Tuesday Filler

Okay, okay, I hear you.  I didn't realize anyone was reading this blog but after neglecting to post for a few days I have been deluged with e-mails.  Actually, I am pretty pleased with the interest and vow to be more dilligent (we'll see how well that goes...)!
If you read my last post you will know what I've been up to.  Nothing much to report. 
Making salmon for supper.  I found a whole salmon at the grocery store for 75 cents!  At first I was a bit wary but it looked and smelled fresh.  The lady at the seafood counter said they had a sale on whole salmon but nobody wanted to fillet it themselves so they kept reducing the price.  If I learned anything from my fishing in Alaska adventures it was how to fillet a salmon!  (Well, that, and if you go fishing in Alaska make sure you have return passage... and a fishing boat is no match for an iceberg, but I knew that before we hit it... oh, and never try to argue with a skipper who says he can break an iceberg in half with a fishing boat because you won't convince him otherwise... mm, and always take a camera if you go fishing in Alaska because you never know what will happen and you might end up getting some very close up pictures of an iceberg...)  So I have half a salmon left and am going to do something with it for supper.  Maybe I'll skewer it and make some sort of sauce...?  Well, there's that excitement chronicled for the ages!
Wish I had more to say but there just isn't much going on.  The weather can't decide what it wants to do so sun and clouds fight for space and occasional rain showers fall.  Temps in the 60s today (50s for the past week) and maybe mid-70s tomorrow (here's hoping!).  I'm dying to put away my winter clothes but it isn't going to happen yet (43 degrees the other morning!!  sheesh!).  Eventually I hope to put them away forever!!

(bright with rain... I'll try to find and scan the iceberg pictures for next time)

Summer's Coming!!

Tomorrow is the first day of summer (officially)!  The weather forecast calls for partial sun and temps in hte 70s?!  It's too, too exciting!  (I'm dressing for summer no matter what the weather decides to do to me.)
I believe the time has come to go back to work.  Our plans to move to California are beginning to take some shape (previously being an amorphous idea, gyrating around our imaginations) and I am getting really restless.  I'm also beginning to panic over money so it will help to be bringing in some more funds for the move.
Current aspirations are for obtaining some sort of temp work for the summer.  There seem to be a few agencies in Olympia that have listings and I think I'll pay them a visit late this week or next.  (I still have a few things I'd like to get done before leaping into the job hunt.) 
Another reason to get out into the world is that I am getting bored.  There are a million things I should be doing every day but I can't find the enthusiasm for any of them.  My day usually goes along these lines:  Get up around 8am, feed animals, check e-mail and read Mary Worth (to get the day going with a laugh).  Ponder when to get dressed and make a list of things I need to do.  Practice Qigong (still learning to breathe...).  Get dressed, take the dog for a walk.  Make another lsit of what I would like to do.  Lunch.  Mark off what absolutely doesn't need to be done and pick something immediate from the list.  Complete task (could be cooking, cleaning, laundry, errands, etc.).  Sit back and feel some sense of accomplishment.  Practice Qigong (I can do the breathing alone but when I add a move I get all mixed up and have to go back to the basics... eventually I hope to be able to breathe AND move at the same time).  Take the dog for his afternoon walk and pick up the mail.  Start dinner.  Feed animals.  Wait for Paul to get home.  Eat dinner.  The day usually winds down with us (Paul, Oreo and I) sitting down to a video around 9pm.  My day isn't exactly thrilling but I was enjoying the mundane after leaving PHG (something to be said for a lack of continuing emergencies) however, now, the monotony is getting to me.  Time to get out and do something else!

Ah, sweet relief!

Oh, rapture unexampled!  73 degrees and sunny in Olympia!!  How lovely!  The weather people are calling the "one day wonder" and warning the populace not to get comfortable.  I am sitting outside with a beer and headphones (it's landscaping day at Apple Park so very noisy... countering the edgers and mowers with some mambo, some reggae, a little Henry Mancini  and some soca for a happy afternoon!) and my laptop and loving it. 
All the negativity about the weather and Olympia must end.  It is well past time to put a positive effort into moving to warmer climes.  I'm going to stop cursing the cold and light a fire, damnit!  Will encourage Paul to do the same.
I'm thinking of protesting the weather by dressing inappropraitely for conditions from now on (shorts and sandals no matter what's happening?) but as yet it's only a beer induced concept brought on by seasonal temps.  I may sing another tune when it's raining and 60 (tomorrow).
Since I did not go anywhere interesting or take photos of anything interesting today, I'm posting an old photo from a sunny day about two years ago (no summer last year) when I just had enough of the office and hopped a ferry to Bremerton for lunch.

Sun, Subconscious, Symbolism and Clarity

(Oreo, waiting for the sun to come back)



Around 5:30 this morning I had two animals poking at me and trying to alert me to the sunshine.  Frank and Oreo were beside themselves and wanted out on the balcony to bask in surprise rays of sun!  It had faded by afternoon but it sure was nice and totally unexpected for a few hours!

Prior to be waken by the dog and cat, I was having a pretty vivid dream.  It stuck with me most of the day.  It wasn't hanging on my mind because it needed interpretation but more because it was so obvious.  I'll never understand how the subconscious works...

The dream (or the upshot, anyway):  Paul and I were in a large house filled with friends, family and tenants from my old job.  It must've been our house (because we were worried about repairs) but it resembled the extremely haunted house of a friend from Virginia (seriously, in real life the house sits on the edge of the Manassas Battlefield at Bull Run and is very, very haunted... dreamwise I think the haunting aspect is pretty telling).  There was a huge storm going on outside and inside we were trying to protect all the people in the house (hm, no interpretation needed there).  The people inside the house were driving me crazy with all their complaints and demands (again, no interpretation needed).  The storm started blowing out all the windows in the house.  There was glass flying everywhere and everything was breaking.  The wind was blowing so hard it blew all the ghosts and annoying people out.  It was terrifying.  Suddenly the storm ended and the sun came out.  Friends and family helped us rebuild the house (made it bigger and fancier) and they surprised us by putting in brand new windows.  At the end of the dream (or at least right before I woke up) Paul and I were sitting in front of a big floor to ceiling window, having drinks and talking about how dirty the old windows must have been beacuse the new windows were so clear we could see the ocean again.

I woke up to sunshine.  I was mildly annoyed that the animals woke me up so early (and that I ran out of milk for my coffee) but I kept thinking about that dream and I felt like my brain was telling me that everything would be fine and after dealing with some stormy issues everything will become clear and we might even be able to see the ocean.  Not bad!



Sun, sun, sun... clouds

The sun made an unexpected appearance yesterday!  I made sure to get out and enjoy every available moment of it which is why I didn't post yesterday (by the time I got back I was somewhat tipsy...).  Anyway, the story goes like this:  As of bedtime Sunday night the weather report for Monday said "rain."  Nothing new there.  Monday morning I was awakened by a perky little puppy dog who desperately wanted me to get up and open the door so he could go out on the balcony and lay in the sun (which is where he spent the rest of the day when we weren't out walking).  I put on my shorts and headed out to find the perfect Mt. Rainier photo op.  I followed the elusive mountain to downtown where it vanished behind some buildings.  It was being coy and I could only see little hints of it behind trees or buildings for the most part.  The peeks I got looked spectacular with the bright white snow contrasted against the bright blue sky.  It was beautiful.  Too bad I couldn't get a clear shot of it before the clouds came in...

I settled for a picture of the Olympic Mountains from the waterfront:

You can clearly see the clouds coming in to regain their foothold in the NW.  Ah well, it was a nice change and so unexpected!  Today it's back to cold and rainy and that's the forecast for the rest of the week.  At least there's been one day in June we didn't need to crank up the heat.

Sand By Your Man

(Back when they both had longer hair)

I'm getting a little tired of complaining about the weather.  It's cold.  That's just the way it is.  We can either turn on the heat and warm up temporarily or move to a warmer cliamte and be warmer permanently.  Either way, cursing the cold does not make it any better.  Paul is at his wit's end with the cold.  While I'm none too thrilled with my feet being like ice or my fingers going numb, I don't see much to be gained by whining. 
This morning I looked up the price of U-Haul trucks to Orange County.  Not bad at $750-ish.  It's cheaper than replacing everything.  Earlier schemes included moving into an RV and visiting National and State Parks which would mean getting rid of anything superfluous (I'm still giving that one a thumbs up!).  Then came the plan to move to Guatemala so Paul could go back and finish his Spanish schooling.  That would involve renting a furnished place in Antigua (at a really affordable cost given the exchange rate!) so, again, getting rid of anything we could live without.  Now the plan of the day is to move to SoCal, I get a job as apartment manager and we have a free apartment on site.  That would involve an unfurnished place and therefore we would need to reassess what to take.  Up till now I was kind of enjoying the fantasy of chucking everything and having few posessions but, faced with this new reality, I am unamused at the prospect of eating, sleeping and sitting on the floor of an empty apartment and staring at the wall for lack of entertainment.  (Been there, done that.)  So that's what I'm doing today:  Sorting out the mechanics of moving.
Paul is working furiously to finish this semester of his Master's program.  He has a bunch of work to submit by next Wednesday (and he's behind) so he's sequestered in his office, coming out at brief intervals to warm his coffee and bitch about the cold.
Oreo is on the chair, shivering under his blanket with his head resting on his pink flamingo toy.  he misses the beach, too.

this was the photo in the paper
Paul grew up surfing there
(no wonder he's pissed off at haiving to wear long johns in June...)

None of this was helped by the teaser on the front page of the Sunday Seattle Times: Southern California's Best Beach Towns. The travel section was all about Orange County beaches and there was a huge picture of the Huntington Beach pier. I honestly thought Paul might cry when he saw it!!

Beach Session

Coming back to cold and dark Olympia was a real drag.  It was so cold in the apartment we had to turn on the heat yesterday and so dark we needed to turn on lights just to read.  I believe we hit a high of 53 degrees.  Fairbanks Alaska (where Paul's brother lives) was 80.  (Paul's brother called to rub it in.)  The sun made an appearance today and we hit 60!  Woo hoo! 

The upshot of all this is that neither of us can stand the thought of living through another non-summer like last year (72 hours of summer weather... bah!).  Paul was so tightly wound yesterday I thought he might snap.  I was just loopy.  Couldn't concentrate on anything.  He asked me in the afternoon if I had come up with any brilliant ideas concerning how to get out of here.  I told him that the only thing I was thinking was "Why am I looking at jobs in Olympia when I really want to be somewhere warm?  I should be looking for a job somewhere warm."  And, I told him, that was followed by the thought of "Oh, yeah, the money part.  Guess I already knew that.  And there's the lease which doesn't expire until December."
So, I went to practice Qigong (which I decided to take up in an effort to get my chi flowing... or whatever it's supposed to do... I hear it's good for breathing and posture... apparently I've been breathing wrong for years... I didn't know, it's always done the trick for me... but more on that later) which didn't give me any new insights.  Paul went running (like he does every day although I suspect sometimes he just sits in the car and reads and then tells me he's been running) and came home all fired up.  He said I had hit the nail on the head and we should find jobs elsewhere.  He immediately applied for a case manager job in Huntington Beach and called a past employer (truck driving) to learn that they are hiring.
Then, this morning, a certain someone drunk dialed me to tell me how fed up he is in his current situation (living on the job which also happens to be where I was last working/living).  I encoraged him to consider sub-letting our place so we could go to California.  I read our lease and there's no explicit language forbidding sub-leasing.  He sounded, well, drunk but interested.
So things are getting interesting.  I found a couple of apartment manager jobs in Orange County (free rent!!) but need to put a resume together including my apartment manager experience (was leaving it out as much as possible to avoid getting sucked back into the non-profit vortex but I'll do it for the free rent!).
I was at Target this afternoon and found a pair of shorts I really liked so I bought them.  I'm done with buying warm clothes.  Must visualize warm.  I even bought a lottery ticket (though I never win... but I figure that up to now I wasn't even breathing correctly so maybe I can change my lottery luck like I can change my breathing?  It's a theory, anyway...).
Updates as they happen.  I hope they happen!

Sons Of Beaches

The weather at the coast wasn't nearly as dire as the weather service had predicted.  We had anticipated wind, rain and cold based on the coastal forecast but the sun was out when we arrived and it was quite nice the entire time.  There were a few rain showers Wednesday night but it dried out on Thursday morning.  In fact, the weather was far worse in Olympia and the park next door was flooded on our return.  Big, fat raindrops are falling today and it is cold.

Yes, Paul wore shorts (and flip-flops).  Here are the beach dogs resting on the warm, black sand.

This is what it looked like when we arrived: 

It was rainy and chilly in Olympia when we left so we were pleasantly surprised!

Oreo had a great time running around in the sand:

I think he likes playing on the beach over anything else!  That is one happy dog!!

One of the great things about taking Oreo to the coast is that he can be off leash on the beach (dogs must be back on the leash in the park and they have signs reminding everyone to leash up on return).

Usually, Oreo is really good about staying close.  He will run around in figure eights but generally just hangs close at heel.  But on Wednesday I took him out to the beach and he took off like a rocket!  I could barely even see him against the driftwood.  He found the remains of the shack we discovered on our last trip:

Back in April



Pile of driftwood today

Oreo was determined to lead me back to the shack so he would run down the beach and circle me, bark twice and then shoot back up the beach and into the driftwood.  By the time I caught up to him, he was climbing the pile of driftwood like a mountain goat.  He was very pleased when I finally joined him  (You can vaguely make him out in the lower left corner of the photo.)

But now we are back in our apartment.  It is cold and wet.  (The weather today in Fairbanks, AK is 79 and sunny...) 

Making chicken stew for supper in an effort to keep warm. 

Phooey.

To Beach Or Not To Beach

52 degrees and raining.  Yuck.  We have decided that we can be cold and wet here or we can be cold and wet on the coast.  So, tomorrow we leave for Cape Disappointment for a couple of days.  We're getting a yurt to help stay dry and taking a bunch of books (Paul needs to read a few books for his schoolwork and I am always up for some quiet reading time).  So I'm furiously cooking and getting ready and he's packing the car (we took everything out so he could park in the Lakewood Park and Ride without getting robbed).  I'll take photos of the gloom and post on Friday (never stayed in a yurt before so I'll at least have pictures of that).

(A photo from last year when it was sunnier at Cape Disappointment)

I'm Such A Beach

I found the Kauai photo!  Now, isn't that lovely? 

(It was buried in a file from 2005!?  Strange, since I took the pictures in 2010...) 

Anyway, I'll add a few more from Kauai just to make up for the lag:

And, while it may not be a beach, if you find yourself on Kauai you must get up early and check out Waimea Canyon (the fog comes in around 10am so you need to go EARLY).

Pictures do not do it justice.  It is breathtaking.

Feeling Beachy

It is currently 63 degrees and raining in Olympia.  I am feeling desperately beachy.  My body may be in the gloom but my mind and spirit are sitting on a warm beach far from here.  Damn, I wish my body were there as well...  So, for lack of sun, sand and surf I am looking at old photos of beach trips past and thinking warm thoughts.  (I'm missing a peaceful Kauai photo but my computer is being no help at all!!!  It seems to have hidden all the Hawaii pictures someplace safe but won't tell me where...)

Tortola

Sandy Cay

St. John

Amalfi

Sunset at Cane Garden Bay