2 Days, 2 Equipment Malfunctions

So I have been here for 2 days. On Day 1 I arrived to find one end of my suitcase wrapped up in tape. Somehow the back of the suitcase had been ripped open. I could anticipate the zipper coming unzippered but I can't figure out how the back would be ripped open. Nothing fell out, so that was good. But now I need to get another suitcase.


On Day 2, a few minutes after I dropped Kai off at about 10:45 pm, the "Check Tire Pressure" message began scrolling across the equipment panel. Then I started hearing a strange and not-too-comforting sound. Since I was on 236th, which is a narrow 2-lane road, I decided to drive to the end near I-5 where River Rock Tobacco & Fuel is located; this is one of the Stillaguamish Tribe of Indians' businesses. It's open 24-hours and has food, water, and, most importantly, a bathroom. The car is rented from Alamo, they're paying for someone to come out & change the tire for me. It's one of those alternative tires which you can only run under 50 mph and only for about 80 miles. I have to take the car in tomorrow and trade it in for another. But the closest place opens at 8, so that's going to alter our plans for tomorrow. When I called to let Kai know that plans had changed, he said he had heard a sound as I left, like gravel getting kicked up by the tires; I heard the same sound but the warning light wasn't on at that time so that's probably not when it happened. (In the menawhile, I am working on the blog.)

Yup, its flat.

I didn't post on Thursday evening because I was very tired, so I'm catching up tonight. I got some sleep on the plane but not much. I didn't want to miss seeing the dawn & the sunrise from the plane; I got to see both!

Dawn, I think that's Venus in the upper left.

Sunrise.

I also got a good view of Mt. Adams, Mt. St. Helens, and Mt. Hood.

L to R peeking through the clouds: Mt. Adams, Mt St. Helens, & Mt. Hood.

Here's a close-up of Mt. St. Helens. You can see where the north side blew out.


I dropped in to see Aunty Florence since she lives close to the airport. She wasn't able to make it to Mom's memorial so I dropped off a CD of the PowerPoint and a program. She made breakfast for us; it was ono! I left about 9 am, thinking the traffic would have cleared by then. Not!

Eggs on rice with shoyu, fruit with yogurt, and tea.

Traffic jam on Interstate 405 at 9 a.m.

For lunch I ordered a pizza from A Pizza House so that I could visit Gulshan. They're doing great; they have a new sign and new counters and a new item on the menu: butter chicken pizza! I took the pizza over to Gabriele's house. Unfortunately, I must have been hungry because I didn't even think to take a photo of it. Or Gulshan or Gabriele!

For dinner, Kai & I met Bo & Barbara, Bick & Ron, and Therese at Moontree Asian Tapas Fusion, which is on the Everett waterfront.


The have a whole bunch of delicious looking offerings. We ended up sharing each dish we ordered, which included beet salad, octopus salad, albacore ceviche, agedashi tofu, baked cod, grilled mackerel, coconut red curry sauce & noodles with tofu, spicy basil yakisoba with chicken, tempura salmon, and tempura vegetables. We had matcha macs for dessert. (Somehow I missed taking a photo of the black cod.)

L to R: Bick, Ron with beet salad.

Octopus salad.

Albacore ceviche.

Agedashi tofu.

Salmon tempura.

Vegetable tempura.

Coconut red curry sauce & noodles with tofu.

Grilled mackerel.

Spicy basil yakisoba with chicken.

Matcha Macs.

We closed the place down! After dropping Kai off, it was quite late by the time I got back to Mary Ellen & Michael's house. I spent a short time catching up on the news with Mary Ellen, then headed off to bed.

On Friday I had breakfast with David at Patty's Eggnest.

David had the Florentine Hash, I had the Chocolate Chip Pancake with a side of peanut butter. David does landscaping and yard maintenance. I hired him about 1&1/2 years before I moved to help me get the yard cleaned up and ready to sell. He did a great job! He also helped me get things packed up when I moved. I gave him all the garden tools that I didn't take with me.

David with Florentine Hash.

Chocolate Chip Pancake with side of peanut butter.

I've known David for a number of years; I met him through the Snohomish County Mycological Society, aka Mushroom Club. He knew I did wetland mitigation designs; he needed a design for the property he bought in Mukilteo where the previous owner cleared into the wetland and all the way down to the pond. I hooked him up with my friend Scott, who I had worked with but had since left the County and started his own consulting business. David was very excited about Scott's design and really got in to the planting of all the different species Scott listed. It's been 5 years now & David has fulfilled all the city's mitigation requirements and the wetland looks great! It still needs a little maintenance work, like removing some purple loosestrife and reed canarygrass, but overall it's doing very well.

From David's deck, looking down towards the pond. The weeping willow in the background was already on site.

After breakfast we took a walk around the wetland. Along the way we saw a bunch of ducklings in the outflow for the detention pond on the property next to David's place.


I met my friend Linda at Chanterelle in Edmonds for lunch. She had the Seafood Passion Salad and I had the Salmon Sandwich; it's a real piece of salmon, not some disc-shaped piece of pink slime. I met Linda a few years ago when I served on a jury & she was a public defender. She is now with the City of Edmonds, she said they are having problems with potential jurors showing up; we talked about ways to encourage people to show up. If you have any suggestions leave them in the comments and I will pass them along to her.

Linda with her favorite, Seafood Passion Salad.

Salmon sandwich.

On the way back to the car I stopped in at Bountiful Home & Nursery to find out more about the electric blue plant growing along the sidewalk and to admire the rest of the landscaping. The plant is called cerinthe.

Cerinthe major, blue shrimp plant.

Later in the afternoon we stopped in to see Bobbye. She had a stroke a few days before I left Washington last year. We had seen her when I visited last July, about 5 weeks after her stroke and shortly after she had returned home. During the day her caregiver Karen helps out, in the evening and weekends her son Ron cares for her; during the week Ron's wife Peggy, who is a nurse, keeps the money coming in. Bobbye's stroke affected her speech center and also paralyzed the motor functions on her right side. During this visit it was much easier to understand her, though she still had difficulty after a couple minutes of talking. It was great to see how much progress she had made in the 10 months since we had seen her. Ron asked us to call & talk to Bobbye on the phone since she seemed to do better than in person; he said she could manage 2 to 5 minutes of fairly good conversation over the phone.

Kai, Bobbye, & me. (Photo by Karen)

We headed further south on Camano to visit Carole. Last year she had a house fire; we helped her salvage as much as possible and move in to temporary place while her landlord removed the fire damaged portions and rebuilt them. The house looked amazing! And there were special cat furniture that Carole had installed for her inside cat Mocha and her the outside cat Tommy that adopted her.

The cat tower includes a portion over the window to the left.

Mocha is a very friendly and lovable cat. She really took to Kai.

Carole made prime rib with sweet potatoes and onions, spinach salad, and kiwis and yogurt for dinner. For dessert she shared some chocolate she had made with ground cacao nibs, coconut oil, and stevia.

L: salad; R: prime rib with sweet potatoes & onions and raw vegetables.

While we were at Carole's, her husband Norm called. Norm works in Oak Ridge TN; he & Kai spent about and hour talking about stuff, they always do. Curtis also texted me to let me know that Dad had decided not to go to Las Vegas because he "wasn't feeling well." We both think it is because he is feeling unsure about the dementia and that he would be fine once he got there, but didn't want to force him to go. On the bright side, Curtis said he was getting very good at giving Xander his pills!

Happy Birthday to Janice & Mari! Happy Belated Birthday to Marvin, Dwight, & Stan!