topics

I walked the labyrinth at Bellevue Unity this morning, in a light rain. I think I need to put in a map link to this labyrinth. All the ads on this page are now about cats! I liked it better when they were about maps and things. You'd think with the name Webster, there would be at least one dictionary or book ad. I hope folks are clicking the links now and then. books, books books! dictionaries! Maps! And of course toy blocks and construction sets!

Webster explores the outside world

Webster had his biggest outdoor time yet.

First he explorered inside our open-air garage.

Then he explored up along the side of the house.

Then he climbed a bit up the cedar tree.

Then he went up the apple tree and onto the garage roof.

From the garage roof he went back into the apple tree and up a couple of branches quite a ways.

All the exploring was quite liesurely and cautious - I don't think we will have a problem with him plunging into dangerous adventures.

Beach

I went by the beach on my way home from the grocery store to check out the extra-low tide of -3.77. Tomorrow's -3.89 is the lowest tide of the year, and todays is only 1.4 inches shy of that. It was raining so not many people were there, and I didn't stay long myself, but did admire how much you could see the difference from Monday's -2.33. I thought that a slight storm surge might have reduced the difference, but it turned out not.

Vet

I think Webster has forgiven me for taking him to the vet this morning -- though I don't presume so far as to accept it lightly when I take him again in three to four weeks.

He got poked prodded, listened to, looked at, and peered into.

He got injected one two three times.

He got a microchip implanted.

I am particularly pleased with the microchip, since he desperately wants to go outside, but his history of having been a stray urges caution.

He is now napping on the couch, a cute little bundle of sweetness.

I am sure when he goes outside, he will perceive himself as a fierce stalker of birds. I imagine the birds flying off in gales of laughter - orange & white are not exactly camouflage coloring.

"Why isn't the water on?" 

Webster 

Yellow eyes 

Outside

New guy just had his first experience with the back yard, carefully constrained in my arms. He met Annika and Dylan, the little girls next door, and briefly their mom Brit, but did not want to meet Itchy the dog, so Brit retreated to keep Itchy distracted with the ball while the girls petted the cat. Everyone, except probably Itchy, was quite disappointed that New Guy is as yet nameless.

New Guy - Day 2

New Guy seems pretty satisfactory. He's rather chatty in an unstrident way, though a little disappointed in our obtuseness about the refrigerator and the bathtub.

Biggest negative so far is that he wants to sharpen his claws on the couch and is totally unimpressed with the scratching box. But to balance that, he is using the litter box -- with great intensity, involvement, and odor.

I think we should keep him.

;)

All tuckered out 

New Guy at Rest. 

"This is okay, but I'd still like some salmon" 

From some angles he looks a lot like Tigger. 

Is this how you want me to sit? 

New Guy seems worried that he may not be getting salmon for dinner. 

New Guy checks things out 

New Guy & Jo again. 

New guy & Jo. 

New guy comes home. 

Jo just called. She has the New Guy in the car with her after delays, and is headed home from Kent with him. I can hardly wait. :)

She found him yesterday on her lunch hour, calling me from the animal shelter to tell me about him, and to make sure it was okay with me.

D'uh.

Because she had a doctor appointment yesterday afternoon, and had no carrier with her, he had to spend another night in Kent and get picked up today.

She got home after her doctor appointment quite revved, and we spent much of the evening talking about him and getting things ready.

I'm ready.

:)

The Station Agent

"It's really funny how people see me and treat me, since I'm really just a simple, boring person. So says Finbar McBride, the hero of 'The Station Agent.' Nothing in life interests him more than trains. Model trains, real trains, books about trains. He likes trains." (Roger Ebert)

For some reason, I seem to be enjoying this movie.

:)

I was off to Bellevue this morning, to pick up some kitty pictures at Kathryn's house. A coworker of hers is parting with a pair. Kathryn turned out to be home, so we got to visit for a bit before she had to leave.

From there, I went to the nearby labyrinth at Bellevue Unity Church. I often try to have a meditative theme for a labyrinth walk, and often it is some episode or period of my life that seems unresolved.

Recently I had watched the movie Gardens of Stone, and I am now about halfway through the book of the same title by Nicholas Proffitt.The central story is set at Fort Myer, Virginia, and Arlington Cemetary. I was stationed there myself shortly after the peroiod of the story, and many scenes and locations were familiar, so in today's labyrinth walk, I explored memories and emotional baggage from my time at Fort Myer. It ended up being probably the most inconclusive labyrinth walk I have done yet.

But it was still a good walk, and may still have been a good choice of themes. I doubt anything else could have succeeded with Fort Myer, the Vietnam war, and the whole era, so much on my mind.

-------------------------------------------------------
This message was sent from a T-Mobile wireless phone.

Where I'm at

Where I'm at

I'm sitting on the beach north of Edmonds, listening to the waves washing against the gravel and the seagulls circling overhead.

Here's where the car is, I'm a bit further west: Click here

That link will allow you to see zoomable maps and satellite images of where I am. Google maps can also be recentered by dragging. I expect to have lots of fun with them.

This entry was an edited version of a saved message on my phone, with the latitude and longitude transcribed from my GPS. As posted, it was not a clickable URL, since that doesn't work when posting by phone. I fixed that & a typo after I got home.

Another camera & Itchy

Another camera & Itchy

Now we try out the $2.66 camera from ebay.



This is a little more substantial,and is more standalone: you take the pictures with the camera by itself, then connect to the phone to transfer to the phone's memory.



This camera is substantially larger than the dongle camera itself, but with the dongle's three foot cord, they end up being rather comparable in pocket bulk.



Neither is worth much as a camera, but both together didn't cost much, and the ability to take pictures and almost immediately email them from the phone makes up for the shortcomings.



The picture of Itchy. She's a fine dog.

Dr S

File23.jpg

I'm sitting outside Dr S's writing & posting this. I'd have done it inside as soon as I took the picture, but didn't think that was the best use of the time. :)

Shoreline

I'm at the Shoreline library.

As i got on I5 on my way out here, what was probably a Coopers Hawk flew accross the freeway. i was trying to merge into moderately heavy traffic at the moment, so didn't get to study it as well as I would have liked.

I clicked some of my ads. i don't think I can make much money doing that, but hey ... :)

I'm having trouble typing because this computer doesn't have sticky-keys, which i have now turned on (from the accessibility options menu) in my computer at home, and which is very similar to how the querty keyboard on my phone works.

I go now Dr S.

corrected

corrected

And this is what the other image looks like after tweaking.



Lessons learned:



- take several shots, but even then don't count on being able to tell on

the phone display which is best.



- the pictures may look better after tweaking on the computer, but if I

want a good paicture, I should take another shot with a good camera.

corrected

corrected

Na ja,



This is what one of those image looks like after a quick tweak. Still

pretty soft, but you can better see where I was.



Shooting into the sun -- bad idea.



;)

File3.jpg

File3.jpg

Looking back toward the beach where Chris took the picture of the heron on Monday.



This picture was taken with the new little cell phone camera dongle I got off ebay.



It is a teeny little dohickie about the size of my thumb, but works, and I took the picture, am writing this message, and will post -- all with my cell phone, while sitting on a log on the beach.



In a light rain, I might add -- this is Seattle after all.

File4.jpg

File4.jpg

Looking back toward the beach where Chris took the picture of the heron on Monday.



This picture was taken with the new little cell phone camera dongle I got off ebay.



It is a teeny little dohickie about the size of my thumb, but works, and I took the picture, am writing this message, and will post -- all with my cell phone, while sitting on a log on the beach.



In a light rain, I might add -- this is Seattle after all.

Looking back toward the beach where Chris took the picture of the heron on Monday.

This picture was taken with the new little cell phone camera dongle I got off ebay.

It is a teeny little dohickie about the size of my thumb, but works, and I took the picture, am writing this message, and will post -- all with my cell phone, while sitting on a log on the beach.

In a light rain, I might add -- this is Seattle after all.

-------------------------------------------------------
This message was sent from a T-Mobile wireless phone.

Alan & Barney

Posted by: abwinston

Alan & Barney
Kathryn emailed today about a pair of year-old cats a coworker needs to part with.

Barney was a young cat once.

Alan takes a picture of Chris taking a picture of a great blue heron. 

Each helmet of the presumed D-Day memorial is stenciled with the word "Liberty." 

On the beach at Golden Gardens this morning, what has to be an ad hoc memorial to D-Day, June 6, 1944. 

In 1970 or 71, a DB type 50kab passes through Osterholz-Scharmbeck, heading from Bremen to Bremerhaven.

-------------------------------------------------------
This message was sent from a T-Mobile wireless phone.

1988

Barney, Sophie, Eliza, Alan - 1988

Daytrip - May 31

I headed out early tuesday to meet Chris in North Bend for a still indeterminate day trip. I was leaning toward getting east of the mountains and away from the rain. So we headed that way in Chris' car, with her fine dog Coal in the back seat. We considered the Yakima River between Cle Elum and Thorp, and the Yakima Canyon between Ellensburg and Yakima, but ended up heading for Vantage and a loop in the sage desert and basalt cliff country east of the Columbia River.

Loop

Other than Taco Del Mar, our first stop was on Lower Crab Creek Road, where we hiked over a low ridge to Lake Lenice, about a half mile from the road.

I took what should have been some fine pictures to share, but there was some sort of camera or memory card malfunction between taking the last picture of the day and trying to upload them into my computer, and I have nothing. Sigh.

But Google did find some online pictures of Lake Lenice, so I am including links that give at least a little suggestion of what it is like. The wetlands were much greener than in those pictures, but they'll have to do.

After walking along the lake itself, we continued east through sage along the upper edge of the basalt ledges bordering the small coulee the lake, Crab Creek, and a string of wetlands are in until the terrain dipped again into a wet and wooded area, where we turned back south toward the road, where we returned back to the car along the abandoned Milwaukee Road rail right-of-way, now a trail.

The whole time, the Saddle Mountains loomed as a long east-west wall to the south of the road, with ever changing clouds of greater or lesser drama streaming up from behind them. Though there were occasional suggestions that it might rain, and Chris insisted that she and Coal were hearing thunder (could it have been blasting at the highway construction site across from Vantage?), we stayed dry and had more periods of sun than chill.

Back in the car, we continued through similarly attractive country east to The charmingly named "SE B" where we turned north toward the Frenchman Hills. The wind had risen, and dramatic dust clouds were rising here and there in the distance around us, and periodic rinsing of the mouth was appreciated.

At a well-known birdwatchers' destination, the ponds near the intersection of Frenchman Hills Road and Dodson Road, we saw less variety and fewer birds than I have ever seen before, probably due to the high winds and high water. But it was still a treat, and we had no regrets.

Continuing North on Dodson Road, we stopped briefly at the Winchester Wasteway, like Frenchman Hills Wasteway and the Crab Creek Wasteway, a product of irrigation runoff and raised subsurface water table.

Dodson Road led is back to I90, which we followed back west to Silica Road, where we immediately turned off the route to The Gorge amphitheater, and went down the old Vantage Ferry Road, which was part of US10 -- the main Seattle-Spokane highway -- from about 1930 to about 1962, when a new bridge was necessitated by the construction of Wanapum Dam. The old bridge replaced the ferry in 1927. The road now would disappear into the lake created by Wanapum Dam, except a boat ramp and parking area have been constructed at the waters edge.

The scenery along this road is a wonderful mix of basalt coulee, sage ledges, and the gorge itself. Returning up the hill, a long sleek dark gray mink-like mammal with a banded bushy tail ran across the road in front of us. Flummoxed us, and my theory is that it is exotic -an escaped pet or fur-farm animal.

From there it was back on I90 for some serious driving back to heavy rain on the wet side of the mountains, with thunder and lighting before I got myself home.