We drove up to Tacoma for the holiday. We got on the road Thursday morning around 10am and headed north. Dinner was at Karen & Russ's at 4:00 and we made it in plenty of time. We were joined by other family members and a couple of guests, including a chap named Leo, a reservist who was shipping out to Baghdad the following evening. His wife wasn't able to join him and us for the evening, as she was stuck in Yakima, but we made him welcome for the evening. The food was great. We had a turkey and a ham, lots of stuffing, mashed potatoes, green beans, and Karen and Andy made a stellar gravy. Among many other things to recommend this family is the fact that they're good cooks.
The Babe and I had lunch with her stepchildren, Lori and Jace, and Jace's fiancé, Steph, at a new restaurant in Tacoma called Joeseppe's. Lori just got married a few weeks ago to a young man she's known most of her life named Phillip. Phillip's a Marine sniper and is back in Fallujah for another 8 months.
After lunch, we stopped in at Jace & Steph's house, which is a nice little starter home. Their dogs (don't know what types) are pretty well behaved and rather attractive. We did the family photos thing, so here are a few shots of us in various assemblages:
Friday evening, we had a "let's eat the leftovers!" dinner at Karen & Russ's place. There wasn't quite enough gravy left over (alas!), but there was plenty of everything else and lots of family. (Like I say, I'm very fond of the Babe's family.) After dinner, we played a fun card game called "99" for a while. It's relatively simple and it has a lot of the feel of playing Uno, for simplicity of the rules, for the speed of the game, and the sheer pleasure at screwing yer neighbor with a devious card throw. mwahahahahahahaaaaaaaa!
Saturday, we stopped in on Barb & Dan (still more family). Barb & Dan hadn't been able to make the Thanksgiving or the leftover dinner and we didn't want to take a trip up without seeing them, too. Dan showed me the wood shop he's building. I am drooling with envy! It'll have everything. One of their dogs, Baron, a 90lb German Shepherd who is thankfully pretty well-behaved, came outside with us when we tromped out towards the shop. I saw Baron bound across the yard and pick up an old tire in his mouth and then shake it. I half-expected chunks of rubber to come out of the sidewall when he did it. Baron is clearly a dog that You Do Not Mess With, at least more than once.
After a lovely visit, we drove out to the peninsula to see JA & Tames. We caught up on this and that, I walked around with JA while he fed the sheep (much larger flock of sheep than had been there the last time I was there) and the horses, who are always nice to see. JA & Tames had repainted everything since last I was there and the inside of the house is glowing. We had a very warming dinner and then drove over to Peg & Dan's place.
Peg and Dan (and the one daughter still at home) live in a 6400sqft house they built on the peninsula on the water. The house feels rich, comfortable, and scrumptious. There's woodwork everywhere, all mahogany (Peg said that there are 38,000 board feet of mahogany in the house). One of the nice things is there's not a single hollow-core door in the place. All the doors are solid, heavy, and very attractive... well, assuming you like polished mahogany, which I sure do.
Dan's a Puget Sound pilot, a fascinating job that can drag him off at all hours at times to pilot a ship in or out of port. Peg's a counselor in private practice in the city. They're very nice people.
Apart from the sheer pleasure of spending time with them, Dan loves playing the piano and singing songs and show tunes from the first part of the 20th century. Both JA and the Babe love singing songs like that. So do I, but I'm not a patch on them, so I usually sit back and admire.
Tames and Peg don't sing, so they always form the Admiring Throng.
Listening to the three of them go at it is a wonderful way to spend the evening.
I have a fondness for this kind of music, too, so listening to it is no hardship. And, as I'm fond of observing, the Babe has a great set o' pipes.
The three of them sang for several hours. Heckuva deal!
We finally had to bid goodbye, as we still needed to drive back to Tacoma that evening and get up at a reasonable hour the next day, but we could've stayed far later under other circumstances. It's always fun to really belt out the old favorites.
Sunday, the Babe and I had divergent activities. She had a friends-and-family obligation for the day, while I had a date with Brian and his pair of tickets to the Seahawks-Giants game. Brian and Fong (and Raymond the wonderchild) picked me up in Tacoma on their way home from Portland, so the Babe had the car. We drove to their place, offloaded some gear, and drove up to the International District in Seattle for lunch. We did a lot of really tasty dim sum (a pleasure I haven't had in far too long), after which Fong dropped us off at the stadium. We'd missed the kickoff and just as we were arriving, the Seahawks had intercepted a pass and gotten a touchdown. The crowd was about ready to eat a bleacher in their excitement. The rest of the game was good, but we were really worried that the Seahawks--who've had a great season--were going to dribble away a good lead. They almost did, actually: in the 4th quarter, the NY Giants scored a touchdown and then a 2-point conversion to tie the game 21-21. With 4 seconds to go in the 4th quarter and no chance of recovery, the NY Giants got up to field goal length and kicked a field goal to win the game... and it would've if it hadn't gone outside the goal post by about a yard.
Well, the crowd just exploded at that point. The Seahawks had a chance to win in a sudden-death overtime. The OT quarter started and the Seahawks just weren't pushing hard enough. The Giants got another crack at a field goal... which they missed. Boy howdy, we dodged another bullet! The Seahawks ultimately had to cede the ball to the Giants again, who were playing great offense that day, and they got it close enough for a good field goal at last! Unfortunately, the kicker was clearly having an off day, because he blew this field goal, too. The Seahawks finally realized they were going to have to stop messing around, so they pushed the ball up the field, got it to field goal length, and got it through the goalposts without problem. Amazing game, although, as Brian said, the Seahawks only won because they failed to lose.
We rode home on the Seattle Sounder. Brian got off at Tukwila and I rode it to Freighthouse Square in Tacoma. The Babe, bless her, had packed up our stuff and thrown it into the car and we drove home straight from there. It was about 6pm when we left (the game had run late, after all) so it was 11:30 or so when we got home.
And once again, there was the pleasure of sleeping in our own bed again.
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