Random Lunacy

So it really hasn't let up here at all. This morning, we had about four inches of snow still on the ground... the stuff that fell yesterday was on top of a small layer of ice and was very heavy and very wet and had compacted a bit overnight. And then the ice storm hit. It was actually kind of cool to wake up to... with the ice pattering against the window (I nearly fell back to sleep, to be honest). But, of course, what it really did was coat *everything* in a layer of ice nearly .25" thick (seriously, when rackham went out later to clear off the cars, they were literally encased in a layer of solid ice). And then, despite the predictions that it would turn to rain, it started to snow again. So, we've ended up with a thin layer of ice, about four inches of compacted snow, a quarter inch layer of solid ice and then another three to four inches of lighter snow. In other words, it's *nasty* out there.

( Photo of the back deck, under the cut. )

Both Rackham and I are working on Geocaching streaks at the moment... trying to find at least one Geocache a day for a year. I'm currently on Day 321 while Rackham is on day 200-and-something... yesterday, we walked about 3/4 of a mile to the closest unfound Cache (a difficulty 1.5 that was more like a 3.5 under five inches of snow!) and then back again. Today, Rackham put the chains on my car and we drove down to Albertson's to find the cache in the parking lot there (and did a bit of shopping, since we were there anyway). Cache found, lunch and bananas purchased, so we headed home... which is when I realized I didn't have the GPS. Great. We hopped back in the car and made our slow way back to Albertson's and checked over by the cache then over where we'd parked and then retraced our steps in the store. Finally, I asked one of the cashiers if anyone had turned in a handheld Garmin GPS and she got this grin on her face that made me want to jump for joy. Turned out the manager had found it out in the snow while on cart retrieval. *whew!*

Later, we got a call from some friends (B and A) who, it turns out, were headed down to the airport this evening... only they couldn't get out of their carport. They'd read that we'd been able to get out and called for help. So we drove over, picked up B and took him to Les Schwab to buy some chains. Got back and got the chains installed and got them on the road to the airport... then walked over to check on some other friends in the same complex and ended up taking one of them over to Trader Joe's to pick up a few things.

Of course, this meant we also got to see the supreme stupidity of King County Metro in action... because yes, on roads like these, the best course of action is obviously to send out articulated buses! Because regular buses aren't able to jack-knife and don't quite block roads as effectively (seriously, every single time we have a snow event, they still send those suckers out and every single time, they end up blocking roads all over the county).

( Photo of a jack-knifed bus under the cut. )

Hopefully the predictions for rain in the morning will be accurate (although they were originally saying it would arrive tonight and we're still getting snow) and then we'll just have to worry about nasty slush and flooding!

Crossposted from my Livejournal

Anyone have a favorite book in Ed McBain's "87th Precinct" series? They're on sale for the Kindle right now and I was thinking of giving one of them a try. So, any suggestions for a good book in the series to start with (since I know from experience that the first book isn't necessarily the best).

Crossposted from my Livejournal

Had a really fun weekend down in Long Beach, WA with rackham... even though we completely forgot to take kites with us (this just means we'll have to plan another trip later this year). Saturday there was a Geocaching event in Long Beach called a Cache Machine. ( Details under the cut. )

Usually, when we go to Long Beach, we stay at the Inn at Discovery Coast, a very nice B&B located right on the beach... but last month, right after the final route was announce for the Cache Machine, Groupon popped up with a deal for a new hotel, the Adrift. Turns out, the folks who remodeled and ran the B&B had bought the run-down, grungy hotel next door and remodeled it as well. We had a fantastic stay... although I think I still prefer the B&B!

Oh! And I wanted to take a page from honorh's LJ and keep a bit of a Workout Diary here... so, in accordance with my goals for this year, ( here's a list of my workouts from last week! )

Crossposted from my Livejournal

I've got a recipe from the UK I'd like to try making... but it calls for "Porridge Oats" and, even after a bit of searching on the web, I'm a bit unclear on what these are, exactly. I know that oats can vary greatly depending on how they are processed... I just haven't had any luck figuring out which version of the types available in the US would best fit.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Crossposted from my Livejournal

Hope everyone had a fantastic Thanksgiving... or, for those in other parts of the world, a fantastic Thursday!

( We had a bit of time this morning, so we headed over to Mercer Island to see about finding our Geocache for the day )

For Thanksgiving Dinner this year, we pooled resources with tomte, gidgiddoni, taradaktyl and her family... meeting for dinner over at Taradaktyl's place this afternoon. Once again, we brined the turkey... it just turns out so well, I can't imagine doing it any other way!

( Photos of food under the cut! )

Needless to say, we all ate entirely too much food, but it was all so good!

Crossposted from my LiveJournal.

A few weeks ago, we were going after a Geocache up in North Bothell (the town just north of us... in a part of it that was across the line in Snohomish County), when we ran into a house for sale. Keep in mind, we hadn't been thinking of moving... except in the vague "eventually, we're probably going to want to move" kind of way. We've done our home improvement projects with an eye toward how well they'd help us sell the house when we eventually decided to go, but also with the idea that we'd be around to enjoy them for a good many years to come.

But this house... was actually pretty perfect for us. More than twice as large as what we have now, with a completely unfinished basement and a lot more garage space. The lot was slightly smaller, but more of it was usable than what we have now and it was bordered on two sides by greenspace. The price was just above what we'd be comfortable paying. We grabbed a flyer, discussed how cool it would be to have a place like that and then moved on. Until I stumbled across the flyer a week or so later and checked the listing... to discover the price had been dropped significantly. Oh yeah, and it was now "Pending Inspection." So, no dice. Flash forward to yesterday when I went to Zillow to find out how much it had sold for... only to discover it had a new listing with a new agent, still at the lower price. Long story short, it's actually pending again and likely to be sold. But until we found that out, we did some serious talking about what it would take to get our current house ready to sell.

( On changing a mindset toward moving. )

It's just funny, because two days ago I was perfectly content to stay right where we are for an indefinite amount of time... and now that we've done a little research into our options, I find I'm chomping at the bit to move on.

Crossposted from my Livejournal

My copy of Ghost Story arrived while I was still down in Utah... meaning I had to wait until I got home before I could start (I'd actually considered canceling my order from Amazon and buying it on the road, but it didn't occur to me soon enough to stop the shipment). And, I must confess, I still haven't read Side Jobs and I know there's at least one story in there that relates to the events in this book (although at this point, I'm guessing it isn't particularly necessary to have read it before reading the new book). Kinda glad I had this to read when I got back, though, since I'm apparently in the throes of fighting off something icky... dancing on the edges of being sick, but managing to mostly keep it at bay while still feeling blah.

When I finished reading Changes, I hoped there was going to be a sequel... but even after I heard there would be, I couldn't help but think of an old Smothers Brothers skit. You know, the bit where one of them ends up rambling in a confusing way until ending with "Take it!" and the other brother says, perplexed, "Take it where?!" I knew I wanted more Dresden, but seriously... take it where?

And now, with Ghost Story, we know.

( Spoilers for Changes and very mild spoilers for Ghost Story under the cut )

Crossposted from my Livejournal

First off, thank you so much for all your birthday wishes! I've tried to go through and reply to them all individually, but I suspect I may have missed a few. I must say, it's always fun to watch birthday greetings start to roll in as the clock ticks over to the 19th all around the world. I love the modern age!

Since my birthday landed on Father's Day this year, we decided to try having a shindig on Saturday instead. Friday, I baked the cake and I was just about to start some water boiling for potatoes and eggs (to make potato salad) when it occurred to me that I didn't really want to do it and, well, the potato salad at PCC Natural Food Market is actually pretty darned tasty (if way too expensive) and it was my birthday, darn it! So, Saturday morning I started the chicken marinating for Guamanian Chicken, hit PCC to buy potato salad, whipped up some dips using goat yogurt, made some frosting using goat butter and goat milk (won't be doing that again... I actually like the taste of goat dairy, but it really didn't work for me on cake), decorated the cake, grilled some chicken and had a party!

( There was a definite theme this year... )

Yesterday for my birthday, I slept in... then indulged in my favorite completely-full-of-sugar-and-so-totally-bad-for-me cereal (at the moment, that would be Lucky Charms) for breakfast, after which we loaded up the cooler with leftovers from the night before and headed out to Mukilteo to catch the ferry to Whidbey Island. We had a fantastic day just meandering our way up the island, doing some hiking and finding caches as we went. We ended up finding 28 Geocaches! *Really* good for unplanned caching (we've found more in a day before, but it was during a Cache Machine... they're plotted out with a route to get the most caches in the least amount of time).

( On the way home we stopped at Deception Pass to do some caching and admire the sights. )

When we'd walked out on the bridge, we'd had to make note of the condition of the tide for the Earthcache... and at the time, it looked to be just at the end of high tide, with a very subtle indication that the water was starting to pull out to sea. On the walk back from the viewpoint, the water was roaringly loud and when we got back to the bridge, we could see whirlpools and rapids as the water was practically sucked out to sea! Very funky that it happened so fast!

Anyway, it was very fun but full day and we crashed pretty much as soon as we got home last night. Now I've got the mad scramble of getting ready to leave for JadeCon this week!

Crossposted from my Livejournal

I can't believe I'm so awake, considering I only got about 30 minutes of sleep last night.

More later, but suffice to say... it was absolutely incredible. And seeing the shuttle all lit up on the pad in the wee hours in the morning was possibly one of the beautiful things I've ever seen.

( A quick look at one of the photos I took today. )

Crossposted from my Livejournal.

I've mentioned before that I didn't used to like roller coasters. Oh, I thought I did... or rather, I thought I'd worked myself up to a point where I was liking them, which is why I was so worried after the car accident that I wouldn't be able to handle them anymore (there were many moments during the accident that reminded me of how I felt when riding a coaster). After I'd recovered from the accident, I rode on Big Thunder Mountain at Disneyland with some trepidation... only to discover that I now LOVE roller coasters (and it's obvious now that most of my enjoyment before came from the relief that I'd made it through the experience). Near as I can tell, rolling our car four times taught my brain what it *really* feels like to be out of control, and roller coasters just don't feel that way to me anymore.

On our last visit to Disneyworld, back in February, I rode Aerosmith's Rock'n'Roller Coaster... my very first coaster to go upside down. And I liked it! You know, after I forced myself to relax and open my eyes (I was *seriously* tense... to the point that I strained my shoulders). So, yesterday when we hit Disney's Hollywood Studios, the first thing we did was head over to the Aerosmith coaster to get Fast Passes... then discovered that the wait time was only 20 minutes for the regular line! So, on we went... I managed to keep my eyes open and it was *fantastic*. Later, we rode with our fast passes, then turned right back around and headed into the Single Rider line (where they use you to fill spaces left by odd numbered groups). Twice in a row was even better! We ended up going through regular line again later that night, making a grand total of four times in one day.

Wow. I never thought I'd be this person... the one who can't get enough of the thrill. rackham has started calling me a roller coaster junkie and I suspect he's right. Last night we hopped on Big Thunder Mountain before heading out of the park and, well, it was fun... and there was some nostalgia for me, since it was the first coaster I enjoyed, but I got absolutely no adrenaline rush from it. We're now thinking of trying to do a day at Universal on this trip so I can try some of the coasters over there.

Crossposted from my Livejournal