The deep end!!

This morning I went to the city pool. My normal pool is a 3 lane, 25 yard pool with 4.5 feet as the deepest part and that's in the center. The sides are like 3 feet deep. The city pool is a 6 lanes, 25 yard pool with a regular slop down to a 12? foot deep end. The shallow end is about 4 feet deep. And it's chlorine (regular pool is bromine). So it was different. And fun. And I swam faster than usual. After I got my 2,000 yards in, I had the lane to myself so I did some jogging and stretching which was also fun.

It's been about 6 months since I'd been there and a year since I'd swum their regularly. Some of the same peops were there but different life guards. Mondays still aren't very crowded which was nice.

It's almost exactly half the distance from here to the city pool as it is from here to the gym pool. The difference is traffic lights. There are a million red ones between here and the city pool. When the traffic is murderous, it is pretty much smooth sailing with a few green lights, to get to the gym. Oh and bicyclists. Between here and the city pool there are suicide cyclists. One guy this morning was coming right at me going the wrong way in my lane. The sun was on his back so I very nearly didn't even see him. I'd forgotten about those stupid cyclists.

Right now, the plan for tomorrow is just to go to the gym sometime after 10. We'll see.

Now I'm home for the rest of the day. It's nearly 9 and the helicopters are still overhead. It feels like they've been flying over my neighborhood since dusk yesterday.

Mayday in Seattle has come to mean grab-all-your-friends-and-march-though-town-and-break-windows-and-throw-shit-at-police. Yesterday was no different. The march starts out friendly-ish in mid afternoon but as afternoon turns into evening, marchers turn into assholes. This year, however, the police did it right. There was pepper spray and some loud smoke bombs - they used those and other tactics to keep the crowds on the road and going south of town.

Finally the police herded them towards the Costco parking lot where they surrounded them. By that time everyone was really tired and a mile away from town. Ha! The whole thing just petered out.

It was messy and loud and went right by here. And the helicopters monitored the whole thing. 9 arrested and 5 police officers injured. Then, this morning, when I woke up, the helicopters were back - this time for traffic.

At least it's not dead-of-Summer hot.

Time to sew.

Hot dog redo

I love a street hot dog. I love any hot dog but a street one - grilled or boiled is always just so good. There are a lot of street hot dog vendors in my neighborhood. Two sport stadiums will do that. On Saturday, before the soccer game, I went out and got a hot dog for lunch. I actually got two. One for lunch is plenty but I wanted to try something.

I brought the second one home and wrapped it in plastic wrap and stuck it in the freezer. Just now, I pulled it out and nuked it back to life and OMG, it was delicious!! I nuked it all together about 2 minutes and then I pulled out the bun and nuked the hot dog by itself for another 30 seconds. Next time I'll pull the bun out sooner - like at 1 minute. But, still. So delicious. No games today but I got a dog anyway!! score.



And today's lost and found photo...

I first met my friend, John, when we both worked for IBM in Minnesota. We each worked for executives but mine out ranked his by a hair. Our first meeting was a power locking of horns that I won. I remember telling my boss that we really needed to be wary of "that arrogant asshole". But, over time, the Arrogant Asshole and I got to be pretty good friends. Then my boss and I moved to San Jose, CA and about six months later my boss hired John and he moved out there, too.

John had lived in Seattle in the 70s and always talked about how cool it was. So, when it was time for my next move, I got to pick the place and I picked Seattle. I moved up here and John was a very frequent visitor. He came every Christmas for years plus 3 or 4 other times every year. We had marvelous adventures. Really really fun times. He was such a great friend. We never slept together by silent mutual agreement although, to this day, I'm not sure why.

He and my boss went on to work on the Nagano and then Sydney Olympics... I saw less and less of John but we kept in touch. He was always on the other end of the phone when I needed him or just wanted to chat. He retired from IBM and moved to Newport Beach, CA and I was looking forward to seeing him more often when one morning (2004) I got a phone call from his sister in Chicago. John had died two days before. I had gotten an email from him on Wednesday. He died on Thursday. I knew he had been having some weird symptoms and finally they had figured out it was Hemochromatosis. They had a treatment plan that was to start on Monday. (I'd never heard of it but since have seen it many many times on doctor dramas on TV. I can now spot it usually before the first commercial.)

I still see him often in my dreams. He's in about 90% of those that I remember. It used to freak me out but I'm used to it now.



Wow, I meant to talk about this photo and really got off on a tangent there. In 1994, my parents, who were constant travelers, found a cool trip package to New Zealand. My dad had been once in the late 60's on business and had never stopped talking about what a wonderful place it was. He called me and told me about the package and said 'why don't you come with?' I was tempted but the idea of spending two entirely uninterrupted weeks with just me and them gave me pause, so I called John and said 'why don't you come with?' And that's how the four of us came to be standing on the side the road at Arthur's Pass on the South Island of New Zealand.

It really was a great trip. John loved to drive and found driving on the wrong side a delightful challenge. Daddy loved having a designated driver so he cold drink any time he wanted to. Mother and Daddy had never met John and they fell instantly in love with him. It was just the most amazing people fit imaginable.  And we all loved every single tiny bit of New Zealand.

In fact, the next year, John and I went back and saw all the bits we missed the year before and some others.

New Doll

Wanna see the rest of the dolls? Flickr or Google

Found 'em!

In the olden days, when you built a web page, you used tiny postage stamp sized images that were linked to regular sized ones because access was via s.l.o.w dial up modem and building a page with a giant (what is now known as small) image was about as rude as today's Do You Want To Join Our Mailing List??!!!! pop ups.

So this weekend when I was picture hunting, I found a bunch of small images but not their bigger brothers. It bugged me all day until finally tonight I focused on the fact that the old harddrive that was hooked up to the windows machine was not showing on the windows machine .....  hmmmm  double checked that and, sure enough, that sucker has a power button on it!  Hit the button and bam!! about a half terabyte of old shit most of which is trash BUT in that trash were the bigger images! There aren't a whole lot but enough to just delight me to bits.

I need to organize them and I will and then write about them here. But, for starters, here's one of me that I really hate. I look like a silly fraidy cat. Which I wasn't so why the stupid pose?



It was taken at Grandma's in Oklahoma City and it might have been the Summer that my aunt (my father's sister) gave me a perm without asking Mom. Possibly I was anticipating (quite correctly as it turned out) how exceedingly pissed Mom would be when she found out.