Greetings from West Coast Spring

We woke to about nine inches of new snow, which wasn't as bad as the worst predictions, though snow continued to fall for several hours and the wind increased before it decreased. The neighborhood crew plowed a couple of times and shoveled our front steps a couple of times, but we had to get the weight of a foot and a half of new snow off the deck, so since Paul was working, I had another day with long hours of shoveling big piles of snow over the side. There was a lot of wind blowing a lot of snow off the trees, but the sun peeked out weakly, so despite the fact that they still don't have our streets clear, I was hopeful it meant our power would stay on -- not everyone in New England was so lucky. 

We took a walk when Paul was finished working to see the neighborhood under huge piles of snow, but it was very slippery and quite cold, so I tried submitting a new Pokestop (this whole neighborhood is a Pokemon Go wasteland, sadly) and went home quickly. We talked to my parents before dinner (frozen veggie riblets and mac & cheese, the kind of thing we can cook until our pots and pans arrive). Afterward we watched the first three episodes of the new season of Paradise, two of which are very different from last season but still enjoyable; awesome cameos and flashbacks, though Silo-level plot holes. Because it's all snow here, some spring from Bellevue Botanical Garden a couple of weeks ago:

Greetings from Bellevue Botanical Garden

Most of my Wednesday was packing, though I took breaks in the morning to talk to a couple of high school friends and in the afternoon to watch half an episode of The Rings of Power with friends I'll be living much closer to in a few days. 

I wasn't sitting for long enough really to follow the Olympics, though I did watch the very up and down ice dance final (thrilled for Gilles/Poirier and Zingas/Kolesnik, proud of and sad for Chock/Bates, have never liked Cizeron -- Papadakis was the best feature of his skating for me -- and Fournier Beaudry definitely skates better without her icky boyfriend-partner but she's still calling the woman he was suspended for assaulting a liar). 

We had a late dinner with Daniel and Cahaya at Thai Ginger -- they're leaving for their honeymoon before we head east -- then came home for more packing! From yesterday at Bellevue Botanical Garden, some more hellebores, witch hazel, plum blossoms, snowdrops, camellias, crocuses and daffodils:

Greetings from Bellevue

Running late after a bunch of packing chores but I had a nice Tuesday around that! Chris brought us lunch from The Curry Leaf, so we shared veggie Indian food before a trip to Bellevue Botanical Garden by way of the Factoria Recycling & Transfer Station (which ridiculously was not accepting medical waste -- they wanted us to drive an hour somewhere else or come back on the weekend, at which point we'll be on a plane) and Goodwill. Lots of hellebores, witch hazel, snowdrops, and some crocuses, daffodils, and aconite in bloom!

 

Two members of my DS9 group couldn't come tonight (one's on a cruise, one had family stuff) and I was pretty crazed trying to upload all my photos before I pack up my computer tomorrow, so I chatted with the two who could come online while I moved the files around. We had soup, crackers and cheese for dinner, and we've had the Olympics on in the evening while working on various move-related projects -- the men's short program was very enjoyable, I'm so glad Maxim Naumov had a good afternoon, and now I'm trying to understand the slope style grading system.

Greetings from Bellevue Botanical Garden

Most of my Monday was busy work, enlivened by visits from maintenance to fix one of our burners and someone else to look at a leaky shower, until late afternoon when we drove to Bellevue and parked at Wilburton Hill Park to walk to Bellevue Botanical Garden, which is in the last days of the annual Garden D'Lights show. We got hot chocolate in the coffee shop there and walked around the winter light garden, which isn't a holiday show but a recreation of elaborate gardens in string and cluster lights, with some animals and a dragon too:

 

We ate our leftover Christmas Swedish food for dinner, which was still yummy, and watched the end of the Rams-Falcons game (for the sake of the Seahawks, I rooted for Atlanta, who fought hard and won despite being out of playoff contention). Then we put on Always Be My Maybe, which is a few years old but I'd seen a good review of it somewhere and it always amuses me how Asian family-and-romance movies remind me of good Jewish family-and-romance movies (shit like Nobody Wants This does not count). It's funny and Wong and Park are sweet together.

Greetings from Bellevue

Quick post after an evening in Bellevue -- it was a beautiful day, so we went to the botanical garden to see the changing leaves and what fall flowers remain, then we went to Bellevue Square to look at the Halloween displays and eat dinner at the Cheesecake Factory (Paul had a coupon for a free piece of cheesecake he was itching to use, and I like their fried macaroni and cheese balls). 

It was otherwise an uneventful day; I worked on a photo project in the morning, we caught the end of the Ravens victory when we got home, and we watched this week's Halloween episode of Ghosts before some Twin Peaks. I'll post garden photos after I sort them; here are Halloween decorations and dinner at the mall, where we also saw the Seahawks' Drake Thomas being interviewed for Hawks Live:

Greetings from Bellevue

The expected rain arrived on Friday, so I had a mostly indoor day. I rearranged some bookshelves, read some more of Kraken, and since it was very wet out when it was time to walk in the afternoon, we went to Crossroads Mall in Bellevue, where in addition to walking we looked at Halloween and Christmas stuff in the Hallmark store. We also stopped in World Market, which was giving away covered mushroom mugs, for some food.

 

We got home in time for the World Series, which I enjoyed -- I like Ohtani, but even though a lot of my family are Dodgers fans and the Blue Jays knocked the Mariners out, I'm secretly hoping Toronto wins. Afterward, we watched A House of Dynamite, which is pretty gripping and has a cast with many actors I appreciate, but has an infuriating copout of an ending that makes it feel dated, like a Reagan-era anti-nuke fable.

Greetings from Overlake

On Thursday I took a break from goats and baseball -- though I saw both in the morning, since the Orioles played early (and won with a walkoff) and the goats are moving closer to our building as they eat their way through the weeds. I went with Paul to his colonoscopy appointment, and while he was having the procedure I walked around the Overlake Hospital complex, which has big central gardens and lots of artwork on display by PNW artists, even Chihuly:

 

While waiting in the hospital I started reading The Secret of Secrets (Dan Brown is trashy, I don't care, it's still entertaining). We had Rosh Hashanah leftovers for dinner, went to see the goats again, and watched the Seahawks beat the Cardinals. Then we watched this week's Peacemaker, which has an awesome twist I'd seen predicted on the internet somewhere but that just made it more fun. Now I'm watching KPop Demon Hunters again because it's awesome.

Poem for Wednesday and Equestrian Madness

The Horses 

By Ted Hughes 

I climbed through woods in the hour-before-dawn dark.

Evil air, a frost-making stillness,

Not a leaf, not a bird,—

A world cast in frost. I came out above the wood

Where my breath left tortuous statues in the iron light.

But the valleys were draining the darkness

Till the moorline—blackening dregs of the brightening grey—

Halved the sky ahead. And I saw the horses:

Huge in the dense grey—ten together—

Megalith-still. They breathed, making no move,

With draped manes and tilted hind-hooves,

Making no sound.

I passed: not one snorted or jerked its head.

Grey silent fragments

Of a grey silent world.

I listened in emptiness on the moor-ridge.

The curlew's tear turned its edge on the silence.

Slowly detail leafed from the darkness. Then the sun

Orange, red, red erupted

Silently, and splitting to its core tore and flung cloud,

Shook the gulf open, showed blue,

And the big planets hanging—

I turned

Stumbling in the fever of a dream, down towards

The dark woods, from the kindling tops,

And came to the horses.

                                            There, still they stood,

But now steaming and glistening under the flow of light,

Their draped stone manes, their tilted hind-hooves

Stirring under a thaw while all around them

The frost showed its fires. But still they made no sound.

Not one snorted or stamped,

Their hung heads patient as the horizons,

High over valleys, in the red levelling rays—

In din of the crowded streets, going among the years, the faces,

May I still meet my memory in so lonely a place

Between the streams and the red clouds, hearing curlews,

Hearing the horizons endure.

-------- 

My Wednesday had some annoyances, though it started nicely enough, chatting with two of my high school friends. It was hotter than originally predicted, though at least it didn't hit 90. I had my annual mammogram after lunch, which went smoothly although I won't get the actual results for a week, then I went to Bellevue to pick up a prescription that CVS had told me was ready (in fact they told me it was the last day I could pick it up), then told me when I arrived that it was not in fact there. So we had to kill half an hour waiting for them to slap a label on a container and went to Belle Pastry around the corner for chocolate mousse cake. 

I missed most of both the Mariners and Orioles games while we were out, which I guess is just as well in the case of the latter though they were winning for a while before we got home, and it was more important to me that Seattle win than that I see it. We had gnocchi with Trader Joe's excellent Limone Alfredo sauce for dinner and now we're watching Thunderbolts on Disney+, which has some flaws but lets Geraldine Viswanathan do some fun stuff and has a lovely Yelena-and-Alexei dynamic that gives David Harbour and Florence Pugh some beautiful moments. Some Equestrian Madness from the Washington Midsummer Renaissance Faire: