Weekend Update

Saturday debuted grey and drizzly and stayed that way all day. First day like that in some time so I would not complain, but......it happened to be the day that my sister, Ginger, wanted my help with her two storage lockers. So off we went to Bonney Lake to spend a day in the rain shuffling stuff in and out of two storage lockers. She did extract a good truckload of stuff to go to Goodwill, and, I got to sit part of the time and read a junk thriller I got from one of her giveaway boxes.

Later that night we met up with the Tyler-Jordans, their son Bucky, and Al Adams & Alayne Cartales at a place at Northgate. We all ate some snacks and had a nice adult chat about politics, the financial meltdown, kids, jobs and all that kind of stuff.

I did not share with them that I had gone to Alaska USA Federal, where we have had an account for some time for a car loan and deposited a sizeable chunk of change drawn against WaMu. Given the most recent bailout news I imagine WaMu is going to find a buyer and survive, but I wanted to do the typical prudent financial thing of not having all your eggs in one basket. Now we're not in danger of maybe being over the FDIC limit at WaMu. The regs for the FDIC coverage are impossible to decipher so I decided the most conservative interpretation was to not have more than $100,000 in any one bank. Strange times for me to have enough money to worry about such stuff and at the same time we're having one of the worst financial meltdowns since the GD.

On Sunday Kathy, Lauren, and I went to Phantom of the Opera at the Paramount Theatre. Quite good and I always get some extra fun from considering the stagecraft...thanks to all the fun and success I had in that in high school. Afterward, we ate at Lolas at 4th & Virginia. Shared a carafe of Lola red with the girls and had some very good food with a Greek spin.

Before heading out this morning I kicked off the 08 Holidays by buying a few things from National Geographic catalog. Some cool stuff and maybe for a change I will not have any crushing shopping despair as Christmas gets closer.

Some of the neighbors, none I know personally, hatched up a 'glo stick' parade for 7:45 p.m. Quite charming to see 20 to 30 kids and a few adults on bike, scooter, unicycle and foot go by with glo sticks decorating them. Several houses on my block were out to cheer them on. One of the parading adults told us "we just made it up". Very pleasant little demo of silliness and neighborhood building.

Now I am off to TV room to join girls and huddle down for a Sunday evening. It started to rain again, just as I was outside for the 'glo stick parade'. I'll take my thriller, "Area 7", (yes, in the desert in american southwest) and read while they likely watch a sitcom or a rerun of Sex In The City.

I hope all of you had a pleasant, unremarkable weekend with some people you love.

Rolling On

This morning Lauren had to be at work at 8 a.m. in a building directly across the street from mine. We drove together in her Yaris….my first commute with my girl with both of us going to work. She was dressed in high heels, dark slacks and jacket. Looked very professional for her stint as a receptionist for a small law firm. Later we went to lunch together. Walked to the Pike Place Market and ate on the second floor deck at Copacabana. The sun was shining, the market was busy but not tourist crazy, flower baskets were in abundance, and I felt quite lucky to have her company while we chatted about various domestic details. I did get a chance to brag about her to our cashier during a chat about whether or not I spoke Spanish. I pointed through the window to where Lauren was sitting and said "she can speak German and French…maybe Spanish next?". L was quite careful of the time to make sure she got back to work on schedule, but we did manage to buy a half dozen of the little fresh donuts from the market. She ate the ones with multi-color candy sprinkles on them. Sweet.