A Gorgeous Weekend & The Little Red-Haired Girl

First off, sorry my posting frequency has dropped off so dramatically. I've been really busy or tired or just plain uninspired or all of the above. Paddling two evenings a week and foot massage one evening a week really seems to eat into my blogging hours.

The weather last weekend was quite spectacular, if rather unseasonably warm. We paddled down to the 520 bridge, an 8 mile round trip. Then I took the boyz swimmin' at SSP, always a good time, dontcha know. Followed by errand running all over north Seattle.

Had a date Saturday night, too. Thought it went reasonably well. A movie at the Crest ($3 second run movies) followed by dinner at Bengal Tiger (mmm, Indian food) and then tea at my place. Before you get worried that I'm taking some strange potentially dangerous guy home let me say this: yes, it was a first date, but not a craigslist guy. He was a guy I've known for a few months and we have enough mutual friends that if he'd tried anything untoward there would have been hell to pay. Anyway, he seems nice and we have plans to go to NW Folklife on this coming Sunday.

Last Sunday I had brunch with friends and then off to another friend's to play with the little red-haired girl. Her mom's been feeling sickly and her dad just had a minor surgery that will keep him from lifting anything over 25 lbs for over a month. They needed a healthy adult to occupy the wee lass. Shortly after I arrived Mark, the wee lass, and I headed over to a playmate's home so the girls could play in the sprinklers. On the way over M said she didn't want to get wet. No problem, don't have to you if you don't want to. Of course once her friend went into the water M wanted to play, too. I got her changed into her swimmin' togs and water shoes, then took pics and splashed them eliciting giggles and peels of laughter. It was particularly cute to see their tiny bums sticking out as they leaned over precariously to drink from the sprinkler.

In all it was a pretty good weekend. Some painfully cute photos will be posted once Mark sends them to me.

multi-tasking

Hard to believe I started this posting a week ago (Wed 5/14/08). Sorry, been busy with lots of stuff. So, here it is...

I'm back at the allergists office. It's pretty cool, they have wi-fi so I brought my 'puter along. So this entry is coming 'real' time! Wahoo! (edit: it seems the wi-fi signal doesn't make it back into the exam room, this would have been posted much sooner otherwise).

It seems all the different inhaled meds that are super awesome for controlling asthma long term seem to actually make my breathing worse! Go figure. The doc wanted to try a new oral med which seems to have a side effect of possible liver damage. Uh, no thanks, especially since I have this nifty little thing called a focal nodular hyperplasia, it's basically a non-cancerous liver mass. I spent a bunch of time and anguish learning that they are typically found when looking at/for something else, oh hey, you got this thang in yer tummy, btw. One doc wanted to remove it, I went with option B, leaving it in place and keep an eye on it. Anything changes, it gets bigger, starts hurting, and we'll revisit it. Anyway, I'm feeling disinclined to take any meds that may adversely effect the liver especially when I don't take anything at all I'm feeling pretty ok. I still have to suck on the albuterol before and after I exercise, but that's just an as needed med. The meeting with the doc is to discuss this and see where we go from here. I'll let you know how it goes.

And now for something completely different:
Here's a link to something I saw on the J-walk blog the other day. It's a list of 20 Word Geography Facts That May Surprise You. I thought it was kind of interesting. And on today's J-Walk Blog I learned that yesterday (May 13) was the 50 year anniversary of the invention of VELCRO! How cool is that! I love velcro, the name comes from the combination of the words velour and crochet. Pretty cool.

ok, the doc really wants me to be on a long term anti-inflammitory. He gave me another new inhaler and another drug in pill form. I'm trying the inhaler first. So far, it's been a week now, things are working pretty ok. I'm cautiously optimistic.

Another Mother's Day

Another Mother's Day has come and gone, my second without the mother. I'd spent Friday and Saturday feeling poorly, so opted to begin my day slowly, seems to be my regular routine on Sunday anyway. I had been wanting to cut some fabric to sew a new t-shirt. I finally cleared all the old family photos off the sewing machine where they'd been since my return from Colorado. I flipped through a few of the mother and then set them aside so I could locate the pattern and the proper piece of fabric. Something nice, but not so nice that if the project failed utterly I wouldn't be bummed at ruining a piece of fabric I really liked. I choose a piece she had marked for a nightgown.

I traced the pattern onto pattern tissue paper and pinned it to the project fabric. So far, so good. Last time I tried to start a similar project I burst into tears and was unable to continue. That was around Christmas time. Time for a little background: My mother loved fabric and all things relating to sewing. Fabric was her vice, if it could be called a vice. She belonged to a number of fabric co-ops where roll ends would be purchased at fantastically low prices and those savings would be passed on to the co-op members. She regaled in telling me about the $30/yd wools that she bought for less than $5/yd! And she bought vast quantities! I'm sure she had countless projects in mind for herself, my brother, and me, and then there were the pieces she bought because they were lovely and the price was great with no idea what so ever what it would be used for. When I helped her move from California to Colorado there were no less than 30 plastic totes filled with fabric. After she passed I looked through all the carefully prewashed and folded fabric (she would prewash each piece as soon as it arrived, fold it and place it on the shelves) recognizing some pieces that were purchased with me in mind. Some of which gave me pause, what *was* she thinking?!? Five yards of pink denim and five yards of pink and white striped denim? Now I like pink, don't get me wrong, but what did she have in mind for 10 yards of pink denim?

And now back to our story ... I got the fabric cut, selected the nearest approximation regarding thread color because I didn't have a proper match, and read the instructions through two or three times. It was time to begin assembly. Sewed the shoulder seams, no problem. Attach the sleeves, no problem. Sew up the sides/armpits, hmm, not sure this was in the correct order, but no visible problems. The collar looks challenging, I think I'll hem the sleeves and bottom, no problem. Now, all that's left is the collar. Harumph. I re-read the instructions, wondered how it could possibly work. I finally pinned it into place and stitched it on. I ended up hand stitching the collar at the base of the v-neck.

It fits better than I expected, I was quite pleased. I had cut the sleeves a couple inches longer than the pattern called for, that worked well. The shirt length and fit around were good. Next time I'll have a couple new tricks for the collar and I plan to make the sleeves a bit larger around; these were not too tight, but I'd still like them to be a little bit larger. I can't think of a better way to spend Mother's Day than doing a sewing project in homage to the mother.

Some cool links and things

Had a pretty laid back day Sunday. The usual sleep in and snuggly with the dog boyz. And then of course, the Sunday Seattle Times Pacific NW magazine had an article on outrigger! By the way the little dash surfer is attached to my dashboard! It's a nice article and a number of my club members are either quoted or photographed. I was at the Vancouver race, that was the OC1 race where I had cramped up so badly.

Here is a video of my boat (same color even) being demonstrated in Hawai'i.


And a link to Mindy's outrigger video blog. Mindy lives in southern California and shoots lots of wonderful outrigger videos. And from her blog I found this link to Outrigger Chicks, I think this is another blog by Mindy.

damp but good & flowers

We had seven show up this morning for practice. Makes it a little difficult in an OC6! We tried to go out with Kristen steering from sitting on the tail of the boat but it was too cold for her to continue that for very long. We went back to the beach and I got out and rigged my OC1 to go out solo. They headed out for Denny Park, directly across the lake from SSP. I busted my butt to catch them over there. They had stopped for some drills allowing me to catch up. Then they headed north a ways and I realized it was going to be too hard on my back to try and keep up with them so I decided to head back in to the beach.

I'd brought my camera out again in the housing and had passed it off to Kristen to take a few snaps. She seemed to have a little difficulty with figuring out how to point and shoot as evidenced by the second photo shown here, there was a whole series like this one! Kinda funny actually.

A bit later in the day Diane, Dave, his girls, and I headed up to Skagit to the tulip festival. They'd extended it by a week because the cool weather had delayed the blooms opening. It was pretty grey and rainy, ranging from barely spitting to actively raining lightly. Thankfully it wasn't pouring. The soil there is mostly clay and when you add a bit of water to clay it gets really slippery. People really showed kindness by offering hands to help others through the worst of the slippery parts. Tulip Town has really great fields of flowers. I'm glad I made it up this year, I love looking at the tulips. And I have a history of photos of tulips. When I was in high school I snapped a few photos of some slightly past their prime tulips that my mother had planted in a half oak barrel. One turned out particularly well. I don't have it digitally, but I recently got a scanner so I'll try to get that scanned in sometime soon.

to infinity and beyond! ok, maybe just the 520 bridge

What a glorious evening. Such a dramatic difference from Tuesday night. Tuesday we were Nancy, me, Matt, Lianne, and her 11 year old son, Kyle, was steering us. He is a great young steersman, when he gets a bit older and bigger he will be a force to reckon with! The wind was coming hard out of the north. We paddled into it for half an hour or so and then headed back. There were white caps by the time we were back on the shore and it was rather hard getting the boat out of the water, the wind and waves were pushing it so hard. Ended up getting quite we and the wind was very cold.

Tonight was a bright sunny afternoon. The water was glassy flat. We ended up with Minnie, Nancy, me, Meilee, and Lianne steered us. We headed out towards the dog park and then south towards the 520 bridge. We did a pyramid on the way out, increasing periods of intensity interspersed with 1 minute periods of active rest (paddling at a moderate pace). It was a little strange there was a motor boat that was following us, at least it felt like that. I think they were just heading over through the cut, but I think they were enjoying watching us paddle, too.

We turned around just before we got to the bridge. We took a moment to sip some water and I took a few snaps with my digital camera. I just got an underwater housing for it and wanted to test it out. All the photos posted here were taken with it today. At one point I stopped paddling to take a couple of snaps. Got a great complement from Meilee after I did that. She said you can really tell when I've stopped paddling, feels like we've practically started going backwards! I guess I *do* make a difference (smiles). The paddle back to SSP was lovely. We were in the groove and it felt really smooth and I felt like my stroke was flowing nicely. Twist, reach, drive, pull. Just the sound of me calling the changes and the water dripping off the edges of the paddles. The water was so glassy and there were occasional rollers from the boats going by. It was a perfect day for paddling. Days like today are what it's all about. It was a glorious 8 mile paddle today. Anyone want to go out tomorrow???

Never give up, never surrender!

Galaxy Quest is an awesome movie. It's a spoof of a Star Trek type tv show staring Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, and Alan Rickman. It is a very funny flick. A friend lost her job Tuesday and was feeling rather sad. We started talking about things that could make her feel a little better. She thought having a few drinks was a good idea. She and her bf came over and I made us each a dark and stormy. Mmm, tasty! I found ginger beer at Trader Joe's and I use Gosling's Black Seal Rum. I also buy limes by the bag, juice them and freeze the juice in an ice cube tray. Mix the rum and ginger beer over ice with a lime wedge (or lime cube). They say the dark and stormy is described as the national drink of Bermuda, whoever they are... I think the combo of the drinks and the movie helped my friend feel a little better.

If you haven't seen Galaxy Quest yet, I recommend giving it a view. It's perfect for that evening you want to watch something that is just goofy and ok with itself being goofy. Kinda like me! I own it so if you ever want to come over and give it a watch just lemme know.