• Green Salad
• Cole Slaw
• Asparagus and Chicken Breast Pieces Swimming in Alfredo

No starch for anybody tonight. White wine for DB, cocktails for BM, and red wine for UM.

I think we have finally come to consensus on spending a week (well, I’ll spend five days) in Cabo San Lucas as my timeshare there. Guess I’d better get booking it – first full week of September is what we are shooting for. That would be AFTER most of the little kiddies are back in school and before BM returns to college.

That’s it for today.

[205.4

Not a bad day at the shop, though I could have come in several hours late with the dearth of customers in the first hours.

Did have a little time to try and find an armrest for the 2000 Ford Focus. All of the universal ones are expensive, and don’t get very good reviews. Found one on eBay that is from the same model of car but came with the higher trim package than my base fleet package. I have a counter offer in on this:

It’s even in the right color!. Like the pencil holder they built in? Great idea – my base console has one as well. On eBay it was $75 buy in now or make counter offer. I offered $55 – we will see.

Quiet dinner at home tonight.

[206.2]

This is the shot of the room AFTER I completely rearranged it so you could actually open and use the Murphy bed. They had the couch backed up against Murphy bed and the kitchen table was where I moved the couch to.

Dinner with WonderFool at Dragon Fish – small Asian plate meal type place. With the 20% off coupon we got out of there for $60.00 + tip, which included a lot of sake for both of us.

Off to the Opera next, via the monorail:

WonderFool wearing my old sport coat that he had retailored (when he was 20 pounds heavier).

This is our last season of tickets – giving up my truly wonderful seats, but at a grand for the pair, it’s become too much.

And how did Speight Jenkins reward us for our final opera? By presenting two short and incredibly painful operas. http://seattleopera.org/tickets/production.aspx?productionID=123

I spent the evening wanting to slit my wrists. Here is the summary:

In this exciting pair of Seattle Opera premieres two very different composers explore the fates of women who must come to grips with grave disappointment. In Poulenc’s sensual, captivating 40-minute monodrama, a desperate woman is shunned by her lover over the telephone and stumbles through a minefield of emotions towards an unknown fate. In Puccini’s sentimental one act, a noble-born woman who has joined a convent is disowned by her family, takes poison in despair, and miraculously passes into a state of grace.

Sister Angelica (Suor Angelica)
Music by Giacomo Puccini
In Italian with English Captions

The Human Voice (La Voix Humaine)
Music by Francis Poulenc
In French with English Captions

Luckily it has only one more performance – the matinee tomorrow.

We should have taken the monorail home – got stuff in a traffic mess of Mercer AND 99 being closed. We could have walked home quicker.

[206.2]

http://www.windermere.com/listing/WA/Seattle/4594-W-Cramer-St-98199/18170253

180 degree view of The Sound.

The Chinese Courtyard at the front of the house.

So, if you need 2+ acres in the middle of the city, and have $4.1 million to spare, it’s a great house. Technically it’s two lots so you could take out the tennis court, barn and fruit orchard and build a second house.

As for me – worked the day, finished sewing the wagon curtains in the evening after a blade lamb steak and salad for dinner.

At least I got the sewing finally done.

[206.6]

After work, it was onto work on the station wagon adding curtains. Apparently I did such a good job matching the color (blind guessing at Home Depot) to paint the curtain rails that you can’t really se them:

Until you hang some curtains on them:

Got the one set done before age and eyesight made it impossible to get the bobbin refilled to sew more. Once they are all done I’ll investigate Velcro® to get them to conform to the body style.

Quiet dinner at the casa.

Back to the grind.

[208.8]

• Breakfast
• Mail drop
• Drop off old Asus for brain transplant
• Home Depot for bug spray
• CampingWorld in Fife for curtain rods for the Focus
• Bank deposit
• Pecos Pit for BBQ
• Home Depot for forgotten items
• Les Schwab to get leaker fixed (must return)
• Safeway for groceries and gas
• Les Schwab to get the damn thing done
• Home

That would be FIVE hours of stuff.

But there is a mystery solved. The train from the other day or so in these pictures:

So, here are the much better shots from train spotters:

This is the “power” car…look at the exhaust pipes on the front, and the aero-dome for the satellite downlink stuff.

Thanks to NormanDcat who looked at the photos and actually figured out my “I thought it was labeled MRL on the cars”.

More is the info he found:

http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?4,3050156

And then I started digging….

Montana Rail Link : http://www.montanarail.com/index.php

Owned by the Washington Companies: http://washcorp.com/index.php

Great video here: http://washcorp.com/video.php

And they repaired their yacht:

http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/warning.php?forum_id=4&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.charterworld.com%2Fnews%2Fattessa-iv-yacht-launch-seattle-usa-largest

Had the train cars barged in so that the yacht folks could rehab them:

I’d give my left testicle to ride on that train – oh the joys of coal in the US:

Makes me think of Warren Buffet and his “train set” which I’ve seen parts of. Apparently I run in the wrong crowd.

Same dinner as last night.

No worries.

[208.6]

The big news of the day is dinner at Swanda’s new digs up north. I don’t envy the “joys” of moving. It’s taken him a month to get everything put away – and the last big item is now in the back of my station wagon, the rollaway guest bed. Where I’m going to put that is another question, but it is always handy to have a spare bed.

Porkloins over roasted onions – he did the roasted root vegetables separately for the BF since neither of us are doing carbs.

Left early as compared to when I used to dine at the old place since it’s twice the distance (but much cheaper in rent) and I tend to not like to drive after having wine with dinner.

Looking forward to being off tomorrow… time to run all those errands.

[210.2]

The new one has a smaller footprint so I get a little junk tray – great place for the remote.

Only took2.5 hours to install it – lots of wires to crimp.

And the plates arrived!

A very late dinner with getting home at 7:30 and only starting to cook at 9:30… Chicken Cordon Blue sliced up over a bed of greens.

Yum.

[210.2 – not bad for 3 days of cruising]

The Vancouver train station.

An interesting train set, private. Wow. Can’t seem to find any information on it though.

And I was awestruck at the redo of King Street Station in Seattle. I’m just hoping they are going to do some fancy accented paint work since that’s a whole lot of white.

Off to bed for me.

[? ? ? – should be interesting to see what tomorrow's number is]