UMTravels

Some shots from the condo:

The view.

Mount Baker (big mountain) and possibly Glacier Peak (the small right hand one).

And we actually have a deck! In all the times I’ve stayed here I’ve never had one of the units (6 total) with a deck. Handy for CaddyDaddy since he smokes.

After breakfast went for a walking tour of a couple of thrift shops, then off to a Thai lunch with Helene and Rich at Khai Thai a handful of blocks away.

Walking back we ran into Epick who was coming out from his job at the Law Courts and spent most of the afternoon hanging out.

Helene stayed until her concert, GreyShard showed up, Stich showed up, and generally we sat around and noshed the evening away.

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Off to Vancouver today. Rich showed up at 11 and we were out the door at 11:30, with the trunk stuffed within an inch of its life:

And once we are in Vancouver and on the luggage trolley:

Only two of those bags were from grocery and booze shopping.

The condo was ready for us when we checked in at a little after 3, and by 5 when HummingBird and BamBam showed up the pupu platter was on the table. Pork loin, refried beans, salad, wine and much good conversation followed.

Later in the evening DTAW (Darlene, the Ambassadors wife) showed up to pick up copies of the Sign of the Times that she was featured in 24 years ago. Still makes me laugh that our lives intersected long before we knew each other.

[206.1]

Today’s wine tasting was of 2010 pre-release for pre-sale Bordeaux. 29 different wines open today, two champagnes, with the rest split between reds and whites. The one that I swallowed (twice) was a white Bordeaux with a wholesale price of $210 a bottle. Combine this with the venue, Rovers, known for it seriously up-market meals, you have a fine way to spend an early afternoon.

Dropped mail off with Chris on the way back to the hood. He was taking a nap before his Physical Therapy appointment at 3 so I didn’t bother to wake him, best that he be at full strength for his workout.

Today’s picture is of the progress rebuilding the South Park Bridge:

Well, both sides are above the water line now. 2013 is the projected finish time.

A quiet dinner at home. Starting to add stuff to the “Vancouver Pile”

[207.8]

If it’ Monday, it must be time for a trade wine tasting. 79 Italian and Italian-style wines were open for tasting. Got there at one, and was done at 3:15. Whew!

That would be Doug, one of Jimmies former partners in EVS on Capital Hill in the middle. Arrive early before the crowds show up making it hard to get to a spit bucket, which you definitely need.

Damn cold in that warehouse, but the nibbles were good.

And speaking of nibbles, tonight’s dinner is a Zippy’s in White Center where according to Jefe, the best burgers are to be found:

Mine was the “Great Dane” with blue cheese, lettuce, tomatoes and red onions. Damn tasty. Even broke my no carbs rule for this one. No wine, or the ability to bring your own bottle, so I took my wine in an insulated coffee mug that everyone in Seattle seems to be carrying.

The rest of the evening finds me responding to a notice from Ovi regarding their shut down in three months. Ovi is a photo sharing site that started out as Twango, a Redmond start-up that I help with before they were sold to Nokia. Luckily they have provided a means to download your pictures — but in my case, there are TWENTY zip files of 5-600 megs EACH. This may take me days. What is that, like over 40 gigabytes of zippd photos. Wow.

[205.8] We’ll see what that Zippy Burger does to that number tomorrow.

Busy day at the shop creating ads for various newsletter, note cards, having friends stop by unexpectedly. Slow day for sales (as are most Sundays), but with all the other projects, no time to work scanning images from Volume 3 of Sign of the Times. I have Volume 3 Number 4 done from a couple of days ago. But nothing more. Though with the entire Libboo team at South by Southwest, it’s not like any more issues will get uploaded until the week that I’m in Kansas City as they are all driving down there in an RV (8-10 people, like a rolling frat party).

After work I swung by the hospital to drop off Swanda’s mail, some clipping, some paperwork. Here is that report:

Chris was in VERY GOOD SPIRITS when I saw him after work today. Curtis was there as well. He looked the healthiest that I’ve seen him in months. There was actually color in his cheeks which means that he’s getting the oxygen that he needs in his system. He was even laughing. They have reduced his oxygen from 6 liters a minute to 4, another good sign. They have pillows on his right side to keep him slightly off kilter to ease pressure on his right lung (where he has had problems of fluids, etc.)

The diuretics are working, as is the diet modification, in getting Chris’ weight down. They actually brought a high-capacity scale for Chris to stand on today for an accurate weight. Today’s weight: 595.2 Yes, an accurate weight for once. The rest were using other methods.

Chris passed along the menus for his recent week, including the menu from “The Market Café” that he is now able with restrictions to order from. Think “Daily Specials”. From the scratched out menu they are doing a high protein (which will help him regain strength), low-carb diet. The things that were scratched out on the menu:

• Tortillas
• White rice
• Fiesta corn
• Corn on the cob
• Buttermilk biscuit
• Brown rice
• Orzo Alondine

And entire dishes were axed:

• Chicken Crispitos
• Artichoke and Chicken Calzone
• Spicy Orange Pork

But, this still left him (with restrictions):

• Pork Carnitas (but no tortillas) Tuesday
• BBQ Chicken (ask for light sauce) Wednesday
• Polish Sausage and Sauerkraut, Wednesday (I’d got for that!)
• Pesto Crusted Rainbow Trout, Thursday
• Pepper steak (ask for light sauce/glaze) Friday

He also sent the standard ala carte menu which is so heavy on the carbohydrates that it would be hard to order from it. Though it still made me hungry so I should be thinking about my own dinner.

The one big milestone for Chris to get into the rehab facility are strength and mobility issues. He is making progress on those daily, but if physical therapy comes immediately after a “code brown” he is still winded from all the movement to be much good completing is PT — “ as all the movement was already a PT session.

Things are looking up. This was my first visit in the last 5 days or so as I had the sniffles, and that makes me “persona non grata” in the ICU, with good reason. Chris has already had one minor cold while in the hospital, and I’m not about to make it number two.

Oddly enough as Chris, Curtis and I were discussing wills, health directives, power of attorney, Curtis ask a question that I didn’t know the answer to. We were talking about using my electronic files of the aforementioned documents as a “boilerplate” that Chris, Curtis, Jeff, Mick and others caring for Chris could just change and insert their information into, get notarized. His question was, “Where does the term “boilerplate” come from? I knew where the phrase “pull out all the stops” (related to pipe organs and blasting it to the max). The answer surprised me:

The term dates back to the early 1900s, referring to the thick, tough steel sheets used to build steam boilers. From the 1890s onwards, printing plates of text for widespread reproduction such as advertisements or syndicated columns were cast or stamped in steel (instead of the much softer and less durable lead alloys used otherwise) ready for the printing press and distributed to newspapers around the United States. They came to be known as ‘boilerplates’. Until the 1950s, thousands of newspapers received and used this kind of boilerplate from the nation’s largest supplier, the Western Newspaper Union.

Some companies also sent out press releases as boilerplate so that they had to be printed as written. The modern equivalent is the press release boilerplate, or “boiler,” a paragraph or two that describes the company and its products.

That’s it for today — health report and English lesson. Sorry it’s so long, but like I said, it’s been a few days since I’ve visited.

And speaking of weight (my own), for those of you who are wondering what that number in brackets is at the end of each post, that would be my weight in the morning. The lowest weight I could find in any of my posts (since I started the practice) was 214 in October of 2008 — three and a half years ago.

Boneless pork chop, green salad, and leftover shop wine for dinner (high-protein, low-carb, and the reason that I weigh less now).

[207.8]

Breakfast with CaddyDaddy before heading to the wine shop for the Saturday tasting. Bunny has preordered three bottles of the $20 2004 Château Villars Fronsac. When I called for his AMEX card, he changed it to four bottles, to be delivered by MoonSong on Wednesday when he comes to clean.

Château Villars has been owned by the Gaudrie family since the beginning of the 19th century. This hillside vineyard faces southwest with 35 years old vines. Harvesting is done in stages to allow each vineyard block to reach full maturity. After careful bunch selection the grapes are vinified in traditional cement vats and receive an extended maceration of up to 4 weeks. Each vat is tasted throughout the month of November and a rigorous selection is made before the wine is put in barrels. The wine is aged in barrel, one third new for 10 to 14 months. It is a solid Bordeaux that is ready to drink at a great price. Full information here.

The Château:

But enough about wine.

Today United Airlines and Continental Airlines combine their websites, reservations, the whole kahuna. They were bracing for the worst with four run-throughs before pulling the switch, and it mostly worked. Some slow down at airports, and a little minor funkiness on their reservation site. This morning I tried to book an award ticket from Toronto to Seattle for after my train trip in May. There were no saver First Class seats a week ago (25,000 plus $61 tax). This morning there were some, but it puked having me hold the seats until both accounts frequent flyer miles were combined and in the system. By this evening, miles were combined (including a random 150 miles that was on my Continental number) and I have a ticket in hand (well, I have electronic ticket in the system).

Why is it considered roulette? That’s when you pray that a seat will open up so that you don’t have to use 25,000 in coach for a one-way or 50,000 up front. It seems that when they combined systems that it opened up all the Continental seats to United customers (along with some Air Canada seats as well).

Next up on the travel hit parade was a rental car for the Hawaii trip later this month. Totally spaced booking one, and when I first looked it was like $400 for the four days with all the fees. Got it down to $310 for a Jeep, then went searching “Kona rental car coupon codes” and found a couple that knocked the price down to $161 for an eco-box, or $183 for the Jeep. Lesson? It pays to shop, shop, search, shop.

With the ribs from the other night that I had at the shop around 5 I just had a snack around ten, so no real dinner.

[208.1]

So today I started digitizing the artwork for all the Volume Three Sign of the Times magazines. The cover:

And as I’m scanning in the artwork, I notice this picture taken by Brian Lynch:

Probably taken at one of his Halloween parties. The weird coincidence is that back in 1988 I didn’t know any of the people in this photo. Today, I know the one on the left (Darlene, The Ambassador’s Wife), and have for the last ten or fifteen years through the Radical Faeries. I’ll have to (at some point) go through boxes in the garage and see if I still have the original. It would make a nice present.

Dinner with CaddyDaddy and DancingBear tonight. A rack of ribs and a discussion of Oh Canada next week. Looked like DB will come up for Thursday night and CD for both nights.Will be nice to split the $110 room fee.

[208.9]

March is here and another SOTT title is in the pipeline:

That completes Volume 4, now onto Volume 3.

Tonight’s lovely dinner? Flank steak wrapped in bacon. Yum. Bacon.

[208.4]

Waking up with a scratchy throat and a drippy head is not good. At least for visiting people in the hospital.

The motto today: chill, don’t push it.

Did the morning stuff (email, Google news, Wall Street Journal), had breakfast, read in bed for a bit, moved some stuff to the garage (not good for sniffles, but it needed to be done), and generally did what can naturally.

Did not leave the house all day.

Did finish another issue of SOTT for upload:

Although you should really see the cover folded out (which the eBook doesn’t have):

Sorry they don’t quite match up, but you get the idea.

Sniffles continuing through dinner of ginger pork and salad. But another issue is online.

[207.6]

Before taking off on a day of errands, I got another issue of SOTT eBooked:

Yes, I know, it’s out of order. Volume Four, Number Three should have been the next issue, but there is a problem with the Libboo image uploader, so I moved onto the issue above. I’m putting them in the system newest to oldest. If you want to read it, you can click on the cover and get to the Libboo site.

Went to the apartment, started a load of laundry, waited for the office to open, grabbed a cart and took all of Swanda’s oxygen equipment to the office to await pickup by Pacific Pulmonary. Next stop was to see Swanda himself. Lots of good news there. This is from the health report I sent out:

Big milestones today. I arrive this afternoon to find his walker in the hall. That is a good sign, it means he is back to using it.

Morning PT session had him up 2 or 3 times, and using the walker in the hallway, and sitting in his Hummer chair and another in the afternoon.

Other news is he and his boss have come to an understanding about on-going employment and insurance, so that is good news as well. He continues to be on the c-pap machine while not eating/reading/resting. They have added a diuretic (water expeller) to his regime as well as they think he has about 50# of extra water in him that they’d like to get out.

I dropped off personalized Power of Attorney and Health Directives for Chris to go over. I’m assuming there has to be a notary on the staff at the hospital. And I have calls in tomorrow about oxygen and other paperwork issues.

I would say this would be a “good” day for Chris

Apologies to both blog readers and health report recipients for the duplication.

Swung by the shop to drop the A-Board prints and found that Jimmy had lowered the computer section of the cash wrap for better visibility from the window.

Came home, made a little jerked lamb for dinner and called it a night.

[207.2]

Noon found me bedside with Swanda and an ever growing list of things to do. No time to get a job this week! He was able to stand twice this morning and had another round of physical therapy planned for the afternoon. Seems several people in my life are getting regular physical therapy, like my father who had his first session today. They (Swanda and Dad) are on the mend, but with each of them it’s going to be a long process to get them back to where they started.

So, the wine tasting treasure hunt. Picked up Jimmy at 1:30 to head to Purple Café for a “Hand Picked Selections 2001 Rosé Offering”. I think they need better hands. Of the five we tasted, the first and the last were OK, but the middle three had acetone overtones, which you don’t really want in a wine. We were in and out in 20 minutes (and that included grazing the skimpy cheese plate). Next up we were off to Georgetown to taste the Australian wine of Henry’s Drive. The Shiraz that were in the $25-$30 wholesale range were tasty, but by the time you add our markup, I just don’t think our clientele would go for them. On the upside, they had a much nicer spread of nibbles, enough to make a light lunch. Two tastings in different neighborhoods that both started at 2pm and I was home by 3pm.

What to do with the extra time (I’d been planning on a little after 4pm to get back home): mow the back yard and alley since the sun is out and the grass is dry (a rarity for a Pacific Northwest winter).

Did get to printing up A-Board signs for the shop, but didn’t get to putting together another eBook for Sign of the Times. Where does the time go?

Tonight’s dinner was a variation on last night’s dinner. Hail the microwave. Big dinner planned for Friday night when CaddyDaddy and DancingBear duke it out to see who gets the other bedroom in Vancouver next week. Or, they could both go and sleep in the same bed.

Not even a picture or a graphic today.

[207.6]

Up and out and open at 11.

Dead, dead, dead in the shop with the first customer at 2:30pm. Luckily the day improved as it went along, with an OK day, and half a bottle of wine to take home for dinner.

How to spend those hours? Working on the layout and information for the Madrona Wines Monthly selections, upcoming tastings, digitizing the artwork from three issues of Sign of the Times in preparation for eBooking, and assembling the text of one.

One of my favorite illustrations (from Volume 4, Number 1):

No visit with Swanda today, but DancingBear did send along this picture from his visit:

Swanda with Marlin and ScottyDog (both of Portland). Though I must say that Jimmies comment about Swanda was “looks like a bad drag queen in a mumu”. I say he’s looking happier than I’ve seen him in weeks (otherwise I wouldn’t have passed on Jimmies comment).

A quiet evening at home until had an epiphany: Swanda eats when he’s stressed, I book travel. Honest, I couldn’t help myself but I got such a deal on it and it will be such a great surprise and that’s all I’m saying.

[208.6]

Starting today Jimmy and I will be splitting the Saturday shift, overlapping for the wine tasting. So, I opened, but left at 4:30 (well, 5pm because my friend Marlin showed up). Jimmy started at 1:30 and stayed until 7pm. Next week we will reverse that. It means that every other week Jimmy can actually make dinner plans that start before 7:30. We’ve also talked about me coming in on Friday afternoon’s to close, again, so he can have a little more free time. We are trying to get our shop hours at 2/3 (Jimmy), 1/3 (Mark).

With Swanda’s dance card filled for the weekend (doing better) I sent the mail I’d collected from the apartment to him via Marlin.

There was a full-scale re-entry party tonight for the Bush Attendees and friends. It started at 7 and I just couldn’t motivate myself to leave the house. I found a martini trying these two new vermouths (not at the same time) to be a more soothing evening.

Just a quiet evening in, working on the “to-do” list for the shop (signs, marketing copy, etc).

Not even a picture.

[208.4]

Today’s accomplishment is getting another issue of Sign of the Time turned into an eBook. This would be Volume 4, Number 4, and it should be live on Amazon and Barnes and Noble by the end of the weekend:

One step closer to getting all of Volume 4 eBooked by the March 5^th marketing push.

Got a last minute dinner invitation from some of the Bush Boys. A lovely (well, four of them) stuffed pork loin with mashed potatoes (that I LUSTED after), though I did have one tiny piece of bread. The venue was an apartment three blocks from my old house on the hill. I was shocked to find parking one block away.

[209.0]

I really need to clean my office, so what do I do, I go to the wine shop and clean up the store room.

Saw Swanda on the way to the office. He wasn’t having a good day, though by the end of the day when Fluffernutter was there is was doing a little better. Keep those candles lit for him.

Shall we just call my office “Printer’s Row”?

Left hand printer = 22 pages per minute in black and white.

Three color laser printers in various sizes handling up to 11×17″ paper in various speeds. Top right is the slow and steady beast that I printed the directory on.

But oy, the piles of stuff everywhere. Many things need to be boxed and moved to the garage when they can go on shelves… once I organize the garage.

Scanned the photos for another SOTT issue, but didn’t get time to compile the next release with odd jobs for the shop. Hopefully tomorrow.

[210.0]

Today’s hospital run was timed for noon to hopefully avoid having to hang out and wait while he has procedures done (and having to pay for parking).

After running more stuff over to Swanda stopped by the Habitat For Humanity ReStore to look around. Ended up with four end bolts of fabric for $10. Not that I have any projects in mind, but you never know.

And I left one very big thing out of yesterday’s blog post. Booked the TransCanada (Vancouver-Toronto) for an amazing $575 which is a third of what it normally costs… and thats in a Sleeper Compartment (not one of the bunks). Now I just have to figure out how I’m getting back from Toronto without having to use a ton of points.

This evening I completed another of the issues of Sign of Times into eBook format. That means Volume 5 and the Anothology are all available now. My Hope is to have Volume Four completely by March 5th when a marketing push by Libboo as part of the case study I mentioned before where they are teaming me with a promoter. We are still trying to figure out how Pigletté and BoBo will fit into this mix as they are a little more of an “odd” audience.

Pork chops and slaw for dinner. Yum.

[212.1]

Visited Swanda this afternoon. Because of what they think was a minor cold last week, I everyone needs to wear masks.

Don’t I look great with the surgical mask on? It doesn’t help my feeling comfortable in hospitals.

Delivered his mail. He was in better spirits than last Tuesday when I talked to him on the phone.

Grabbed a late afternoon Pulled Pork at Pecos Pit. Probably not good for my diet, but damn tasty. With that snack it pushed my dinner (veal scaloppini) back to 8pm.

No other real news.

[210.5]

Rolled over this morning and the clock said 10:57. YIKES, we need to be packed and out of the cabin by noon.

We made it, barely. To speed things up I just pulled the car up to the housekeeping shed which is right next to our cabin. Much easier since I have all these boxes and bags.

Before I forget, here is what I bought for $200 at the auction last night. A new winter coat:

It’s wool and seriously warm. Here is a detail shot of the belt buckle:

GreyShard and I got off the land about 1 and headed into Detroit for a lunch with some meat in it. The food was good, but they were seriously understaffed so the service was glacial.

Spent the rest of the afternoon battling traffic both before and after our stop at Fabric Depot. Didn’t find anything that really spoke to me even though everything in the store was 30% off.

Final stop was dropping GreyShard at the reentry party which I’m skipping so that I can go battle the traffic some more.

Got home a little after nine and am in for the night.

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True to my prediction, I didn’t make it about of bed until 11 unless you count getting up to pee. And speaking of peeing, the other night (not last night), like woman living together for a long time have their cycles line up, at 5:30am each of us got up to pee. Ah, men in the woods.

Not much in the way off snow this morning, and the temp seems to be warming a bit so hopefully when it’s time to leave tomorrow the roads will be fine. Here is a great shot of the main lodge courtesy of Lightening:

Just the normal woods routine today with the exception of the coffee maker blowing up this morning. Well, not blowing up as in a gas leak, more like the flow stopper (for when you pull the carafe out) fell off, so, no release, and now place for the water to go other than up and out over the coffee grounds. Messy. And left me with only half the normal amount of coffee.

The auction is the main event tonight. This just reminds me that I haven’t paid for last year’s auction item which DancingBear and I are planning on using in late March to spend three nights (plus we purchased and extra night) in a three-bedroom house a couple of blocks from a nude black sand beach just south of Hilo.

Let’s hope I don’t go too crazy in the bidding from my usual seat on the front row (right hand side when looking at the stage).

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The snow has arrived. At times a little, at times a lot:

It’s a little washed out, but you get the idea. Let me tell you one thing, that fur coat is plenty warm:

Spent a little more time in the lodge today, though I still had someone come up and ask me when I’d gotten to the gathering. They were a little shocked by the answer of Wednesday as they hadn’t seen in all that time.

At least we have the liquor cabinet to keep us feeling warm:

Tonight after dinner is the talent show which is often the highlight of the gathering. I’ve heard musicians on the stage that have gone onto become national touring acts. (Holcombe Waller [even had an NPR Song-Of-The-Day], Charlie Murphy). I guess when you’ve been coming to gatherings for over 30 years; you are bound to see a little talent.

Our favorite sick, twisted clown (Mirabelle) is our Master of Ceremonies this evening. Just imagine a deep gravelly voice saying, “ever had sex with a clown?” followed by a leer:

A late evening — before I knew it I it was after 1:30 in the morning when I got back to the cabin.

I’m sensing a slow morning tomorrow.

It’s not like I have anything to do or anywhere to go.

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