While I do often think of my pets as my children, I really hope that if I ever do have kids, I never have to utter a phrase similar to this one: "Bello, for the love of God, STOP HUNTING YOUR SISTER!"
Showing posts with label family news. Show all posts
Showing posts with label family news. Show all posts
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Quote from my family
One of my favorite nieces said this today:
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
In Tacoma last weekend
We spent the weekend in Tacoma with the Babe's family for a graduation party. Ashleigh (one of the Babe's 16 nieces and nephews) graduated from the UW and there was a large party. We are very proud of Ashleigh and rejoiced in her graduation with everyone. She's wonderful.
We had some extra time, so we also looked at houses and neighborhoods in Tacoma. More about that later.
Sunday, December 21, 2008
My granddaughter, Raegan
I just got a recent picture of my granddaughter, Raegan, who is preposterously cute, even for a 2-yo granddaughter.
Tuesday, December 02, 2008
Quick update
We spent Thanksgiving in Palo Alto, CA, with my maternal aunt & uncle, Marcia and Dick. I also got to see one of my cousins, Beth, and spent a delightful morning with one of my oldest friends, Falline.
I'm up late at night doing a zillion workish things, so I don't have time to write up a trip update at the moment.
The cats were all very glad to see us when we returned.
I'm up late at night doing a zillion workish things, so I don't have time to write up a trip update at the moment.
The cats were all very glad to see us when we returned.
Saturday, December 08, 2007
Thanksgiving weekend in Tacoma
We spent Thanksgiving weekend in Tacoma with The Babe's family, though we were able to break away for a day on Saturday and visit a few friends. I got to see my dear friend Kim and we stopped to see Elisabeth, Lonnie, and Zen. In the evening, we were able to do dinner with the Babe's old friends Bruce and Stacy--for those of you who were at our wedding, Stacy was the woman who sang You Are My Home (from The Scarlet Pimpernel)--in downtown Seattle.
Bruce and Stacy have a charming son, Elliot, who did not accompany them. Elliot's, uh, 3 years old. When Stacy left Elliot with her mother for the evening, her mother said "Who are you going to dinner with?" Stacy explained that they were going to dinner with her old drama partner and her husband. "What's her husband do?" Stacy's mother asked.
After thinking a second, Stacy said "He's a banjo-playing technical writer."
Her mother snorted and said "Where'd she meet him? On the Internet?"
Stacy said "Yes..."
Later that evening, the Babe googled "banjo player technical writer," thinking that there would probably be just me. She was horrified to discover this produced 159,000 hits using those criteria. The Babe explained that she'd always felt that one banjo-playing technical writer was a sufficient quantity.
Bruce and Stacy have a charming son, Elliot, who did not accompany them. Elliot's, uh, 3 years old. When Stacy left Elliot with her mother for the evening, her mother said "Who are you going to dinner with?" Stacy explained that they were going to dinner with her old drama partner and her husband. "What's her husband do?" Stacy's mother asked.
After thinking a second, Stacy said "He's a banjo-playing technical writer."
Her mother snorted and said "Where'd she meet him? On the Internet?"
Stacy said "Yes..."
Later that evening, the Babe googled "banjo player technical writer," thinking that there would probably be just me. She was horrified to discover this produced 159,000 hits using those criteria. The Babe explained that she'd always felt that one banjo-playing technical writer was a sufficient quantity.
Friday, March 16, 2007
My niece Addie is so cool!
My sister Lorraine sent me a photo of my niece Addie after winning an award for an art project she did. She won 1st place (naaaa-tchully!) with 2,000 submissions and her entry goes on to the county level next (she's in Southern California). If she wins that, she gets to shake hands with Arnold S!
Monday, February 26, 2007
Susan the Wonder Child
Susan the Wonder Child was always a pretty girl, but she's really getting to be quite dazzling. She was hanging out with a friend the other evening and they did a photo shoot for fun. Here are a few of the pictures; there are another dozen in the Susan set in my Flickr account.
Susan all gussied up
She's even doing a darned good job of keeping her room clean these days. Far better than I usually manage to keep my office, too!
This one is her favorite from the shoot
Susan, noir
Susan all gussied up
She's even doing a darned good job of keeping her room clean these days. Far better than I usually manage to keep my office, too!
This one is her favorite from the shoot
Susan, noir
Saturday, February 24, 2007
My sister's going to be on national TV
My sister Lorraine, who's a thanatologist, is off to DC to be on a TV show entitled Living with Grief: Before and After the Death. Very cool!
Addendum, March 3: Lorraine had said "national TV" when she was telling me about it, but it's actually a national teleconference. It's still cool, though, and she's selling lots and lots of her books. (Come to think of it, we need to get our little sister Susan to write a book and we'll all three of us be authors.)
Addendum, March 3: Lorraine had said "national TV" when she was telling me about it, but it's actually a national teleconference. It's still cool, though, and she's selling lots and lots of her books. (Come to think of it, we need to get our little sister Susan to write a book and we'll all three of us be authors.)
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
I *am* a grandfather!
Lori talked to the Babe today and said that I can definitely be a grandfather. Both her and Phil's biological fathers have died so there's a dearth of grandfather types around. I'm seeuw heppy!
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Grandparenthood!
The Babe's stepdaughter Lori--who is a beautiful Japanese American woman--and Phil Kim--who is a very handsome Korean man--had their baby yesterday, September 18th, at 4:53 AM. 6 pounds 10 oz. 19 1/2 inches with lots of wavy dark hair with blondish highlights and dark grey-green eyes. Her name is Raegen Hae Ji Kim (Hae Ji is Korean for Larry's daughter, very smart, and lots of love). Mother, father Phil, and child are doing great!
I don't get to claim full grandfatherhood--a step-stepdaughter isn't quite the same--but I can be a bonus grandfather.
You know, I never thought this'd happen to me. It's nice. :)
Thursday, May 11, 2006
Susan's birthday
Today is Susan the Wonder Child's 22nd birthday. She's off at the moment doing a bowling party with friends, although there was a little problem in getting there: she had a flat tire and was held up waiting for the AAA guy. But friends of hers went to the bowling alley and let them know she'd be late, so I think all has worked out okay.
Sarah Bella, the Babe's oldest daughter, had her 28th b'day on the 6th. There were no flat tires.
The Babe herself is having her birthday on the 20th. But more about that later. :)
Monday, February 20, 2006
Planning our cruise
Later this year, we're doing a cruise with Steve and Andi, one of the Babe's brothers and his wonderful wife, who are celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary by getting away to the Caribbean. There'll be a few other family members on this trip as well, which'll be nice, but it's pretty significant that this'll be my first cruise ever as well as our first cruise together. (The Babe's done one cruise before this.)
We're looking at beach trips, shopping, a butterfly farm, and a number of other things. I'm also thinking that I need to start convincing the Babe that she needs skimpier bathing wear to show off that gorgeous frame of hers. I'm doubtful of my ability to get her to the level of Wicked Weasel swimwear by this cruise, but as Robert Browning said, "A man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?"
Thursday, December 22, 2005
'Twas the Week before Christmas....
Barb & Dan hadn’t been able to make Thanksgiving and wanted to have a big family dinner with everyone, so we went up to Tacoma on the train on Friday the 16th. We both enjoy the train as an alternative to driving--just how many times can you see I-5 from Eugene to Tacoma/Seattle without screaming in boredom, after all? And there’s a pleasure to having the train do the driving, particularly in bad or icy weather.
We paused in Portland to change trains. The Portland train station is not as bad as, say, a Greyhound Bus station, but it's fairly boring. We boarded early (Amtrak's business class is a heckuva deal; for a few bucks more, you get better seats, vouchers for the snack bar, and more comfort) and settled in. Joining us in the cabin was a set of grandparents and their five-year-old grandson. The child was definitely bright--the Babe was impressed with his ability to sound out "Vancouver" from the sign at the train station- but at the same time, he was still playing "Got your nose!" He also knew the words to the "Bob the Builder" song and to "Rudolf, the Red-Nosed Reindeer." Really well. Oy.
His grandmother was kind of interesting, too. She spent much of the trip on the cell phone (we were at opposite ends of the car and we still got treated to her conversations) bitching at people about how the how Congress was never in session this day and that no-one was returning her calls and how there was some important immigration legislation that the White House was really in favor of and so forth and so on. She clearly wanted all of us to be impressed with her. Sorry, anyone who's pushing for something this administration is in favor of immediately puts her in the "waste of space" category.
We got in to Tacoma on time (we’ve learned to avoid the Coast Starlight and stick with the Cascades) around 4:00pm Friday afternoon. Hank (the Babe’s father) picked us up. We made a stop at Starbuck’s for coffee for a little while, then headed over to Steve & Andy’s house, where we were staying. When we got there, there was no-one but a young man named Robert who we hadn’t met before. It turned out that Robert is in the Coast Guard and that Matt, Steve’s son, had met him in basic training. Robert was billeted at the Coast Guard station in Seattle but didn’t have anyone to spend the holidays with. He’s from a very small town in North Carolina and the mechanics of getting around Seattle were a bit foreign to him (he’d never ridden a bus, for example, so getting on the bus to get off base and see parts of Seattle wasn’t something he knew how to do), so Matt took him under his wing and brought him down to Tacoma.
The Babe and I parked our stuff in the guest bedroom and then went over to Evan and Dena’s house. I love their house; it’s authentic Craftsman style and just scrumptious! I admired a painting of Evan’s, which turned out to be an unsigned Sidney Laurence, specifically, a copy of his Off to the Potlatch.
Evan explained that Laurence was a drinker, had ups and downs and was something of a perfectionist, so he may have felt that he hadn't gotten this one juuuuuuuuust right. As a result, he sold this one off cheaply and took a stab at it again. It came down to Evan through his grandmother, who bought it from Laurence in Alaska, and it's truly gorgeous. The photo on the website doesn't do it justice and it is slightly different.
Here are a couple other examples of Laurence's work: Mt. McKinley, one of Laurence's favorite subjects, Evening Glow, and Cordova. His paintings are strong, a little primitive, but have a certain pre-Raphaelite intensity to them. There are still more paintings at the Sydney Laurence web site.
We went to Mexican food for dinner, something we've not yet found in Eugene that's really been worth eating. It was pretty darned good, too, so if anyone in Eugene knows of a good Mexican restaurant, please let us know! Afterwards, we drove over to Steve & Andy's, grabbed Robert, and headed off to see the annual Zoolights festival at the Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium. I'd never been to the Point Defiance Zoo before, actually, and this was a lovely introduction. There are vast displays of lights: a 30' panorama of Tacoma and environs, for example, with both bridges (and front and rear lights for the rows of traffic!), Commencement Bay, and Mt. Rainier in the background. There are salmon going upstream being snatched by a bald eagle, which flies off to feed it to the eaglets, a monkey that swings from beam to beam all around the ceiling perimeter of the outdoor stage, a true chameleon that eats a fly, the Rainbow Bridge (actually, I don't know if it's supposed to be Bifrost or just a horizon-to-horizon rainbow), and lots of other things. It's on until Jan 1 every night until 9:00pm; go see it. Robert had never been to a zoo before, though he had been to an aquarium. He had a good time as did we.
We dropped Robert off at Steve & Andy's, then went back to Dena & Evan's house. I was zonked from far too little sleep the night before and crashed on the couch while the Babe talked to Dena & Evan. I would've liked to stay awake, but it wasn't going to happen. We drove home and fell over for the night.
Saturday, we woke up slowly. After a breakfast in, the Babe went out with Andy and a few others to the mall to go shopping for a Girls' Afternoon Out. Steve and I went out for coffee for a while with Hank, then came back home. I bashed on the computer for a while Steve ran an errand to get a plug to make a repair over at Hank's condo. He got back and we hung out and waited for a carpenter to drop off kitchen cabinets. (They're really pretty and they match the existing cabinets nicely.)
Barb was making a 26-pound baron of beef, a piece that's so big that it was probably created by taking a side of beef and a chainsaw and doing something creative. The butcher had taken care of spicing and forming it; all she had to do was bake it. Our mouths were all watering in anticipation. We showed up around 5:30.
Robert enjoyed himself. (He said that he'd felt good that, just the other day, he'd been channel-surfing and finally found a hunting show.)
There were two big events to go along with dinner: one was Rebecca's announcement that she was engaged (hurrah!) to a young man named Kevin.
The other was that we got to see Olivia, the newest family member, who is dazzlingly cute even for a baby girl...
...and her family line.
The Babe is wonderful to see with babies; she gets very cute.
Olivia's grandfather is as proud as anyone. And rightly so, I think.
One of Olivia's many charms is that she's a very sweet-tempered baby (I'm sure this will change at some point) and smiles a lot.
Although we all were very pleased to be holding Olivia and eating amazing food (I am so glad to have married into a family of good cooks!), it was a very pleasant evening just hanging out with family as always.
Old family friends Phil & Arlene were there as well.
Dinner and desserts--of which there were many--settled in on all of us and the party started breaking up around 10-ish. (We're getting old.) We drove back to Steve and Andy's for the evening.
Sunday morning, we watched the Seahawks on TV at Steve & Andy's. They scored two touchdowns in the first eight minutes and promptly forgot how to play football. Steve got so disgusted that he turned off the TV at halftime (after the score was tied 14-14) and washed dishes for a while. The Babe came out of the bedroom a while later (she'd slept late) and turned the TV back on near the end of the 3rd quarter. The score was now 21-24 (the Seahawks were still losing) and got us interested in watching the remainder of the game. They pulled it out at last but only because someone must've reminded them in the 4th quarter that they were playing football and not baseball. Well, they're in the playoffs and that's good.
Andy dropped us off at the Amtrak station that afternoon with a big box of half a dozen kinds of cookies and fudge. (Again, it is so nice having married into a family of good cooks!) Andy makes the best Russian tea cakes and there were cookies with miniature peanut butter cups in the middle and chocolate fudge and all sorts of things that are really bad for diabetics but oh! they were good. We boarded the train and headed southwards for home.
Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Thanksgiving weekend
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.
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Oktoberfest in Leavenworth
An annual event in this silly and wonderful family I've married into is attending Oktoberfest in Leavenworth. I feel a bit of background about Leavenworth is in order for those of you who aren't familiar with it.
Leavenworth was a little timber and rail town in central Washington. It survived for decades on the Great Northern Railroad and a local sawmill, but things changed in the 30s when the Great Northern pulled out of Leavenworth and the sawmill closed and the logging industry went away. There wasn't a lot left and the town hovered on extinction for years.
Finally, in the early 60s, the town remade itself into a little Bavarian village in hopes of making itself a tourist town. It worked pretty darned well. They had a lot going for them: the hills surrounding parts of the town look fairly Alpine and the entire town has been redone with Bavarian gingerbread on pretty much everything that'll stand still.
There are always something going on in Leavenworth: Christkindlmarkt, Yule lighting, and an Ice Fest in winter, Polka-Rama and Maifest in spring, and lots and lots of art fests, choral and music concerts, speakers on all kinds of topics, and, of course, Oktoberfest. All of these are a draw and the Leavenworth Chamber of Commerce is working hard to expand the tourist potential; currently, they're raising money for a Leavenworth Civic Center (a good idea in my opinion, too).
Oktoberfest in Leavenworth is always held the first weekend in October (unlike Oktoberfest in Germany, which starts in September and runs for about two and a half weeks). They bring in a bunch of German oom-pah bands, truckloads of beer, and lots and lots and lots of food. The tourist crowds are pretty thick, but it's a very friendly event and people are there to have a good time, so there's very little rowdiness. (It also doesn't hurt, with all that alcohol, that there's not much driving in a town that small and there are loads of on-duty officers keeping an eye on things. It all works out.)
This year as last year, the Babe and I headed up to Tacoma and joined up with a bunch of the Babe's siblings, spouses, in-laws, and a couple of old and dear family friends, and we all caravanned over to Leavenworth (about a 2-1/2 hour drive). The trek east on I-90 is worth the trip on its own, as you go through the mountain passes, which are quite scenic. We stayed at the same hotel again this year and even had the same rooms (which we'd rented in March just to be sure we'd have them). When we got there, we unloaded our goods and chattels into our various rooms, after which, the Babe (who had a bit of a cold that we'd been passing back and forth) took a nap while the rest of us went out for beer and nosh to start the weekend off.
Our group this year was as follows (in no particular order other than the pictures):
Steve, one of the Babe's two brothers. Steve is a cop and has a big, broad sense of humor. He's very easy to talk to and (as you can see from the picture) tells stories well.
Andy, Steve's wife (we went out river rafting in September with Steve and Andy). Andy works as a bookkeeper/office manager (and probably should have "Goddess of Organization" title on her card, too). She and Steve frequently host family gatherings. Andy's a good cook, too, which I have always appreciated.
Karen, one of the Babe's many sisters, who is married to Russ. Karen teaches school and she and Russ have amazing children.
Mary (on the left) with Karen. (Mary's not actually related but she and her husband Mike are such fine people that they ought to be.)
Darris (on the right), Andy's sister, about whom I don't know nearly enough except that, like everyone else in the group, she's good company and is great to spend time with.
Russ (on the left) with Mike (who, like Mary, is also a wonderful person). Russ, an engineer, has a very dry sense of humor and tends to be on the quiet side (which can get you steamrolled conversationally in this family at times), but he is a force to be reckoned with: every so often, he'll open his mouth and say something completely devastating that you didn't even see coming. His eyes twinkle when they do it.
What can I say? It's a wonderful family to be part of.
We spent some time sitting around and having a pitcher of a tasty amber microbrew and nibbley food (outstanding French fries and onion rings). The weather was cool but not biting and the breeze had great fall smells on it. We got the waitress to take a shot of the entire table, so here's the whole motley crew (including yours truly):
It's the general tradition to spend the first day doing some shopping (Leavenworth has an awful lot of shopping to offer) and then have a large dinner together. After discussing it, we decided to do Italian food Friday night and then a huge German dinner Saturday. There are Italian restaurants in town and we had a good dinner together. Some of the guys decided to go to the beer hall that evening, for beer, for music, and to pick up Oktoberfest beer mugs while they still had them to sell. We were also collectively on a mission to pick up a beer mug for a missing comrade: Barb (another of the Babe's sisters) and Dan weren't able to make it because one of their daughters was expecting her third child that weekend and they wanted to be there, but Dan didn't want to miss out getting that year's beer stein. I was still short of sleep--I hadn't slept the night before we came up to Tacoma in the course of getting ready and was still a few hours behind, so I turned in early, as did the Babe, who wasn't entirely up to par herself.
Shopping on Saturday
Saturday, we met each other in the hotel's breakfast room. They always have a nice light breakfast although it's short on protein and long on sugars. But there is enough coffee to get one primed to face the day. We headed out through the town to do some serious shopping during the day. The general pattern was that we'd move in a general clump, but there were invariably shops that some weren't as interested in as others, so there were frequent pauses outside or in the shops to either side, then we'd reclump and continue down the street.
One of the discussion points that weekend had been about getting Karen a dirndl, so at one of the shops that sells authentic clothes (right next to a fudge shop that's also worth a stop at for a free sample), we paused and looked at the wares. As the shopkeeper explained, it was hard getting a really good selection reliably as she had to order them from Germany and the turnaround was anywhere from 4-6 weeks to several months and no telling which.
Fortunately, there were a couple of dirndls in Karen's size. They looked pretty good. Karen tried one of them on.
We had our large Saturday meal at King Ludwig's, a popular German restaurant there. They have large platters of food for up to 8 people at a go: lots of food. There were several kinds of sausages, roasted chicken, schnitzels, krauts, pickled beets, German potato salad. . . yum! We got a couple pitches of dark beer and a pitcher of soda and plowed in (belch!). Leavenworth's food is quite memorable.
Traditionally after our late Saturday lunch, the men take off to play golf and the women go shopping. However, I don't play golf. I like golf jokes, I find golf rather interesting, but the couple of times I've tried to hit golf balls, I have been truly ghastly at it. I would have to practice for months to get up to being merely abysmal. I didn't have to play, they suggested, I could always join them and carry clubs. Um, well, noooooo, I didn't feel like I'd come all the way to Leavenworth just so I could caddy, but, uh, thanks all the same, guys. I then got a little ribbing about not spending time with the guys playing golf, but I was able to point out that while they were out playing golf, I was wandering through town shopping with five great-looking women, which, I felt, gave me the win (insert enormous smug grin here). In fact, though, I didn’t do nearly as much shopping as last year on Saturday afternoon. After lunch, I really felt like napping a bit (still catching up on sleep). I went back to the hotel and slept for an hour or so, then walked down main street and caught up with the shopping party.
Addendum, October 30: Steve points out that they didn't say I could carry the clubs, but that I could drive the cart (which they'd rent if I came along). True enough; I had misremembered. However, I still demurred for the same reason: as much as I enjoy Steve, Russ, & Mike, hanging out with the women and shopping seemed like a lot more fun. On the other hand, the ladies have said that next year, they're likely to spend the afternoon at the Solstice Spa getting (are you ready for this?)
The men came back from golf a few hours later and we wandered through the outdoor art show for a while, after which we went over to the beer hall. This year, the beer hall was not being held in the big hall where it was held last year. Instead, there were two smaller beer halls: one in the hall across the way (with about half the capacity of the big hall) and the other in a large tent further down. It was okay, but it wasn't quite as much fun because it was a good deal more crowded and seating was at a premium. But it was still fun: the band was fun and there were several rounds of men and women from the audience trying to yodel along (most were awful but one was almost good), there were lots of really great silly hats, and the band would play the Chicken Dance every so often and we'd all get up and do the chicken dance.
After a couple hours of beer and sausage, we decided to head back to the hotel and play a card game together, something we've done at family events before. We spent a few hours whapping each other at the card table and laughing a lot, then we all went to bed.
Sunday Morning and Home Again
We got up and all headed out for a large family breakfast together (another Leavenworth tradition). The wait at the restaurant was about 35 minutes (well, we were after a table for 9), so several of us walked up the hill to check out the wait at the waffle house and also to get Starbuck's. The waffle house didn't appear to be any better and we all kinda liked the place we'd planned on, so the sortie walked over to Starbuck's, endured another line, and then walked to the restaurant just in time to walk in with Starbuck's cups hidden.
Breakfast was scrumptious. Afterwards, we stopped at a butcher to get sausages and a candy store to pick up some nibbly things for the road, then we went back to the hotel and packed up. We bundled into cars and headed West top Tacoma and home.
Postscript: Barb and Dan became grandparents again late the following week. Babies show up when they're darned good and ready and not a moment before.
Friday, October 14, 2005
Philadelphia, then home!
We embarked on the final leg of our vacation in the morning. We bade goodbye to Nancy (with promises that we'd return here, too) and after a brief pause for photos, we headed off towards Boston again to drop off the car and catch our shuttle to Boston.
Our trip took us through New Hampshire and down 89 towards Boston. It was a pleasant drive. It turned out that the Babe needed a larger size of knitting needle for the shawl she'd been working on, so we stopped at a store in Manchester, NH. Actually, we first stopped at a visitor's center on the freeway near Manchester and got wuuuuunderful service from the two people on duty there, who looked stores up in the phone book, drew maps, and gave us first-rate directions to a Michael's. We got there without any problem, the Babe got her needles, and we continued towards Boston.
We dropped the car off without any problems, caught the shuttle to the airport, and checked in. We then needed a bit of lunch and a chance to sit down and so we ended up lunching at--ta-daaaah!--Yet Another Legal Seafood. Shucks, if it works, don't fix it. We had a lovely lunch without lobster this time and played some more honeymoon gin. (Note: Despite my strong desire to have some again after 15 years without, I never did order bluefish paté. Next time, next time....)
We got to Philadelphia in short order and were met by Sarah, our favorite Ph.D. candidate (and the Babe's oldest daughter; I'm sure those two facts are somewhat connected) and Narda, who is Sarah's favorite Ph.D. We drove back to their house, a lovely old townhouse in a pretty part of Philadelphia. We ate dinner and then Sarah and Narda introduced us to a game that they were very fond of called Settlers of Catan (a great game series created by Klaus Teuber) which proved to be exciting and very addictive. We stayed up until the wee hours playing, then all went to bed and fell over.
The next morning, we had breakfast and decided that we were going to go out to buy the one of the expansion sets for Settlers of Catan. This took us over to Collingswood, NJ to a game store that had the expansion sets. We purchased the Cities and Knights expansion set and then scampered back to Narda and Sarah's place to read the rules and play the game with the expansion. The expansion set proved to change the game dramatically, but it was still a lot of fun. We stopped playing Settlers of Catan for a while so that the Babe and I could teach Sarah and Narda a game that we'd just learned from one of the Babe's sisters called "99," a simple card game that allows for a lot of "screw-yer-neighbor" tactics. We got to bed at a more civilized hour this time because we had plans for the next day.
We went to the Farmer's Market (that's not the name of it, but that's kinda what it was) in Philly. There are actually a zillion other things there including a bunch of really great food things, though. One of our first stops was a novelty store, where the Babe demonstrated one possibility for Halloween.
We moseyed around for a few hours, smelling things and tasting things and looking at fun stuff. It was a riot of color and activity and delightful smells and sights.
I actually didn't get a lot of photos of Narda and Sarah while we were there, but I snapped one shot of them at the market.
After the market, we walked through a public swap meet nearby, then walked about half a mile towards our ultimate dinner location, a very good Caribbean/Cuban restaurant that Sarah and Narda had eaten at before and liked. It was beastly hot and humid, so we stopped at a café and had cold liquids and rested our feet and enjoyed the AC for a while. We went to dinner and we all ate way too much, then headed back to the house and (unsurprisingly) played still more Settlers of Catan.
The next morning, the cats were being exceptionally silly, so I got a number of pictures of them. Narda and Sarah have two cats, actually: Rooster, who's a young obnoxious cat at the moment, and Mojo, who's older and bigger.
Rooster was playing "zoomcat" and was romping around the bedroom and attacking the blankets, the air, and most anything that moved… or didn't, for that matter. The rug, for example, had been lying there minding its own business when Rooster figured it needed to be taught a lesson.
Rooster squared off at one point with Mojo, who played along briefly but clearly doesn't think of Rooster as a real threat.
The last time we'd been in Philadelphia to visit (a couple years before), we'd gone out to the town of New Hope, PA, a delightful arts colony full of shops and little places to explore. I'd bought another Stetson out there, the Babe had bought some lovely dresses and wraps, and we'd all had a lovely day. This time, we decided we'd try a couple of other places nearby, so, after a sumptuous breakfast at Narda and Sarah's favorite breakfast place, we hit the road for Doylestown, PA for an autumn festival.
The center of the town (about 6 blocks by 3 blocks) is nothing but booths and activities. In addition to which, there were lots of established shops on the streets to look in. One of the activities for children was "scarecrow stuffing."
As each scarecrow was finished, the contestants would line them up near the scarecrow-stuffing tent.
It was a bit strange, really, seeing all these humanoid figures slumped against the wall, but there were moments of affection and romance as well.
Despite everything going on, I actually didn't take many other pictures there, but I've always been a fan of good street theater.
Twigby the Autumn Elf was working the crowd (and occasionally mugging for pictures). He obligingly posed for another shot.
There was still a few hours of daylight left when we were done and we made one more stop: Peddler's Village in the nearby town of Lahaska. Peddler's Village is an area of maybe 1/2 square mile with close to 200 shops in it. I was looking for a leather shop to buy a new wallet (my old one has lasted about 23 years, but it's getting to be kinda manky). While we found a really nice leather shop, they didn't have anything quite as... slabby as the wallet I've got now. The wallets they had--which were a real bargain and quality items to boot!--were clearly not strong enough to stand up to more than a couple years of the normal abuse I put wallets through, so I passed.
We went home, played still more Settlers of Catan, and then went to bed. Narda went off to work early the next morning. We spent the morning with just Sarah (yes, we squeezed in one more Settlers game), then we cabbed out to the airport. We got in to Boston on time, spent a little time hanging out at Logan Airport, then caught the flight to Seattle, then home to Eugene. It was a very long day of travel.
It had been a wonderful vacation and a delightful way to celebrate our third anniversary. We were glad to be home and glad to be sleeping in our own bed again at last.
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