Transit-ioning

TEST RUN: Today we invested four hours in making sure CJ can get to and from his college campus by himself and on time.  

Our test run started at the end of our block, where we waited for a Via driver to take us to the light rail station in Rainier Beach. Via is a newly-expanded service for King County transit riders in some neighborhoods, including ours, thankfully. It's like an Uber or a Lyft, but much, MUCH cheaper - just the price of a bus ticket.

We climbed into the car at about 10 a.m. The driver took us to the rail station, but I have to say, I wasn't super pleased about the entire experience. The driver's cell phone rang when we were about 1/3 of the way to our destination. He not only answered the call, he proceeded to have a personal phone conversation for the entire rest of the trip, holding his cell phone in his left hand while he drove us with his other hand. That is against the law (with good reason) in the state of Washington. 

To quote the Washington Traffic Safety Commission:

Distracted driving is the act of driving while engaged in other activities that take the driver’s attention away from the road.

In the state of Washington, it is against the law to hold your cell phone while you are driving.

I've already sent in a comment via the Metro King County website. I told them not only was their driver's action illegal, I thought it was especially poor form because there were two teenagers in the car, including Annabelle, who just finished driver's education training and it has been hammered into her head by that and me that you don't use your cell phone while you're driving. 

Fortunately, we survived our Via trip. :) Then, it was on the train to the stadium district in south Seattle. Annabelle has an Orca card that lets her ride the metro area's various forms of mass transit for free. CJ will have one once his school starts, but in the meantime, I downloaded an app that allowed me to buy our tickets ahead of time. 

After we got off the train, we knew we had to get on a Sound Transit bus to Tacoma, but we weren't entirely sure where the bus stop was. Fortunately for us, a woman about my age saw us staring at the transit systems map and asked if we needed any help. I told her we were trying to catch a bus to Tacoma, and she said she was also doing that, so we followed her to the bus stop. 

It was a quick and easy ride, with just a couple stops in south Seattle before we hopped on the freeway and went right to UW Tacoma's doorstep.

I thought the upholstery on the bus looked like a 1980s pattern. Annabelle noted that it was actually a map of the greater Seattle area. 

One thing we learned today is that you have to request your stop. It doesn't just happen. It was good to learn that on the dry run, so now CJ knows that for the live drill.

Once we were off the bus, we walked the UW campus until we found the building (J) where CJ will be taking his one and only in-person class (American Architecture) this fall.

While walking the campus, we found memorial for a former Japanese language school that used to be on the now-UW Tacoma site.

In pretty short order, we found the building where CJ's class will be held. 

Boy was he pleased to see that the end of the building is occupied by a Zeke's pizza place.

We had some slices on their patio before heading back to the bus stop for the trip north.

All in all, a successful journey, and now there's one less thing to worry about regarding the back-to-school to-do list.

Blooms and Bites

BLOOM AND GROW: Last week, we got to do a little crafting for a back-to-school gathering for teachers and staff at the kids' former school. 

It was a garden party, and the theme was 'bloom and grow.'

Annabelle used her Cricut to cut out letters, which we mounted on a mesh background. 

She also made some tags for the teachers' grab bags. 

They were fun projects. We miss doing stuff like this. It used to be a near daily occurrence, it seems like. 

FAIR FOOD: The fourth Saturday in August was our most recent Teen Feed date. Since it was just a few days before the Washington State Fair opens, we went with a fair food theme for some fun. 

The Italian sodas looked tasty!

We had big, beautiful ears of locally-grown corn, bathed in butter and salted just so.

We had caramel apples - not the big, whole kind. Instead of whole apples, we sliced them up and drizzled them in caramel sauce.

Scones are a staple of the Washington State Fair. Fisher scones have been sold there for over 100 years. I contacted the Fisher scone people and they sold us a commercial sized box of scone mix at a greatly discounted price. It let us cook up about 8 dozen scones.

The main entree was corn dogs. Not the most high falutin' food, but the Teen Feed crowd liked them.

One thing I didn't like was the oven on site and how it cooked the corn dogs. It's a big commercial convection oven, and for whatever reason, it was turning the corn dogs too brown and crispy on the outside but still frozen like a Popsicle on the inside. Not good. 

So, Annabelle put some in the microwave. And then forgot about them. This is what that looks like.  

In the end, everything went mostly OK and we made over 80 meals.

SALSA: Our garden is on its last legs, pumping out the last bits of produce. 

Our pretty little dark purple peppers joined pounds of tomatillos in some salsa I canned on Sunday.

VISITOR: The kids and I came home from an errand a couple of days ago. Imagine our surprise to find this slinking around our floor in the kitchen. 

                                                   

CJ managed to corral it using a cake lifter and a colander and released it back to the 'wild' (our backyard).

CREEPY: Speaking of creepy crawly critter, my latest woe-is-me chapter involves a sneaky spider. On Saturday, I felt an itch on up upper right arm and felt a little spot. I figured it was a mosquito bite. Turns out I figured wrong. I felt sick all day long and didn't know why. 

Later that day, the bite site swelled up to the size of a hard boiled egg and turned black and blue, which was when I realized it was more likely a spider bite. This is what it looked like six days in. Pretty, no?