Appreciation

I've come to appreciate a lot of things as I've gotten older.  I don't think they're new discoveries really, but rather I think I've just noticed that I appreciate them.

Like recycling for example.  I hate it when I see someone ignoring a recycling possibility.  First of all, I'm not a Greenpeace fanatic or a holistic wearer of Birkenstock sandals and hand-woven wool socks--All my friends know that.  However, I like to think that, given the chance, I will always tend to be conscious of where I'm tossing something or whether I need to toss it at all.  I don't confront someone with bad choices, but I may cluck my tongue or wrinkle my lips in disapproval when I see someone making a bad choice.  I will, however, say something when someone throws something on the ground instead of in the trash.  I go, "Hey!" and when they look, I point.  Most of the time they pick it up.  I don't care if they mutter under their breath--The desired result was achieved.  Obviously, I'm going to use judgment and not say anything if I think my life would be in danger for opening my big mouth.  The bottom like is that I appreciate anyone recycling anything.  I guess that's why I'd rather fix things than replace them.

I like to sit outside in our hot tub on a cold mornings and watch the birds enjoying our provided feast of suet, seeds, and dried corn.  I never knew that before.  There is something very, very peaceful about it.  I have come to be aware of lots of different bird varieties, and have reasonable success at identifying them.  I'm even okay with the squirrels.  I know many people aren't.  They are, after all, rodents.  They're not even native to us here (they're Eastern Gray Squirrels) but they have pretty much established themselves as natives.  Until such time as I catch one doing damage to the house, I will enjoy watching them too.

Although I don't get much of a chance to, I really enjoy sitting somewhere and enjoying a vista.  Sunrises and sunsets are especially good, however fleeting they may be.  A nice view of a valley, a mountain, a forest, a river or lake--I don't care.  If it's a beautiful setting I could sit there and admire it for a long time.  Although I'm not a religious person, I guess that's my brush with spirituality.  Maybe that's why I like traveling to places so much.  A hundred lifetimes wouldn't be enough for me to see and appreciate all this planet has to offer the senses.  What is it about watching a fire or ocean waves that makes us "zone out" and get lost in thought?

Sue always makes fun of the fact that I can't pass up an animal without petting it (within reason of course).  I think I've always been that way but I've never really thought that much about it.  I guess I like the fact that an animal trusts me enough to let me into its personal space.  I like to experience their reaction to a touch, pet, or scratch.  Sure, sometimes I feel like I should wash my hands right away on occasion, but I guess I like to put myself into their skin:  If I were this animal and didn't have fingers that could touch or scratch, where and how would I like that scratch administered?  I would like to see all the zoos closed down.  Why should we jail the animals just so we can stare at them?  We have internet now--We can see, hear, and research anything we'd ever want to know about any animal in the world.  I think animal jails are a very sad thing.  For every one that "survives captivity" there are probably scores that don't.

I have a huge appreciation for smells.  I marvel at how smells work.  How can there be such a huge array of scents in our world--Each one different and easily identifiable from the other?  I like to smell flowers.  I feel that their bright displays are reaching out and doing salesmanship on me and urging me to smell them.  Sometimes an intriguing scent wafts across my receptors and I go on the hunt until I find it.  Great smells are one of my favorite pleasures.

Sorry if this has been part rant, but I just wanted to offer a little taste of my appreciation for things.  I don't know what brought it on--Just roll with it.  Better yet, add your own favorite thing in a comment below!

The Week in Review

I would say it's been an action-packed two weeks since my last blog post, but technically that wouldn't be accurate because I posted a poem a few days ago.  It's not the same as a real blog post though, so that's what I'm here to do.

I can't really think about anything significant that happened last weekend.  Sue was out at one of the best JW assembly meetings they have in the Tacoma Dome both Saturday and Sunday so I was really just hanging around.

One thing that did happen was a little garage sale browsing with Sarah on Saturday.  Her mom was out of town visiting her friend over on the Spokane side.  (I remember how I used to treasure those weeks when I was still married to her--They were like a vacation to me back then!)  Anyway, we both made a pretty good score at the first one we stopped at.  She's on a perpetual hunt for anything from The Babysitters Club.  She has a pretty extensive collection going already and carries a list of books that she still needs with her all the time "just in case".  These people had two large dolls (18" tall?) of characters from The Babysitters Club series still in the box.  While they weren't totally complete, they were in pretty good shape.  She got them both for $11.

I bought two wheelbarrow wheels.  I know--Big woo huh?  Thing is, they were brand spanking new airless urethane wheels with grease fittings and the works.  I paid them $5 each for them.  I found them online at $65 each!  This was perfect because we have two wheelbarrows--One has a tire that refuses to hold air for long, and the other one has a totally worn-out axle hole in the wheel.  Neither of them had a provision to grease them like the new ones do either.  Hey, it's a guy thing.

Tuesday was a wood-gathering day.  I responded to a guy on Craigslist that was giving away used cedar shingles.  What he was really doing was shrewdly-coordinating a cleanup at a job site.  Basically, we showed up at a spot and followed him back to a house he and his employees were re-roofing.  The shingles were basically all over the ground.  With Keith helping, we filled the whole pickup in no time.  I think it's safe to say that we are pretty well set for kindling now. But that's not all--We also stopped in at my folks' house a little earlier and filled the whole truck with used 5/4 cedar decking.  We did it mainly for our fire pit out back, but a lot of it is actually pretty decent and reusable (with some trimming of course).  Two truckloads of wood in one day.  It's safe to say we did a lot of work in a pretty short time loading all that up.

Thursday wasn't a good day for Suz--She backed her Scion into my truck.  She didn't hurt it too bad.  I won't go into much detail because she already covered it in her blog.  My truck needs a new tail light bucket now though.  She must have hit it just right, or it was ready to break anyway.  It's funny the lens didn't break--It just broke all four of the mounting holes off of the "bucket" it screws into.

It's a whole different neighborhood we have going here now.  So much activity!  Kevin and his boys (and now Shirley too) had already moved in across the street from Denny, but since the DeBellings have arrived the activity between the three houses is really high.  It's not very safe from this standpoint:  Now the front yards are the playgrounds.  There are bikes and toys everywhere all the time.  Now nothing ever seems to happen in the back yards.  I swear--When I drive by their house at 5:30am to go to work, it looks more like I'm driving through someones back yard.  There are also kids darting into the street all the time.  Sue has tried and tried to get the message through to them all (the parents mostly) that the street is not ours, nor is it a driveway or safe zone.  There have already reportedly been a close call or two...

Today will be a stay-home chore day.  Apparently I have a past-due item on my honey-do list...

Rhyme Time, Baby!

What is it that makes me like

to tell a tale this way--

To format it in rhyming lines

when I have words to say?

It's a style of story-telling

that's hard, without a doubt.

To make the flow and syllables

sound right when sounded out.

I guess I like the challenge;

to see if I can tell

an interesting story

that's fun to say as well.

Sometimes when I start them

they don't go anywhere.

No matter how or what I try

I sit and blankly stare.

After trying many things

that never quite work out,

I use the mental garbage can

then try another route.

Sometimes even I'm surprised

when words seem to cascade.

Instead of simply killing time

a masterpiece is made.

I've dabbled with many varieties

of poetry and verse.

Some were mediocre tries,

and some were even worse.

The difficulty of a poem

can vary with its style,

but struggle followed by success

can make it all worthwhile.

They come in many flavors

these poems that I build--

Some are very hard to rhyme--

Some leave me unfulfilled.

But limericks are my favorites;

they're whimsical and fun!

Although they're harder to complete

they please me when they're done.

If you've tried a poem yourself

but failed each time you tried,

try yet again--Don't quit just yet;

Success will bring you pride!

This one took me weeks to make

but now that it is done;

Who knows--I may just clear my head

and start another one.

Blogger Comments Frustration

I have two blogs hosted on Blogger.com.  I have this one and my 365 Photo blog.  While I'm not anywhere near as active as some bloggers, I consider myself fairly active and consistent.

Which brings me to my frustration.

The folks at Google run this blog site, and like almost everything else "Google", we (the public) are their beta-testers.  Every time they roll out a change in one of their multitudes of applications, it just happens.  No fanfare, no input from us, no warning, no nothing.

Recently, they incorporated a better WYSIWYG entry system for their blog posting.  Yeah, it does have some better features, but it's also a lot more "buggy" than the old way is.  The cursor tends to show in one spot while you actually start typing somewhere else.  Inputting a picture is a whole 'nother nightmare.  Sure, you can drag them where you want them to go, but only if where you want them to go is all over hell.  Sometimes it takes me 10 minutes of frustration just to get 4 pictures to stop and behave in the right place.

The latest?  Comments.

Comments is a huge thing for bloggers big and small alike.  We like to see that something we wrote or posted gets a thumbs up or thumbs down from a reader.  We see that we have comments and we like to see who it was and what they had to say.  Likewise, when we choose to take the time to comment on someone else's blog, we are taking time out of whatever we were doing to make that comment post.  It means the post touched us in some way and we wanted to share it with the blog owner.

Now all of a sudden (this week) blog comments are all screwed up.

Comments we post don't show up.  They show up when we post them but are missing the next day.  The comment counter under the post shows that we have comments, but when we click on it we find that it's empty.

Come on Google... Give us a break.  We know you're the only truly free blog game in town, but that doesn't mean you can use us like lab rats.

Does it?

An Washington State Photo Experience

We had a most awesome weekend!  We went on a long, long drive around the north-central part of Washington State.  We had fantastic weather, hardly any traffic (good route choices), and took tons of pictures.

For those of you that are familiar with Washington State, we went over Snoqualmie Pass and turned north at Cle Elum.  We followed highway 97 all the way to the Canadian border going through such little towns as Omak and Tonasket.  We detoured off the beaten path here and there trying to find things that looked promising (based on internet blurbs) but didn't find much of anything.  We did find some interesting driving and a mildly-interesting antique store when we detoured off at the town of Riverside though.  When it became time for us to start looking for a place to spend the night we were at the border town of Oroville.  The problem was the only thing we could find was one nasty-looking rundown motel in the center of town, and a hoity-toity resort on the edge of Lake Osoyoos--Nothing in between.  That resort had a 3-night minimum, but sported such cool things as music that played from loudspeakers (at least around the office area), tons of Adirondack chairs painted in various pastel shades, and a gate that was locked at 11pm.  It was a huge cluster of matching bungalow-type buildings right on shore of the lake.  I didn't even get to the point of finding out how much it would have cost.  We opted instead to cross into Canada and look around in the city of Osoyoos.  We finally found "motel row" but by then there weren't a whole lot of vacancies (after all, it was the 4th of July weekend).  We found a "so-so" motel in a great location, right on a beach of the lake. (Lake Osoyoos is a long lake, half in the US and half in Canada.)  We hoped to get our pictures of the day posted from there but our internet pretty much fizzled out before we were able to.  Our first day was marked with disappointment as far as our quest for photographic opportunities, but we still got a lot of nice shots here and there.

Yesterday was different.

We hit such a wide variety of places.  A great outdoor museum in Molson that held a ton of very interesting equipment, implements, and artifacts from a century ago.  Just up the road (still in Molson) was a great school/museum that was by two sweet old ladies, one of which was quite a character.  We're sorry we didn't get a picture of them.  They had both went to school there!  We stopped into the little bitty town of Chesaw (only two blocks long?) and enjoyed a couple hours at their 68th annual rodeo.  That was a lot of fun.  We also hit such places as the "ghost town" of Bodie, the town of Nespelem, and the Grand Coulee Dam.

As the day grew older we pondered where we were going to stop for the night.  We discussed it for a while and we decided that we had finished up our "list" of places that we wanted to see.  Instead of having to spend money on another motel for the night, we decided to go ahead and drive home.  We got home at 1am, but that's okay--We got to wake up in our own bed, have the whole day here for us to catch up on things, and we got to avoid the undoubtedly heavy traffic that always happens on a 3-day holiday weekend.

We spent almost the whole weekend on lesser-used two-lane roads, many of which had fantastic scenery.  On some of them we hardly ever saw another car.  There were a couple times when we were on dirt roads for several miles, and not only were they nice, smooth roads but they were also some of the best scenery we saw.

It was a great time!

Here are some facts from the weekend excursion:

Total miles driven:  750
Pictures taken: Rick = 560+ / Sue = 1100
Best quality highways: Ferry County
Most unique "thing" we found:  The Gehrke Whirligig park in Electric City (near the Coulee Dam)
The best slice of Americana: The Chesaw Rodeo
From the Molson school museum we could have walked into Canada (it was visible at the top of the ridge above us.)

Another Sign of the TImes

Technology has changed a lot of things about our lives--That's very common knowledge.  We'd be lost without our computers, cell phones, televisions, GPS, iPod... The list goes on and on and on.  Technology has also driven us into a wireless frenzy.  Everything now is wireless if it can be made to be wireless.  The first thing was our phones--Now practically everything is wireless.

What we don't really think about is how these kinds of things have ripple effects.

Have you ever thought about how many things that have been rendered obsolete by our tech-ish toys?  That's a huge list itself.  With regard to technology, anything analog is history.  Analog cell phones fell quite a while back.  People that owned analog phones were forced into the digital world if they wanted to retain their beloved phones.  But even that list isn't what I'm talking about here.

I'm talking about furniture.

Technology has rendered furniture obsolete?  Well, one particular item, yes.  This was reported a while back on the news, but I was reminded by it again this morning when I was perusing the Free section of our local Craigslist ads.  The item:  The entertainment center.  It has been rendered useless and obsolete by the sheer size of the newest televisions.  They simply will not fit into our old entertainment centers.  I think the biggest TV you could feasibly shoehorn into one was a 32", and that was pushing it.  For most it was a 27" TV.  Nowadays, TV's are so big they can only fit on top of furniture.

This morning I ran across this ad and I did a screenshot of it so you click it and see it full-sized.  This is beautiful oak furniture, and very high quality too.  I've seen these items in person at the store (my ex and I bought other items from this same line).  It's sad that it's come to giving stuff like this away:

It's just another sign of the times I guess.

Arrival!

The new neighbors have arrived.  Mark, Rachel, Celeste, Rebekah, and Markie are all here, freshly transplanted from Mormontown.

Hats off to Suzie.  She did a huge amount of work to insure that their new home would be inhabitable upon their arrival.  She worked long and hard at it.  If only we had before and after pictures!

At one point, I took off for Fred Meyer to buy a couple things we needed, like a shower head and a couple extra door keys.  I was a few miles away and close to the main drag in Covington when I saw a big, yellow Penske truck coming toward me.  Yep, sure enough it had their maroon car on a trailer behind it, and right behind that was their minivan pulling Mark's prized baby blue VW Beetle project car.  I grabbed my phone and called in the alarm to Suzie and the other "troops" that were working on their place.  "Battle stations!"  Okay, it wasn't that dramatic, but you get the idea.  It was kind of odd that I saw them.  As Suzie said later, "You went a different way to Fred Meyer than you usually do, and they took a different exit than they did last time they were here.  What are the odds?"

Here's a couple shots of the bunch:

And here's a couple of my favorite individual pictures:

Welcome to the neighborhood!