Thanksgiving Week

Lots of ground to cover. On Monday, 11/22 it snowed here in Seattle and caused rush hour gridlock. I left my car in the building garage and caught a 41 bus to Northgate. Got on it at 6:30 p.m. and got off it at 10:30. Fortunately, I snagged a spy thriller from the library at our office and went to the bathroom before I started on this ride. Due to the snow we left for Portland on Tuesday during the day to take best advantage of daylight and warmest temperatures. I had planned to work Tuesday, but best laid plans and all that.

We stayed at Flanders Lofts at 4th and Flanders in downtown Portland. It is a one bedroom condo we rented via VRBO.com. It was nicely arranged and decorated, plus with a kitchen Kathy and Lauren could get together to do some cooking on Wednesday.

While in Portland we visited:

~Rose's Restaurant on 23rd N.W.
~the Polish pottery store...something Kathy had her on her mind.
~Thai Peacock Restaurant
~Biwa restaurant, where we met up with Lauren, Erich, and Jared.
~Macaroni Grill downtown (read on for an interesting story on this).

On Thursday we went to 535 E. Knott Street to Jared's and Erich's upstairs apartment. There we met Charlotte, Jared's girlfriend, and all of us collaborated on a lovely Thanksgiving meal. Turkey, cauliflower with cheese, potatoes, green bean casserole, fruit salad, brussel sprouts with bacon, macaroni and cheese, pecan pie with whipped cream and plenty of booze! Then we played Cranium and yours truly can spell words backwards like crazy! A fine time was had by all. I felt very lucky to be a Dad getting to hang with his daughter. All the other young people there were not with their parents.....

We also went to a McMenanims theatre where we saw "Inception"...a very trippy sci-fi movie about planting dreams in people's heads. Leonard Di Caprio, Marion Cotillard, Ellen Page. Adding to our movie watching for the weekend, we saw "A Single Man" on demand at the condo. It was pretty good about the real grief and the real love in a gay couple's life in the '60's but I hated the ending. Then, on Black Friday, after mall crawling a while at Pioneer Place in downtown we saw "Love and Other Drugs" with Jake Gyllenhall and Anne Hathaway.

After the movie we went across the street to Macaroni Grill for a farewell dinner with Lauren. She was headed to Eugene to spend a few days with friends there before flying back to D.C. on Sunday. Our meal was interesting in several ways. First, I ran into Jane Weinold, a coworker from Seattle, and her daughter. Second, the tables are covered with white butcher paper and equipped with crayons. our server, Eliza, wrote her name upside down and backward so of course I had to and so did Lauren. We then got Kathy to sign it on my theory that even though it was destined for the trash, for a brief time it was a historical artifact of our evening together and based on relativity it was a moment that would live forever. Somewhere in the far distance some one has not yet seen it because the light has yet to reach them....I know, I know...

Finally, while we were doing this stuff at Macaroni's, a few blocks to the east the Christmas Tree lighting was occurring and so was a failed terrorist plot to blow up a van parked near the tree! Yes, the event, or thankfully non-event, that is in the news played out within a few blocks of us. The bomber was busted at the Train station which is about 200 yards from the condo we had rented!

So, we had a lovely long break with our daughter and other young people, and a mass murder bombing that might have threatened us was foiled. A lot to be thankful for.

Goodbye Norm

my b-in-law Norm passed away today from a stroke. he was 80. always a calm, pleasant guy to be around, with a low-key manner. in recent years he had rediscovered a passion for photography and was quite good. google Norman Andrus and follow any of several links to view his beautiful photos...mainly of California. rest in peace, Norm.

Ed Sullivan Time II

clever me...use a TV trivia piece to represent Sunday night and turns out I used it before! When there were only 1 or 2 or 3 TV channels, Ed Sullivan Show dominated Sunday night. Entire families gathered after dinner to watch a variety show: music acts, jugglers, trained animals, and, in 1964 or so, the Beatles!

anyway, recapping the weekend before I retire to netflix.

Saturday: trim the hedge, mow the lawn, trim the bushes by house, sweep the sidewalk, see the crud out of the juncture of the curb and street, general front of house tidy up. needed it and it was a fabulous day weather wise. 75 degrees and sunny.

cleaned the living room, washed both couch covers, moved three boxes for Lauren to the back of the Yaris so I can take them to work for UPS to D.C. cleaned the back deck, sprayed the crow shit off one end of it and a couple of the chairs. etc, etc.

dinner: Lowell & Carol came over and we sat out on deck in the balmy afternoon and drank some champagne. Kathy made a plum klafutti, Vicysoisse soup (using potatoes from our garden), we Weber'd some chicken thighs, had a find Rioja, and enjoyed intelligent wide ranging conversation.

rained pretty good overnight.

Sunday: lazy day. some laundry, harvested the rest of the potatoes from garden and cleaned out the vines, ran to store to get the Seattle Times and the New York Times, and went for bike ride on Burke-Gilman trail. We rode about 50+ minutes and both of us had the light sweat and the slightly weak thighs...so it was good, kicked our old butts a little.

Word from California is Norm has had a stroke and that is not good. He's 80 or so, and Geri is worried. I'm sending out the positive vibes for compassion,recovery, acceptance, gracefulness......those kinds of attitudes and ways of being when confronted with the shitty reality of getting old and feeble. Power to you Norm, whatever the outcome.

Monday September 20, 2010

Current "fun": watching anything on Netflix. We have a TIVO which lets us stream all kinds of movies and TV shows. No commercials! We record Mad Men on Sunday night and watch on Monday. Both of us like it pretty well.

I sat down at computer to install new HP printer that I got as part of a deal when buying Lauren an Apple laptop. Then o course have gotten distracted doing other stuff.

Lauren: living in D.C. and enrolled in a joint Masters in European Studies and Phd in German program at Georgetown. She's on full tuition, plus stipend! Quite a girl, but we are not thrilled she is at the other end of the country. Kathy is going for a long weekend at the end of September. I'll be gone at same time to conference in San Diego.

Lauren went to Arizona and met up with the Red House gang for Laura's wedding. Here's a sidetrip to Grand Canyon:



Working hard. Never enough time, never caught up. Frustrating.

Enough for tonight.