UMTravels

Up at 8, grudgingly, breakfast at 9, on the road by 9:30am.

Destination Olympia. Work of repairing the carport of his rental for Jameson, work on two chickens for dinner for me. Doesn’t look fun for him with the rain.

On the way back from dropping him off on the Westside to borrow a friends truck, stopped downtown and did a little antiquing, but found myself parked in front of a musical instrument store, with almost a dozen ukuleles hanging in the window, and as it turned out, another half dozen hanging on a rack. Apparently the ukulele craze is bigger now than it was in the 20s and 30s. Went in to price them for Jameson since he likes mine so much, and says it would be easier to travel with than a guitar.

Tried and failed to nap in the afternoon, so decided to make chicken paté from the chicken livers from the two chickens for tonight’s meal. Why the two chickens had 6 livers, 1 gizzard and no hearts, I do not know.

The two chickens were stuffed with a half an orange each (to keep them moist) and sprinkled with a Tuscan seasoning mix, and baked on top of a bed of new potatoes, onions, carrots and celery. Serve with a salad and some steamed asparagus and the boys (Curt, Rich, Brandon) were happy campers.

After dinner tried and failed to get all the scholarship applications read, only managed one.

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A lovely scramble this morning before heading to the airport a little after noon. Taking Solus to the airport and picking up Jameson, nice to be able to combine the two trips, and let’s Solus meet Jameson.

Lunch was a variety of leftovers from the fridge. A little chicken noodle soup, half a sandwich apiece, a little pineapple upside down cake.

And now for the odd. This “vehicle” was parked around the corner from my house.

Let’s see, I’m counting one beetle (with sun roof), and 5-7 van bodies… Truly odd.

Spent the afternoon running around checking out Bamboo Hardwoods, an antique mall on Lander, Dick’s Restaurant Supply, and finally Crosscut Hardwoods. Didn’t end up buying a thing, but it was a great way to kill time until cocktail hour.

In honor of Jameson’s visit I grilled two massive steaks to go with the roast potatoes and Brussel sprouts and Caesar salad.

What a wonderful yummy dinner, and the hot tub afterwards wasn’t bad either.

Jameson off to bed a ten since he was up at 3:30am this morning to make his flights.

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After the usual breakfast, picked up Solus at the train station, the train was even on time!

Back to the house we went, with a lunch of home-made chicken noodle soup, with home-made eggs noodles. I used the bread machine to make a batch of dough, though I should have cut the recipe in half as I had enough noodles for 6 servings if not more.

• 2.5 cups flour
• 2 eggs
• ½ cup chicken stock
• 1 tablespoon butter
• Pinch of salt

Throw the ingredients into the bread machine on dough setting, pull it out when it beeps to add nuts (should you have been making bread), roll out on the counter to 1/8^th in inch, cut into slices, add to the boiling pot of chicken stock at the same time you add the frozen vegetables — only takes a couple of minutes for the noodles to cook since they are fresh, not dried.

The afternoon was filled with work on the Boltage project with more conference calls, and working on the site for the gathering:

http://www.hippysweatshop.com/

It’s all done with the exception of the PayPal buttons on the registration paid, and testing to make sure it actually works like it should.

Dinner was roasted new potatoes, a Caesar salad (with anchovies and home-made croutons), steamed asparagus, pan-fried pork chops, and a lovely white from Bonny Doon.

After dinner (I don’t know what got into me today) I whipped up a pineapple upside down cake from scratch because there were a pineapple slices left over from Sunday brunch that needed using up.

Next time I’ll make it in a round pan to fit the plate better.

After dessert it was off to the hot tub with a glass of scotch. Life is hard.

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Today is all about getting setup for the rest of the week.

• Priest on Wednesday
• Thursday trade priest for nephew
• Friday trade nephew for Curt
• Saturday, who knows

Lots of cooking coming up. Nice to have a quiet day to work on Boltage projects (adhesives conference call with 3M Rep), on the Summer Gathering (Registration form that can be submitted electronically and compiled on this end). Nice to have a juicy pan-fried steak for dinner.

While stumbling around the web I found this little video of someone from a previous life. Enjoy.

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Well, maybe no red, but it was a good day at the mail box — three pieces:

• Morgan Stanley junk mail, right into the trash
• Letter from my buddy in prison who I haven’t heard from in a couple of months
• My IRS refund check, the first in probably 10 years

Spent the day running around for groceries and to put the check in the bank, too funny that I just transferred money into checking this morning and paid all the remaining monthly bills. Guess this means I’ll have a running start on next months.

The rest of the day was spent working on getting a new account set up with PayPal for the summer gathering that I’m the co-host for — it will be a first for this rather tradition bound group. Imagine being able to email in your registration and pay using PayPal®, how modern. I even made some custom PayPal® buttons for the site:

After a dinner of boneless pork loin chops, a potato pancake and some salad I got most of the flyer and registration form done. Still on the list are to make the form into a submittable PDF, design the website, get the buttons hosted, link the bank account to the PayPal® account. Luckily the gathering isn’t until August.

I guess that leaves the Boltage research on adhesives until tomorrow. Maybe I should have done the billable hours work first!

Update on my father’s aggressive prostate cancer — seems it is stable, aggressive but stable, oddly contradictory. They are adding new drugs to the regimen and will check back in 3 months. Check back at the end of June for more news.

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A welcome home breakfast awaited me this morning, though I did have to get out of bed to enjoy it.

DancingBear and Swanda arrived a little after nine-thirty with all the fixing in tow for a stunning breakfast:

• Homemade sweet rolls
• Slices of pineapple
• Scrambled eggs
• Bacon off the grill
• Prosecco and juice
• Steamed asparagus

All I had to provide was the:

• Place settings
• Coffee
• Pre-made bloody marys

Not a bad deal. THANK YOU BOTH!

And thanks Swanda for bringing my latest packages from the apartment! Todd took off after breakfast to Eugene and home, nice to have a house sitter for once. Me, I cleaned up some mail, e- and snail, and went for a nap.

Rest of the afternoon was spent uploading YouTube videos, and putting the blocks in place for tomorrows return to work projects — think adhesives and PayPal buttons.

A quick working dinner up north with DancingBear and then back home to the couch as I’m fading after this long week.

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The million dollar question at breakfast this morning . . . what time will the train arrive in Toronto?

Answer: 11:40, a little over three hours late.

Not a problem for me, but there were many people with a two hour connection, not at an eight hour connection. From getting off the train and into the lobby:

And down stairs to the subway station . . . the joys of a big city and integrated mass transit. One subway a couple of stops, another subway to the end of the line, then onto an express bus with no stops all the way to the airport (of course, mine was the third and last stop at the airport on the bus).

Had lunch at a “pub” in the airport – – the Montreal smoked meat sandwich didn’t stand up well to the one in Vancouver so I won’t mention the name of the “pub”. Next up, uploading the last round of pictures and some of the videos from the trip. Pictures are on FaceBook® and the videos on YouTube® – you can get the link to the videos here.

Flight number one was on-time. Hurray. And I was surprised by the 1^st Class seat in the Embraer — they are normally much smaller than a 1^st Class seat on a full-size jet, but this one was just a little smaller, and all by its self on the right as you enter the aircraft.

Flight number two was on-time and would have been early but there was a back-up at the gates, so we waited.

Back to mass transit for the ride home. Why are all these hot young guys on the train at midnight — duh, it’s Saturday night.

Home and straight to bed.

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I’m really settling into a routine — the early breakfast, then back to bed followed by the shower and lunch interspersed with reading. Today I’ve started a Sandra Brown detective novel (bubble gum for the eyes and brain) called “Fat Tuesday”. Needless to say, it’s set in New Orleans.

Lunch was especially good today with the asparagus soup at a starter and the main was a Greek salad with grilled shrimp on top – – and I even had dessert since it was a black cherry ice cream.

There was a diversion to today’s standard afternoon – – a live singer songwriter duo headed back from Winnipeg to Toronto entertaining at 3pm in the forward dome lounge and 8pm in the “bullet” lounge.

They are really good together even though they don’t actually play in the same bands, but have been friends long enough to know a lot of the same tunes. This almost makes up for the fact that today, more than usual has been a day of stops and starts on the train. I’d say the economy has recovered judging by how many freight trains we’ve had to stop and let through.

I’m thinking that means no possibility up an upload during the 35 minute stop at Hornpayne. I’m guessing whistle stop at best.

Dinner was a lovely rack (5 ribs) of lamb, scalloped potatoes, Atlantic seafood chowder, a spinach mandarin salad – – and a free mimosa (to go with the remainder of last night’s bottle of wine) because of the delay.

After dinner it turned into a party in the Park Car – – the official name for the “bullet lounge” I’ve been referring to. The boys were back playing, that would be Michael Peters on the right and Keith Price on the left in the photo above.

Here is a little snippet of their performance in the Park Car:

And a great picture of the view from the top of the stairs leading up to the now vacant dome section.

After the concert I bought them a round, no wonder my liquor bill was $80 with tip for the night, along with picking up CDs (2 for $20) from each of them.

Yes, we are BEHIND the bar.

Most of the time they were playing we were stuck on a siding, this time not due to freight trains, but due to the train engineers running out of time on their clock (no more than 10 hours). So, here we wait for a replacement crew 30 minutes from where the crew was supposed to change – – nothing like seeing a pickup truck with train wheels pull up beside the car.

Now for the real question: What time will we arrive in Toronto?

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Now that we are on the prairie the train has picked up speed . . . lots of speedy – – 65-70mph according to the GPS unit hooked to the computer which for the evening I had mounted in the rack over the bed:

The down side of all this speed is the train is rocking back and forth so much that it’s impossible to sleep on your side as the train keeps wanting to roll you over. My problem is that I’ve trained myself to sleep on my side to minimize snoring. It’s hard to break that training in one day.

After my Trans-Continental breakfast of two eggs sunny side up, grapefruit juice, coffee, rye toast, ham and hash browns, it was back to bed to get another three hours sleep. Had fresh clothes and fresh teeth for breakfast, but didn’t get to the shower room until before lunch. FYI, nicer shower rooms than on Amtrak, more space in the dressing room area.

A note for the Colonels, maybe you should think about taking “The Canadian” when you come to visit Seattle. Food is equal or better, and they have a curtained at night berths where you could each get lower berths — and the seats look comfortable as they do recline a bit (or a lot, but that makes it a bed).

Much cheaper for a compartment with a door, and there is a couple on board from Michigan/Florida (depending on the time of year) who seem quite comfortable with that set up. The picture is a seat for ONE person. Plenty wide.

And how have I been spending my time on board?

• Looking out the window
• Eating three meals a day with strangers
• Finished Imbibe magazine (needs to be split between Swanda, Pucci, and a Colonel when I get home)
• Finished Popular Mechanics magazine (bits to Cochran, and got a great idea for an adhesive for one of the products I’m working on)
• Finished the last New Yorker from Swanda (passed along to fellow passengers)
• Finished Paul Theroux’s The Old Patagonia Express (goes to Brother Jon, then Jameson)

Funny thing about that book – – I thought it was going to make me more excited about the possibility of using miles to get to either Quito or Lima, and then onto Cusco for the train to both Macchu Pichu and Lake Titicaca . . . it seems to be having the opposite effect, it’s making me want to go back to Argentina and finally explore wine country (even though it’s more Frequent Flier miles).

Today’s video clip:

Dinner was the prime rib of beef that looked so good I ordered the most expensive bottle of red on the menu — a red out of the Okanagan at $49 a bottle. The Caesar salad before was nice an anchovy, but the steamed veg a little soggy. And no rolls, but great company as I got to sit at the kiddy table — two asian lads half my age (Korean and Chinese).

Got to end this post as we arrive in Winnipeg at 8:30pm and need to get it uploaded after I tip the conductor for keeping me supplied with ice for the last couple of days. After having trained him to bring a bucket of ice while I’m at lunch and refill it while I’m at dinner, now I need to train another attendant since he gets off in Winnipeg tonight.

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Extra post for today. Update from Edmonton where hopefully there is a signal.

This is a really bad still shot from my video camera because my main camera battery died while I was in the “bullet lounge car”. Almost looks like a sepia tone.

Dinner tonight was the pork no-so-tenderloin with Atlantic fish chowder, salad, roasted potatoes and pearl onions with a cheesecake for dessert. It’s a nice touch that they “gussy” up the dining chairs for the evening service (and I like the fact that they are not booth seating!):

And here is where I have spent the last 20 minutes waiting for a red signal. At the junction of train tracks just above the Edmonton tag where the blue line ends.

Hopefully I’ll have time to post the video for the last post. But alas . . . none of that is happening since the wi-fi here needs a password and we arrived late and there is no time to get off. See you in Winnipeg.

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Woke up in Kamloops a little after six and lounged around in bed for another hour or so until we pulled out. I’m pleasantly surprised that the beds are actually more comfortable than those on the Amtrak long distance trains.

Open seating at breakfast in the dining car, which actually has movable chairs rather than benches, which is much better for the full bellied of us. And not a bad breakfast either:

After breakfast, off to the showers for the final cleaning of the morning. I did the teeth in the room before breakfast. FYI, there is a crapper in the room, but you can’t use it once the bed is down since it covers the lid (thankfully with a tight seal). And then onto the “bullet” lounge for a little sightseeing and blog work.

To get the real feeling of the car, hopefully I can insert this video which starts in the bubble dome “bullet” lounge car (for use by sleeping car passengers only) and back down the stairs to where I’m sanding in the picture above:

We are running a tad behind today .. . . a coupling broke on a freight train and we ended up ferrying workers back and forth on the mile plus long train, quicker than walking. At the moment looks like arrival in Jasper about 15 minutes late leaving less time to find the wi-fi signal and get blog entries and hopefully photos uploaded.

Lunch was a tomato Florentine soup, the Angus burger, slaw, and a skipped dessert. The dining car:

Might have a late update from Edmonton just before midnight Mountain Time.

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I should have taken the bus to Canadaland.

Up at 5:30am to catch the 7:30am train to Vancouver, the later train gets in too late and I don’t want to have to spend the night. Got checked in at noon, and am having a good feeling about this train trip . . . they are holding my carry-on for the day and will deliver it to my roomette before I even board. How civilized.

And it was good to meet Helene at the train station in Vancouver and then go off for a lovely smoked meat sandwich before retiring to her house, for a nap. I’ve got plenty of time because the Trans-Canada doesn’t leave until 8:30 tonight.

BamBam and Hummingbird came over late afternoon to split a bottle of red, and bottle of bubbly, and a truly amazing pupu platter spread laid out by Helene. Its odd feeling “homeless” in Vancouver, I’m so used to having a room at The Canadian downtown.

Lots of public transportation to get around town. Yes, I even took busses today.

Got back to the station at 7pm with the boys in tow . . . Helene walked us to the bus stop from her apartment in “The Unique”.

My initial feeling about the train trip, technically “The Canadian” was tempered a bit by the sleeping car lounge for the Blue and Silver Service (Touring Class sleeping passengers), I’m afraid that the lounge in Portland has them beat, and since I’d checked my laptop, I couldn’t even use the wi-fi (and didn’t want to on my phone). There was an outdoor lounge as well, but it’s not exactly the weather for it, but it did have a nice view of the train and the “bullet” lounge that is the last car on the train:

But soon enough I was settled into my compartment for the three and a half day adventure. Complete with welcoming champagne in the bullet lounge which was so crowded that I just brought it back to the cabin.

And off we go into the night . . . albeit slowly as we have to give way to all the freight traffic. No wi-fi on the train, next possible wireless stop is Jasper tomorrow afternoon, so this evening I just sit and read the paper and have a couple of cocktails and finish my smoked meat sandwich from lunch.

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Package at the apartment, the first of the two phone shipments, or is it three if you count the set of five connectors that are coming.

Spent the rest of the afternoon getting the MagicJack up and running. MagicJack basically allows you to plug in a regular landline phone into your computer and basically routes the call over the internet. It also lets you choose which area code you want. Me, I picked Manhattan. Now the website for Studio 403 has three phone numbers on it: Seattle, Santa Fe and New York City.

The other addition to the silly phone network in the house is to get the phone to actually ring. The old Western Electric phones need tons of amperage to make the bells ring, but I found a modern cordless phone in the garage (in my big box of phones) that has an electronic ringer, which is working nicely.

Tomorrow the 30-button phone arrives, but alas, I’ll be out of the country.

Tonight’s dinner party is a potluck down the street. My contributions are a seriously non-kosher pupu platter of pork and shrimp each with a dipping sauce, a couple of loaves of French bread hot from the oven, and a nice salad.

And once again, I forgot to take pictures. Maybe once I’m in Canadaland I’ll get some photos for the blog. But that’s tomorrow.

Speaking of tomorrow and the blog, there will probably be lapses in postings since I’ll be on the train from Tuesday to Saturday.

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Slept in — actually, got up at 8:30am, had a cup of coffee and went back to bed until 11am.

Rest of the afternoon was spent doing laundry and the apartment, picking up butter and wine, and baking the bread for tonight’s dinner.

Dinner you ask?

• UncleMarkie
• Todd
• DancingBear
• With Bretticus cancelling

And the menu?

• Two pork tenderloins in a sweet chili garlic sauce
• Romain salad with coutons
• A warm loaf of caraway rye bread
• Bottle and a half of wine

The review — damn tasty.

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Company in town, dinner guests coming — time to fire up the grill for a slow cooking of a slab of pork ribs.

• Todd arrives at 2:00
• Ribs on a 3:00
• Start Bread at 4:00
• Put bread in oven and rep salad at 5:30
• Jim and Suze arrive at 6:15 (delayed by bridge opening)
• Eat at 7:00

The only thing I forgot to do? Take a picture of the end result.

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Wonderful toast this morning  — from the loaf of bread I made last night. Unusual in that my challah generally doesn’t make good old regular toast — French Toast yes, regular, not so much. I love ripping into those bright yellow yolks and watching it drip from the bread. Yum.

With a late lunch went the last of the chicken with molé sauce over saffron rice — two more containers out of the fridge and into the dishwasher.

A little work before the representatives from Evergreen show up — it’s a meet and great, a changing of the guard, a status report on my endowment and what it will kick off in grants this year, and a dumping on me of 15 scholarship applications for the Mark Stephen Souder Scholarship for Information Dissemination. More information here: http://www.evergreen.edu/scholarships/scholarships/souder.htm

Nice hour and a half meeting — always nice when they don’t ask for more money (that I don’t have).

Pan-fried steak with a big salad for dinner — Evergreen chocolate mints for dessert (too many).

Mostly packed for the Trans-Canada trip next Tuesday, which is good since I’ve got company coming for the weekend (and maybe next week).

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Jill has 10 days of freedom, and luckily she spent one of those evening with me eating lamb lollipops, asparagus, salad, and a Trader Joe’s Amaroni which at $16 is really good — especially since most Amaroni’s start at double that price.

And really, the rest of the day was dull in comparison to Dinner With Jill.

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This morning I got an invitation to go with the Colonels on a tour of Nova Scotia —  a little rich for my blood at the moment, and the availability of frequent flyer mileage tickets in the summer is questionable at best. But I did take them up on their offer to spend a couple of days on the South Carolina coast on Edisto Island.

So there goes my second week in May, the first week in May is with Dan and Lisa in Steamboat Springs, Colorado in the 2-bedroom Presidential Suite at the WorldMark, and the third weekend is summer camp with the boys in British Columbia outside Squamish to which I might add a couple of days on the end for Whistler since it’s so close.

I guess my schedule isn’t lightening up any considering that next week is my cross-Canada train trip (need to start packing) and April has Jameson coming the first weekend, then the second weekend Rich and I are off to Whistler after the poker game for a week in Whistler followed by a week in Cabo San Lucas with both Rich and Curt to celebrate Rich’s 60^th birthday, and the start of his military pension.

My spare bed is starting to look like a travel agent’s literature rack:

Tonight’s meal was a chicken mole with saffron rice and a salad — thanks Spiral for the mole that you brought to Vegas for your birthday, I’m still eating it.

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Breakfast of eggs and toast. Traditional Rose Street breakfast.

“Gift Bag” drop off at the Microsoft campus for Boltage prototype… the campus has gotten scarily large… and by the way, it’s on BOTH sides of the highway, and extends to the left and right out of the picture. Nice soccer/baseball field in the middle — been there from the beginning.

I started at MSFT in 1989 at 3,500 employees, left 10 years later at 35,000 employees, and this is what the campus looks like in 2011 with 90,000 employees an about that many support staff. When it was 3,500 people, we were all on payroll, right down to the mailroom (thank you for handling all those scotch and wine deliveries). When I left, they had outsourced the mailroom to Pitney Bowes, and the receptionists to Kelly, and even the Administrative Assistants were a 3rd party vendor. Scary. And weird to be back on a corporate campus that has tripled in size. Even the company store weirded me out.

Dinner was bockwurst and kraut — didn’t even have any white wine to put in the broth.

It was after dinner than I got “the call”.

I was chatting (yes, me, on the phone) with a buddy from Boston when at 8:20pm my time a call came from my father… that’s 9:20pm his time. Drop first call, take father’s call. 9:20 is after this bedtime, or at least about “drops for eyes” time. He’s had some prostate cancer issues which apparently have not responded to treatment and have become aggressive. Tests next Monday, results the following Monday (after I’m back from CanadaLand). His spirits are good (“I’ve had a good 87 years, chuckle, chuckle), but the next two years will be interesting.

Guess I’d better start saving those frequent flyer miles.

Hang on to the rail and try not to throw up.

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Monday is all about running around SODO and the International District

• Shirts from the cleaners
• Install wireless router at Swandas
• Red wine and rack of ribs at Grocery Outlet
• Liquor for the cabinet and the luggage for Canadian train trip next week since there is no duty-free on the train
• Car wash and gas at Costco

And Monday is about left-overs

• Breakfast was left-over potato skin, chopped up with steak, scrambled with eggs
• Lunch was left-over sushi
• Dinner was left-over steak over a bed of left-over greens

And Monday evening was about finding weird phones on eBay

And finally getting the picture of the poker buddies from last Friday.

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