Daily Adventures

I had a small accident yesterday. Stepped on a floor sub-board that wasn't fastened down, it flipped, and I went down a good four feet to the mud under the house. My left leg stayed up on the floor, the right knee hit a joist, slid down, and then my foot hit the ground. Took me a few minutes to get up, and when I did, I worked another two hours. *laughs* So I know nothing is torn apart or broken in it, and then it got a little too stiff for me to keep going.

So... uhm... haven't been writing as often here. I apologize for the delays. We're now heading for home, but I can fill in.

( The filling in from Wednesday... )

The trip was really good: busy, warm, and wonderful. We stuffed the SD trip full of great food, beaches, the Zoo, mounting paintings, and seeing my family again. Since we'd gotten our ticket so late, we came home again on Friday and had the whole weekend to make our own turkey (yum, leftovers!), pumpkin pie, and stuffing with gravy, and then John's birthday was Sunday. We celebrated that with a three mile walk around a lake, and going to dinner where he wanted and my "chocolate thingy"s for dessert.

I like that Jet decided that the recipe for my chocolate thingy's should remain a family secret and that he was going to make them for his kids some day. *grins*

( More details and pictures for those with the time for them. )

We arrived in Seaside, Oregon on Thursday evening, getting to two houses on Beach Street in Seaside that weren't side by side, but had two houses between them. The party started at about nineteen and ended up with 24 between the two houses. All the meals were in our house, which had not only the bigger kitchen, but a whole lot more table and diningroom space and on the last day, it was sunny enough for some folks to even eat outside on the upstairs deck.

It was one good, long beach party, all in all. On Thursday, on the way over it was raining so hard it was hard to drive. George and Isabel caravaned with us and we all stopped for a quick lunch of crackers and cheese and salami in the car at a lookout point above the Columbia river. We could see the wood mills there, with huge piles of logs that were so far away they looked like matchsticks. There were piles of wood chips and sawdust so large they filled entire barges probably going to paper mills elsewhere.

It was raining when we ate, but it was cool and beautiful and a slow enough rain that we didn't really get that wet.

When we got to the houses, we set up spaghetti with tomato sauce and sausage, salad, and garlic bread in huge batches. The spaghetti got all cooked at once, and by the time everyone was ready to eat it was nearly 8 pm. But we all fit and we all ate at once and it was like the biggest family you could imagine, all at once, but then the whole gathering turned into something like that.

( Read more... )

The four days out at the Oregon coast were wonderful, mostly overcast, one brilliant day, and we ended with a real soaker, which was exactly the right time for it. We camped with John's parents, whom I was very impressed with, and his brother and his wife, whom I've always admired. It was a lot of fun to be with them, and Walt's cooking made me fascinated with Dutch ovens. The rainy day was good in that we could pack up, tour the Tillamook plant, have ice cream, and just go home, get everything hung up to dry, and have a wonderful dinner at Yeh's Wok.

The only problem is that, during camping, my Visor spazzed when I put new batteries in it, so I've now lost contact information for just about everyone. Also, given how full John's made our social calender until we leave on Sunday, I'm not likely to get to visit with any more folks, realistically. *sigh*. Sorry about that, Kirby and others. I apologize for spazzing on that.

Yesterday John and I wandered the new Bellevue Square and Lincoln Square and then got to see Pirates 2. ARRGH! I say, "ARRGH!" It's great but there's another movie coming, which should be great. I'm really looking forward to the next one.

Then I lost my voice as we went to the old Rosehill Ale House (which is something else now) and celebrated the retirement of someone that had joined Data I/O a year before John had. And, consequently, met up with nearly 30 people that we haven't seen for nearly a decade. It was astonishing. The pub was, as usual, quite loud, so I pretty much lost my voice trying to talk with far too many people.

It was odd, though, in some ways. Meeting and greeting folks that I hadn't seen for that long. I felt distanced, but also like I *should* know how to act with them, but also knowing that that really wasn't the case. It was very cool, though, to see Patricia Blair, the wife of Nello, whom we used to work with. she's now Mrs. Washington! Hee. She won a beauty pageant!! And is now the traveling Mrs. Washington with engagements, parties, and doing judging at beauty contests herself. Lots of charity work in there, too, which is making her very happy. That's very cool.

I had enough voice left, when I got back and had a mug of tea, to read Jet his good night books, and that was very good indeed.

My God. It was actually out and out and completely sunny today. Unexpectedly, gloriously, completely sunny today. Hot and amazing and beautifully sunny.

It even started that way after a pretty cuttingly cold night, the humidity in the air made it far colder than I thought it would be, but the blankets were enough to get by. But when I finally awakened, after ignoring my bladder for longer than I thought I could, I got dressed and put together and Waltr was out making cinnamon rolls for everyone. Wow. I trotted off on the long trip to the bathroom and then came back to orange flavored cinnamon rolls out of the Dutch oven and coffee. Coffee that John had made in the vacuum flask with our drip maker. Hee. Yay!

That was a fantastic way to start the day. I'll admit that the hard cushions of our van bed really made their impression on my hips and back, it wasn't that great, but with a bit of food and plenty of stretching I was okay for the day, which involved, mostly, going out to the beach and digging in the sand. :-)

Cathie had had to leave in the early pre-dawn morning to go to work. She wouldn't be back until Tuesday and we missed her.

Jet and John and I mostly just went out on the beach and dug all day. I built a bunch of stuff.

Jet found brine shrimp in the sand, thousands of them. There was a section of sand at the right depth or something, and when the waves came in the brine shrimp would leap up from the sand, swim around in the water while it lasted. Jet could see them all in the water and catch them on his hand and gently show them to me. When he or the waves deposited them high and dry on the sand, they would burrow in under the surface.

I found that if I stepped on the sand they were buried under, the sand would wiggle under my feet, and my feet would sink into the sand. When I lifted my foot, there would be a brief puddle, and the shrimp would come up into the water for the brief moment it was there, and then bury themselves back into the sand as the water drained away. It was odd to see them flash up like that and then down again. Jet loved seeing them and digging for them and picking them up only to put them back into the surf.

We stopped for lunch for a while and put lots of sunscreen on as half our crew was sunburnt from just the morning. Jet said he wasn't hungry but then devoured the food we put in front of him. Then we all went out again, picked a different spot and dug in deep.

I'd gotten braver and thought a bit about what I wanted to do and build a high tower with curved walls to either side circling in from the arched entry way. It was fun to see it happen. Then I remembered something in the book and wondered if it would work.

I swirled the sand and water until it was all flowing, got a double handful and started passing it from hand to hand. When it had drained a little, I added half handfuls of dry sand at a time to the outside of the handful and, eventually, I had a sand ball. It was dense, heavy and solid, and Jet yelled, "CANNONBALL!" when I handed him one and he launched it in the direction of the waves. I made several more, set some of them on the sand to dry and harden and drain a bit from its contact with the sand, and eventually I topped the tower with a series of sandballs that looked unnatural. :-) One doesn't think of sand staying in the shape of a snowball the way snow does.

A family with three girls came up to look at the castle and admire it, and Jet said it was the ice cream castle. I liked that name. I asked them if they wanted a sand ball and they nodded shyly. So I handed them one. John made another one and Jet another for them, so they had a set. Jet took to shaping them so naturally it surprised me, but he got good ones, too.

Jet happily put a bunch of balls into the sea, too. Ones that were set aside for him. He felt that he could knock over the castle too, but John did his level best to persuade him to not to while I went to get a camera before Hurricane Jet did it's destructive best.

I got pictures. But by then Jet was uninterested in knocking it down, he was far more interested in flinging handfuls of sand into the sea.

Eventually, I took Jet to the showers and got him cleaned up and all the uncomfortable sand washed away. That was very useful indeed. :-) He cleaned up nice and warm from the hot water, and I dried him off, dressed him and when we got back there was a taco dinner underway. Jet ate four shells with cream cheese and furikake. The rest of us had, essentially, taco salad in shells. There was lots of good salad and some refried beans and taco seasoned beef.

While dinner was being served, I thought I'd try out my Visor for journal entries, and when it complained about low batteries, I took out the old batteries and put in new and the darn thing spazzed on me. This new one keeps spazzing out whenever I replace the batteries, unlike my old, faithful, original Visor which never complained about a voltage change of any kind. So I may well just go back to my rubber baby buggy of a Visor and at least HAVE all my data when I need it.

I now have no contact data other than what was in my cellphone. I am unhappy about that.

When dinner was done and the hot chocolate came out the mosquitos came out, too. John slathered Jet while I slathered myself with the non-DEET stuff that's now out. But by the time Jet wanted to go to bed the stuff had decayed enough that it wasn't working anymore. So the mosquitoes, after the warm day, swarmed us. Jet got five big bites on his face, neck, behind the ears, and in the van one landed on his cheek while he was whimpering at it, and got him there. Thank goodness West Nile hasn't made it this far. Sigh. I was upset. Jet was upset. John tried to calm us down without making us more upset. We finally cleared the van of all the bugs and John read to Jet.

Then I nursed him and he fell asleep, but when we tried to put him up, even as tired as he was, he cried and cried. This time I explained to him that he had to help us put him into the sleeping bag when he was done, and that worked well enough in his near term memory that when he realized we were putting him in again, he tried to help and he fell deeply asleep in his sack.

This night was unbelievably cold for me, and I ended up on John's half of the van, nearly on top of him as he was actually a heat source. I was amazed that it got that cold even in our insulated space, and Jet didn't notice a thing and said that he slept really well, woke up once, turned over and went back to sleep. He said that the sleeping bag made it so that he could sleep all night long. Yay for all night!!

Got up this morning and had the odd job of taking a subset of all the things we'd brought on the trip an packing it up in order to go traveling some more in a different situation. We are going camping, out on the Oregon coast and from everything John was saying it was going to be cold and wet and not that happy making. Still, there was only so much warm stuff I'd packed, and I really didn't want to bring everything I'd brought to entertain myself, so I just took some stuff.

Most of the knitting bag went, minus a good deal of the sock yarn, and adding the sleeves of the sun and moon sweater. That was good. I then emptied a few things form my messenger bag and my computer bag into it as well. I didn't bring any computer other than my Visor and the keyboard that goes with it, and that would have to do me for the extent of electronics.

I heard Jet packing at Isabel's urging, and was told later that he'd just put all his clothing drawer contents into his bag. That was a boon in later respect. But that made his packing job very, very fast, and he was in the car with Seltzer in nothing flat. There was a good thirty minutes or so until anyone else made it to sit in the car, and then I sat in the car for a good twenty minutes before anyone else was all set and done. Of course, John and Isabel also packed nearly all the kitchen and food stuffs, and I helped load some of it into the car, but mostly I stayed out of their way. :-)

They'd gone shopping at Costco last night, so they got a mountain of good food, and we packed it all away as well as we could. With the roof rack and the whole back side of the van we managed to get everything in with very little room to spare. Four bikes went on the bike rack and it did just fine, packing sponges and all.

Isabel and I were in back with Jet. But I'll admit that I mostly just slept on the way there. Jet was chattering like a blue jay and talking or singing or making noise of some kind nearly the whole way. Just as we were about to get into Oregon, we stopped at the Astoria Maritime Museum, which had a Coast Guard cutter on display for tours and an older ship along with a HUGE anchor, a deep-sea buoy and a museum of some size. The best, though, was just eating lunch in the sea air. It was bright out and sunny, but the wind was cutting and I was pretty cold in it. At first, I hid behind the giant anchor and then I finally got out and was a wind break for Jet for a while as we ate sandwiches, carrots and chips.

We then walked out on the dock to take a gander at the ships, but a huge freighter came in, and it was nearly empty as the red hull was mostly above water. It was impressive coming in under the bridge as it barely fit.

I loved the huge ship's ropes hanging there to dry, too, as one could see the mending on it as well as the sheer size of the weave. Beautiful.

From there we headed into Oregon and found a Fred Meyer's with cheaper gas than we'd seen anywhere in Washington. The only catch was that you couldn't pump it yourself. John got out of the car and the guy said, "I'll get to you when I can, sir." *giggles*

From there we took the winding 6 out to Longview State Park.

It was the same state park the three of us had stayed at two years ago, with the yurts and forest and beach. Cathie and Walt had arrived before us and found a site that was out of the woods and out by the beach. The old site still had some pretty obvious damp spots and lots of overhanging trees and given that the weather was gray and nigh on drizzling when we got there, we preferred the open spot. Plus, I figured there would be fewer mosquitoes that far out from the woods. And, on the most part, I was right.

It was great to see Walt and Cathie again. I look up to them in a lot of ways as they're seven years our senior and they have definitely made their lives their own. I admire their choices and what they do as they're both involved in making working lives a lot safer for a lot of people. That's very cool.

I also like their sense of humor and taste in food. :-)

We arrived, sat in the uncertain sun for a while and caught up. Then John said, "This is the best it's going to be, so we better go out on the beach while we can, the next couple of days aren't going to be better than this."

So Jet got into his swimming trunks and kept his shirt and I wore my shorts and shirt and my L.L. Bean sweater and we went out onto the beach. The sun really, really tried, but it never really broke out until it set. So under the cloudy sky we enjoyed the beach anyway.

Jet demanded that his shirt come off NOW when we reached the sand. I was okay with that as it wasn't actually too cold, and it went, dry, into John's pocket. Jet cheerfully stuck with digging in the sand, though we persuaded him to move a little bit up the beach and not dig right at the entrance. Walt brought an Army surplus shovel and dug exactly where Jet wanted him to dig. I dug a little further as I wanted the water to come up.

Remember that sand castle book I borrowed a few months back? Yeah, the one next to the knitting book. Hee. I remembered that book and I have been dying to try the techniques out of it on a real beach. It was harder than I'd thought, in some ways, as I couldn't get my hands around the 'plops' to get them to jiggle into a good settle. I could, however, jiggle them from the top with the palm of my hand. Weird, but it worked, and I was able to build several towers and an arch of sorts. Jet liked that, and immediately knocked some of it down to prove he liked it. :-)

I loved how the sand flowed through my hands and how the water allowed it to flow and fill areas that I directed it towards. The walls that I built were far tougher than I thought they could be, and so I experimented with walls to and from the towers and then stairs cut into the tops and then along the sides. I was impressed with how the sand carved, and built a lighthouse with gabled roof and four sides to the sea. Jet supplied 'rocks' for the bottom of the tower, and we carved a staircase around the tower.

That was a lot of fun.

Jet loved the pit that I pulled sand out of. I finally figured out how to do a two-handed digger scoop of flowing wet sand. It took a bit of experience to just figure out how to do the things that were in the figures and what they felt like rather than just how they looked.

Jet also found that the ocean water was, in his words, "Cold! Cold! Cold!!" And he danced away from the waves, and ran when they tried to get him. He loved sitting in the relatively warmer water of the 'pit' I was digging out of. When he announced, however, that water was leaking out of his pants, I decided I was done with sand castle building and I went into the surf to wash off.

It was cold. It was very, very cold. Pacific cold. Beautiful, gloriously cold on feet and stinging on sanded knees, as I'd definitely gotten down to the sand level to try and carve things with a shovel point and my own hands.

The weather was good enough, though. Good enough.

We went back to the camp and Jet got hosed down from the back of Walter and Cathie's van, as they had a shower built into the back. It was good enough to get all the sand off of him, and we dried him with towels and put his warmest clothes on. Then John handed him a steel skewer with a hot dog strung on it, and asked him to help with cooking dinner. Hee. He was happy to help and sat by the warm fire with the hot dog dangling over the coals. It eventually hit the coals, so he asked who wanted to eat it, and I thought it would be a fine thing to have a dinner cooked by my son. :-) So I ate his "dirty hot dog" and he had one of John's which were nicely toasted.

There were also carrots, sugar snap peas, potato salad, chips and plenty of condiments, so we all munched away happily. I was hungry and had two hot dogs from all the digging and sand slogging. That was great.

Jet loved the fire. But when it actually got dark it was nearly ten, so he was more than ready to go to sleep. He and I went to the bathroom and did potty stuff and then brushed teeth. He then went back to the van and got flossed and into his pajamas and we read stories, nursed, and when it was time to get up into his bed he woke up enough to help get into his sleeping bag up on top of the van. The wind up there was whistling softly and I could hear the surf pounding away at the beach, much more closely than within the confines of the van itself.

But Jet was in his blanket pajamas with a good, thick sleeping bag, so I wasn't too worried. He crawled deeply in, asked for Seltzer to hold, and then snuggled in with his new pal and went to sleep.

We soon followed as it has been a very busy day.