Thoughts in Random Patterns

At Home in Homer

It's just after 9 at night here, and the sun still shines brightly and will shine for another 3 hours or so. It's great to be here where my desk is completely empty except for a computer and there are no piles of things to sort/file/do and the phone never rings.

In the past 30 hours we've settled in nicely. I've been doing a steady stream of laundry, mostly the sheets used to cover the furniture while we're gone, and our travel laundry, and making sure all the towels and bathmats are fresh for our visitors. I like doing laundry and seeing the clean, orderly piles of clothes when I'm done. We've gone to the regular grocery store and the good-for-you healthy store, signed up for summer memberships at the health club, and picked up our 12 boxes of books and clothes that my fantastic assistant, Kelli, shipped to us and timed just perfectly for our arrival. The Jeep battery was dead when we got here, but our kind neighbors let us use their battery charger and the Jeep is rolling. Brad magically emailed the nice former owners of our house and found the furnace boiler repairman, Lyle, who came this morning and made the hot water work again and was friendly and cheerful, too. I like this small town.

Tomorrow I'll vacuum the carpets and wash the floors and finish cleaning all the bathrooms and we'll be ready for our first visitor who arrives from Boulder via Anchorage at 2:50 p.m. The house needs to have the trim painted, and the windows need to be washed, and the driveway needs to be graded, and the yard needs to be weed-whacked since you can barely get in the front door for all the growing things and and and -- all the joys of home ownership. But there's nothing urgent now that we have transportation, food, and hot water, and plenty of books, of course.

Getting here was quite pleasant except that Brad's flight from Boston to Seattle was delayed and he just missed the Seattle to Anchorage flight. Just. We were text messaging as he rode the shuttle train between terminals and I really thought he'd make it; but he didn't. I was sad when the big door to the plane closed and Brad wasn't on it. Then I put on my new velvety black eye mask from Sharper Image that Velcros tightly to the head and slept soundly through the entire flight. I don't even know whether they served a meal. When I landed in Anchorage, the jetway wasn't working, so we walked down the stairs and across the tarmac and in that short time the smoke from a nearby forest fire made the old semi-post-traumatic-stress disorder responses kick in. I wonder how long it will be before seeing television news coverage of fires in Arizona or California or the smell of a lot of wood burning doesn't make my heart race and acidify my stomach. Still working on that one.

When Brad flew in an hour later, he said the snow and the arctic light on the mountains coming in to Anchorage was beautiful.

We had breakfast at the Snow City Cafe, which feels like a very Boulder place to me -- or maybe it's just that I like cafes with Nuevo Huevos and chai on the menu. We took a DeHavilland Dash 8 puddle jumper to Homer and here we are, both blogging away, connected to the world on our computers, listening to Buddha Bar III, looking out at the Homer Spit and Kachemak Bay.. It's good to be here.

Trashy Detective Books

The Starbucks across the street from the W Hotel here in Seattle feels like an actual cafe and not just a coffee delivery factory.  It is large and has wi-fi internet connection and nice music and there are a couple of comfy lounge chairs in the corner by the floor-to-ceiling windows.  I have spent the greater part of two days sitting there reading trashy detective books, which is one of my very favorite things to do.  I’ve read Cold Service and Widow’s Walk by Robert Parker, (two more in the very long series of Spenser mysteries which are set in Boston), One Shot by Lee Child, (a Jack Reacher mystery), The Forgotten Man by Robert Crais (an Elvis Cole mystery), Ten Hot Ones by Janet Evanovich, (a Stephanie Plum mystery), and am making my way through The Bourne Legacy, which is written by Eric van Lustbader but is copyright 2004 by the Estate of Robert Ludlum.  I’ve had a lot of grande decaf nonfat lattes and Earl Grey tea with milk while hanging out at the Starbucks, and I’ll confess to at least a couple of delicious glazed donuts.  Yum.  Indulging all around.  I’ve also been watching West Wing Monday marathons on Bravo and The Closer on TNT and renting silly movies (Hitch, Hostage (which was actually a Robert Crais non-Elvis Cole book)) and basically soaking up a bunch of indulgences that aren’t available to me in Homer, especially television.  I did buy several first novels and have read Osprey Island by Thisbe Nissen and started The Harmony Silk Factory by Tash Aw. Knitting, a first novel by Anne Bartlett, and Before We Get Started:  A Practical Memoir of the Writer’s Life will go in my carry on, but I suspect I’ll find another mystery to entertain me on the plane tonight.  I think John Sanford has a new Lucas Davenport book out…

Brad will fly across the country from Boston and we’ll meet at the airport to take our flight to Anchorage together, arriving late.  We’ll stay at the downtown Marriott and have breakfast at the Snow City Cafe and take a de Havilland Beaver puddle jumper down to Homer and our summer can officially begin. 

Seattle

I’m sitting in the terminally chic lobby of the W Hotel in Seattle, having spent the entire day yesterday in my hotel room.  It’s somehow incredibly decadent to stay in bed and order room service meals and watch television and read trashy detective books all day long.  It did pour rain pretty much the entire day yesterday, so I thought it was a perfect opportunity to stay in bed.  This morning I felt rested and ready to hit the town.  I drank the Starbucks latte that Brad kindly brought to me unprompted after his morning run and took a shower and got dressed and actually left the room and the hotel and walked around for an hour and a half getting some sense of the city.  It’s sunny and breezy here today, and I covered much of the downtown area on foot.  I like cities:  the apparent purposefulness of people walking quickly, the availability of bookstores and coffee (especially here in Seattle!) and shiny new things in storefront windows.  Seattle is nicely ethnically varied and laid out in a fairly tidy grid pattern and all the steep hills raise the heart rate during a casual stroll.  It’s strange to me that Pike’s Place Market, which is probably the most touristy part of town, is also home to a large concentration of adult movie theaters and Girls Girls Girls places.  Or maybe XXX entertainment action is why people travel to Seattle??  The Rem Koolhaas designed public library is just around the corner from our hotel.  I’ve walked past it a couple of times, but am saving going inside to share with Brad, who is mostly excited about checking out the bathrooms.

I suppose that we’re technically on our way to Alaska.  We left Boulder yesterday, but I’m here for a week while Brad does board meetings and a Microsoft thing and a Gnomedex conference (whatever that is — something for geeks, I think) and then he’s making a quick trip to Boston.  It’s good to do a cross-continent 2 day trip on red-eye flights; really makes you appreciate sleeping in a bed again?  So I’m going to have plenty of time to enjoy Seattle and being in an urban environment before we get to Homer for the rest of the summer.

What Makes My Heart Beat Faster

So I just got home after spending a terrific afternoon taking my neice, Morgan, and nephews, Drew and Jason, with my sister, Wendy, on one of those Crazy Aunty Amy shopping sprees, then to The Dairy Center for an art opening, then to great dinner at Zolo Grill, then taking Morgan home in Brad's Mercedes SL55 AMG.  I almost never drive Brad's car since I have an incredible Mercedes CLK55 AMG of my very own, which Brad amazingly negotiated from Mercedes as a replacement for the one that caught on fire in our driveway, which made my heart beat fairly quickly at the time. 

But what I'm talking about today is driving a rocket ship at 120 miles an hour on the new, empty tollway on the way home after dropping Morgan off, having driven her at a sedate 90-100 miles an hour.  Brad's car handles like a dream, incredibly smooth and responsive and exciting and FAST.  I had Snow Patrol blasting and both hands on the steering wheel as the sun set behind the Rocky Mountains.  I love to drive, like to think that I drive well, and would still be driving at a high rate of speed down the highway if I didn't have a husband and dogs waiting at home.  If you're a friend of Brad's, and you like to drive, definitely ask him if you can drive his rocket ship.  Certainly makes my heart beat faster..

The Watershed School

My neice and nephew, Morgan and Drew, finished up their academic year this evening by giving Presentations of Learning at their school.  Each student makes a 15 minute presentation explaining what they learned and assessing their own growth and learning throughout the year, both academically and personally.  These presentations are open to the public and the students take questions at the end of their presentation.  It's incredible to listen to young people who are articulate and thoughtful and knowledgeable about themselves, their community, and the world around them.  It gives my usually misanthropic critical self a rest and lets me be enthusiastic about the possibility of a better future.  I kept thinking about the book I just read, Oh the Glory of it All, as I listened to these young people.  It never ceases to amaze me how we cannot know the impact we can have on others, both postive and negative.  Even though Morgan and Drew will likely return to public school next year, they both expressed gratitude for the genuine attention and respect they received from their teachers.  I was a person who did well in public school (I've mentioned my gold-star seeking, goody two shoes, conformist behaviour before) and had some terrific, dedicated, life-changing teachers (hmm, you should go to college back East ("back East" apparently being a foreign country))-- but I wish I had gone to The Watershed School.  Congratulations to the students, teachers, staff, board, and supporters of the school!

From The Watershed website:

If you learn best through experience and engaging with the world around you...

If you are eager to take responsibility for your learning and to shape your own education...

If you are excited to work with other students from different cultures and backgrounds...

If you are willing to challenge yourself to go beyond what you thought was possible...

If you want to make a difference in your community...

If you are ready for the most extraordinary educational journey of your life...

...then we invite you to take a closer look at

The Watershed School

Oh the Glory of it All

I read two books this weekend/week, both memoirs about adolescence in America.  I couldn't put down Oh the Glory of it All, which is sad and funny and beautifully written in the cleverly self-conscious and ironic style that I think I first loved in Dave Eggers' memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genuis and his first novel, You Shall Know our Velocity.  And it does indeed turn out that Sean Wilsey, the author of Oh the Glory, is an editor at large at McSweeney's Quarterly, and Dave Eggers wrote a blurb for the back cover.  Small writing world?!?

Oh the Glory is another piece in an unsolvable puzzle about why some kids make it through adolescence and some kids don't.  Some of the most disheartening parts of the book are about him being shuttled from one boarding school to another until he fortunately gets to one where the people treat him like a person.  It's nice that Sean Wilsey made it down the long road out of his family and into the comparatively sane world of adulthood and wrote this book.

Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!

Last Thursday night, coming home from Washington DC, driving through Eldorado Canyon State Park at dusk on the way to my house, I saw the first mountain lion I've ever seen.  In fact, I saw two.  And they were big, somehow much bigger than I had imagined them to be, and much scarier.  The small lizard brain that says, "Be afraid, be very afraid," was speaking loudly.  I saw them ahead of the car in the one lane dirt road that goes through the park, and then they climbed up an angled rock ledge on the left side of the road and were gone; so swift and graceful and eerie.  According to the mountain lion entry in Wikipedia, "Adult males may be more than eight feet long (nose to tail), and weigh about 150 pounds (70 kg). In exceptional cases males may reach as much as 200 pounds. Adult females can be 7 ft (2 m) long and weigh about 75 pounds (35 kg)."  I believe it.  These are big, scary predators.

We've always known there are mountain lions in our neighborhood.  My golden retrievers, Denali and Kenai, have brought home complete sets of deer forelegs and assorted other big and nasty dead deer bits that were obviously lion kill.  The dogs are always so proud of themselves that they don't really want to relinquish their trophies to me.  In retrospect, I've been pretty complacent about letting the dogs run around at dusk.  That's definitely over now.  My thinking was that with the two of them, one at 95 pounds and one at 115 pounds, they could look out for each other against a single big cat.  But the "cats" I saw were definitely much larger than the dogs, there were two of them, and they just completely exude the "we're at the top of our food chain" vibe.  I think the only predator I've seen that's even in the same class of scary as the mountain lion is the spotted hyenas I saw in Tanzania.  Part of why hyenas are so scary is they look almost prehistoric with their blunt skulls and pack hunting behavior.  They're just plain ugly.  The mountain lion is elegant and fierce and just plain scary.  No more roaming around freely on our property at dusk for Denali and Kenai.