Daily Adventures

"I thought we were in Seattle.  What is that huge bright thing up in the sky?"

It's been cool here, but sunny.  Ordinarily, it is sunny here through September and into October, the long Indian summer is almost always a part of Seattle weather, but it's fun to talk about, especially since all the weather reports had been predicting rain for most of the days we were to be here.  60's as a high and clouds all the way down the ten day forecast.  But it's been remarkably clear and sunny here while we've been here, and I've been enjoying it a great deal.


I really enjoyed sitting on Isabel's back porch.  I read, I sketched the geraniums, and I waited for these guys to come to the hummingbird feeder.  There were hummingbirds who had staked out the feeder and it was always something of a thrill to hear the thrumming of their wings.

Our time with Isabel is something I think I'll just hold private.  It was good and helped me heal from some things I'd been holding. She's an amazing person, and I do love her a lot.

We also did some of our usual things, going to the Pike Place Market, hitting Uwajamaya and the bookstore there.  We found all kinds of small treasures, including a pen case for me, a Porco Rosso puzzle, origami paper that had old fashioned Japanese paper on one side and a different color backing it.

There was also this.  A Taiyaki.  *laughs*  I've been looking for them ever since I saw them in My Hero Academia.  All Might's mentor had them in his freezer and he nuked them to warm them up before he ate them, and I have been looking for them ever since.

Best of all Isabel has a two-slot toaster, so I was able to drop them into the single slot and toast them until they were crisp on the outside, and the adzuki bean filling was warm in the middle.  They were amazing, and Uwajamaya's supplier (or they might make them on site?  I don't know) was really good about getting the filling to conform to the outline, so that these fish were beautifully filled from edge to edge. The interesting thing was that the paste was lighter in color than the canned red bean paste I get from the store, so they might make that as well.

Another find was an ice cream place in Redmond called Molly Moon's Handmade Ice Cream, which had many of the usual flavors, but surprised me by having a Lavender Honey ice cream and a huckleberry topping.  The ice cream itself was redolent with lavender and the honey only added to the floral bouquet so that it felt like I was eating the essence of flowers. The huckleberry topping was fruity and almost citrusy with acidity.  I loved it.

Redmond has also gotten two interesting Northern Chinese restaurants. One of which we were able to visit.  Tian Tian noodles had the very intriguing dish of "Stir fried shredded pancake" in their noodle menu, which really reminded me of a dish my mother used to make that took day old scallion pancakes and fried them with various leftovers that turned out a bit like soft chow mein, but so much tastier.  But the other place, the Dough Zone, had the Shanghai style soupy bao (xiao long bao), so we had to go there.  *laughs*  And it was well worth it.

As you can see, we kind of dove in before I even got to snap a picture or three.  The sweet and sour cucumbers were crisp and exactly as advertised.  They were Japanese style cucumbers cut in a spiral and harder to pull apart then they looked like they might be.  The shredded ginger in the dish to the right was what really sold me on the place.  They got that right. It's what the xiao long bao shops in Shanghai gave you, and you were supposed to pour black vinegar in them to season the vinegar before you dipped the bao into them (or drizzled the vinegar into the soup spoon with the dumpling). That's a touch not a lot of places get right.

The xiao long bao, themselves, were amazing.  The skin had that perfect give, and none of the bao had holes in them so they were all filled with soup and the meat of the dumpling.  They were savory, so hot we could barely taste them to start, and then mellowed to a tender perfect example of what these are supposed to be.  The picture on the left is that of their "spicy beef roll", something we'd only ever gotten at the Taiwanese barracks food restaurant in San Diego... and it's slow-cooked spicy thinly sliced beef in a roll of scallion pancake.  And they'd done their scallion pancakes super crispy on the edges and the beef was good and spicy and beautifully tender.

I highly recommend them.  A review said that they had no ambiance, but that also meant that I could talk to John across the table without having to shout the way we'd had to at the more famous dumpling outlet in Bellevue.  It was a very successful visit.

Fall was in the air, and these maple leaves were the size of dinner plates.  We had one morning when it just rained for an hour or two before the sun came back out, and one night I could hear the rain and I went to sleep more peacefully than I have for quite some time.  I still miss the rain.  And it was so good to just walk in the trees.  We visited Marymoore and the dog park and were very happy about the one dollar parking fee that maintained the trails, and did a lot of improvements there that were good to see.

It was a good time, and we had to go on Friday to get home before Tuesday, as I had things scheduled.

I spent the entire weekend at La Foret, a UCC-supported retreat out in the Black Forest just west of Colorado Springs. It was an all-family retreat, so it included nearly anyone wanted to go, and was headed by Luke, our new pastor.

The Graff-Fryes also did a lot of the organization for the camp, including the schedule, content, and running the show. It was a very nice weekend, though the cabin beds, as usual, left a little to be desired so far as comfort was concerned. I really enjoyed lots of small aspects for the entire trip, not the least of which was sleeping the entire way there and the entire way back. *laughs*

( Lots of lovely little details of how things went. )

I spent the entire weekend at La Foret, a UCC-supported retreat out in the Black Forest just west of Colorado Springs. It was an all-family retreat, so it included nearly anyone wanted to go, and was headed by Luke, our new pastor.

The Graff-Fryes also did a lot of the organization for the camp, including the schedule, content, and running the show. It was a very nice weekend, though the cabin beds, as usual, left a little to be desired so far as comfort was concerned. I really enjoyed lots of small aspects for the entire trip, not the least of which was sleeping the entire way there and the entire way back. *laughs*

( Lots of lovely little details of how things went. )

I've mostly recovered from the eye infection. After running through all the systemic antibiotics and a full bottle of the antibiotic eye drops with steriod-based antihistamines, my eyes have mostly cleared up. The flu thing that hit me so hard pretty much finished out the month for me.

I slept a lot for nearly two weeks. Thank you to *everyone* that wished me better health when I was having problems.

Last weekend, darkprism_fics and I heard back from Torquere and they want the manuscript, with another set of edits, and the editor was good enough to deliver on the pain before delivering on the "I want to see Torquere publish this". (Uhm... it's been a funny kind of Yay Us! But We Have To WORK). So we spent the first five days of last week cutting 10,000 words, and going over it with a fine-toothed comb after.

( Nanowrimo Goals, a Sweater for Jet, and an Aeolian Alpaca Lace Shawl. )

For the last three days, I've tried to not just "sit at the computer".

I've gotten back into bad work habits for the last month or so, and just sat at the computer even when I was too tired to really write, or didn't have enough brain to do so. I would mostly sit and surf and get frustrated with myself as my upper body's doing the whole overuse thing again. Tendon's swelling, muscles aching, and the nerves were starting to buzz again at the end of the last huge haul of getting the last installment of "Silver and Black" out.

( So I've stopped. )

I took a bath, last night, for the first time since probably April. Candlelight, bath salts, and plenty of hot water in the short, deep soaking tub. It's a lot like the ship's tub we'd had installed in the master bath of our Redmond house, where space was at a premium and I really wanted a bath that would take a minimal amount of water. I don't like using that much water just for my comfort and when the tub is small and narrower, but deep, I displace enough water that it takes less than if I took a shower to get a good long soak in.

I needed it, as the weather has turned cold. The leaves froze and turned their colors, and are now going brown at the tops of the trees as they die completely. The wind howled and buffeted against the walls and windows by the bath, even as I soaked in my quiet. This morning most of the trees were denuded of most of their leaves, and the front yard was filled again with leaves.

"I just vacuumed yesterday," John said ruefully as we walked back to the house after dropping Jet off at the bus. The leaves crunched underfoot and the air was sharp with cold.

No mist of our breaths, though, there's so little humidity here that it just evaporates.

( Read more... )

When the kids are at the bus stop, they're often up in the ornamental cherry tree, shaking the leaves down. "Look Mom! It's fall! The leaves are falling!"

Indeed.

Last week, John and I went up and drove the "Peak to Peak" highway and got some splendid pictures and talked over the whole idea of my going to Clarion West.

( A few pictures and the gist of the coversation below the cut. )

Title: What Time Might Take
Requester: chuchacz
Series: Bleach
Topic: Byakuya/Renji  "Autumn"

Kouyou, the viewing of falling maple leaves, as closely followed as spring's hanami, and, for Kuchiki Byakuya, less fraught with memories of blood for all that the leaves more closely resembled that color.

He sat seiza. Thick earthenware cup warmed his hands. The bitter green scent of matcha rose in the cold air. He watched Renji, Rukia, and Ichigo laughing, pelting each other with crisp leaves, uncaring of the transience of that which they so roughly handled.

His vice-captain turned, his hair a copper flame that burned in slanting light; and Byakuya's throat went dry, knowing what time might take.

It's supposed to snow this coming weekend.

So I brought in all the basil and made a huge batch of pesto to freeze. I pulled the big onions and let them dry a couple of days and then cleaned them off a bit and put them in the basement. I cut what zucchini I could, and peered at the sweet potatoes who were an experiment. I'm pretty sure I'm going to lose them. I cut all the garlic chives and sent them to Mei, but for a single bundle for us.

I also pulled all the pearl onions and some of the random green onions I'd planted from the root ends of grocery store green onions. They'd all done pretty spectacularly well over the summer and I've had free green onions all summer.

I spaded the sides of four of the tomato plants, and I've turned off the watering systems. They'll get by for a bit and harden off better without extra water. The baby spinach is all peeking out of the ground, now, and the seedlings are growing like mad. I still remember the huge spinach in the garden this spring and how a hard frost in the morning had frozen all the leaves but by mid-afternoon, the leaves were all flexible and tender again. Weird plants, spinach...

The tree leaves are starting to swirl down. The trees starting to alight with the fire colors of fall, oranges, red, and yellow. I wish my Phoenix sweater was done... but so it is. It's hard to watch sub-titled anime while knitting on *that*, so I just wade through John's kilt hose quite happily instead. Even the cables aren't deterring me from watching the text...

The mushroom box Jet and I planted yesterday smells wonderful... like earth and must and mushrooms... Jet loved wetting the stuff down this afternoon. It's amazing how much of it dried in just the day in the house.

It's fun getting ready for winter. I'm so glad that it's just about here and I won't have to do a thing to the OUR Center garden for a few months. There's going to be two clean up crews coming in October, and hopefully they'll lay the beds to rest for the winter. They've asked me to manage the groups and I'll be happy to. It'll be good to be done for a while. I'm pretty tired from this summer's work, and I'm not exactly sure I'm going to do it *all* again... giving up that much time every week has made me mildly cranky in some ways, as there's so *much* work and I wasn't getting it all done. *sigh*

It was good, on the most part.

It's definitely fall. Nip in the air and all that. 60's yesterday and some friends had a barbecue birthday party for their one year old. Jet only had a cake for this first year birthday, and turned Smurf like. It was good, thought, just to see them. Jet had a blast, playing with nearly everything in the yard, and trying stuff out and ignoring the dogs, on the most part. He wasn't afraid of them, but they were bigger than he is, and he just didn't think about them one way or another.

Friday was our usual, Jet and Mom errand day, running to the library, the yarn shop, and other things. He had a lot of fun showing off his socks to everyone. I got started on Cathie's Clapotis, and the colors of the Navajo ply are coming out beautifully.

( Picture behind the cut. )