Pensacola to Seattle: Mixed Bag
Time for a visit to Mom, get her out doing a little Christmas shopping, even in the rain. Seattle is in that time of the year when the day goes from black to dark grey to a little lighter grey and then by 3:30 in the afternoon, the sun starts going down and you have that grey that fades to black.
Getting here is just getting through it. It’s not so bad as the grueling trip out of Qatar or Kuwait, or even out of Germany. It’s a mere 5-ish hours of plane ride, but airplane travel has become such drudgery these days. I always used to chose the window seat, but on a long flight I get antsy and like to get up and stretch, so I would have to disturb two other people, so this time I chose the aisle. As it turns out, I hate the aisle, I hate people walking up and down and bumping me (and I am not hanging out in the aisle; they are intruding on my space!) and then I have to get up when they get antsy. I hate the non-meal thing, so that even if you bring food, you feel bad about eating if no one else is eating, and I hate the crowdedness and people lining up to use the lavatories. Flying used to be more fun.
Getting into Seattle is fun. They’ve streamlined getting baggage – although with the new baggage charges, I notice there is a lot more competition for overhead space, because people don’t want to pay to have a bag. I’m still lucky enough to have my bags go free and I don’t like trundling big things on board and having to heave them into the overhead bins while other people are trying to get by.
Picking up the bag as easy, but the car rental kiosks have disappeared. I was just here in May; when did all the rental cars go somewhere else? Now, as it turns out, you have to go catch a bus and it takes you to a central car rental place off the airport. It’s big and spacious and impersonal and soulless. They didn’t have the car I had selected and wanted me to take a Jeep Cherokee. I even got in it, but my feet barely reached the pedals and it didn’t feel like a car I wanted to drive so I persisted pleasantly until they gave me a car that felt right – a Camry. They also told me that Seattle drivers are terrible (not true; this is one of the most polite places in the world; people STOP for the YELLOW light) and that I really really needed a lot of extra insurances. I held my ground, but as I exited out into a dreary rainstorm, I prayed for protection to get me through Seattle safely. I guess they got to me after all, even though I know Seattle is one of the safer places to drive.
Today was one of the busier days, running errands, getting things done, I don’t much like shopping, but for some reason shopping in Seattle is easy. Then tonight was pure pleasure – meeting up with old and seriously good friends at for some seriously good seafood. The place is called T & T’s Seafood, or sometimes T & T’s Chinese Seafood, and you wouldn’t be impressed if you saw it from the outside, but it is one of those places that fools you. It is full of people who like real Chinese food, not what can pass for Chinese food in those little restaurants that dumb it down for local trade. More than half of the customers are Chinese; most of the huge bags of food going out to people picking up are going to Chinese. That’s a good sign.
When we sit, we are handed menus. which we don’t open because we know what we like. The owner comes up and chats with my Chinese friend and walks away with the menus. I asked what we are having and she said “I don’t know, he said he knows what we want, he remembers us from last time” (six months ago). When the food starts arriving, it is all so good . . . crispy cooked green beans, so good, crispy fried tofu with garlic and green onions, and a seafood dish loaded with fresh scallops and fish and shrimp – pure Pacific Northwest Chinese, the best! Good friends, great conversations and a plan for when we will meet up again – a great evening.
Tomorrow the clan will gather, everyone in Seattle around one table, and family will catch up. We have a new baby due any minute; my youngest sister is about to become a grandmama for the second time.
It is supposed to rain the entire time I will be here. No wonder Seattle drinks so much coffee!
The Season
Today I had a long list of things to do to start getting ready for our first house-guest of the season. God is good – the day dawned relatively cool, and the humidity is low. I could open the windows and let the cool breezes clean out the stale air-conditioned air we’ve been living with.
We had lunch at Taco Rock, an honest little Mexican food place we love, we are working our way through their menu. Today AdventureMan had tamales, which he said were really good, and I had the Pollo (chicken) plate. Delicious. We sat outside.
We sat outside. . . what amazing words. There are times when the heat in Pensacola is like the heat in Kuwait or Doha; it is so hot and so humid that it is like being slapped in the face. Today . . . we sat outside. It was wonderful.
Things really get cranking in Pensacola in October. The Ballet starts. The Symphony starts. The Opera starts. Every Saturday, there is at least one charity run/walk raising money. Last weekend was the Truck-Pull to benefit Ronald McDonald House (I think I remember that correctly) and the Greek Fest, and the Master Gardener’s Fun Fair, and the Butterfly House Celebration, and the Glass Pumpkin Patch frenzy, and the corn mazes are opening and an Impact 100 event – it is the season. Once the temperatures are regularly below 90°F every day, people start feeling human again and start doing things.
The Pensacola Christmas Parade is December 8th. We’ve taken the Happy Baby, The Happy Toddler, and I can hardly wait to take the Happy Little Boy. He will LOVE the noise of the police and fire engine sirens, he will love the lights and the beads and this year, he can scramble for beads with the other little children. Well, yes, you are right, as much as I enjoy how he loves it, actually, I love it and he is my good excuse to go. 🙂
Information on the Pensacola Christmas Parade 2012
I plan to enjoy these next few months cooler months as much as I can while they are here 🙂
Dauphin Island: Birder’s and Vacation Paradise
You’ll see them leaning into the gale, wind whipping their hair, their rubberized hoodie, the reporters on CNN and The Weather Channel who make waiting for a hurricane seem like exciting stuff.
“Here it comes!” they will shout, as a super tall surge-enlarged wave crashes over the highway, and they can barely keep on their feet.
They always seem to be on Dauphin Island.
Dauphin Island seems to have a bull’s eye on it. It is the target of many of the hurricanes that roar into the Gulf of Mexico, and it took a beating in the 2010 British Petroleum oil spill, effects of which are still resonating throughout the Gulf. (of Mexico)
The weather is cooling. It doesn’t seem like much, temperatures in the high 80’s or even hitting 90°F, but low humidity and lower night temperatures make it seem bearable, even delightful. Friday night, AdventureMan suggested we take a short road trip, get up early and get to Dauphin Island while we could still get the morning light.
We actually didn’t hit the road until 0800, but hey, it’s Saturday. Traffic on I-10 is light, and we breeze through Mobile and exit to the Dauphin Island parkway.
Once you get on the parkway, it is a beautiful drive. I could hear the beat and echos of the True Blood theme song, you pass lowlands, and wrecked houses, almost every car on the road is a pick-up truck and you feel like you have drifted a hundred years or so into the past. You take several bridges, one over the Fowl River, before you get to the big huge long bridge that connects the mainland with Dauphin Island.
(Foul River from Wikipedia:
Fowl River is a 14.4-mile-long (23.2 km)[1] brackish river in Mobile County, Alabama. It originates near the Mobile suburb of Theodore and then splits into the East Fowl River and the West Fowl River. The East Fowl River discharges into Mobile Bay south of Belle Fontaine.[2] The West Fowl River discharges into the Mississippi Sound east of Coden.[3] It was named by the original French colonists as the Riviere aux Poules, which can be translated into English as Fowl River.[4])
(I just had to put that in because I needed to know where the name Fowl River came from, as opposed to say Foul River. I always thought Poules were female chickens, but Chicken River doesn’t sound very fearsome, and after all, a chicken is a fowl.)
When we got to the big long bridge going from mainland Alabama to Dauphin Island, AdventureMan said “Now there is a bridge your Mother would love.” He is right. My Mom loved the bridges in Pensacola, and she would really love this bridge:
As you get close to Dauphin Island, there is a beautiful estuary area, with wading birds of all kinds, herons half-hidden by tall grasses; it is a lush paradise.
We zipped out to the vacation rental areas to see . . . well, you know, what we could see. I hate to think of myself as a Lookie Lou, but I wanted to see what the island looked like. It looks a lot like Santa Rosa Island, where Pensacola Beach is, except less developed, and cozier. Almost every house on the west end of the island is on stilts, so the water surges can just wash right under them and cause less damage. Some of these houses are family houses. We saw a lot of houses on Dauphin Island where it looks like people live year round, and many more where it looks like the whole family comes out for weekends.
I saw one house I loved, a huge house, actually maybe two or three houses, with a huge screened in sleeping porch in the center. I could imagine all the families gathering and all the cousins getting to sleep on bunks on the sleeping porch, telling each other ghost stories and then hearing sounds as their excitement kept them from going to sleep. Finally, lulled by the sounds of their parents conversations and laughter, they drift off . . . .
The roads were barely cleared, tons and tons of sand heaped along the sides where it has been scraped to make the roads minimally passable. It’s only been a couple weeks. Other than the heaped sand, we didn’t see any major damage from Isaac.
The only downside . . . and it is a major downside in my mind . . . is the constant blot on the horizon of the offshore drilling rigs.
Let’s see, you have this beautiful paradise-like island, full of bird life and wild life and undersea life, and you line the shallow nearby waters with drilling rigs? Rigs for which the safety standards are not enforced? Dauphin Island was hit hard by the BP Oil Spill, and stands frail and vulnerable against repeated attacks by nature and by man-made catastrophes.
I always check out those who comment on my blog, to make sure they aren’t someone posing as a commenter, but really selling something. When I visited this visitor, I found posts about Americans and visiting America that cracked me up. Here is one on American greetings 🙂
Clouds for Daggero (and my other Hot Friends in Kuwait)
Can you imagine a daytime temperature of 120°F? Can you imagine fasting, not eating – or drinking – in that kind of heat?
Daggero asked for clouds. It’s the least I could do. We may have a big cloudburst coming tonight, but I chased it today and it only sprinkled:
Clouds didn’t stop the fun at Palafox Pier
A few large tantalizing drips of rain, and then nothing . . .
Sisters Working Together
We have a mission, and that I why I am in Seattle. My sisters and I have to clean out my Mother’s condo, now that she has moved to a very elegant new living situation, with a lot of people her own age to play with. Mom has talked about this for years, but always with concern that when it came to dividing things up among the sisters there may be some greed, or that we might come to blows over the division of the possessions she is not taking with her. She came up with a system, whereas we put everything out and then take turns choosing.
The truth was a little more chaotic – but a lot more fun. Most of the time, we wanted different things. Even when two people wanted the same thing, they found cordial ways to negotiate a solution. It was a day of hard work (more similar days to come . . . ) but a very good day for the three sisters. We found some ‘missing’ items, tucked away in obscure places, some treasures. It was a good day.
I’ve always known what I wanted – it is a piece of my Alaskan heritage:
As long as I can remember, this Eskimo mask has hung in our house. Now that it will hang in my house, I need to learn more about it. It has a spear, and fish, and feathers, and some things I don’t recognize. I’ll need to do some research.
Le Carre’ and Mission Song
I really liked Mission Song; I liked it so much that I kept reading it even when I needed to be doing other things. Vintage LeCarre’ was all grim and grey, large bureaucracies countering the evil Russian Empire. One of his points was that if we aren’t careful what tactics and strategies we use, we become the very evil we are fighting.
More recent LeCarre’ – The Mission Song, The Constant Gardener, The Tailor of Panama . . . continues to follow the bureaucracy of spying, and the machinations of world power. Who will control the resources? Who can we put in power? He has captured that it is no longer only national powers, but also international corporations which may be the players in the international game of thrones.
The Mission Song has a lovable main character, son of a priest to the Congo and an African woman, raised in the mission, speaking many languages and dialects, picked up as a child in contact with shifting groups and nationalities. When we meet him, he is married – badly – to a rich and powerful English woman, and working as a translator. Suddenly, his life takes a big turn, he is whisked off on a week-end mission, and life never returns to ‘normal’ again.
“Sitting is the new Smoking”
“Sitting is the new smoking, you know?” said my good friend. No. No, I didn’t know, but it sort of doesn’t come to a surprise. What comes as a surprise learning the specific – that every hour watching TV shortens your life by 22 minutes. Whoa!
This is from the Bottom Line Daily Health News:
Shocking Stats on How TV Shortens Your Life
You know that vegging out in front of the boob tube isn’t good for you. But have you heard about a disturbing new study from Australia suggesting that TV’s negative effects on life span are even worse than you probably imagined?
For the study, researchers analyzed data from an observational survey of more than 11,000 people ages 25 and older that began in 1999, cross-referencing against mortality figures for 2008.Findings: People who spent a lifetime average of six hours per day watching television died 4.8 years sooner, on average, than people who watched no TV. Also, every single hour of TV viewed after age 25 reduced the average viewer’s life expectancy by 22 minutes!
Explanation: It is an indirect link, according to study leader J. Lennert Veerman, MD, PhD, MPH, of the School of Population Health at the University of Queensland in Australia. The more time a person spends watching television, the less time she (or he) has for healthy behaviors proven to promote longevity, such as exercising and socializing. Also, Dr. Veerman noted, while researchers in this study adjusted for the effects of diet quality and waist circumference, other studies show that TV viewing typically is associated with a worse diet.
Bottom line: TV’s harmful effects on longevity may be comparable to the effects of major chronic disease risk factors such as obesity and physical inactivity—a fact worth remembering next time you are tempted to turn on the tube.
Source: J. Lennert Veerman, MD, PhD, MPH, is a senior research fellow at the Centre for Burden of Disease and Cost-Effectiveness in the School of Population Health at the University of Queensland in Australia, and leader of a study published in British Journal of Sports Medicine.
10 Years Later, 9/11
I have a photo I love, my favorite nephew posing in his thobe and kefiya and egal, all of it just a little off, a little not-right, if you are really Arab and know how they are worn, but I love the quirkiness of it. I took that photo on September 10th, ten years ago today. He and his parents had just returned from a fabulous trip – meeting up with AdventureMan and me in Paris, coming to our house in Germany, traveling on to Greece and then to Egypt. While they were traveling, I returned to the US for a wedding, and met up with them once again at their house.
The next morning, my nephew stuck his head in my bedroom and said “Aunt Intlxpatr, there’s something you need to see.” The first plane had just struck the World Trade Center Buildings.
“That’s not good. You can’t hit a building by accident; you really have to aim to hit a building.” I was still fuzzy headed, but the adrenalin was pumping and he and I remained riveted to CNN. It wasn’t long before the second plane hit, and all the world changed. Sometimes it seems to me like the fact that the Pentagon was also hit gets lost these days.
I had tickets back to Germany but wasn’t sure if my plane would even fly. It was a scary time, a lot of dire speculation and not a lot of facts to back it up. As it turned out, my flight was one of the first international flights out, and it was packed with all the people who had been stuck in Seattle for a week trying to get back.
For about a year, I was obsessed with reading everything I could about 9/11, and then I just hit overload, and went the other way. It’s like I felt I would explode from all the contradictory information, all the scare tactics, all the misinformation and conspiracy theories floating around, so for most of the time, I just shut it out.
I keep the photo of my nephew where I can see it often, and think about a time when we lived in a brighter world.
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