Olympia Walk

Husband and I traveled to the capitol of our state for Thanksgiving weekend with extended family. "Extended" is a good descriptor; there were over 40 people crammed into Brother-in-law's house with new little faces to be met and a few friends thrown in for good measure. And, of course, there was feasting a-plenty.

But before all the decadence, Husband and I took a long walk in the morning from our rented lodgings around the downtown area and waterfront at Olympia. So come along with us.

Right around the corner from our rented apartment we passed the community garden, which included assorted vegetables, restful garden decorations, and a little chicken farm.  It was charming.

As long-time readers of this blog will know well, we get very excited when we see a sculpture with which we can interact.  This young girl in front of some health-related state government building provided a lovely opportunity.

Down the way we were amused to find that this lucky chair had been named "Chair of the Month." I wonder what fine behavior earned it that honor?

Reaching the waterfront was an exciting moment for inlanders like us. It never fails to thrill me when I can get back to a place where there is a goodly body of ocean water.  It's like an old friend for this island girl.

As you can see from the map, though, we were nowhere near oceanfront. Note the "You are here" red dot, way down at the bottom of the Puget Sound.

Statues aren't the only inanimate objects with which we interact. Husband couldn't resist doing the Samson act when we reached this pier.  Somewhere under those layers are muscles...big, impressive ones, of course!

I was delighted to look down off the end of the pier and see jellies plying the waters.  It's not easy to get a picture of these ephemeral creatures. Photo editing software helps them show up more clearly.

 By this point in our walk Husband was feeling very cold. I was feeling playful. The two states of mind don't always mix happily. Check out the facial expressions.

There were huge long strings of geese flying over. And yes, unlike some of the silly groups we see on the east side of the state, these were actually headed south!

Headed back toward the downtown, we found these two happy beings near the farmer's market. We couldn't resist doubling the number of happy beings.

Living in a rural area, we tend to forget about some of the "oddities" one sees in a more urban environment. ("Oddities," of course, just refers to something not typically seen. Not meant to be pejorative.) As best as we could tell, this one was an impressive wall mural celebrating the work done by labor unions and other similar advocacy organizations.

You know those stations in touristy stores where you find key chains, mugs, and suchlike with people's names on them?  Well, I can never find mine. I don't have a Ginger mug, Ginger keychain, or Ginger anything. So it was kind of fun, as a tourist, to find that Olympia has a Ginger Street. How magnanimous of them.

While this town didn't serve up a lot of good weather over the weekend--it was raining by the time we arrived back at the apartment from our long walk--there were a lot of beautiful fall colors to be seen, and interesting architecture.  I'm quite fond of big stone buildings such as this one on their main street, which is called "Capitol Street."

And my final shot: a lovely, colorful Japanese maple a few doors down from where we stayed.  A crisp autumn day is an incomparable treat.  But a soggy autumn day isn't too bad if you have some lovely colors.

Driving Impaired

Wallula Gap. Photo from Wikipedia.

Yesterday we drove across Washington state to Olympia to celebrate Thanksgiving with a large gathering of family from Husband's side of the tribe. As we were coming over Nine Mile Hill at about 1:00 in the afternoon, heading down into the valley that leads to Wallula Gap, I noticed that the white Chevy pickup in front of me was weaving a bit. Then he drifted over toward the middle line, suddenly swerving back just before he would have sideswiped a vehicle coming up the hill.

"We could have been in an accident!" Husband exclaimed. He was right. I couldn't have stopped our car in time to miss a wreck. I slowed down and put a more cautious distance between me White Chevy and kept an eye on him.  He continued to weave in his lane, going a steady sixty-five miles an hour on the two-lane road. Occasionally he'd actually cross the middle line or the outside line for a moment.

Husband took my cell phone and called the Washington State Patrol. They didn't want to hear it. "Call 9-1-1," the lady said. So we called 9-1-1 and gave them White Chevy's Oregon license plate number and described the situation. "Okay. We have one other call to take care of first," they said. By now we were passing the Wallula paper mill, and the road widened to two lanes. I didn't much want to pass the guy. What if he drifted into me as I went by? I pulled up closer in the passing lane to assess what he was likely to do.

Wallula Paper Mill

And then I could see (with my super-duper long distance vision that always picks up information that I'm not supposed to see, like what others have written on their papers or computer screens) in his driver's side rear view mirror that White Chevy Driver was looking down for chunks of time. Looking down?

He was TEXTING!!!  The bum!!! Somehow it seems more egregious when someone is of sound mind and doing something that impairs their driving, than when they've been drinking too much and drive badly because they can't make good judgments in the moment. I know it's a hair's width of difference, but I think there's a higher degree of stupidity with the texting driver. When he nearly sideswiped the oncoming car and jerked himself back into his lane, he should have promptly set aside his phone and given himself a good verbal thrashing.

Husband and talked about it. We have texted while driving. We rarely do it any more, our consciousness having been raised about the dangers of driving impaired due to inattention. And now we have Exhibit One: White Chevy Man. We and the oncoming driver could have been toast because he was being a Stupid-head.

Lesson learned.

Postscript: Stupid-head turned off the highway before we reached Crazy Mary gas station (don't we live in a place with cool names?). So unfortunately he didn't get the pleasure of a little chat with a representative of the Washington State Patrol.  Bummer.

Missing

Seen on the wall by Husband's office door. I'm sure I'd recognize Timmy in a jiffy.

It's horrible when you lose something. A lady I know has been searching for a lost key for the last three weeks. My mom searches for her hearing aids pretty much on a daily basis. I have been searching for receipts I was sure I'd tucked away, but yesterday I had to turn in the dreaded "missing receipts" form to Accounting. It's no fun when something's lost.

I don't think you get very far in life before you're missing something or someone. You might miss your mama. You might miss your childhood home or friends. You might miss someone you love who has died. You might miss your good health. You might miss someone who has abandoned you, cut you off, or refused to try to understand you. You might miss having a better memory. You might miss an easier life, or a job you liked better, or a spouse being as attentive as they were in the beginning.

Jesus told several stories about things that were lost: A lost sheep, a lost coin, a lost son. Each story reminds us that those that are lost often don't know that they're lost, and that God is the great Finder and Rejoicer. No more missing. No more loss. It's a picture I'm fond of. Very fond indeed.

A Few Musings on Faddishness and Uniqueness

I met this gorgeous fellow at the Columbia Gorge Discovery Center

Have you noticed that people tend to go through fads with kitchens and small children? I've been somewhat intrigued by following them over the years since just after college, when I started noticing them.

First there were baskets and fake ivy. Just about any kitchen I walked into in the 1980s featured lots of baskets cluttering the tops of the kitchen cabinets or hutches, with fake ivy trailing across or down. Around that time, pop-out bay windows over the kitchen sinks became popular, sporting little cacti or potted herbs in them. Then it was the era of barnyard animals on the kitchen hand towels and potholders: ducks, cows, chickens and roosters and suchlike. And now? Now we're into the chrome-and-glass era. Appliances sport the brushed chrome of the sixties, and kitchen cabinets with clear or rippled glass doors are in, again reminiscent of the industrial look.

Another faddish target of decor is the nursery.  I haven't kept track of these particular fads for as long, considering I've just acquired grandchildren in the last ten years. But along with the princesses, cars, and teddy bears, I've noticed the Noah's Ark nursery era, and the Jungle Animals in Sage-and-Brown nursery era. And now we seem to be into the Owls and Fat 70's-Style Flowers nursery era. [Just for the record, I think owls and bright, fat 70's flowers are cute.]

Sometimes I think it would be fun to do something counter-cultural, like maybe decorate a nursery (not that I will ever have the opportunity) like Gilligan's Island with a thatched roof over the crib and a bamboo rocker. Or like a Tibetan monastery, or a Namibian desert. Or in the kitchen it might be fun to cook everything in a wok, or install a bright red refrigerator in place of our white one. By the way, how come I can't find good electric woks these days? They used to be a hot gift item. I need one.

It's funny, isn't it, how we are sometimes driven to do the "in thing," and at other times we individuate with the intent that no one else in the world could possibly be like us--although it's very unlikely that any person is truly going to find uniqueness. What is this push-pull of the community versus the hermit in our minds?  Sometimes I think there will always be a bit of the teenager left in us, looking for a tribe while simultaneously wondering who I might be if I were standing out on a mountaintop all alone.

Reading at the Table

It's Sunday morning, and I've just finished observing a long-treasured leisurely Sunday morning tradition at my house: sitting at the breakfast table with the newspaper, a cup of coffee and my breakfast.

I am glad that my mom never fussed at us for reading at the table. The only meal we had as a whole family each week was Saturday lunch after church, and of course the books didn't come to the table for that one. But the rest of the week, reading was just fine. My mom loves to read so much, she probably didn't want to give it up in order to model socially acceptable etiquette for us.  So we never learned that reading at the table would be against the rules in most families. And thankfully, Husband isn't a traditionalist, either, so I haven't had to shape up my errant ways.

When my brother and I were kids, reading was best coupled with a bowlful of Lucky Charms or a couple of tomato sandwiches for breakfast, or a plate of fried rice or rice noodles and veggies for lunch. The most highly-prized reading material was a big fat book called 1003 Jokes, Toasts and Stories, if I remember the title correctly. On Sundays it was the newspaper, with both of us kids grabbing to see who could get the funnies first. And while the meal menus have changed over the years, I still use mealtimes to catch up on magazines and book reading.

I know that all the dieting advice says you shouldn't read or watch TV while you're eating a meal. But so far the habit of reading at the table has me still firmly clutched in its grasp. It's like sitting down to share the meal with a variety of interesting friends, both old and new. What a rich experience!  I'm always learning something during my mealtimes. And I have a sneaking suspicion that this is the happy habit of a lifetime.

A Foray Into Florida

All photos by me

Life's been busy since the school year started for us. First I had to get the school year underway, and then I was busy training for and walking the Hood River Half Marathon--which ties, I'd say, with the North Olympic Discovery Half Marathon for the most beautiful course. And then we had a delightful visit from my brother and his 18-month old twins. And then I was off to Florida for meetings and a conference of chief academic administrators. 

Whew.

And the destination, to be exact, was St. Petersburg Beach.

I was excited about this trip because I've never been to the west coast of Florida before. My [vast] experience with Florida has been confined to Orlando-ish regions. The beach sounded great to me!

I decided to stay at the hotel where the meetings were held--the Tradewinds Resort. To keep down expenses I shared a suite with two other colleagues, one from Alberta, Canada, and one from the Napa valley in California. We had a rollicking good time, them being English teachers by discipline. When hanging out with other women who enjoy Hyacinth Bucket (I mean, "Boo-KAY"), there is no other option but a rollicking good time.

Walks on the beach, of course, were a must, as were visits to restaurants serving ethnic food. In my remote corner of Washington state, the only ethnic options are Mexican, Chinese and Thai. While at St. Petersburg Beach I got to go out for dinners at Greek, Thai and Indian. Heavenly!

The meetings themselves were very good. I reconnected with an old classmate from Harvard Institute for Educational Management; he and I have made it a yearly appointment to get together for coffee at these meetings. Our shared context of Christian higher education bonded us as classmates at Harvard, and we've been able to swap encouragement over time. This time it was bittersweet; he was just named the new president of a college in Ohio, so he will be moving into a different set of duties and meetings now.

Nevertheless, there were other connections to be made, ideas to be swapped, and people to meet. Meetings like this are good because you hear the latest and you realize that everyone is dealing with the same challenges you have at your school. There's something to be said for shared misery as well as shared triumphs.

On the next-to-last day of meetings, my two suite-mates and I decided to skip the afternoon workshops and get some culture. So off we went to discover the Salvador Dali museum in St. Petersburg. (For those who, like me, are unaware, St. Petersburg is the bigger city, and St. Petersburg Beach is the smaller town strung out along what is basically a long sandbar that's built up across the bay from St. Petersburg.)

The Dali museum is of lovely modern architecture, looking like a cube dropped into a bubble. In the picture above, not one of those triangular window panes is exactly the same dimensions as any other.

The spiral staircase in the atrium of the museum goes up three stories. The place is beautifully laid out, with lines to please the eye wherever you look. Architect Yann Weymouth, in my opinion, was brilliant in designing the building. The staircase, for example, was designed to resemble a string of DNA, a scientific phenomenon that intrigued Dali and showed up in his art.

Photographs are not allowed in the galleries, so you'll have to make do with pictures from the atrium and outside the museum. But the paintings are interesting, and in some cases gruesome. In my opinion, artists are typically an unusual and often tortured bunch of people who are inordinately self-absorbed, and it shows in their work. We took the recorded guided tours (a player and headphones for each person), which was very helpful in explaining the life and work of the artist, and what was being portrayed in the paintings. I'm a bit too culture-poor to pick up on the meanings myself, were I to just stand back and look.

Of course one of Dali's most famous paintings is the one called "The Persistence of Memory," which depicts wilted clock faces in a barren landscape. In the garden, looking at a depiction of one of those clocks on a twisted garden bench, we three administrators decided we must demonstrate just what administration does to a good woman!

One of the lovely things about visiting Florida in November is that the weather is pleasant and the flowers still blooming. The days were not too hot and the nights not too cool. And best of all were the palm trees. They always delight my soul.

And it's always fun to try something you've never done before when you're visiting a new-to-you city. Joy from Canada joined me in going for our first ever Segway tour, this one of St. Petersburg. Once we got a bit of training in the parking lot, we were off to see the town, the pier and the palm gardens. These are wonderful devices, these segways. I highly recommend--should you be where such a tour is offered--that you give it a whirl.

Despite the busy days in meetings, and the busy evenings networking with colleagues from across the country, my foray into Florida was a lovely break from the daily grind of committees, personnel issues to solve, and tasks to be done. It seems quite surreal, a couple of weeks later when it's below freezing with snow flurries outside. It was very good.

To paraphrase Hycinth Bucket in summary, "It's been a fun day, but we must press on."

The Poppy Dishes

Now that the Lad has moved out of our home for the last time, his second college degree being finished, Husband and I have been talking about getting new dishes to replace our well-worn, chipped ones. It has been an exciting thought, seeking out something new and more colorful than the beige dishes with the green lines on the rims.

When I was in the City an hour away last month, I dropped by Pier 1 Imports and found some gorgeous dishes with the theme of red poppies. They took my fancy immediately. I love red poppies. They make me think of the times I've spent in Europe in the summer. And I loved the warm colors of the golden background, the lovely flower-shaped dessert bowls and serving dishes. They were made in China, of course, but that was okay. We use lots of things made in China.

Being the careful sort, and considering the dishes were priced at $800-plus-some for a set of 10, we decided to wait and think it over. You don't want to jump at a purchase of that magnitude. We drove home without buying, thought about the dishes for a week, and still liked them just as much.

So we drove by the City on our way back from walking a half marathon one Sunday in Hood River, Oregon, and paid for the expensive 10-place setting of poppy dishes, complete with red square dishes, flowered square dishes, square bowls, mugs, and flower serving dishes. We lugged those heavy ceramic dishes home in surprisingly good cheer, considering we'd just spent a wad of money.

A couple of evenings later I unpacked a few of the dishes for their maiden voyage, serving pumpkin soup with croissants, cheese and tomatoes. My parents were happy to come up the hill to be present for the event. The meal was delicious . . . even more delicious, I'm certain, than it would have been on any other dishes in the whole world.  I was looking forward to many happy years eating off our red poppy dishes.

And then I filled the sink with soapy water and proceeded with the dish washing.

It was then that I noticed a sight that made my heart sink: Water had seeped in under the glaze at the seams of the bowls. The longer they soaked in the dish water, the higher the moisture soaked up from the base, darkening the ceramic of the dishes. I looked at the plates. The same thing had happened, spreading out from the square foot where it sits on the table. None of the set seemed to be water-tight.

Feeling sad, I took the whole set back to Pier 1 Imports later that week, a round-trip that wiped out a whole evening as I drove to the City, got my full refund (plus one penny, because it just happened that way when they figured it), and drove home. But more than the disappointment over lost time was the disappointment over a happy "find" gone wrong.

Sometimes we just don't get what we think we're getting. It's that kind of thing that makes you feel rather half-hearted for a while.