After breakfast it was off to the liquor store for bourbon for next week’s Mexico trip – along with a couple of bottles of wine.
The only downside to this trip is that my wi-fi adaptor on the tablet has seemed to die. Dan and I spent hours trying to get it to work, complete with rolling the operating system back to 8 from 8.1. Now I have to get all the software reinstalled before Mexico, or just bring the large laptop.
As you can see – something is really wrong because the wi-fi doesn’t have the on/off switch it’s supposed to. But the $15.00 Manhattan at the airport helped.
Or a FaceBook photo post from the cellphone:
Or on the plane…
As you can tell, I got upgraded to First… but just snacks. No warm towel, no meal.
Arrived in B’Ham at 7:30, or was it 8:30 – who ever knows when it’s a red-eye flight.
All I do know is that after those flights into Bellingham I always pull off at the first rest stop and sleep for an hour.
Traffic was a mess – probably since it had just rained – rained so much that the Battery Street tunnel flooded – ruining my chance to detour off a clogged I-5.
The mess took away half an hour of an afternoon nap I needed before heading to Denver at 5 – and no upgrade either. Sad.
And then there was the amusing rental car situation. I booked an Economy car – advertised as a Fiat 500 (or similar). I was looking forward to driving one:
Of course they were out of those and the smallest thing they had was:
Seriously, a full sized SUV. I notice they didn’t give me the Mustang on the lot.
It did have this nice feature – you could plug anything in:
I didn’t get to Dan and Lisa’s until after 10 so it was a short night – which is good since I need the sleep.
Left the house at 11 for my run north to Bellingham to catch my mileage run flight to Honolulu.
Did a little shopping on the way, and swung by Unicorn’s place to pick up directory sheets. Still had enough time at the airport for a Manhattan and some fish tacos. Yum.
Got to ride on one of the Alaska’s new “sky interior” 737s:
They actually had 5 unsold First Class seats that didn’t sell for an extra $150 – those people in the back are crazy. One of the flight attendants took pity on this LARGE Hawaiian woman and moved her up front at no cost. I’m sure her seatmates appreciated that.
Two salesmen whose careers have been torpedoed by the digital age find their way into a coveted internship at Google, where they must compete with a group of young, tech-savvy geniuses for a shot at employment.
Acting under the cover of a Hollywood producer scouting a location for a science fiction film, a CIA agent launches a dangerous operation to rescue six Americans in Tehran during the U.S. hostage crisis in Iran in 1980.
Talk about both ends of the spectrum. It was interesting to relive both my Microsoft days and my memories of the Iranian Hostage Crisis.
Flight were on time which left me cooling my heals in the Delta Sky Club in Honolulu until my 10:50pm return flight.
Scan the Wallastor snail mail and send it off to Japan
Book three round-trips to San Francisco ($154 r/t) to get a 10,000 mile bonus
Getting an RMA to return the icemaker that stopped working last week
Icemaker packed up in a thick Styrofoam cooler – killing two birds with one stone… getting ice maker fixed and getting rid of cooler. Downside is that it will be 2.5 weeks before it returns.
And a funny thing happened this afternoon – Seaside Boy texted me out of the blue. Apparently the Everett relationship didn’t work out and now he’s in a polyamorous relationship with three guys in Covington. At least this one is an open relationship and Covington is only half an hour away. Wasn’t I just asking for a closer relationship?
And he now has a beard:
Off to Honolulu tomorrow – no need to really pack anything as I’ll only be there for 3 hours – but I did snag First Class upgrades in both directions. Downside is that I can’t change my return seat from 4D to 1D until I get to the airport — which means it will probably already be gone at that point. Oh well, don’t look a free upgrade in the mouth.
Breakfast (carb heavy) at 10 and the Weiner Wagon was fired up at noon.
The Wagon seems to be a hit with the campers. The plan is to get off the land by 2pm with Boo in tow, and it did happen.
Home by 2:30 and the Weiner Wagon parked in the garage – and time to start the cleaning process after a little fooling around.
Got one load of the three loads going before I dropped Boo back off in Lakewood. The 45 minute drive each way is starting to wear on me – and so soon. It’s like Seaside Boy and Everett. Maybe I should find someone closer.
Off to work – the usual routine with the exception of a return visit from a friend of a friend – who I find “fetching”. Probably nothing, but one can always hope for something more age appropriate.
On the road a little after 5 by the long way to avoid the bridge toll – still just 30 minutes to the woods – at 15 more to do the shopping for ice, sprite, and some marked down steak (which also meant horseradish just in case there was not dinner at camp).
After I got to the gathering – checked my phone – got the upgrade to First on the HNL trip on Wednesday – and changed my seat to my favorite (1C).
Yes there was dinner, and later there was the most amazing burka I have ever seen:
Not sure if it was homemade or not, but it made me get out of the hot tub to take a pic of it.
Left the bog — the Longhouse Gathering is at the edge of a bog, luckily not many mosquitos this time of year – at 9:30 for a quick ice/bun/wieners run, off the land at 10 with enough time to go home to shit/shower/shave.
A good crowd for a three day weekend. You never know how it’s going to be with people in/out of town, Bumbershoot, Sounders game. But it was good – like twice usual when I ran the numbers at the end of the day. Of course, I’d also forgotten that Jim had run the September wine club shipments a day early so that brought us down to a passable but light Saturday. And it will through off our monthly number since August’s totals will have two months of wine club rather than one.
Out of the shop at 7 headed to dinner with DancingBear and BreticusMaximus, and other guest’s the adorable Ethan (straight friend of BM), Marlow and Misha. They actually held the main course of the meal for over an hour so I could come to dinner – and really, there was enough food to feed ten people – and then dessert (which I passed on).
Was home by 10 since I’m working in the morning.
It certainly beat working, then going home, cooking and then finally eating.
Well, the sun returned to the gathering today – around the same time as people started to trickle in for the big weekend.
Hot dogs for breakfast, followed by a little real breakfast of bacon and eggs. Like I said, the first days are a little sketchy on the food front. I made a run to the store for ingredients for tonight’s meal which is pizza on Moonsong –made dough. I contributed a Caesar salad to cut down on the pure carbs. Never did get around to putting out the last of the wine.
It was yummy – I shouldn’t have eaten it on my diet but with fresh homemade dough it was too tempting.
The other picture for today is Boo and me by the hot dog cart.
This is my last night in the woods until Sunday – got to work this weekend.
[? ? ?] But with all the carbs guessing it won’t be good.
Let’s just say the weather changed while I was on the road – think rain – think rain that is sometime Midwestern rain – that heavy cats/dogs/the whole damn barn full of animals.
I needed to pick up Boo at noon down in Lakewood (45 minutes in good traffic, an hour today) and because northbound was even more of a mess than southbound we wound through the city of Tacoma to get past where the accident was. Should have brought the station wagon with its automatic transmission.
After a little interlude back at the house it was time to decide whether to go out to the gathering tonight, or wait for the morning and better weather. Boo made the call for tonight so it was rushing to pack everything up.
And what after getting there did I discover I’d forgotten?
A sleeping bag for Boo
All the condiments for the Weiner Wagon (ketchup, mustard, mayo, relish – I did remember the cheese, kraut, chili and onions)
We were the first ones there. So much for expecting a prepared dinner at 6:00, so it was up the hill to the store for those missing condiments.
Wolf was the next one in, followed around 7 by Moonsong and Unicorn. Finally a camp coming together, but it definitely going to be hot dogs for dinner tonight!
And we resolved the sleeping issue – there is a bunkhouse that has a king size bed that Boo and I can share with my one set of sheets – and for me, it definitely beats sleeping on the single in the wagon – a practice that I’m giving up now that I know about the bunkhouse.
And it was a good thing we were sleeping under a roof as the rains came and went to the volleys of thunder. Not a good day to be a pet (read, cats and dogs).
Another breakfast of too much food – this time it was the eggs benedict and the seafood crepe. Whew.
More errands before I take Obrad to the airport for his 1pm flight – first up, cigarettes for his buddy in Zagreb – stopped at the Red-X in Parkville — $36.00 a carton – cheap by most states standards.
Then back to Zona Rosa (where we went for books yesterday) to see if we could find a toy store – my GPS said there was a Toy’s R Us in the complex but no such luck so it was onto the airport.
As for me – flight wasn’t until 5 so I headed to the old airport near downtown for a couple of museums.
The TWA museum (small, but lots of artifacts, $5) and then the National Airline History Museum (more artifacts, a 8-minute movie and tours of a hanger full of working antique airliners, $8):
Had to bag out of the tour a little early to make my flight but here are a couple of photos:
Then it was off to the airport for a cluster-fuck of a check in with no MVP line, and check-in kiosks that claimed to spit out bag tags, but didn’t. Luckily I’m always early and on the other side of security once on the airplane, a first class seat awaits.
Home by 10 after a quick stop at Safeway for groceries.
After breakfast it was off to pick up Obrad in the suburbs after a quick stop at WalMart for a package of black socks.
From the suburbs it was back to the Savoy Hotel to get Obrad checked in (even though it was like, noon). I had a couple of things to do before heading to Paul and Gails to drop off wine and pick up Paul for errands and BBQ. Here is Obrad with the wine in from of the Savoy:
I love the stained glass in their front windows.
First stop was up north – a bookstore for Obrad and a sporting goods store for me – then off to Arthur Bryants for some BBQ:
Then shopping for dinner – fresh salmon which I should have brought from Seattle at the price they were charging, but I don’t do farm raised. And since we were broiling the salmon with the door ajar – here is a trick to warm your bread at the same time:
And the final assembled dinner:
A fun dinner for seven: Paul, Gail, Clayt, Deanna, Wendy, Obrad and your truly.
Good food, good company, good wine, good conversation.
Headed to Kansas City, unfortunately sans upgrade – the problem with flying on a Monday.
Got to the Board Room at the airport to find they had remodeled it in my absence… Jill found it claustrophobic, I just found some of the furniture choices “odd”.
Flight was on time – and it was on one of the new 737-900’s with the sky interior of all LED lighting:
Pretty cool actually – though that is a Boeing picture, not mine.
Got the luggage, got the car – a mid-sized SUV Jeep product – got to the hotel and checked in. Actually had a little time before I was due for dinner out in my former suburbs which allowed me to chill a bottle of wine:
The reason for this trip is to connect with Obrad, who is back in Kansas City for a 40 year reunion of AFS students – one of which will be at dinner along with her host sister.
Driving out there I realized I don’t miss the suburbs with all the twisty, windy roads that don’t seem to connect to anything. Thank goodness for GPS on the phone as I would have been totally lost.
Good dinner, good conversation, and a good bottle of really old wine:
Didn’t stay too late, for tomorrow is another day.
Opened the shop today on my regular open/close schedule.
Less traffic through the store than usual – and looking at the numbers for this week they were a little light – guessing everyone is trying to squeeze in that last trip before Labor Day and back to school for folks.
Popped out a little early to start working on a loaf of bread to take to the Breitenbush Re-Entry Party not far from my house – down in Burien. The downside of Burien is that it pretty much knocks out all the bus riders, though it is on the 132 line from downtown.
Ate all sorts of things that aren’t on my diet – mainly involving pasta in a cream sauce (a personal weakness) and what appears to be some sort of frito pie. At least I didn’t fall victim to the dessert table. As usual, twice as much food as we all could eat.
I can’t believe that I stayed up until 4:30am chatting online with boys – and the alarm goes off at 8:30am.
Well, it’s been a month since the car has been out of the shop so I can run it through the auto wash – they said I could hand wash it the first month – like that is going to happen.
And I had a free wash card. After five cheap ones they give you a free expensive one with all the colored foam.
Takes me back to the sixties (in reality the seventies and early eighties).
Was out running errands and didn’t get back to the house until a little after 4 – to find Swanda arrived early. Luckily on five minutes early.
Got the car uploaded – well mostly, some non-important stuff is still in the trunk. Got us cocktails and settled in with the PBS Financial News at 5, followed by the BBC News, then NBC National News and finally the local news at 6:30.
The local news is my cue to start working on dinner so we can eat at seven.
Burried under the asparagus are a couple of steaks – cooked them in the same pan since they take the same amount of time if you like your steaks medium-rare.
Spent the day running around town getting some hardware for next week’s Weenie Wagon run – spring clips for holding up fabric, a flag pole holder and plastic pipe for the hot dog flag, chili for the steam table (and peanut butter for Paul and Gail for the Kansas City run on Monday).
Then it was home to start prepping for dinner with Jill (and Murphy The Wonderdog).
Once Jill arrived it was time to transfer the Tito’s Vodka she brought into two wine bottles for her cruise next week, and transfer a little into a glass with a marinated carrot as a swizzle stick.
A simple dinner of pan-fried pork chops and a big salad. Murphy was VERY happy to get the bones at the end of the meal and promptly chewed them into bits and swallowed in seconds.
Well, that seemed to help – the higher heat and putting it in the warming oven to keep it hot while I worked on the sauce. It also helped to have all the ingredients that went in at the same time pre-assembled in small bowls.
The outcome:
Bliss, eyeing the home grown tomato mozzarella salad.
The final result. Pretty tasty. This is dinner party number one of three – tomorrow Jill, Friday Swanda.
Followed their recipe (except used olive and peanut oil instead of vegetable oil) and it didn’t turn out too bad. Here it in process:
And here is the finished product:
The recipe had you put them back in the pan to warm them up in the sauce, which I think changed the coating into a little more doughy consistency. Tomorrow I’ll try upping the heat and moving them to the warming oven on a rack.
I’ll let you know how it works out as I’ve got enough veal in the freezer to be eating it for at least a week.
Well, today’s excitement is a dinner/sleepover date. The downside? He doesn’t have a car or a driver’s license. Lakewood (south of Tacoma) here I come. Hence the sleepover part. I’m not driving 45 minutes after wine with dinner.
At least is wasn’t in the middle of winter – 45 minutes with the top down is much better than 45 minutes playing slip-n-slide.
Got my car (the wagon) back from Mountaine who is in town for an extended holiday of spiritually recharging Washington Coast camping, combined with seeing the Ring Cycle (Wagner) with a friend of his and Helene, then he’s back to Tennessee. Some issues – power plug (formerly known as a cigarette lighter) not working – I said check the fuse since the horn didn’t work when I bought it – BINGO, and the front passenger tire low after several days of camping. Got to get that checked out.
Had to do an afternoon Safeway run for green beans – he’s not such a fan of salad, though after dinner around ten was requesting salad and was quite happy that I had some chicken strips to put on it.
That dinner? A couple of ¾ pound lamb shoulder blade cut lamb chops with a Caribbean jerk seasoning cooked in the same pan with green beans and bacon and a large salad. I really should have made a pot of rice for him as it would be culturally appropriate. I was hoping he’d adapt to the Atkins-style diet so that he doesn’t plump up anymore.
Wish I’d taken pictures – it did turn out pretty.
With company – no work on the garage, maybe tomorrow, maybe after Labor Day. It has to happen soon – fall and the rain that comes with it is just around the corner, and the Miata has to go into the garage for winter though it would be nice to have it now so I didn’t have to put the top up every night.
Well, the plan was work the shop then up to Swanda’s for dinner.
Not.
Got a call from Swanda with a summer cold which I sure don’t want.
Swung by Safeway and picked up a pork chop for dinner – I could have gone to the Turkey Release Party (Jim’s Winemaking Label) but the party started at 3 so I would have been way late, and I was just burnt out on groups of people.
As an addendum to Thursday’s post – these came in the mail today:
New shoes for the collection.
So, Sunday is my Friday night for tomorrow I’m off to pick up a guy I met online for a dinner date tomorrow.
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