Five Minute Post

Yes, that is snow behind the flowers! Photo shot at Mt. Rainier

Ten hour days are kicking my butt but I'm determined to squeeze every bit of the minutes I have to accomplish what I can.

One of the women I work with is a single mom with 5 children. She told me yesterady she is also taking 3 classes. I admire people who can squeeze the life out of everyday. Talking with her made me feel kind of like a slacker. 

I never made it on the treadmill yesterday so I decided this morning I had to get back to some multi-tasking. While the coffee is brewing, I cleaned up the kitchen. I poured my coffee and sat down to check my email and FB. Told myself I'm gonna write a quick post while I enjoy my coffee and then hit the treadmill for 30 minutes.  The walking really boosts my energy level so I need to do it.

Hope you have a fabulous Wednesday.  Don't forget to stop and smell the roses flowers.

love, susan

Beach Bound

Cape Lookout

Just a quick note before I get on the treadmill this morning.

What a fantastic 4-day weekend. It doesn't get a whole lot better than this one but we are headed to the beach this coming weekend and the weather report is forecasting 82 on Friday and 88 on Saturday with clear skies. 

Come on, Friday!

love, susan

Mt. Rainier Trip

Mt. Rainier

We ventured over to see Mt. Rainier yesterday with a group of friends. The weather could not have been more perfect. I broke one of my own safety rules on the last leg of the trip by shedding my leather jacket. It was in the high 80's, perhaps even reached 90 by 4:00 p.m. and I thought I might faint from overheating.

We could see Mt. Rainier for over a hundred miles before we reached it.  Embarrassingly enough, when we got to the stopping place where I snapped this photo, I asked my friend, Dorothy, "is this Mt. Rainier"? Okay. Seriously. It looks way smaller up close than when you see it from 100 miles away. How can that be? An optical illusion, I suppose. Let me just say it and get it out of my system.  It ain't no Mt. McKinley.  But the surrounding area is so beautiful that it makes up for it's lack of grandiosity.

Flowers and a field of snow

I can hardly believe we have lived here 3 years now and this is the first time to visit Mt. Rainier. We will definitely be going again with camping in mind. There are hiking trails everywhere and we only scratched the surface of the area. With it being a holiday weekend, there was a huge amount of traffic but I noted that people were very polite and not in a hurry to run us over. There are quite a few places to park so even with the increased traffic, we were able to find places to park 8 motorcycles.

This trip was 350 miles and my tailbone was feeling it by the time we rolled into our driveway at 6:30 p.m. I put 750 miles under my belt this weekend and that's a record for me.

TAKE-AWAY: My take away from this weekend is that I have learned that a lot of things really are mind over matter. Perseverance. Mom used to tell me that but like many people, until I experience it for myself it doesn't mean much. I had a couple of uncomfortable times yesterday where I thought my tailbone was going to split in two but what was I doing to do? Keep riding.   love, susan

 

   

 

Easy Riders

Summit between Enterprise, OR and Clarkston,WA

Yesterday, I rode in almost 3  states (we skirted Idaho for 88 miles but never crossed the border) on the longest ride ever on my motorcycle. 395 miles. I enjoyed every single minute of it. 

We left Richland at 10:00 a.m. and met up with a good buddy on our way out of town. We left our house with a plan but it changed. That's how we roll. With a thermos full of coffee, a container of zucchini bread and a full tank of gas we headed towards Elgin and ended up in Clarkston,  WA and then home 12 hours later.

I love this photo our friend, Doug, snapped. Gene and I visited this very same summit 10 years ago almost to the day when we began our relationship. It is only coincidence that we ended up there yesterday but I couldn't help but think about all the fun we've had from then until now.

I learned some new things yesterday. First, I have way more tenacity than I give myself credit for. If I had given it too much thought, I would have balked at the length of this trip. I was a frozen popsicle by the time we rolled our bikes into the garage last night but I'm an Alaskan ... I am Ford tough.

I learned from Doug how to put my hand up over my eyes to shield the sun so I can see the road when riding directly west at sundown. Can I just tell you that I couldn't see anything except Doug's red tail lights. My stupid photo-gray glasses didn't get dark enough to be effective. It was scary but at least I've been riding long enough to feel very comfortable riding one-handed.

A must-have for long distance rides

Doug showed me some of the tricks he keeps in his saddle bags. I was impressed with the baby wipes for those times when a biker simply can't find a good rest room. He had all kinds of cool stuff in his bags and now that I have bags on my bike, I just gotta go shopping. 

I learned that women can be in the lead. At one point in our ride yesterday, the guys couldn't decide who was going to take the lead so I rolled my wrist and went around to lead them for a time. It felt good! After a while, they encouraged me to lead and it broke the trip up a bit to move positions. You need that when you are on a long ride like this.

Doug and Gene

I learned that some people are just easy to ride with.  I would ride with Doug again any day of the week. He obeys the laws and he doesn't mind pulling over to take a break. Among several pull-overs, we stopped twice to eat and once to get a fancy coffee and harass the counter girl. She was a good sport.

We are heading out for another long trip tomorrow to Mt. Rainier with a large group. It will only be 340 miles tomorrow. I'm glad I got a trial run and know that I can do it. Tomorrow, we'll have the sun at our backs the entire day. What a relief.  Doug will be riding with us and I'm sure it will be every bit as fun as yesterday. I just hope my muscles get over the torture I put them through yesterday. 

Oh, I learned one more thing. Taking two Tylenol before I hit the road works wonders. I need to put some in my saddle bag because I could have used two more before the day was over. I'm convinced that is the only reason I could sit on that bike so long.

love, susan

Energy

I started my new job yesterday. Although I am working for a temp agency, it is contracted to the Department of Energy.  The government. I spent 4 hours in the morning watching a computer screen, moving through about 30 sub-topics with a little quiz at the end of each. I learned a lot about Beryllium! I also learned a lot about safety and it seems to be the number one focus of the training.

I had to find something interesting in an otherwise "boring as hell" environment. The place where I went for the orientation was a huge classroom which was mostly empty because there are big layoffs pending this month. The lady at the desk where I had to get my badge said I was lucky to get a job out here.

I finally made it to the job site at 1:30 p.m. and found a group of very nice, older women who warmly welcomed me to my cubicle. The nice thing about these cubicles is that the walls are only about 4 feet high so I won't suffer claustrophobia like I did in my last job. I have two big flat computer screens on my desk. My trainer demonstrated how I will be copying and pasting from one screen to the other. Love it! In true government fashion, I will be indexing piles and piles and piles and piles of paperwork, one single paper at a time into one system and then taking that information into another system. 

THE GOOD PART: The ladies in my office gather in the center of the cubicles at a table for lunch.  Lunch is my favorite hour (1/2 hour here) of the work day. At my last job, we had a kitchen with a table but I could hardly ever get anyone to join me for lunch at the table. Everyone just took their lunch back to their cubicle. It was a culture I could not change. Yesterday, one of the ladies told me they like to gather at the table to share lunch and I was genuinely excited about it. I expect to learn some new things about the Tri-Cities, recipes, grand kids, etc. I don't expect we'll be talking much about Beryllium. Yay.

 

Well, I'm up at 4:00 a.m. today and have to leave for work at 6:10 a.m. I still have to exercise, iron some clothes, shower and get out the door.  Hope wherever you are that you have your best day so far!

love, susan 

The Gig is Up

Well, my summer gig is up. I'm going back to work this morning. I'm ready. Summer has been way more fun than I could have ever dreamed and like all good things, it has come to an end for now.

I landed a job through a temp agency and I will be working out at the Washington Hanford Closure. Hanford is a mostly decommissioned nuclear production complex operated by the U.S. federal government.  I don't know jack about nuclear stuff but my job will be in document control regarding the closure. I am imagining sitting at a desk with two screens and indexing documents ... all day.

I will be working 4 10-hour days with Fridays off at least until December. I'm anxious about figuring the schedule and how I will fit into it but I think it will be just a matter of a couple of days to get on schedule. 

I am ready to get back to work. I've been restless and wandering about my house aimlessly for the last two weeks.  I need a purpose.  My purpose all summer has been to plan one outing after the next and when there aren't any more outings, then what? 

We do have one more big camping trip planned to the coast so I'm looking forward to that.

Have a great day everybody! Get to work!!

love, susan

Pictureless

I am without a card reader to move photos from my camera to the computer, so I'm feeling a bit awkward with no photo to write around. It got packed away with my house guest's computer on Sunday but should be arriving in the mail soon.  I have a photo from our adventure last week with our house guest that I'm anxious to post and write about.

On Sunday, we took a short drive out to McNary Park and walked around the fish transfer station. I had no idea what it was until Gene explained that the fish on the upper part of the dam have to go through this very cool pipe and they end up in a holding tank and are then  barged down the river to the ocean.  Or maybe it's the other way around? Are they going upstream?  Some days my blondeness cannot be denied. I probably should read all the placards they had everywhere but those things sometimes just bore me to tears. Does that happen to you?

While at the transfer station the coolest thing we saw was a bunch of huge (they are all huge in my eyes) spiders and webs. I shot some good close-ups of them. I haven't been very inspired to take photos lately but these arachnids (my friend Kathy will be so impressed with my word usage, I hope) were interesting colors. Gene found a dead bee on the ground so he offered it up to one of the spiders that was nearby and I watched it wrap the carcass into a cocoon.  Ick.  It was like a car wreck, I couldn't stop watching.

The weather is changing. What a relief from the 90's we've been having. 75 is going to be downright chilly by the end of the week, no doubt.

Not much else to write. Hope wherever you are that you get to do something fun today. 

love, susan

Live, Learn, Pass It On

I went to bed last night thinking about the mint green, simple, long dress I ordered from the Sears Roebuck catalog in 1977, which would be my prom dress that year.  I've been following a group on FB called "You're Probably From Haines If You Remember ..."

Quite a few girls I grew up with have commented how we used to live for the day the Sears catalog arrived. We would wear out the pages just looking and dreaming about something we'd love to have.  I'm quite certain we lived in a recession much worse than we are in now ... or at least it seemed like it.  We didn't get a lot of new things but I did order my dress from Sears and I absolutely loved it.

I'm pretty sure this group on FB has been the cause of my thinking about that darn dress. I just can't get it out of my mind. 

After I graduated, mom kept that dress hanging in her closet. I'm quite certain the dress is still hanging in a closet somewhere. She always offered to give it to me but I never wanted it after I wore it that one time. I've never been one to hang on to a lot of "stuff". Well, except for ...

My son's stuff.  I have a couple of boxes of old elementary school papers that I opened up this morning. I used to start a new box at the beginning of every school year and all his graded papers would go in the box along with memorabilia from the news that year. I made the mistake of opening one of the boxes this morning and a flood of tears came rushing. I don't why that happens. I had forgotten that I stuck a couple of his summer outfits in the box. There is a t-shirt from a sponsor of his t-ball team. I had to laugh because he hated playing t-ball. We made him keep going because we were so desperate to meet new people in Juneau that summer, although I'm not sure we made any new friends from that adventure. 

There are many other treasures in the box but I had to close it back up. Crying gives me a headache. I'm going to tuck that box in the closet. Perhaps I'll open it another day.  There are other things in the box that maybe he'll want someday but I wouldn't bet on it. He's a minimalist.  Good for him! 

I'm not going to ask him a million times if he wants these things, like my mom did.  Gosh, how guilty I felt for always telling her I didn't want all that stuff she saved from my childhood days. I still don't want it.  But I finally get it.  I get what that stuff meant to her and my dad.

If you are reading this and you've got little children, I hope you save some memories from their daily lives. Save those little poems they write. I still get choked up just looking at my son's handwriting on a piece of paper. It doesn't even have to be anything profound or artsy.  I look at that piece of paper and it's something that connects me with him.  I can't really explain it. 

love, susan

A Bug's Life

Praying Mantis

"People have no tolerance. They think all bugs are bad. It's the American way. If you don't like something, kill it." (Quote by - Carl Olson)

The season most definitely is changing as all of a sudden I am starting to see praying mantis.  I saw one Friday night on the side of a building and then spotted this little beauty on my kitchen window this morning. I am totally fascinated with them.

Normally, I don't care too much about bugs but to call a praying mantis a bug doesn't seem quite right. They are gentle and very alien looking. They don't move very fast and I can't even imagine how my heart would feel if I killed one. Once you have been up close to a mantis, you will know exactly what I mean. They can turn their heads 300 degrees, according to Wikipedia. They are cannibals and have been known to prey on small scorpions, lizards, frogs, birds, snakes, and even rodents. They don't move very fast, which makes watching them not quite so scary.

It's hard to believe I have lived this long and never seen one before I moved to Washington. Luckily, I've been educated about them so I wasn't freaking out when I saw my first one last year. I feel lucky that this one graced me with its presence this morning long enough for me to snap a photo. 

 I snapped a photo in front of an empty container to give you an idea how large they are.

Have you ever seen a praying mantis before? 

Mirror in the Sky

"Oh, mirror in the sky, what is love?

Can the child within my heart rise above?

Can I sail through the changing ocean tides?

Can I handle the seasons of my life?"

      ~ Stevie Nicks

I happened to turn on the Oprah yesterday and it was a rerun of her final season with her guests being several rock divas.  Stevie Nicks is among my all-time favorite female artists and I do so love her "Landslide".

I woke up with the feeling of an impending season change. Fall is not far around the corner. I love fall but I'm not a big fan of winter. I'm just not going to think about it today.  The season changing is not all about the weather. Every day I wake up and this is a day I haven't experienced yet.

You see, I'm an "ex" future tripper. I've had to work at it but I am all about living in today. I was looking at my calendar on the fridge and I have a lot of events coming up. Being away from work (the paid kind) the last three months has made me realize that even though I'm not getting up and going someplace in exchange for money doesn't mean that I'm not doing worthwhile things. In the last three months, I don't believe I've wasted one single day doing something I didn't want to do. I am so happy to say that.

love, susan

   

Truth

Love builds up the broken wall

and straightens the crooked path.

Love keeps the stars in the firmament

and imposes rhythm on the ocean tides

each of us is created of it

and I suspect

each of us was created for it.

--Maya Angelou