Greetings from Redmond

Spent another lovely nostalgic day in Redmond and Seattle, starting with breakfast in our hotel, after which we checked out and brought our things to Daniel's house. From there we drove to Redmond, where we met our former next door neighbors for lunch at Kitanda and a walk on the dock in our old neighborhood; we got to see one of the eagles, a great blue heron, some Canada geese, wood ducks, and grebes. 

Then we met Daniel and Cahaya at Marymoor Park with their huskies, who encountered several other huskies in the dog park. Cahaya had some stops to make on the way home, so we went to Idylwood Park to walk by the beach where we walked almost every day when we lived in Redmond. We also drove past the leaves changing color along West Lake Sammamish Parkway and the new light rail along the highway. 

In the late afternoon we drove to Seattle Center to get dinner at the Armory. Cahaya couldn't get anything she wanted, so she went to find sushi and the rest of us had Mod Pizza, then went to Chihuly Garden and Glass, which is sometimes open to the public at night when there isn't a wedding or special event. We'd never seen the gardens lit up before, and they're just as spectacular in the dark!

Greetings from Underwater

I packed all the books and Tarot decks in my bedroom on Friday, which took up most of my day, apart from some reading at lunch (acai and The Bookstore Below). In the late afternoon we walked to the beach, saw the eagles, and enjoyed the 60-degree weather -- we have daffodils and plum blossoms blooming along the park path! 

My evening involved more packing, a shower, leftover Indian food, uploading a month's worth of animal photos, and the Milan Olympics opening ceremonies plus some of the team skating competition. Now we're watching the season finale of Ponies, which has been excellent. Here's the octopus we met at the Seattle Aquarium:

Greetings from Old Salem

My Wednesday was mostly about packing, though I did take a break to chat with Kay in the morning and to watch some Rings of Power with Kristen and Laurie in the afternoon. We also walked to the beach -- it was 60 degrees! -- and saw three eagles and many ducks, geese, and coots. 

 After eating leftover Kanishka for dinner, we watched this week's The Masked Singer, and now we're watching Ponies, which is excellent -- great acting, not too much violence, and a major holocaust-related storyline. Flickr is down, so here's a rerun of a previous visit to Salem, Oregon in 2008:

 

 

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 Juanita Beach

My Thursday was mostly about packing, though during a trip to Home Depot to get more book-size boxes (they're cheaper there than from the moving company), we stopped at Blazing Bagels for the first time in a while and got some excellent bagels though we also discovered that they no longer make bagel dogs, vegan or otherwise! We also walked to the beach in the rain and waded through a large flock of geese enjoying the wet grass at the park. 

After Thursday night chat, Cheryl and I watched The Pitt together. When it was over, I wasn't much in the mood for New Klingons, and instead started the fourth season of Bridgerton, which is beautiful despite its flaws (and while I'm rooting for Sophie, I really don't want Benedict turning into a completely different person for her). Since I posted zoo birds yesterday, here's some of the variety of birds we saw at Juanita Bay last weekend:

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:

Poem for Wednesday and Twin Peaks Country

Vocabulary 

By Jason Schneiderman 

I used to love words,

but not looking them up.

Now I love both,

the knowing,

and the looking up,

the absurdity

of discovering that “boreal”

has been meaning

“northern” all this time

or that “estrus”

is a much better word

for the times when

I would most likely

have said, “in heat.”

When I was translating,

the dictionary

was my enemy,

the repository of knowledge

that I seemed incapable

of retaining. The foreign word

for “inflatable” simply

would not stay in my head,

though the English word “deictic,”

after just one encounter,

has stuck with me for a year.

I once lost “desiccated”

for a decade, first encountered

in an unkind portrayal

of Ronald Reagan, and then

finally returned to me

in an article about cheese.

I fell in love with my husband,

not when he told me

what the word “apercus” means,

but when I looked it up,

and he was right.

There’s even a word

for when you use a word

not to mean its meaning,

but as the word itself,

and I’d tell you what it was

if I could remember it.

My friend reads the dictionary

for its perspective on culture,

laughs when I say that

reference books are not really

books, but proleptic databases.

My third grade teacher

used to joke that if we were bored

we could copy pages out of the dictionary,

but when I did, also a joke,

she was horrified rather than amused.

Discovery is always tinged

with sorrow, the knowledge

that you have been living

without something,

so we try to make learning

the province of the young,

who have less time to regret

having lived in ignorance.

My students are lost

in dictionaries,

unable to figure out why

“categorize” means

“to put into categories”

or why the fifth definition

of “standard” is the one

that will make the sentence

in question make sense.

I wonder how anyone

can live without knowing

the word “wonder.”

A famous author

once said in an interview,

that he ended his novel

with an obscure word

he was sure his reader

would not know

because he liked the idea

of the reader looking it up.

He wanted the reader,

upon closing his book, to open

another, that second book

being a dictionary,

and however much I may have loved

that author, after reading

that story

(and this may surprise you)

I loved him less.

-------- 

My Wednesday was just as social as my Tuesday, but from home. I chatted with two of my high school friends in the morning, ate lunch with Paul, did a little bit of work, and watched some Rings of Power with Kristen and Laurie. Then we took a walk in beautiful weather to the beach, saw four eagles and many ducks, and came home for some chores and dinner. 

TV tonight was the season finale of Percy Jackson, which I didn't like as much as the first season, plus the new episode of Fallout, which has improved as the season has gone on, and this week's The Masked Singer, entertaining but they sent home two black performers while they kept the mediocre Snow Cone. More photos from Twin Peaks -- sawmill, sheriff's department, Dutchman's Lodge, Double R Diner!