A Storm Pushes Through

Today a storm pushed through town. Big deal, you might say, especially if you are in the Seattle area. We reacted the way we did in Bellevue when we heard a storm was coming. We rushed to Costco to get any supplies we might need. It seemed liked Tucsonans don't react the same way since Costco was not especially busy. It was fun watching the storm coming in. We are near the Catalina Mountains and could see white at the top and clouds gradually hiding them. At Costco a native said the storm would hit where we were in an hour, based on how visible the mountains were. She was right! Tomorrow we are supposed to get even more cold, wet weather and possibly snow. I'm not used to the darkness here that the cloud cover gives. I'm a tough Seattleite, so I can handle it. We are well provisioned and I've got a couple of good books to read. Let it snow!

Happy 100th Birthday, Dad!

Today my father, Paul, would have turned 100. He lived to be 89 and had a full, mostly happy life as far as I could tell. If he were alive, I'm sure we'd celebrate by getting the whole extended family together for a duck or salmon dinner with pie for dessert and play the old Edison record player that his parents got in the early 1900's. His favorite song was "Mrs. Murphy's Chowder". I always liked "Over There" from the record collection and would also play that. We would give him Blue Nun wine to drink and he probably would start talking about the old days, meaning his youth before I was born. He often mentioned the Spanish Influenza flu epidemic of 1918 and how many of his friends at Garfield Elementary School died from it. He sometimes talked about Nov. 11 and how he got out of school early to celebrate Armistice Day, the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month--the end of the War to End All Wars. He sometimes would look at his old photo album of his trip up Glacier Peak with his friends after he graduated from Everett High School. Before heading for the wilderness, the group of buddies stopped at Birch Bay. It was there that he met his first love, Josephine, who lived in Bellingham. She died a few years later of rheumatic fever. Dad was proud of his scaling Glacier Peak and referred to it often as we were growing up. He kept his ice pick and some hiking sticks from that trip until he died. He came back from that trip to face life in the Great Depression. He talked about some of the struggles of making mortgage payments on the family business. He took a job for Mr. Metzger, a business man, and chauffered him around the area. Later, when he married my mother, they spent time in Los Angeles while he worked for Metzger. Dad also liked to talk about his time at the shipyard in Everett during WWII. He gave me a "thousand dollar" bracelet that he made there. Apparently, they weren't always busy and he made it to have something to do. It always seemed to me that those war years were happy ones for my parents. They lived with my mother's parents and all seemed to get along. I don't remember Dad talking about being scared during the war or losing friend in battle. I'm sure that he must have experienced those things. He just never talked about them. Family gatherings were always the highpoints of his life. He would have enjoyed the party we would have given him!

One down, one to go

My friend, Mike, inspired me to start blogging as a way to stay in touch with friends and family while gone from home. Mike is away from home again and blogging, so I want to keep up my blog more regularly to keep in touch.

We took Cliff to the airport early this morning. He always leaves early so he can still get in most of a day's work when he gets back. Vacation time is precious for him. I remember and do not miss those years when I carefully planned out each vacation day! Phil will also fly back to Seattle today, but later on. He should be getting back just in time before snow hits Seattle. Snow is also a possibility for Tucson on Friday. We have been having unseasonably warm, sunny weather for a few weeks. It's supposed to turn cold all of a sudden on Thursday and Friday as a storm system from Seattle comes our way. The difference here is that the moisture rarely sticks around for long. I can't complain about the weather here.

Getting Ready

Cliff is coming tomorrow and called this afternoon to discuss meals and movies. It's good that he is a planner. Cliff wanted some input on the menu for Christmas so that he could help with the cooking. I gave him the choice of steaks or turkey, figuring that a vegan meal wouldn't cut it. He settled on steaks. We will have waffles for Christmas brunch. I shouldn't have been so surprised by his request for plans because he managed an eating club at Stanford for 2 or 3 years. He is also lining up some social activities. He wants to see a few movies while here and sent us a list of possibilities. His planning made me wonder what has happened to my own scheduling. I know I used to plan menus and meals, get us all through our daily activities, and plan some sort of social life. When did it end? I used to be more like Cliff. When did I switch to planning meals 15 minutes before dinner time?

Phil Arrives

Early this morning I viewed the lunar eclipse. I was able to see it when it was almost total and looked orange. It was memorable, but only was visible a little while because clouds rolled in. It lasted longer than my glimpses of meteors, though. Larry missed out because he waited a little too long and saw the moon only filtered through the clouds. A little luck, and a little sacrifice (of sleep) made the difference in our experiences. We won't have another opportunity for an eclipse like this for 80 years. I'm glad I seized the day (or night!).

Phil arrived this afternoon. I'm not sure how we'll spend the week with him. One chore will be trying to fill his prescription at the least expensive pharmacy. He doesn't have health insurance for this month due to a quirk in the new law about coverage. We can pay Cobra for him if something big happened, but we'd rather not. If times were a little different, we could hop across the border in Mexico and have the prescription filled at a greatly reduced cost. There are lists of reputable pharmacies to go to, so I wouldn't hesitate. However, I am apprehensive about traveling in Mexico right now with the drug wars going on. I listen to the long-time residents advice to not go right now.

Waiting for the Lunar Eclipse

Once again I'm waiting for a spectacular event in the sky. This time it's a lunar eclipse. Larry and I dashed out to see it start. I'm determined to stay up to see the moon when it is totally eclipsed. After all, it's the first day of winter and a full moon. The timing seems auspicious.

Meteors!

Larry and I watched a meteor shower Monday night. It was beautiful! The sky around our house perhaps wasn't dark enough for the best viewing, but we still managed to see several meteors. They don't look like fireworks displays. Instead the light is a brief streak in the sky that lasts only a second or less. I couldn't help thinking that my life is like a falling star that appears suddenly in the middle of the sky and vanishes so quickly that you hardly know it's been there. The more love I give and feel, the brighter the streak I make.

Waiting for the Meteor Shower

It's been over a month since I last posted an entry to my blog. I don't have any good excuses. I just got out of the habit of writing. Tonight Larry and I are waiting until midnight to go outside to watch the meteor shower, so I figured I'd summarize what I have been doing. My purpose in writing this blog is to let family and friends know what Larry and I have been doing and what challenges we face. I'm thinking that there is an outside chance that my grandchildren and future descendents may want to know something about my life even if no one else does now. I hear of books written about pioneer journals. Why not my blog in the twenty-second century? Maybe some of my mundane observations will eventually interest a future scholar or novelist.

I enjoy thinking up titles for my days. In trying to catch up, I'll start with titles for my paragraphs.

Gordon was right! My cousin Gordon is father of two. When he saw me holding baby Clifford, he remarked that parents never stop worrying about there children even when they are grown up. How true that is! Cliff had been fretting about finding a new job, both because he had been tired of his current job and also because it was going to end in March. He finally found another job which sounds great. The worry is that he told us he needed a car. We had already had preliminary discussions with him and had decided to give him one of our Priuses. However, the problem has been how to get the Prius in Wallingford down to him in SF. It was obvious that he did not want to fly up and drive it down. He also got pretty sick with tonsillitis and needed to rest. We finally decided to find an auto transport company to move it for us. The only problem with that is deciding on a reputable one. We soon found that there are hundreds of companies and that the decision was not so easy. We finally decided to go with a broker in Tucson so that I could have face-to-face contact if things didn't go smoothly. Penny is helping with the loading in Seattle. Things are still in process, but we aren't worried yet. Phil has been struggling to finish college. It looks like he can make it, but needed to take a couple of incompletes in his final classes. He is busy moving out of his apartment in Bellingham and into our townhouse in Wallingford, as planned.

A dozen TV's! Larry and I started out with a simple plan to replace our older technology televisions with hi-def ones as a little luxury to celebrate retirement. We had a general shopping strategy to first check out Costco, which always has a great return policy. We found TV's number 1-3 in our first round. We got a 46" Samsung for the great room plus two 32" Westinghouses for the bedrooms. We didn't like the Westinghouse ones, so brought them back. We discovered a special on a 46" Visio, so returned the Samsung to save a considerable amount of money. We ended up hating the Visio and started looking for another 46" TV. We were impressed by the 3D Samsung at Best Buy, but thought it was too pricey until we found the same TV on Amazon for a great price. We ordered it in a bundle. That TV appeared too dark, which made us think that something was wrong with it. Amazon graciously agreed to send another one. In the mean time, the 3D kit came. We discovered that we got headaches from using the 3D glasses and decided we couldn't keep the bundle or the TV and returned them all. We kept looking for a great picture and decided the Sharp was worth a try. We bought one for a good price in an open box at Ultimate Electronics. When we got the TV home, we discovered that it didn't have a remote control or power cord and a few other things. We took it back and was given a brand new one. In case you've lost count--that is TV number six for the great room. Fortunately, Number Six is the charm. It seems to be working well and has a nice picture. Now the bedroom TV story--Costco took back the 2 Westinghouses. We ordered Hannspree's from Costco.com instead because of their stellar ratings and inexpensive prices. However, I had a problem ordering with my new credit card. I got frustrated after multiple attempts and finally had Larry order the 2 TV's. It turns out that both my order for 2 TV's and Larry's order for 2 TV's went through. 4 televisions arrived for us on the same truck. We took 2 back to the warehouse, of course. The total count for the bedroom TV's is 6. Out of the 12 that we purchased, we did keep 3, so only sent back 9. We really were not trying to be difficult customers. We just had a hard time evaluating the TV's in the stores. The pictures really do look different at home with various sources for pictures and stores seem to compete with each other to have favorable return policies to make it easy to try out the sets at home.

Heat Wave in December! Larry has reminded me several times not to gloat about our weather here. Today hit 84 degrees. It feels great. I heard about the snow storms in different parts of the country and am thankful for our beautiful weather. I just love walking around without a jacket.

Lists! I've been in the making lists and finishing up projects mode for the past few days. It always makes me feel like I've accomplished something when I go down a list and check things off. Today I finished incomplete sewing projects, wrote Christmas cards, and worked on our calendar.

I'm getting sleepy now as the hour approaches for star gazing. I think I will sign off. Tomorrow I'll report on what we see.