My So Called Life

Seattle Part One – Into the Wild

/ Shane / 3 Comments

Although she has flown two other times before (Arizona and Philadelphia) it was like flying for the first time to Evie. She was pretty excited about it, but Sara and I were a little dubious since she is a little more active (rambunctious) these days and this was a loooong flight. We had a layover in San Jose, so I think the whole thing was about 6 1/2 hours, not to mention getting to the airport before our flight, etc. We had some free drink coupons from the airline and Sara had the idea that we could pass them out to the people unlucky enough to sit in front of our kicking, screaming monster child. As it (always) turns out, she was the perfect little angel and here we sit with free drink coupons, unredeemed.

Evie was practically giddy with excitement as we prepared to take off, however, as soon as the airplane left the ground her eyes got as big as saucers and she gripped the side of the seat screaming, “Go down! Go down!” When the pilot refused to heed her cries, she moaned in dismay, “It just keeps going higher and higher!” By the time we got home, she was an old pro and enjoyed in particular the take-offs and landings.

The first part of our Seattle vacation was sort of the rugged, outdoorsy, adventure part of the trip. After arriving late and spending the night by the airport, we took a car ferry over to the San Juan islands. As I expected, this was probably my favorite part of the trip. Friday Harbor was sort of Mackinac-ish, with shopping and restaurants and an awesome port to watch boats. The rest of the island is a little more sedate, and we took some awesome hikes. We saw wild deer, 2 foxes, quail, a 6 inch slug (we have a picture to prove it), jelly fish, seals, and, of course, orcas. Unfortunately, we did not see any bald eagles, which are apparently abundant.

Not actually one of our pictures

Not actually one of our pictures, not even the boat we were on

Of course the highlight of the trip was the whale watching tour to see the orcas (“killer whales”) which live around the islands. Unfortunately, the whales were waaay up in Vancouver, but fortunately the boat was willing to drive all the way up there. They said it was the farthest north they’ve ever gone in that boat. It was well worth the journey, because all 3 of the local pods were together in one “super pod”. There were around 85 whales in the water when we got there. You could see them in almost any direction and I saw several “breaches” (when they jump right out of the water). We got some pictures, but it was hard to capture the coolness. Unfortunately, since we had to spend so much time getting up there and getting back, we didn’t get to see much of the other native wildlife. We did see some seals on the way back though. We were on the boat for like 4 hours and Evie did a marvelous job, never getting cranky.

When we got back, we bought Evie a stuffed orca, Echo, and she became our constant companion for the rest of the trip. We helped Evie choose a name from the orcas that were born the same year she was. Evie was stuck to her like glue. Since Evie’s car seat was on the side of the car instead of the middle, we were worried about closing the door. We would say, “Fingers!” and Evie would say, “Fingers Echo!” I’m happy to report, neither Evie nor Echo lost any fingers in the door.

That was pretty much it for the first part of the trip, but I just wanted to mention (since we were talking about it) that we  had an amazingly weird but amazingly tasty sandwich on the trip. The restaurant was Market Chef and the sandwich was “sister’s favorite sandwich”. It consisted of apple slices, cheddar cheese, sunflower seeds, sprouts and dijon mustard, all melted into a gooey deliciousness that is hard to describe. I know it sounds weird, but it was mouth watering!

Garden Update

/ Shane / 1 Comment

It has been a long time since I really gave an update on the garden (aside from the pickle canning of course). I guess the second year isn’t quite as exciting as the first year. In fact, the first time around we were snapping pictures of every new fruit or vegetable that poked it’s head out, but this year we don’t even bat an eye at massive, award winning, 20 pound zucchini. Actually though, the garden this year is head and shoulders above our garden from last year. There are a couple of big differences.

First off, we are doing a lot less weeding. I don’t know if it is because we got the garden sooner and thus were able to nip more weeds in the bud, if we were just smarter about our weeding, or if our garden is just laid out so well and so full, that the weeds are just crowded out. Or it could be that we just don’t care about having a weedy garden as much. Whatever the reason, this is saving us a lot of time and effort.

Second, our garden is planned out much better, in some cases because of the knowledge we gained last year. We are even rotating things out, for example, we had a huge crop of lettuce before it eventually made way for other things, since it is over quickly. We planted squash that is timed out such that the zucchini will be finished and ripped out in time to make room for the squash. We’re also working on our second crop of carrots.

The lettuce was out of control, we couldn’t give it away fast enough. Currently, we have more zucchini than we know what to do with. We’ve gotten tons of beans, most of which we’ve frozen. Now we are starting to enter tomato season.  So far only our cherry tomatoes have been taking off, but we have some types of tomatoes which are all ready at the same time, like Roma, so we will be expecting a tomato avalanche shortly. We also have at least 8 good sized green peppers waiting for us and we’ve even gotten a few hot peppers.

So, even though I haven’t been posting as much as last year about the garden, rest assured it is going (and growing!) strong.

Scenes from a Gas Station

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Yesterday I was at a suburban gas station. Parked next to me was a really old, beat up van. The van was packed as if the people inside were going on vacation. I was sort of curious because the van hardly looked like it wold run and the people inside were kind of confusing. The “parents” couldn’t have been more than 30 and the “kids” were probably between 16 and 18. Maybe it was a church group or something. Anyway, right then the man tried to start the van and it took a looong time getting started. When it finally roared to life I glanced up and caught the eye of the guy driving. He gave me a wink and a nod and a look that kind of said, “Oh yeah, listen to that beauty!”

I was still laughing at that a few minutes later when some shady dudes pulled up in a super ratty van and said, “Hey! You interested in an entertainment center?” I was like, “huh?” and he was like, “An entertainment center. For your house.” I said, “Uh..no thanks. I’ve already got one.” He said, “Are you sure, I’ll give you a good price.” “No thanks,” I said and they finally drove away.

This has really got me thinking. Who buys an shady entertainment system in a parking lot? Someone has to, right? Or else they wouldn’t do it. I mean, even if I could be sure it wasn’t stolen and / or broken, like say it was from a Best Buy van or something, what are the odds that A) I would be in the market for an entertainment system, B) I’d be carrying a large amount of cash with me (they didn’t look like they were set up for credit card transactions) and C) that I’d even be able to haul it home in my car. And why, out of all the people in the gas station, did they single me out as a potential customer? I was dressed pretty decently, I was coming from work, and I was even wearing my badge.

I almost wish I had the whole thing to do over again so I could pretend to be really interested, just to get more information. “Yeah? What do you got? Let me see!” I just want to judge their face to see if they’re surprised, or if that was a normal, expected reaction.

That was one of the strangest trips to the gas station in my life.

Weekend in Review

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This weekend we had an unusual calm in the storm that is our summer weekend schedule. This means we had plenty of time on our hands, which we used to do basically nothing. Especially this weekend because it was super hot and humid, so I didn’t go outside unless I had a good reason. So I will give you the quick run down of the few events of the weekend:

We went to the Farmers’ Market and bought some of the best brats I have ever tasted. They were a tad pricey (okay, maybe more than a tad), but they were soooo delicious. They even came in old school butcher paper and they were all connected like a string of sausages. We bought a couple of ears of corn which we grilled with the brats and had a fantastic meal. I’m just saying.

While we were grilling outside, Evie made a “beauty salon”. I’m not sure where she got the idea from exactly, probably from one of her books. The beauty salon worked like this: she dragged a chair over to the porch stairs, and that was part of it, but we didn’t use the chair at all. Then she would have you sit on the stairs and she would sit on the stair above you, so she was level with your head. Then she would give you a back rub. Sometimes she would pretend to get something to put in your hair, sometimes she wouldn’t. Then she would tell you that you looked pretty and then call for someone else to come to her beauty salon. It was quite amusing!

Evie and I were practicing riding the tricycle over the weekend. She’s getting there. I was trying to teach her how to steer and I kept saying, “Point the tricycle where you want it to go!” and she would take her hand off the handle bars and point furiously, even as the handle bars pointed away from it, as if to say, “Over there tricycle! Why aren’t you going that way, can’t you see I’m pointing?”

Evie was my little helper over the weekend. We were fixing squeaky doors with WD-40 and she was my official  squeak tester. She was so excited to open and shut the door really fast and then declare, “No squeaks!” One good thing about kids is that, sometimes it is really easy to make them happy. 🙂

Camping Question

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In light of my recent camping post being linked to by a camping blog, I thought I would put up a little poll about something that came up when we were camping. I meant to include this in my original camping post, but I forgot to write it down on my blogging notes from the weekend, so it slipped my mind.

In other news, we are down to a 1 car family as Sara’s car takes an extended stay in the shop (should be about a week when all is said and done). And there will still probably be more repairs in the future. We are having a pretty bad run as far as car trouble goes. I think when all is said and done, we’ll have spent about $1,300 in about two months between our two cars. It’s really not too bad when you consider we haven’t had much car repair for the past few years, so maybe we should count our blessings. Still pretty annoying though.