings of Power with Kristen and Laurie. After that, Paul and I took a walk to the beach and saw a large murder of crows making a racket in the trees by the lake, plus the eagle pair and a flock of annoyed honking geese. 

We watched the last three episodes of Wonder Man with Cheryl, which were extremely enjoyable (they even called it a bromance!). Then I was in the mood to remember how Trevor ended up there, so after dinner and TMNT night on The Masked Singer -- we ordered from Kanishka, since we had a coupon it would have been a shame to waste -- we watched Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Birds at the Woodland Park Zoo:

Greetings from Zoo Lights

Poetry posts may be erratic until I move. I spent most of Monday packing -- first little collectibles that came in their own padded boxes, which we'd had saved in our storage unit and retrieved on Saturday, then games and oversized books, which have to be fit like jigsaw pieces so they don't slide around in medium boxes. We're letting the moving company pack the breakables so they're all covered in case of disaster, but I can manage the books and boxes. Anyone know how to keep built Lego sets intact in transit? 

We walked to the park in the late afternoon and were surprised to see prunus blossoms already -- hot pink ones! -- along with many ducks. Then we came home, ate leftover Indian food for dinner, and watched a few episodes of History of the World Part II, which is pretty ridiculous rather than clever satire but that suits my mood at the moment. Now we're watching F1, which is...fine? There are cars and men who drive them, don't ask me more. Wild Lanterns at the zoo, glowing at night and over for the season in daylight: 

Greetings from Seahawks

On Sunday we went back to the Woodland Park Zoo in daylight, where the Wild Lanterns show was being dismantled for the season but the animals were mostly awake. We got to see the new family of Mexican gray wolves (the baby lion cubs aren't visible to the public yet) and lots of other animals -- even the bears, who have a camera in their den while they're in torpor for the winter. The penguins were honking loudly and their enclosure had been decorated inside and out with Seahawks pennants and footballs. We brought lunch and ate it in one of the zoo restaurant enclosures.

 

New England had already beaten Denver by the time we got home. We watched Seattle beat L.A. while eating leftover pizza and trying to keep the cats warm (there were some dicey moments with dumb penalties, but they led all game). Then we watched this week's episode of The Night Manager, which definitely needs more of those two characters discussing whether they dream about each other, and speaking of dreams we saw Train Dreams afterward, which is superbly filmed and acted but a lot of it is about grief -- personal, social, and the ways racism and sexism intersect historical memory.

Poem for Thursday and Wild Lantern Garden

Love Poem, Lampyridae (Glowworms) 

By Fiona Benson 

The female born again with little changed

except she has no mouth and may not eat,

except she has this urge to climb, and a light

she must raise and twist; the male born again

with little changed except he has no mouth,

except he has this urge to search, and wings –

oh she must twist and turn her tail’s green fire

like bait, its little stab of brightness in the night,

and he must search with wings through troubled air

to find her pinhole lure, its single, green,

seducing star .... All night she signals him in:

come find me – it is time – and almost dawn;

all night he looks for her in petrol stations

villages and homesteads, the city’s neon signs:

where are you – it is time – and almost dawn....

Once were humans wandered in the lanes,

led astray by fairies, foxfire, who found

their stranger selves and brought them home.

Now the dark is drowned, but some things

you can only find beyond the light,

and it is time and almost dawn and love,

my love, there is no finding then. 

-------- 

I did some computer work Thursday morning, and in the afternoon I had to work on the Big Upcoming Project, though that did get me out of the apartment (and I also stopped at Kohl's to pick up some huge post-holiday bargains, and took a walk to see the waterfowl in the lake). We ate leftover noodles for dinner, then I had Thursday night chat. 

After chat I watched this week's The Pitt with Cheryl, then the new episode of Starfleet Academy with Paul (better than the first episode but I'm a long way from sold on the show). Now we're watching some more Lower Decks which at least makes me laugh. Flowers and pollinators from the Woodland Park Zoo's Wild Lanterns:

Greetings from Woodland Park

On Sunday we went to Green Lake and spent most of the day with older son, starting with lunch at Gao Lhao Bangkok Noodle Shop (we thought about Kitanda but I was in the mood for drunken noodles). Then we picked up Theo and Thandi to walk around the lake -- it was Pokemon Community Day, so we also caught a lot of Grookeys and evolved some Rillabooms and I got lots of shinies and special backgrounds. 

After dropping the dogs back off at home -- son's wife was having a girl's day out with friends -- we then went to the Woodland Park Zoo for the last night of WildLanterns, the zoo's winter light display, which is all about nature...animals, plants, and underwater life. It was a chilly, beautiful evening after a clear, gorgeous day. When we left the zoo, we went to the Jewel Box for crepes both savory and sweet.

 

Once we got home and fed the cats, we watched the first two episodes of Starfleet Academy. I took lots of notes, many indicating places where I rolled my eyes and snorted in disgust, so I think I will give it another couple of episodes before I post them -- I mean, maybe it'll become less dependent on tropes and cliches and I'll stop wondering why there's energy for a whole colony of photonics post-Burn.

Poem for Tuesday and Cougar Mountain Lion Cubs

Sonnet 19 

By William Shakespeare 

Devouring time, blunt thou the lion's paws

And make the earth devour her own sweet brood,

Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger's jaws

And burn the long-liv'd phoenix in her blood,

Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleet'st,

And do what e'er thou wilt, swift-footed time,

To the wide world and all her fading sweets:

But I forbid thee one most heinous crime,

O carve not with thy hours my love's fair brow,

Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen,

Him in thy course untainted do allow

For beauty's pattern to succeeding men.

Yet do thy worst, old time, despite thy wrong,

My love shall in my verse ever live young. 

-------- 

I had a fairly quiet Tuesday morning doing paperwork and talking to a couple of friends, then lunch, making PDFs of some of the things I scanned yesterday, and a walk to the beach just as the rain was ending, so dozens of ducks and a huge murder of ravens were emerging. We came back for my DS9 group, which watched "Blood Oath" -- the episode in which Kang, Koloth, and Kor gather with Dax to fulfill a blood oath, and while some of them take issue with the fact that Dax is no longer Curzon, none of them care that Dax is now a woman who wants to be called Jadzia. There's also a wonderful scene in which Kira talks to Jadzia about what happens when you kill people and a bunch nicely unresolved between Dax and Sisko. 

We ordered Ballard Pizza for dinner and ate it while starting to watch the last several episodes of the new Robin Hood, which remains anachronistic, hard to pin down politically (is it good English values against the invader French, or nascent Christianity softening the Saxons into better people?), and extremely entertaining. Sean Bean, Connie Nielsen, and Steven Waddington own every scene they're in, the younger women are interesting and complicated, and there's so many Plantagenet dynasty shenanigans that it feels like a Lion in Winter prequel with a much stronger Prince John. Lots of things aren't resolved so I really hope there's another season! Speaking of lions, here are the cubs at Cougar Mountain Zoo: