Author: Susan

My sister was here overnight for a quick visit after coming to town for a work conference! The plan had been very on-again off-again, so I was so happy when it worked out. She arrived bearing flowers (one of her co-workers had an anniversary the day before, and her husband had ordered flowers to her room. Rather than jettison them when she flew out, she gave them to Sharon to gift to me! So pretty!) Instead of trying to cram activities in, we just stayed in and talked, with one quick visit to the ring store and the latte stand for engagement fun/Seattle flavour. Such a fun visit.

The only dim spot was that she flew out Friday evening, and so had to toss or gift all of her liquids. The loss of the Tide stain removing pen was a particularly harsh blow.

We went to go see Real Madrid (and David Beckham, the only soccer personality I know by name) play DC United in the Seahawks stadium. Soccer is definitely an interesting sport to watch. Nice large ball that you can see from the (relatively) cheap seats, pretty clear rules, and lots of athleticism on display. Culturally, though, it just seems a tad off from most American sports. Not strategically, nor in the crowds (all 66,000 of them — worst traffic ever), nor the intensity of the competition, but, interestingly enough, in the way people are injured. In most of the big team sports here, it seems that a tough exterior is a virtue, and generally when someone goes down, the crowd is on edge waiting to see if they come back from it. A person rolling on the field gripping a knee immediately leads to the assumption that their ACL is torn and their season is shot. Soccer is full of those little moments of drama (lent credence by the fact that people are constantly flinging their bodies about the field), but after a few minutes of lying and pounding the ground, or sitting and moaning to the ref, the injured will see the ball come back to him and leap up for a new round of running and full-body layouts. Clearly the dramatics are part of the game (and the American team participated as wholeheartedly as anyone), but it kept striking me as profoundly out of place. So interesting.

In other football news, I’m going to be in a fantasy league. Kevin brought home this magazine to start prepping his draft list, and was deeply amused when I started dibsing running backs.

Ought to be an interesting fall…

This weekend was Seafair, and while we still didn’t make it into Seattle for any of the festivities, we still saw the Blue Angels both days. On Saturday, we just saw them from the top of the street:

and as they flew overhead as we went into Bellevue to go to the ring store.

On Sunday, we got slightly more in gear, and went to Meydenbauer Park (pdf) in Bellevue to watch. It’s a great park, quite a bit below the road and with a pretty mix of shady grassy areas and beach. There were lots of families with little kids, and a swimming area with lifeguards. It seemed like a nice place to park for the summer.

The view wasn’t perfect, but we could see the planes run low over Lake Washington in their approach to Mercer Island and the I-90 bridge, which was really neat. The sound is always in the wrong place, so it took some practice to get good at watching. Here’s a sample loop way up over Mercer Island:

Keep in mind that the blur at the bottom isn’t one plane, it’s four:

At some points, they were flying five and six that close together. It’s completely amazing, though clearly I did not miss my calling — it’s definitely something I would never want to do. The same cannot be said for Kevin. We’d been watching for about eight minutes when he started rhapsodizing about how cool it would be, and how amazing the planes were, and how he wished he could fly one to work every day. I was looking at him with a somewhat disbelieving “right, but not seriously” expression, when a group of four year old boys that had been digging up sand at the water’s edge spontaneously started jumping up and down and chanting “Blue Angels! Blue Angels!” …it just must be a boy thing. Right up there with being able to make a full complement of motor sounds with your mouth. The planes buzzed the beach a few times, much to the delight of the boys in the water, but they flew so fast that I couldn’t get the optimal shot…

I have 290 yards of a gorgeous color of Blue Sky Alpacas Alpaca & Silk (it’s a 50-50 blend), which was a birthday present from Amanda.

I’m looking for pattern thoughts. Any ideas? I was thinking possibly a long version of these. The gauge for the yarn is 5-6 st/in. For the moment, it’s been hanging out by my computer so that I can pet it as I go by (so soft!), but it would be nice to have a project in mind for it. 🙂

This has been such an exciting and fun week, but busy and not conducive to pictures. So, a recap: Pearl Jam at the gorge, skipping the company picnic due to the extreme heat, lots of wedding conversations, envying the fish. (We only have one fan, and the greater Seattle area is completely sold out. The fish’s water can’t get much over 82 degrees, and the best way to keep it in check other than buying a $200 chiller is evaporation. So, cool fish, sweltering us. Note to self: buy fans this weekend.) Plus, busyness at work, errands, ring researching, and Stitch n Pitch!!

Note knitting clutched in ring-bedecked hand. 🙂 I only made it through one row in nine innings. It’s a good thing that no one depends on my knitting ever being finished.

It seemed like a good turnout, and knitters accounted for a lot of three sections. Good fun! The eastside stitchers made a good showing, and it was fun to get to see Laura again and meet her baby in person. Very cute!

And a final picture (all of these were taken by Diana — I forgot my camera, and traffic was too miserable to go back for it. Thanks, Diana!!), to prove that we were actually at the game. It was a romp (Go Blue Jays!) and it was fun to see all of the Canadian flags flying in the park.

Good fun, I hope they do it again next year.

So when I said that 25 seemed like a “big” year, I wasn’t expecting the fun to begin quite so soon… (!)

We were having friends over for birthday cake and the red sox game last night, and Kevin proposed as everyone was showing up! 🙂 Such fun, because then the night was doubly a celebration, and it was so great to have good friends there to be so happy with us. The ring is just “for now” — $4 at Clare’s, but now we get to go ring shopping together! It keeps flying off, since it’s way too big, so I rigged a bracelet/leash for it until the real ring appears. 😀

I snapped a few quick pictures of the tank last night, since things looked so neat in the “twilight”. (Our daylight lighting is composed of a mix of blue and white light. For about forty minutes at the beginning and end of the day, the white lights go out and everything in the tank looks fluorescent under the blue-only lights. It’s kind of like having a blacklight.)

The first is our Montipora (with the ever-inquisitive Click in the foreground). Earlier in the spring, our calcium had lowered to almost nothing. Kevin (very clever kid) spent a while eliminating potential issues before he identified the problem and since May, he’s been dosing aggressively to push the calcium back up to a healthy level. This montipora was showing the most negative effects from the plunge — all of his mouths were closed, and the pink was actually retreating. He’s come back completely, and is now actually growing. (You can see the white new growth at the tips at the upper-left and upper-right! yay!)

It’s so frustrating when creatures in the tank aren’t looking healthy, because it can be so many different factors. Most of it is trial and error. Is there some trace element built up in the water? Missing from the water? Is the lighting too much/not enough? Is there too much/not enough water flow? Are the ailing creatures not getting enough of the right kind of food? Are two corals too close together? (Corals use chemical warfare as a defense system.) Is something (fish, crazy hitchhiker crab, unknown tank inhabitant…) eating or pestering someone else? Is the temperature too high or low? Does this creature expect a greater depth (and thus higher water pressure)?

So many different possibilities to ponder, and since our little tank ecosystem is all a web, tweaking one thread can affect many of the other variables. I’m so glad that Kevin figured out the calcium piece and that it’s been a pretty straight-forward fix.

Our one guy who’s never seemed to have these issues is the leather. He keeps growing merrily, and looks particularly amazing in the blue light:

Oooh. 🙂

I turned 25 yesterday. It’s such a nice solid, momentous sort of number. After a few years of meandering, non-event ages (23? what happens at 23?), it’s kind of fun to have a year that really sounds like it means something. 🙂

Since Tuesday isn’t a great day for large scale celebrations, I meant to spend the night quilting, and just put off the celebration until the weekend. Instead, I got to spend the night talking to a long roll of friends and family, which was so much fun. I almost never get to talk to the east coast crowd during the week, and it was so good to catch up with people. Kevin was out, so I didn’t have to feel bad about delaying dinner or plans between the two of us, and it was just a fun evening. (It actually bears remembering for next year — an alternate date celebration is probably better so that I can do my fun phone call roundup.)

So, tonight, birthday-plus-one, I finally got to break out the sewing machine. My progress before bedtime was pretty minimal, so here’s a photo for ambiance. The buds that broke off from my birthday flowers (yay, Kevin!) are in the background. So pretty! The pictures I took of the full bouquet didn’t really come out with the flash, so you’ll have to imagine the rest of the various pretty pinks. 🙂

Here’s to 25! May it be as important a year as it sounds like it should be. 🙂

I’m finished with the back of my twist top tank!

(Sorry for the bizarre perspective — it really is even in real life.) I worked on it fairly steadily in Pennsylvania, and finally finished the shoulders last night. Though I was following the pattern, and my guage is on, it’s very long and skinny. We’ll have to see what blocking does for that. Now on to the front!

I didn’t mean to go all AWOL on the blog-posting, but it was the product of a busy last two weeks of work before Kevin and I headed back to the east coast for vacation. First we headed up to Lake Winnepesaukee, NH to see my parents for their 30th anniversary, then (maximizing the benefit for the cross-country travel time), we flew down to PA to see Kevin’s family. I even brought the card reader for my camera, but somehow never got around to posting… oops. Since I had pictures, I’ve gone back and filled in some posts from the trip.

Here’s to more frequent posts! 🙂