A Change in the Air

FALLING: And just like that, summer seems to be in the rearview mirror. The trees are turning, the nights are longer, and a couple of mornings ago, I could see my breath when I took the dogs out.

That said, there are a couple of signs of summer persisting, including our sunflowers, which continue to impress.

It's interesting how their blooms open one half at a time.

Some of our sunflowers are done for the season, though. Annabelle put our first bloomer out of its misery recently.

A couple of days ago, the kids harvested the hops. There were hundreds and hundreds - perhaps even thousands - of them.

Meanwhile, out back we have a little project going on. 

We're building an 8-by-12-foot shed in the northeast corner of the lot.

It's going to replace the awful eyesore in the front yard, at the end of our driveway. The rusty old metal shed isn't just ugly, it's hazardous. The floor is rotten, and stepping inside is perilous. I can't wait to demo it!

LAST GASP: Last Wednesday, we went to the ballpark for what might be our last game this season (well, except for CJ, who works every home game).

The Ms were playing the Red Sox. It was an important game, as those two teams are battling for a wildcard slot. Unfortunately, the Mariners came out on the short end. It was a tie game, 3-3, into the 10th inning, when the wheels fell off for the home team.

Sadly, the best part of the outing was the food. The local favorite burger chain Dick's had their food truck out front of the park, so we had to indulge.

And inside, we finally tried the Old Bay fries from the crab shack concession stand. They were super tasty!

Oh, and we finally got an up close look at the stadium's newest statue - Hall of Famer Edgar Martinez!

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? 

Psycho

VIVA LAS VEGAS:  In what has become the new normal, I am woefully behind with this blog. 

So behind that I have to go back a couple plus weeks to tell you about an adventure CJ had semi-recently.

He flew solo down to Las Vegas, where his oldest brother Rick lives with his wife Rachel and a pair of adorable Dobermans (or is it Dobermen?), Pretzel and Marzipan.

Marzipan is still a pup, and she took a shining to CJ. 

Family and furry friends aside, another big magnet for CJ's trip was a death metal concert event called Psycho Las Vegas. It was held at the Mandalay Bay resort.

CJ was on his own for the event, and I was a bit surprised by his lack of planning. He was texting me saying he couldn't find various stages or the schedule, etc. So I found myself thousands of miles away, using the magic of the Internet to help him navigate.

I sent him screen shots of schedules and a map of the resort.

I also helped him navigate the airports from afar.

It didn't help that it sounded like the event was not the most organized. There were numerous cancellations, including on the day of the show CJ went to.

He did manage to finally find his way around the resort and to the various stages where the entertainment was taking place.

For a couple of sets, he wound up pretty close to the action.

He wound up making his way back to Rick and Rachel's via an Uber about midnight after 12 hours of metal.

Other highlights of his trip included food. 

Lots and lots of food. Check out his ridiculous hot dog, below.

I can't believe he ate the whole thing!