RV Travels With Huggy

I don't think it is Spring yet although it is noticeable every day that it is staying light a little later in the evening. I really am ready for Spring, though, as I really don't like winter. Today we are expecting a high temp of close to 50 and not much wind, so that isn't too bad, for a January day but I really like temps in the 70s better.

Another thing I'd like to see end is this silly season of political junk. I don't know why the major political parties make us go through all these hoops, listening to this crap on TV and radio, seeing more of it in the newspapers and probably magazines but I don't read many of those. The parties pretty much know who they are going to foist off on us and we really won't have much choice, then come the election in November we can mark our ballots for Tweedle Dee or Tweedle Dum and there really isn't much difference between them. Maybe at least after that Congress can do the work of the people rather than only paying attention to what they think will best help them get re-elected and of course raising more money for those stupid ads. Some time ago (years) I read that our Presidential election may eventually come down to a National Lottery and the loser will be stuck with the job. I think that time is getting close.

I really haven't taken my new little camera out to play with it very much as the weather hasn't been very nice or the kind that would entice me to do that. We are starting to think about getting away to go somewhere this spring but the challenge is trying to figure out when "spring" might be here. Maybe by the end of February we will start getting some really nice days and about that time some of the early flowering trees and bushes may spring out with blooms. See, everything points to spring!

Labels: Flowers, Griping, Photo gear, Weather

I guess I have to wonder where time is going as it sure seems to be slipping away very quickly. Halloween is here already and it hardly seems like we are past summer. Of course a part of that is because summer was short and late this year and the weather guru's are saying that we will likely have another La Nina weather pattern much like the one we had last year. I suppose that compared to what happened weather wise in much of the rest of the country we here in the northwest cannot complain very loudly. But I am definitely more of a summer type person than a winter one, so I will complain a little. Oh well, the way time is flying it really can't be too long until summer comes again but I hope the next one will come in a more timely manner.

Pat and I are doing pretty well although we both do have a few of those things going on that seem to affect older people. It is a surprise to me how much more of our money goes out for various medical things than it did in the past. I really think the Powers That Be ought to change the things they include when they calculate the annual increase in cost of living for Seniors, as I am sure that medical costs are a lot higher percentage of our annual expenses than they are for those in whatever base they do use.

My basic retirement plan from Metro Transit is paid through the State of Washington Department of Retirement Services (DRS). When I retired at the end of 2003 I was told that I would start getting an annual cost of living increase, starting in the year when I reached age 66. For me, that was 2009. I got an increase that year and again in 2010, but this year the State Legislature decided to partially balance their short fall in budgeting on the backs of retired folks and they ended those COLA increases. All during the years I worked I paid 6% of my total income into that plan and my employer matched my contribution. The state was supposed to also match but there were many years when they either shorted their contributions or failed to make any contributions. Now they say they don't have enough money to pay all the things they want to pay and still give me a COLA increase any more. I think it is the State's fault but I am going to have to pay for it. Oh, and it doesn't affect the other retirement plans the State has, only mine and the original teacher's plan. Now they are talking about asking me to vote for some tax increases. Guess how I'll vote on any tax increases in the future? If they think I can live the rest of my life with no more income than I have now, then I think the State can, too!

Sorry about all this complaining on a Holiday, but it is starting to weigh on me.

Labels: Griping, Pat and I, Weather

Pat and I at the Enzian Inn in Leavenworth, WA last April. This was four years and a day after our wedding in 2007. Leavenworth is still a favorite place to visit for us.


We have had a real odd year weather-wise. For quite awhile it looked like summer was not going to come this year, but yet we have had one of the driest (lack of rain) summers ever. The temps rarely got above 70 until almost August and only hit 80 two or three times. Then in September, about the time school started, we had about ten days in a row of close to 80 every day. There was rain last Sunday & Monday, the first since early July, but it has been sunny and nice since then. BUT, you can tell that fall is knocking on the door.

I was out early this morning and the temp was only in the high 30s. The sky was clear so the sun came out with sunrise and the temp soon went up and will probably go up close to 70 today, which is just about perfect. The leaves are changing color and starting to fall from the trees. We've re-started the pilot lite on our gas fireplace, taken down the patio table umbrella and the outside sunshades over the windows. And now those weather gurus are talking about another La Nina year that could be even stronger than the one last year. Ugh! I do miss Snowbirding!

Labels: Photos, Trips to see things, Weather

I'd like to wish a Happy Mother's Day to all Mother's in Blogland. We have had a good day so far and are about ready for me to take Pat to dinner. We have a reservation for 17:00 at Taco Bell. Well, maybe it is somewhere else but I've been telling her it is T.B. all day. I suppose I could have just said Costco where two can eat for about $3 plus tax. But Mother's Day only comes once a year so I guess it is okay to spend more than that on two meals.

We are still waiting for Spring. Pat bought two tomato plants today and if the weather forecast holds for tomorrow, they will get planted. Everything up here is running late this year and I really wonder how well crops like apples will do, with this late start. I guess they'll be okay if we have a hotter than usual summer but so far that sure isn't looking like what is going to happen. Ugh.

Labels: Holidays, Pat and I, Weather

Weather. Yes we have had unusual weather this year and every time I start to gripe about ours I realize that other parts of the country have had much worse. We don't have tornado's (well, occasional small ones have been reported but they don't do any damage) but I am more than ready for Spring to finally arrive. Today looks like it has with sunshine, blue skies and temperatures in the mid-60s in most areas, but clouds are due back overnight with rain (again) tomorrow. We drove out through some of the tulip field areas yesterday (Mt. Vernon's annual Tulip Festival runs all the month of April) and some other farming areas today and there is still a lot of standing water in fields and pastures. Tulips are finally up although in most years they burst out in early April. Some fields have been plowed but it is still too wet for them to do much in the way of planting. Pat has been hardening plants in the garage, some that should have been planted outside a month ago. Oh well, May is just around the corner and maybe Spring will finally arrive with it. The picture above is from one of the commercial tulip growing farms here, where the bulbs are actually the main product.

Gas prices have gotten worse since my post on March 17th about being happy that I bought a Prius. We are seeing regular gas locally at prices over $4 a gallon at some stations but can also find it in the $3.85 range and we do get an extra 10 cents a gallon off at Safeway and Fred Meyer because of our purchases at those stores last month. Where will it stop? Pat's VW New Beetle uses diesel fuel and it is running $4.15 now at those two outlets.

Thursday of next week, the 28th, will be our Fourth Wedding Anniversary and we do have plans. More about that later. This year also marks my 50th anniversary of graduating from Lewis & Clark High School in Spokane, WA. There will be a reunion in Spokane during the summer and we are going. I don't think I have ever stayed in a 5-star hotel but with a pretty good discount for LC-61 class members I think we will stay in the Davenport Hotel which is the headquarters for the reunion. There were about 520 in my class who graduated that June day in 1961. I still am in contact with a few of them and look forward to seeing more later this summer.

Labels: Festivals, Flowers, Griping, Reminiscing, Weather

On Tuesday night, Feb 22nd, it started snowing and when we got up Wednesday morning we had about six inches of the stuff. I right away got the driveway and sidewalk shoveled and it started melting. The park roads got plowed and it was looking very good by evening.

That night it started snowing again and actually dumped about 12" of the stuff in a two hour period! By Thursday morning, we had between 14 and 16" all over the place. Now I know this probably doesn't sound like a lot of snow to some people who live where it snows a lot, and I like having snow around us in the mountains, but not down here where I live. That is more snow than we usually have in at least three or four years, total. This time I have some photographic proof:


This is what our road beside the clubhouse looked like, shortly after I finished shoveling (again) but before the snow plow came by. Our two cars are both small and low to the ground and we couldn't operate them in this much snow as their wheels wouldn't even reach the ground, with the car hung up on the snow!


This is the mountain of snow I built in our yard from shoveling snow from the driveway and sidewalk. Our neighbor in the next house was doing his at the same time and I suggested that we build two snow forts, then have a snowball fight. I guess we are too old for that now.

Anyway, a week and a half after that snow fell, there is still a little of my mountain in the yard. Maybe I'll go out and throw snowballs at cars as they drive by. No, I guess most people wouldn't appreciate that and my hands would get cold.

Labels: Griping, House, Photos, Weather

I guess we here in the northwest really have little to complain about regarding our winter weather this year when compared to much of the country, but I am going to do a little complaining anyway. Here I had been thinking that our winter was about over and it was time for SPRING to arrive, but this week we got a rude reminder that it isn't over yet. Tuesday evening while we were celebrating Pat's birthday eating dinner at the local Johnny Cerino's, the outdoor temperature dropped and soon after it actually started snowing! This was on February 22nd! By the time we got up the next morning we had about six inches of snow! I got that shoveled from the driveway and sidewalk and our community had our roads plowed and by the afternoon things were looking better. Then that night it again cooled off and the snow started falling, this time dropping twelve inches of the stuff in just two hours. It continued to snow overnight although not quite as hard as when it started, but we ended up with about 16 inches of the stuff Thursday morning! That is more snow overnight than we usually have in two or three years worth of winter, and it was followed with two nights of low to mid teen temperatures and not even above freezing in the daytime, although it was sunny, so not much of it has gone away yet.

Now, 13:00 hours on Saturday, it is again overcast with a snow looking cloud cover. The forecast calls for it to warm up this afternoon and over night as a warmer but wetter front collides with the cold front we have had for a few days. That may bring another three inches of snow according to the forecasters before it warms up to just rain by tomorrow morning which should eventually get rid of this stuff. I have the biggest pile of snow in my yard that I have ever had. My neighbor and I were each shoveling our driveways Thursday morning when I suggested that we build two snow forts and have a snowball fight. Fifty years ago that would have been fun.

Come on Spring, I am more than ready for you to arrive!!!!!

Labels: Griping, Weather

I am still around although I haven't posted anything for some time. I think this last December is the first month I've not put up something since I started this blog in Dec 2005. I don't have much to add here but will do a little updating.

Christmas came and went. My Navy son enjoyed a month long leave between his assignments and is now getting used to a new job in a new location. He had never been with Navy Air before so decided to try it this time. He likes the job and the people he works with but they hope to keep their house in another town that is too far away for a daily commute so are trying to resolve that issue. He may end up renting a small apartment in the new town for $500 - 600 a month just to have a place to stay during the week, then go home on the weekends. An unforeseen expense as he thought he would be able to get BOQ type housing during the week.

I started back to work. Sort of. I have been on the Citizen's Advisory Council for our local transit agency (SKAT) for a year and a half. It seemed to be a natural fit for a volunteer opportunity for me, what with my background in transit. Last month I was asked if I would be a passenger count surveyor over the year 2011. It is a paid position although just barely. I told them that I would as long as it was not enough of a job to make me fail retirement. I was assured it would be no more than ten hours or so a month, so I said I'd do it. I went on a test ride early this month and since then have done three on my own and it seems to be going pretty well. I will sure learn the local system this way!

Pat and I both bought Internet Tablets last month. We are not Apple people so bought two that run on the Android operating system. It has been interesting learning how they work. Pat asked the other day what they will do that our desktop and netbook PCs won't do and I said nothing. But they are easy to carry and fun to play with. Mine is a 10.1" by View Sonic, hers is a 7" by Archos. She thought the 7" would work better for her as it will fit in her purse. We don't have smart (Android) cell phones but that may end up finding its way to our house before too long. But again the question, Why?

I am ready for summer. We were told in the summer that this was to be a La Nina weather pattern year and it was supposed to be worse than the last one two years ago. That one brought us about two feet of snow around Christmas time and we usually don't have any snow. So far we have had the stuff three times but a lot less than 2' and none of them have lasted as long as it did then. Right now we are having way tooooooooo much rain and that has caused some river flooding as well as hillsides sliding down in places. Our Skagit River went about three feet over flood stage last week which caused minor flooding but it looks like cooler temps in the mountains (less snow melt) and less rain now have them receding. By Wednesday we are supposed to have sunshine and 50 degree temps although with the clear skies that temp will drop a little below freezing overnight. Sounds good to me. And when we look at what is happening weather wise in other parts of the world, we sure can't complain.

Labels: Christmas, Computers, Family, Pat and I, Weather

I thought I'd better mention here that Tim from Handy's Heating came back last Monday, checked out our new fireplace and replaced the control module on it. Now it is working fine, but our weather has been warm enough that we haven't needed it since then. The forecast calls for a high temp of only 61 on Monday so maybe that day we will be able to use it. I do know it will get a lot of use over the winter and am glad that we did go ahead and have it installed early enough that it will be ready when needed.

Time really seems to be flying. I can't believe that it is already October. It really is true that the older we get the faster time goes. Annie has been gone over five years and this month will mark four years that Pat & I have known each other. In fact, we will be visiting good friends over in the Lake Chelan area of Central Washington on the 22nd which will be our exact four year anniversary. Roy, if you read this, we will have to plan on something special that day.

We are planning that trip for about the middle of the month. To get there we cross Stevens Pass which reaches an elevation of about 4100 feet, on US 2 and go through one of our favorite towns, Leavenworth. We should get to Leavenworth about the right time to stop for lunch. That time of the year the fall color should be brilliant. I hope the weather will also be great. October is usually a good weather month with fairly warm days and cool nights. It should also be ahead of the snowfall in the mountains. The long range forecast is calling for a return of the La Nina conditions in the Pacific Ocean which usually means colder temps for us. Winter always brings more precipitation and if it is cold, that can come as snow. Two years ago when we last had a La Nina winter we had close to 24 inches of snow here around Christmas and we usually have none all winter. Spokane in Eastern Washington, where I grew up, had four feet of snow that winter, much of it on the ground at once. They always have snow but not that much! See why we wanted to have the fireplace installed before winter? When we come home we will probably go to Winthrop and come home across the North Cascade Highway (WA State Route 20) if it hasn't yet been closed by snow. It is over a mile high and it has so much snowfall that the State Highway Dept doesn't try to keep it open through the winter. But when we come out on the west side we are right in our own backyard. And by going that way we can stop for lunch at Duck Brand Hotel & Cantina in Winthrop, another of our favorite eating places.

Enough for now. I still have some photos from our Oregon Coast trip back in May to post, especially those of our visit to the light house at Newport. I'll get to that before much longer.

Labels: Annie, Friends, Pat and I, Reminiscing, Small towns, Weather

We have dreamed about putting a natural gas fired fireplace into our house for some time but just were not sure where to put one in a house as small as ours (1450 sq ft). But we are hearing that the long range weather forecast for our area is calling for another nasty winter, much like the one of two years ago, so we decided to finally go ahead and just do it.

We had visited the booth of a local heating supply place at our County Fair this summer so we started with them. They had a nice unit on a special price that we liked, so we ordered it. The delay was in getting the special sized hearth made, but it finally arrived last Thursday and they came on Friday to do the installation. Of course I have some photos of that process and I hope I can get them in here as Flickr has changed the way the code is copied to put into a blog. I hope I've figured it out. Here goes.....


This first photo shows part of our living room, with the hearth about in the right place. We felt this location would provide some heat into the dining area behind the fireplace and the kitchen is then to the left in the photo from the dining area. We rarely have power outages but they do happen and we wanted to be sure this stove would work, even with the AC power off. It does although not as well as it will with the AC powered blower working.


The two installers, Tim and Jake, have carried the main unit in and are placing it on the hearth. It is by Vermont Castings and has a cast iron firebox so weighs about 200 pounds. Tim is the stove man, Jake is the carpenter.


As you know, we live in a cat house with Huggy, Molly and Peewee. Peewee is the youngest and most inquisitive, although Huggy was watching most of the process from her perch on the sofa. Except when she was asleep which was quite often. Peewee has given the area around the floor a good sniff test and is now checking out the top. Better now than later when it gets hot.


Our manufactured home requires that outside fresh air be supplied to the firebox for combustion. With a gas fired unit there isn't a lot of exhaust so they are able to use a double walled chimney, with the fresh air coming down the outer part. With a fireplace that burns wood or pellets, you have to cut a vent into the crawl space under the house that comes up to the bottom of the fireplace. Gas is a lot easier.


The chimney goes through the roof inside a box that keeps the hot parts from the combustible parts of the house. For that, a fairly large hole has to be cut into the roof and it has to be aligned with the hole in the room ceiling where the box accepts the chimney from the stove. Here Tim and Jake are checking the alignment of the drill before punching the holes out through the roof.


Pat is sitting at the dining table in the background while the fireplace is in its final position, with the chimney installed. The glass front of the firebox has been removed so that Tim could place the "logs" in their proper position. These are some sort of a ceramic that glows when the flame heats them. There are also "embers" added to the mix. The iron front that goes in front of the glass is also here on the floor. You can see some of the gas controls under the firebox. We have a remote control that runs on batteries and the receiver in the fireplace gets its electrical power from some units that generate power from the heat of the pilot lite so no household electrical power is needed to operate it, although it will distribute the heat better if AC power is available to drive the fan system.


Here is the unit operating. When Jake finished hooking it up to gas he could get the pilot lite to ignite but it wouldn't stay on even after quite a long burn-in with the button depressed. Jake isn't a stove man and Tim had gone on to another job so we called in Jesse who got it working. These have a high temperature paint on much of the unit but it does smell a bit at first so they suggested that we let it burn for a couple of hours with the doors & windows of the house open. It was 77 degrees outside so we didn't need the heat but it did get the paint smell cleared.


Here's a closer view. I have been playing with using a couple of different sizes photos from Flickr and am anxious to see how they look in the blog. Hopefully they will be okay.

Anyway, we now have a fireplace so should be all set for winter. However, the pilot lite went out yesterday and it again won't stay lit. We will have to have the stove guys back out tomorrow to get it resolved. I'm glad that we did this before winter set in.

Labels: House, Our cats, Pat and I, Photos, Weather

Today we went to lunch with some neighbors at Big Rock Cafe & Grocery, just outside of Mount Vernon. The title of today's post is their slogan, which is posted on signs outside and also prints on their cash register receipt. Of course they sell gasoline through the store. The food is good and at reasonable prices. We will go back.

We have been following the weather problems that seem to be occurring all over the world and most of them make our weather problems actually seem pretty minor. BUT, today our high temp is going to be about 70 and after nearly a week of high 80s to mid-90s, that sure sounds good.

I've decided to try to sell my Honda moped. It has been listed for sale on Craig's List for a few weeks and while I've had some inquiries, no one so far has bought it. Most inquiries have been from the Seattle area or farther south so a buyer would have to come 60 miles or more to see it & then have a pickup to take it home in. It has very low miles and has been stored inside a garage all it's life so is in real good condition and I don't want to just give it away, but maybe I'll try re-listing it at a lower amount and see what happens. Or maybe I should just take it to Chris' car lot and pay him a commission to sell it. That would be the easiest thing for me to do. I have the electric assist bicycle and have been storing it in the sunroom. Pat would rather I keep it in the garage but I need to sell the moped to get the space. I don't use it very much- have owned it a little over five years now and it has less than 800 miles on the odometer.

More later.

Labels: eBikes, Friends, Weather

I have been busy and not gotten to the other photos from the Oregon Coast trip. I will try to get to them before too much longer.

One thing that I've been up to is moving my small stock portfolio from a full service broker to one of the discount brokerage places. Since then (at the end of June) I have been having fun making some small trades and a couple of somewhat larger ones that I have wanted to do but was unwilling to pay the high broker fees to sell and buy more.

Another thing that I wanted was to have the dividends paid to me buy more shares of stock rather than paying to me in cash. The place where my former broker was when I started with him did allow that but then he changed companies and the new one allowed that only on mutual funds. The new place allows that at to happen with most securities as I understand. So far only one of them has paid a dividend since I changed (at least that didn't still go to the other place as it was my brokerage on the day they based the dividend on) and that one did buy more shares. It pays monthly, as does a new one I bought in my IRA that will pay its first dividend to me next Tuesday, so I'll find out then if it will also buy more shares. This is kind of play money that I don't need to live on so I'd rather have them buy more shares, which helps the portfolio grow quicker.

Anyway, I have been having fun with it now and am learning more about how to track investments. I also have my Honda moped scooter listed for sale on Craig's List. I have had it almost five years and it still has less than 800 miles so is not even really broken in yet. I have the electric bike which I have been storing in the sun room but Pat would rather I get it out into the garage, so the scooter needs to go. When it does sell I will probably move that money into the stock market. With the much smaller cost of making purchases with the discount broker, I can do that.

Our Old Coots did get together again this summer in Spokane (WA) and Pat agreed to go even though it was in July. She doesn't like hot weather and all three days we were there the daily temps were over 90. It was fun. The Old Coots is a group of us who went to school together in Spokane many years ago. In fact, it is so many years ago that next year we will celebrate our 50th high school graduation reunion. I definitely want to go to that. Since we no longer have the RV, we drove the Prius over and stayed in a motel. The car averaged right at 50 miles per gallon of fuel use so it is running right about where it is supposed to.

I will try to post a little more often and get around to reading those I like to read but I just don't seem as motivated to blog as I used to be. No promises.

Labels: Cars, Events, Friends, Reminiscing, Weather

This past week we returned to one of our favorite area towns, Leavenworth WA. It is about 130 miles away, east of us on US 2 on the east side of Stevens Pass through the Cascade Mountain Range. Leavenworth was a railroad town but went into decline when the railroads decided to no longer make stops there. Some in the town recognized the similarities of their area to the Bavarian area of Germany and proposed that they go through a rebirth to make themselves a Bavarian community here in the Washington State Cascade Mountains. They did that and have been quite successful. It is close enough to the population area around Seattle that many from the Puget Sound region go there, for a day or for a bit longer.


This view is looking west in the downtown area of the village. There are commercial buildings on the left and the town square is on the right. In mid-March the leaves have not yet returned to the deciduous trees so they are bare. There is also not much snow on the foothills around town. The Pacific Ocean had an El Nino year this year and most of the precipitation that usually falls here in the NW instead went south to California. I know they need water but think this year they actually got more than they wanted. I understand that some of it also traveled east, as far as the east coast, so they got some of our mountain's normal snowfall.


If we are not traveling in an RV, we like to stay in one of two hotels in town and they are both in this photo. This trip we stayed in the Linderhof Inn, the nearest one in the photo, but the Enzian Inn is in the background. Both are good places to stay while in Leavenworth. Both are right on US 2 as it goes through town and the entry to the shopping village is just a block away and across the highway. There are well marked pedestrian crosswalks and the traffic seems to be well trained to stop for pedestrians. Both these hotels have swimming polls (outdoors, so they were not yet open on this trip but the hot tubs were) as well as other things and breakfast is included in your room rate. At Enzian it is a full buffet meal.


There are many places to eat in town and most offer German food as well as regular American fare. Gustav's, shown here, is a tavern that is across the street and a block away from the Linderhof Inn. The food is primarily sandwiches but they are very good and there's a good selection of northwest brewed beer and ales. I like their Sleeping Maiden Porter but Pat prefers to stay with her wine. Beyond Gustav's in the photo you can see Visconti's, an Italian food place, that is also very good although more of a dinner place. We also love Cafe Christa in town on the second floor so you have a neat view overlooking the downtown village and the town square across the street. And they have a Bavarian chocolate mouse (did I spell that right?) that is so rich one serving is more than we two can eat together. A great place for a mid-afternoon break for coffee and desert.


Another view here of the foothills around town, showing how little snow there is this year. All the snow would normally be gone by mid summer but this photo was taken while it was still officially winter. These hills should be covered solidly with snow at this time of the year. Instead of it falling here, it went to Maryland and Virginia and that other Washington. Can we have our snow back next year, please?


I like attractive girls and anyone who has read my blog for very long knows that I really like my mochas, so when I spotted this young lady across the street pushing her baby in a stroller AND drinking a mocha, I couldn't resist taking her picture. It would be nicer with leaves on the trees behind her but I kind of like it this way, too. Made me want to go get a mocha. But not a baby. Been there, done that, and am now very happy with Grandkids. I can enjoy them and return them to their parents later in the day. But I think this is still a nice photo.

We only spent two nights in Leavenworth but that gave us half of the day we arrived and all day the second day, plus a little time on the third day. In a tourist trap type town where there are almost too many things to buy, that is long enough for one trip. We may well return later in the year for another visit and in a month and a half we will be going to the Oregon Coast for a week or so. Our travels now do not involve an RV but we are still getting out, seeing and doing things around the area and I will continue to take photos and make blog posts here. I have even started a Travel Photos set on my Flickr photo site (click on any of these photos to be taken there) and may go back in the Flickr archives to add some earlier photos to that set. More later.

Labels: Landscapes, Photos, Small towns, Trips to see things, Weather

This El Nino winter has brought us an unseasonably warm winter and with it an early spring. The Skagit River Valley, where I live in Washington State, is still very agricultural and one of the main products of our farms are daffodil and tulip bulbs. Every year in the month of April the local Tulip Festival is held and visitors come from all over to stroll through the fields with these flowers in bloom. However, the flowers are not the main product, it is the bulbs in the ground. The growers try to leave the flowers as long as the can before "topping" them but it looks like this year that will come before the end of the festival at the end of April. If you want to come see them, come early, like at the beginning of April or even in late March.

As of today many of the tulips in our own garden are starting to bloom but I have no photos of them. However, this area has some beautiful flowering trees- some are cherry and some plum and I can't tell the difference. A week ago we had beautiful weather on Saturday March 6th and due to the early spring, the blooms on these trees were already changing into the red leaves of summer. I had wanted to take some photos and with colder temperatures along with strong wind & rain forecast for the next few days I figured I'd better get to doing it while it was still possible. So, I put my macro lens on the camera and took a hike in our park. Here are three photos from that trip.


There are quite a few of these trees that have grown large enough to partially cover the roadway in the northeast part of our park. These are a few of them, looking north from Phillips Loop East (yup, that is the name of the road I live on.) You can also see one of another kind of "tree" that our park has grown a lot of over the last couple of years- a For Sale sign on a post. We are a senior park and some residents sometimes need a higher level of care than totally independent living that we have here, so they move. The real estate market has not been kind to us here either. There are people who would like to move in but most have another house somewhere else that they have to sell before buying one here. So, right now we probably have a good dozen homes (out of a total of 120) that are for sale.


This closer view shows some of the red leaves along with the blooms. These trees are beautiful now with the flowers blooming and also during the rest of the growing season with their red leaves.


I have always loved forsythia plants with their early spring very bright yellow blooms. They always look so bright and cheerful after our usually dull, dreary winters. So we planted one in our yard a couple of years ago and it is doing very well. Our only goal with it is to try to keep it from getting too big. Last Saturday when I was on my photo walk, our own forsythia was too beautiful to ignore, especially with it brilliantly lit by the afternoon sun.

I have other photos of spring plants in our park and will try to include them in posts here and I'll try to do it a little more often that I have been. We are going east of the mountains for a couple of nights in one of our favorite local towns, Leavenworth, next Wednesday and I should also get some photos over there. I think I will also have some good news about my car "collection" when we get back.

More later.

Labels: Cars, Festivals, Flowers, Small towns, Trips to see things, Weather

This being the last day of January it seems appropriate to welcome the month of February. Welcome! In our area we have set a record for the warmest January on record and those records go back into the late 1800s, so this is a pretty long standing thing. Our weather guessers are saying they expect February to be warmer and dryer than January was, but it normally is so I'm not sure if it will be quite a bit better than usual or what. I have noticed more hours of daylight and that I like. It will also do well for our home heating bills, although I guess what is good for us here is not so good for others in different parts of the country. Last year we had a very cold, snowy winter while the East Coast was enjoying balmy weather. This year it seems to have flip-flopped. I don't know what next year will bring but I'll vote for another El Nino year like this one, although it didn't get started until about the end of November.

February is also a month with some important birthdays for our family. It starts out with Pat's younger brother on the 4th, then Pat's on the 22nd and my brother's on the 24th. Pat and T have a fun thing of trying to outdo each other with wacky birthday cards but Pat is a little behind since if she goes too far overboard it will catch up as T's BD is first and he has almost three weeks to find an appropriate card. The 22nd also used to be the birthday of George Washington, our country's first President. Pat told her school mates the reason they got a holiday on the 22nd was to celebrate her birthday. We also used to get Abraham Lincoln's birthday off on the 12th. I guess Congress decided it was too much to allow the People to have two holidays in one month. Or there was a lot of pressure from government employees who wanted three day weekends but thought they couldn't get two of them in a month, so they canceled both birthdays and we now just celebrate an office workers holiday on the 3rd Monday. We haven't canceled or moved Pat's birthday- it will still happen on the 22nd.

I've had a few questions about how Huggy is doing. She is fine although we are still having cat wars between our three cats. Huggy and Peewee, the youngest one, have almost made it a game. Molly is still the queen of the house and she tries to just ignore both of the others although they sometimes do get her involved. There are times when they will all three be in the same room and just quietly ignore each other. That is about the best we seem to be able to have happen.

Labels: Birthdays, Holidays, Huggy, Our cats, Weather

I had heard early last fall that we were expecting to have an El Nino year weather wise this year, although it wasn't expected to start until after Thanksgiving, near the end of November. I guess it has arrived although we have also been wetter than usual and El Nino usually brings us warmer, dryer weather than normal. I guess it depends on where you look. Here in the lowlands of Western Washington State along the northern part of Puget Sound, we have had twice the amount of precipitation that we would normally have in the first part of a year. We have the Olympic Mountain range to the west of us and the snowpack there is above normal. To the east of us is the Cascade Mountain range and the snowpack there is below normal. Here is a photo of the hill to the east of my home that was taken about New Years Day 2008 (Jan 1st) and it shows the snow that was on that hill at that time:

Last year we had a lot of snow and this hill had visible snow on it from early in December until probably late February. This year there have been a couple of mornings when there was a dusting of snow up there but nothing that stuck around very long and right now it is totally bare clear up to the top.

While we have been seeing record cold and snow levels in much of the eastern part of the country, we have been warmer (and strangely, wetter) than normal. There were a couple of days this past week when our high temp hit 60 or over and even the overnight lows were all above 50. I know this affect is from El Nino out on the Pacific Ocean and I guess that is what is causing the excess' of winter back east. Our biggest problems right now with it are coming from saturated ground on slopes that are sliding down in mudslides. Friday the US-2 highway just west of one of our favorite little towns to visit, Leavenworth, WA, was closed when a large boulder came crashing down onto the roadway. I've seen photos of it on the TV news- about 25 feet long, 20 feet wide and 15 feet high. It totally covered both lanes of the roadway and caused a crater that is 3 to 5 feet deep under it. There are cracks in the road surface that extend up to 100 feet away from the rock. This is a main east/west corridor across our state and it is closed for a week or so until it can be repaired.

Other roads around our area have been closed due to mudslides & flooding and some will not open for awhile because they are worried about trying to clear them until the rainfall slows down. As I said earlier, this year's El Nino has been a bit different. Too bad we can't just direct the jet stream to deliver the clouds and rainfall to where it is needed! And just leave the cold weather up north.

Labels: Griping, Landscapes, Photos, Weather

Wow, we are already a week into the month of December! That doesn't seem possible. Although since I am not fond of winter I'll be glad when the weather improves and we start getting more daylight hours. But right now, we are in for some cold times. Tonight in Mt. Vernon it is predicted to get down to 27 degrees and tomorrow's high only 30. Those brutal temperatures are things that we are not used to.

Thanksgiving this year was good for us. We enjoyed two separate dinners, one on the Monday before and the other actually on Thanksgiving Day. The first was at the home of my youngest son and held that day due to the fact that he had to work on the actual holiday. The other was at Pat's youngest daughter's home. Both were good.

The day after Thanksgiving Day has been known for some years now as "Black Friday" because it is supposedly the day in the year when retail business' turn a good profit (a day definitely with the books "in the black") and start the run to Christmas which for some is the busiest season of the year. A couple of times in the past I participated in those early morning (middle of the night?) sale starts but this year I slept in. I drug myself out of bed about the usual time and arrived at Best Buy at the crack of 08:15. Pat did even better, arriving at Fred Meyer about 10:30. But, we both got what we were after at those special prices for the day.

Since then I have bought some more gift things online but didn't participate in the so called Cyber-Monday sales as I didn't see anything that really struck me as needing enough to turn loose my credit card number. I have been able to buy things far enough ahead of Christmas to take advantage of free shipping on most items. That is the big bugaboo for me with online buying. I hate to pay shipping charges and on small things the shipping can be as much or more than the cost of the item you have bought. That is especially a problem with eBay purchases.

I have been kind of holding back on purchases for myself. I keep hearing from She Who Should Be Obeyed that I do that too often, thus making it hard for others to buy gifts for me. So, I am still holding out in my torn, holey gloves, even in these brutally cold temperatures, as some of us walk for exercise three times a week to the hospital for coffee in the cafeteria, then back home. Now only three weeks to go.

Labels: Christmas, Family, Holidays, Weather

So far it doesn't feel bad, what with it getting light earlier in the morning. That means on Mon, Wed & Fri when I go walking with the guys from my park it will be an hour warmer when we start at 08:30. But I know that at the other end of the "day" it will get dark an hour earlier and that is the part I am not fond of. The two things I liked best about Snowbirding was the warmer temperatures and more hours of daylight. In the north during summer our days are longer than they are down south but it is the opposite in the winter. And the winter difference between here and southern Arizona is about an hour, or the difference between having Daylight Savings Time and not having it. Oh well, in two more months the timing will start back the other way toward longer days.

We did go on a road trip last month in the Prius. We left home on Monday Oct. 12th and drove to Spokane, WA on the far Eastern side of the state. It is about 340 miles and most of the trip over was via I-90 with 70mph speed limits. I did set the cruise control for 70 and we averaged about 47 miles per gallon (mpg) going over. That is not bad but not as good as what I've heard these cars can do. I didn't do any extraordinary things like trying to draft behind semi-trucks or anything like that. Just driving at a pretty constant speed.

For our return trip we came west via US-2 which is a 60mph road most of the way, with some slowdowns for small towns. We didn't go quite as far as we stopped in Manson to visit friends but it was long enough to give a pretty good test. This leg didn't have us crossing any mountain passes (there is one on I-90 of about 3000 feet) but we did drop down to the Columbia River and climb back up. Our mileage average for this leg was about 53mpg. It does make a difference when you slow down a bit- 60 as compared to 70.

The last leg, home from Manson, had us on 60mph roads but also crossing two mountain passes, one over 5000 feet and the other just below that at 4800+, then dropping down to sea level. Out mileage for this leg was about 51.5mpg which I figure is very good, especially when considering the elevations we climbed to. To be fair, the area between the two passes is all at high elevation so the climb up to the second pass is probably less than 1500'.

The car was very comfortable and easy to drive. We both like it, other than Pat often getting a static shock when she gets out. I don't know why it doesn't affect me the way it does her. I keep telling her that she is an electrifying woman. I don't think that helps.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to meet my younger son and my youngest granddaughter and go watch K play in a soccer game with her team. They are in a U-10 league and I think all the girls on her team are age 9. The other team sure has some tall girls for only being 9 but the two teams were actually fairly well matched. Our team lost but the score was 4 - 3 and it really could have gone either way. Of course it was raining- isn't it supposed to when the kids are playing soccer? I took some photos of the game and after a quick look through them, I setup one to post here:


My granddaughter likes to play defender which means that her position is to hang out in front of their own goal to help the goal keeper defend it. But K is quite fast and her coach has been working with her to move the ball forward when she has it and to even go as far as taking a shot at the other teams goal. Here she is moving the ball against a much taller opponent and staying in front of the other girl. K's team are wearing the gray jerseys. I think she might develop into quite a good player if she stays with the game.

Labels: Cars, Family, Photos, Weather

All the Back To School sales that are going on and articles in the local newspaper would have me thinking that summer is about over. School seems to start earlier and earlier as time goes on. In our area we usually don't have very reliable summer like weather until after about the 10th of July but this year has been different. We had rain the day after we got back from our North Cascades Loop trip in mid-May and almost none since then. The temperatures have been pretty consistently in the 80s with a few days actually into the 90s. Until about a week and a half ago. Since then we have had some rain and cooler temps. But, now the thermometer is heading back up with talk of maybe into the 90s by mid-week.

Often I prefer to take trips after school has started in the fall as our September weather is usually beautiful, but that is also when I hope to go to the Spokane area for a week or so. Eastern Washington is cooler and more comfortable then than it is in the summer and we coastal residents are not used to hot temps. Maybe we will go there and down to the ocean for a few days. But we do need to rebuild the tow dolly in order to safely take the Beetle along and you got to have a tow car.

We did go to the local Skagit County Fair this past week and Pat was a lot braver than me and had a caricature drawing done of her by a artist who was there. I'll post it here and see what you all think of it.

I guess it is okay but I think I like some of my photos of her a lot better. But these things are not done to try to make them an actual portrait. And this was done just two days before she spent the morning at her hair dresser. Oh well.

Labels: Festivals, Griping, Pat and I, Reminiscing, RVing, Weather

The UPS delivery guy really surprised us by arriving at 18:45 hours last Wednesday night to deliver my package with Microsoft's Windows Vista Ultimate inside. It took two tries but I did get it installed on my desktop machine and it is working fine. Of course I have a lot to learn as it is different from XP. I have had Vista Home Premium on my laptop but haven't done very much with it in the past. This time I have had to get some new drivers (I never printed from the laptop so didn't need new printer drivers) and even the sound system driver that came on the CD supplied with my computer, that I just bought in mid-November, would not work. But the computer manufacturer did have what I needed online to download and it did the trick.

I have reinstalled quite a few of my programs and did have the data files backed up to both the internal D drive (two internal hard drives) and an external hard drive. About the only thing that is really going to take some time is getting Photoshop Elements Organizer up and running. I decided that there was a better way to organize my photo files on the hard drive so made those changes during this move. I didn't even try to reinstall one of the backups of my old albums as I'd have to go through all of the photos and reconnect them to the data files. I think it will be easier to just start over and re-enter all of them, then redo the tags and comments. But it will be quite a chore as I think there is something over 5000 photos and that is just in the album I made up since I've met Pat. The older one I may just reuse as I haven't changed many if any of those locations in the hierarchy of my hard disk.

We have been doing a few things in addition to working on resurrecting my computer. Yesterday we went to a before noon ($5 admission fee) showing of the movie, "Frost/Nixon." It is one that we've been waiting for and yesterday was it's first day in our town. It is good and that makes the second good movie we have seen recently in the theater, the other being Clint Eastwood's "Gran Torino."

A couple of times a month some of the area musicians from the Washington Old Time Fiddler's Association meet at the Mount Vernon Senior Center, on the 2nd and 4th Fridays of each month, in the evening to jam. It is open to the public. This is something I've wanted to go see for quite awhile and we finally made it and will go back as these are fun.

Summer has not yet come to northwest Washington State. Not even Spring! Our forecast for tomorrow shows a high temp of only 32! I don't even want to think about the low, but it's in the lower 20s range. Then, if it is an accurate forecast, come Tuesday it will start warming up and probably get wet again, but we should be back to more normal temps. A week from tomorrow we are into February and then flowers should start blooming. It has to warm up for that to happen, doesn't it?

Labels: Computers, Entertainment, Software, Weather