Smoke Screen

COMING UP FOR AIR: Sorry MPA has been missing in action. We have been both busy, and miserable, and by day's end, I don't feel like sitting in a hot, smoky room and blogging, hence our silence.

We've been busy making cakes and cookies for others, and miserable due to the terrible smokestorm we've been subjected to for too many days to count, now.

I check the Washington State Air Monitoring Network stats like some people check the stock market. The news is not good. We went from Good to Moderate to Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups (that's me!) to Unhealthy and are now firmly in the VERY unhealthy. 

Check out this video. It pretty much says it all. 

By Saturday a.m., I finally had to seek some medical attention, I was so beaten down by the smoke. I have three new meds in my daily mix (a couple of antihistamines and some antibiotics for a raging/worst of my life sinus infection). 

We also constructed our very own DIY HEPA filter after watching this video.

 Oh, and if you haven't checked your furnace filters recently, you should to that, too. ... 

IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD: A year since we relocated, and we're still exploring our new neighborhood. Late last week, we finally made it down to the library that is actually built over a waterway. 

See the building over the river below? That's the super picturesque Renton Public Library, spanning the Cedar River.

From the library, we walked along a trail heading east, under the We found a few informative signs along the way.  To CJ's right is the Interstate 405, which we walked under.

After that part of our sojourn, we checked out another local trail, where the Cedar River meets Lake Washington. 

Cedar River Trail Park is right in Boeing territory!

I loved having the beautiful Boeing birds on one side of me, and the river and lake on the other. So cool!

The bridge in the above picture isn't open to the public. It's for moving planes from the Renton Boeing plant out to Renton Municipal Airport. I found a sign about it behind blackberry bushes and a chain link fence.

I looks like this bridge was built in 2014, in order to replace a 1944-vintage one. It looks like a (remarkable!) 14,700 planes crossed the old bridge between the factor and the airport. 

As an added bonus, during our walk, we were buzzed by some historical aircraft.

We had no idea why the vintage warbirds were circling overhead.

However, a couple of days after our encounter, a post by Paul Allen popped up. He owns both the Flying Heritage Museum and the Seattle Seahawks. Apparently he dispacted a few cool planes to circle over Seahawks' training camp, which is on the shore of Lake Washington in Renton. 

Paul Allen's photos of the event are better than mine. ;)


IN REVIEW: CJ recently completed reading a book he borrowed from the library, "Save Me, Kurt Cobain."

Here's what he had to say about it.

I recently finished reading Save Me, Kurt Cobain, a book from my local library. Save Me is a (fiction) book (primarily) about a teenager who discovers that the seemingly late Kurt Cobain is her father, over a dozen years after his real-world death. Most of the book is set in late 2006 and early 2007, though it was published in 2016. Save Me is the debut book by Jenny Manzer.

A page on Manzer's website describes the book as follows:
"Cavan has been an outsider since age four when her mother vanished from their home in Victoria, British Columbia. Now 15, Nico is determined to find her beautiful, music-obsessed mother. After glimpsing “Cobain” on a ferry from Seattle, Nico follows the man with the blazing blue eyes to a remote Vancouver Island cabin—and her life will never be the same."

The book has been noted for its unusual fusion of reality (the band Nirvana, the musician Kurt Cobain, Nirvana's concert in 1991 in Victoria, BC, etc.) with fiction (For example: Nico Cavan, Kurt Cobain's suicide being fake, etc.) Save Me is a relatively short read (~264 pages, is I recall correctly), and contains references to Nirvana's discography, from the obvious (Smells Like Teen Spirit, Heart-Shaped Box, Come As You Are, etc.) to the not-obvious, like Aneurysm and Territorial Pissings.