Babies from Serbia...

I dreamed last night that all of a sudden there were about 20 orphans from Serbia at my Dad's house. We had to take care of them, and I think they all had AIDS. I remember dressing them, and they were too big for the smallest onsies, so we had to run around looking for bigger ones. We were feeding them, and finding places for them to sleep. I never really got what we were doing with them, or what the goal was (to find them homes, etc). But I remember spending a lot of time with them, and we also had to give them medication. I just remember having a great nurturing feeling about the dream.

Rioters in Vancouver...

Really? This whole mess in Vancouver just irks me. I guess part of me wants and expects people to be "good". But I should be smarter than that. I know alcohol is likely a factor, but what makes these idiots want to destroy shops, loot on live TV, taunt cops and canines, and parade around taking pictures of the destruction others created? I just don't get it. And as a friend stated earlier, the city of Vancouver and the fans of the Canucks are going to get a bad wrap as if this was solely their fault and the fault of the loss. When in fact is was probably only part of the excuse, and the stupidity of some of the intoxicated (at least I hope they are) fans getting involved after the fact. And it also pisses me off that the media should be reporting the win by the Bruins and the celebratory fans, and maybe even the sad Canucks fans. But in either case, hockey has been overshadowed by asshole hoodlums. ARGH!!!!! I think I need to stop watching CTV now, it's just pissing me off.

Neighbors

It has been since my dorm year at college that I have lived so close to neighbors that I see some of their routines.

On one side of me is a couple of early 20s girls. My parents say that they like to have loud parties, but I haven't heard any since I've moved in. They have a couple of guy friends (boyfriends?) and a girl friend with a maybe 2 year old that frequently come over. It can be loud if they all hang out on their patio and chat, but that would be the same for anyone.

On the other side is a couple with their 2 small children. I haven't officially met them yet, but they all seem nice. However, I can hear every time they walk up and down their stairs, and they don't close their kitchen cabinets gently. The kids spend most of the day using the back patio as their playground, and they talk at twice the volume of any average adult. Don't get me wrong, they sound adorable. But loud they are.

Then there is this guy with an 18 month old (just guessing), who hangs out on the lawn in front of our place every day it seems. He is a bit older, so not sure if he is an older Dad, or a Grandpa. But the inner condos don't have any lawn, so I guess he just comes out here to let thew little guy run around a bit.

Then there are the dog walkers. Tons of them. Between the trail and the sidewalk, I probably see at least 20 people with dogs walk by every day. I notice that every older lady had a dog the size of Merlin. And this one lady has a little dog who is injured or paralyzed. His/her back 2 legs are in little slings and uses wheels to get his back half around. I always felt bad. Then my Mom and I took Merlin for a walk on the trail before she left and ran into them. The dog was a little pain in the ass and was so feisty than he knocked himself over and needed help to get back up. The owner didn't seem too sympathetic toward him/her, so I wasn't really either. But maybe he's nicer towards humans, rather than other dogs.

That's it for now. As I observe more things, I'll keep you all posted.

My move...

So, I have officially moved... as of a few weeks ago. And now that my parents headed back north, I have the place to myself. It's nice to be living in a place by myself, where I don't have to think about someone (my Dad) walking in whenever to make food, or listen to random people talking or fighting outside my bedroom window. Such a change, I love it. Plus now I've been cooking more, because I have room to actually prep and cook. When I didn't have the space, it was more of a frustration than enjoyable.

I haven't used the pool yet, but it'll be pushing 90 degrees on Tues and Wed, so those might be good days to do that. And it's been fun exploring the area. Not like I wasn't living 20 mins from this area most of my life, but I only really knew the area of Broadway Plaza. But now I have been checking out restaurants (and a Thai place I may try this week), stores, etc. I also need to explore the Iron Horse Trail (literally about 40 ft from my front door). As I sit in the living room and watch walkers, runners and bicyclists go by on the trail, it makes me feel like a bum. So that's on my to do list too.

Well, that's it for now. Off to figure out what to make for dinner, keep looking for jobs online, and catch up some more on my DVR.

Vivid dreams

Every night as I lay down to go to sleep, I get these split second snapshots of the dreams I had the night before. Not enough to evoke whole scenes or the theme, but enough to make me lay there and try my hardest to remember what it was about. And that is every single night. I think it’s kind of fascinating how our brains work like that. But also drives me nuts when I can’t remember the dream.

Then, last night I was having a great dream, and remembered it when I woke up. I had to get up and take a phone call… long enough to forget what I was dreaming about. When I went to lay down again, I was trying really hard to continue the dream where I left off.

Am I the only one this happens to?

Another random dream last night...

I was at my friend’s house in the Bay Area, and we were hanging in a back family room. There was all of a sudden a roar in the air. Kinda like when it’s stormy and planes fly at lower altitude, only louder. Then I started noticing the clouds were swirling and not looking quite right. Then a tornado emerged. We all freaked out. I ran toward the center of the house to a doorway. I sat on the floor in the doorway and wrapped my arms and legs around the wall. Then the house gets picked up and we started spinning. I remember feeling a little dizzy.

Then all of a sudden we stopped. We looked outside and the house had landed in the middle of some street. I remember having an iPad, or similar device, and looked up where we were on the GPS. We ended up in some small town East of Reno in the middle of Nevada. No one seemed too phased by a house landing on their street, which led me to believe that the tornado went through this town too. We started wandering around a bit. Then people started setting up booths selling T-shirts and what not. I remember complaining that people were trying to capitalize on a natural disaster. We wandered back to the house to find about 12 people dressed like hippies had taken over the property. It was like something out of the show ‘The Colony’ where they were protecting a property for themselves during a disaster. I just remember thinking that I hadn’t even grabbed my purse on the way out the door. I wandered around town a little more, but that’s all I remember.

Restaurant and Mansion Dream

I was staying at a friend’s house, and was woken up by her babysitter (who I had never met) telling me that she had to leave for a while and I had to watch the kids. Well there were about 5 kids, not all my friend's, that ranged in age from about 2-6. So I had to get up and watch these very active kids. They were running around doing every craft imaginable, eating all sorts of things, and making a big mess.

I ended up out on the street in from of this pub sort of restaurant. Turns out it is owned by my old friend Andrea. I was chatting with a few people out front about the fact that there was a power outage on this and a few other blocks. One of the girls was also telling me that a couple of blocks up was this gas station that in this movie we all knew (which I think wasn’t a real movie I’ve seen in reality), the main character proposed to the other main character. I thought that was cool and wanted to see it, but never did.

We ended up inside the restaurant and the place was filling up with customers. They all knew there was a power outage and that we weren’t officially opening until the power came back on. But guess they were alerted that it was going to be soon, and they started getting antsy. I wasn’t really there to work, I was just a friend of the owners and was visiting or something. But there seemed to be a lot of employees running in and out of the kitchen like chickens with their heads cut off. They were trying to get things prepped, but were still waiting to get the power back so they could start cooking and stuff. Then Andrea’s Mom showed up and was trying to calm everyone down. I think she managed the place. I never did see what happened there.

I was suddenly back at my friend’s house. Not her real life house, but this made up, beautiful mansion. It was this very modern, white mansion with all clean square lines. There was a large pool outside the large plate glass windows out front. But there were also sprawling grounds with manicured lawns, another huge pool away from the house and a hot tub that could seat about 20 people. There were lots of people coming and going, some I knew, and some I didn’t. There was apparently going to be some huge party there that night. My old co-worker Jason, and his wife were there. And also a bunch of old college friends, like Adam and Bill. This group of friends and I were chatting in this one room for a long time, and they kept trying to point out to me people I may know. People were still coming and going, as I got the vibe that any and all people were welcome there and people just showed up whenever to hang out. At one point this very beautiful and shapely woman walked by the window and Adam ogled her. I jokingly asked if he was still married, and he held up his hand to show his wedding ring. Then he jokingly said, “I can still look.”. At one point I was out front just watching a handful of people heading down to the larger pool and hot tub further away from the house, and just had to ask someone for clarification, “Exactly whose house is this?” and they confirmed, Jennifer. How I didn’t know that since I was staying there, I’m not sure. Then I basically headed up the large staircase to the room I was staying in, to get ready for the party.

Then I woke up. I didn’t get to see how the party turned out.

Orlando Bloom dream... odd.

I was starting a new college and was moving into a dorm. It was a large campus, like a small town. I was hanging in this room with this guy. He was going to show me around and to my room, but we weren’t ready yet, so we were just hanging out and chatting. And there were a few other people in the room having their own conversations.

Then this girl comes in, who I think is the gf of the guy. She said she just got home from L.A. and I said that I did too. Then I told her I was there for a hockey game, and she then told me she loved hockey. What are the odds? So that was cool, I was making a new friend.

Then randomly, Orlando Bloom shows up with some sort of crazy automatic gun of some sort. They had these weird bullets that were huge, and had little metal doors on them that opened. Not sure why. He started shooting the gun through the room, not aiming at anyone, but causing big explosions. It didn’t seem to faze anyone, so he did it a couple of times.

Soon after we started hearing aircraft and everyone started scattering. I looked kinda baffled, so the guy I was chatting with said, “It’s a bi-plane, so it must be serious.” So I ran too. It was like the whole campus was running and screaming, and I looked up and saw a bi-plane and a helicopter. And I kinda wondered why everyone was running, because I think they knew about the shooting and were going after Orlando Bloom. But I ran anyway. Soon we saw a long limo zipping by with flags on it, as if it carried someone really important. I tried climbing up some stairs in one of the building, but it was as if the building was warped and I couldn’t squeeze up it.

- And then I woke up. I hate when that happens and I don’t find out what happened. Plus, what’s up with Orlando Bloom in my dream? I couldn’t even tell you how long it’s been since I’ve seen him act in something. Wasn’t on my radar. Very strange.

New Year’s Weekend in L.A.

So Sarah and I met up with Steph and Bre around 8:45am on Friday so we could sort of caravan down to L.A.. We ended up taking a couple of different freeways, but remained in the vicinity of each other. They even passed us on the freeway once and didn’t know it. After making one gas/food stop together, we arrived in L.A. ten mins apart from each other. We checked in the hotel which is an older hotel, and we later learned has VERY tiny rooms. There were a ton of 20 something’s checking in at the same time. We later learned that there was some local Rave and a bunch of them were going to it (dressed very oddly… I feel old).

Sarah unfortunately had pneumonia, but came on the trip anyway. She was feeling kinda ok, but she decided to take a nap before we headed out for the evening. At 6pm we met up with Steph, Bre and Jeremy to head to El Coyote Café, that Claire and Bobby recommended to me, for dinner.

We passed through Beverly Hills and Hollywood and ogled the mansions. The restaurant was eclectic and fun. I decided on the ostrich tacos, because how often do you find that on a menu (although I have had ostrich before), and they were great. Everyone enjoyed the place. After, we decided to head over to the Santa Monica Pier, which we predicted was going to be a madhouse.

Luckily it wasn’t. Michelle and Dan had been at the Ducks/Flyers game and met us at the Pier. We walked around a bit, took some pictures with a macaroni,
scared Steph by walking to the end of the pier over the water, watched some fireworks at 9pm down the beach, then walked down to the beach. Afterwards we went to Bubba Gumps for some late night drinks, appetizers and dessert before heading back to the hotel.

We got back around midnight and all headed to Steph and Bre’s room, which was a mansion compared to ours ;-) and we all hung out and chatted and laughed (boy did we) until 3am. Steph had woken up at 3am, so Sarah thought it would be fun to see if Steph could last 24 hours, and she did.

Saturday morning Sarah wasn’t feeling so hot, so she wanted to sleep in. We were meeting the gang at 3pm at the Yard House, but unfortunately Sarah wasn’t up to it, so she stayed behind. We walked down there and luckily it was no issue getting a table for 20 at that time. Slowly but surely everyone arrived (ended up being 15 people). It was great to see all the people from the previous night, plus Heidi, her 2 friends, Des, James, Kym and her husband, Matt and Stephanie.

We had a great time at lunch/dinner, even though it took them forever to take our orders. We walked over to Staples around 5 and went our separate ways to either the store, or to watch warm ups. Luckily Sarah was feeling better that this point and walked down to meet us for the game.

We were all seated in the same row for the game, which was nice. The game itself was a little mellow. Not a lot of fights or penalties, so it seemed to go pretty quick actually. But the Sharks pulled out a 1-0 win, and that’s what matters. We took our traditional group pic next to the Gretzky statue, then said our goodbyes.

Steph, Bre, Jeremy, Dan and I ended up hanging out and chatting for a few hours. It was a good time.

Sunday however was the day we had to leave. Sarah and my goal was to leave town by 11am, but after getting out of the parking garage, and getting gas, it was more like 11:20am. So off we went on a dreary day. Sarah’s Mom already gave us a heads up that there was a ton of rain between us and home, so we expected that. One we got close to the Grapevine, we saw a sign that said “snow escort, expect delays”. We didn’t know what a snow escort was, but thought it would be cool to see some snow. Well, after we were up the mountain, maybe around 1pm, we started seeing snow.

We thought, cool, and took some pictures. Then after a while, it was starting to stick to the ground, and the hills were looking dusted with snow.


Then the snow started piling up more, and that’s when traffic stood still. We started off with 5 lanes (or was it 4?) of traffic, moving pretty darn slowly. Then the snow started coming down really heavy, and we started moving about a mile an hour.

Then we would stop, then maybe go for 10 feet, stop another minute or so, go another 10 feet, etc. And I have never in my life driven on icy or snow covered roads in a non-4 wheel drive before. I would press the gas, my wheels wanted to force me to the right, and I had to compensate by turning to the left every time. I didn’t tell Sarah, but I was pretty freaked. I was worried I was going to spin out, or my car was going to shift to the right and hit another car, or get stuck in the snow. My heart was racing.

There were even a few people getting out of their cars and walking in the snow on the shoulder, not sure why. On the other side of the freeway, we could see plows, one at a time going down one lane, then a row of cars following it. So we knew that’s what was happening up ahead of us too.


After about an hour from when we first stopped in our tracks, the 5 lanes had been merged down to 1.

Some big trucks sucked it up and plowed through the snow in some of the outer lanes (yikes), but the rest of us played follow the leader and I tried to keep my tires in the tire tracks of the car in front of me. The icy roads had turned into slush and snow, and was much easier to drive on. It took us a full 2+ hours to get over the Grapevine, in what took us maybe 30 minutes on the way down.

And I have never seen so many cars just stranded on the side of the road for one reason or another. It was insane. When we were close to the bottom, we noticed no traffic on the other side of the freeways, and the road was just covered in snow. We knew at that point they closed the freeway down. Which apparently they did at 1pm, and may not reopen until tomorrow or Tuesday. And we felt bad for all the people on the other side that didn’t know this yet.

We stopped at the first place we could to make a pit stop. The gas station, food places, etc had no power. OK, so we drove another 5-10 minutes to the next place with services, this place MUCH larger. No power to the whole town either.

OK, so we just decided to move on and make up some time and made a stop a few hours later. We finally got to Sarah’s about 8 or so hours later, which took us less than 6 hours on the way down. Then I still had about a 45 minute drive home. We both made it home safely, which is what matters, and we have a story to tell.

Article about the storm and I-5 closure. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-cold-weather-20110103,0,3315839.story

Back to Washington – Day 11

My last day in Washington. We had decided to have lunch at the Rockfish Grill, since my shuttle wasn't leaving until 2:45pm. So we had a nice lunch, then headed back to the boat. I actually only had about 30 mins at that point to finish my packing, so I did that really quick. Then I headed up to meet the shuttle. It was the same lady driver I had back in June. Nice lady. I was the only one on the shuttle with her all the way to where you change buses, so we chatted the whole time. She was telling me about how she lives in a very rural area, and that her family likes to shoot off crazy fireworks for New Years and stuff. And that they will shoot prairie dogs and stuff for digging up their property. I am for sure not pro-killing animals, but the way she told the story, it was pretty funny. I got on the other bus at the transfer station, and we continued on to Sea-Tac in the dark and rain. We got there around 6pm (a little late) and I had 2 1/2 hours to kill before my flight (it was delayed 30 mins). So I wandered the shops, bought a book ,magazine and 2 bottles of wine. Not sure why about the wine, I just thought I'd buy some on a whim. Then because of my stomach issues previously, I was too worried about eating anything too creamy, fatty or fried, so I skipped my normal trip to Ivar's at the airport for my usual fried shrimp and clam chowder. So I stopped at the place next door and got some couscous salad to go to eat on the plane. It was delicious. The flight was uneventful and I arrived in around 10:30pm to the puring rain. I thought I left that stuff in WA ;-)

Back to Washington – Day 10

So today was a much better day to take the ferry to Friday Harbor. We headed over to the terminal in the morning and waited to board the boat. Once we got on, Fred stayed in the car with Merlin and my Mom and I wandered, since I've never been on a car ferry before. Once we got over there, we made a few stops then headed to the Pelindaba Lavender Farm which was cool, but being the time of the year it is, nothing was really pretty lavender colors. Only a couple of plants.

Then we headed over to the Krystal Acres Alpaca Farm which was really cool. You could walk along the fence line and look at all of the alpacas. Then they have a really great shop on site where we chatted with the daughter in law of the owners of the farm, for a while. They had this really cool alpaca felted hat I wanted. But for $99, I couldn't justify it.

After that we stopped at the Lime Kiln Pt State Park. I decided to take a little trail down to the water to get a view of the lighthouse. Very cute.

Then off to Roche Harbor to have lunch at our little spot of the dock, The Lime Kiln Cafe. And as we were walking around, I even say an otter sitting on shore for a few, before it swam away.

We had to get back to Friday Harbor to catch the ferry to come home. This time we just stayed in the car. And for fun we turned the GPS on to watch us "driving" in the water.

We then just chilled the rest of the night, had dinner, and watched some TV.

Back to Washington – Day 9

I woke up around 8am to some of the more insane sounds of wind and rain, and the boat bouncing back and forth. After only having about 5 hours of sleep, and then the weather on top of it, I decided it may not be the best day to take the ferry over to Friday Harbor. So we postponed. My Mom and Fred took off to go grab breakfast in town, since they were already up. I got up to take a quick video of the waves outside, as they were crazy for inside a marina. Then I went back to bed, and didn’t wake up until 3pm. I didn’t plan to sleep that long. I got up and we just kind of lounged around. Eventually we had dinner (curry chicken, pasta and peas) and watched the news. We took Merlin for a walk, and I brought my new little tripod so I could take pics of the boat at night. I got one decent one at least. Then we watched ‘Letters to Juliet’ which was really cute. I decided to update my blog, then I’m going to crash. We’re going to try to take the ferry tomorrow.

Back to Washington - Day 8

I slept in until about 11am, then got ready to go into town to get lunch. We went to the Calico Cupboard, and I had a great club sandwich. It was a pretty mellow day. Gloomy as it has been, but just popped into a handful of stores downtown. Once back at the boat we did more nothing and just chilled. We had leftovers for dinner, and watched the Discovery Channel show on Jordan (that I have on DVD). Then my Mom and I watched NCIS and NCIS: Los Angeles, neither of which I normally watch, but are good. Then I went to bed and watched some old Big Brother episodes. But once I started to go to sleep, I started feeling sick again and couldn’t fall asleep until after 3am. So one of those leftovers was something that didn’t agree with me now, and the first time I had it. Wish I knew which thing it was.

Back to Washington - Day 7

I slept in today, but then we headed to La Conner to have lunch and wander the shops. It was only about a 20 min drive to get there, and we stopped at the La Conner Pub. It was right on the channel, and I had popcorn shrimp and a salad. It was really good. The town is full of cute little galleries and shops. My favorite was this wood art shop, The Wood Merchant. They have some great stuff. Everything from pill cases, to sculptures, to utensils, to artwork. And they had these cool 3-4’ playing card art pieces all made out of pieces of wood. Really neat. It got dark really quick, so we headed back. After we were back at the boat for a while, the wind started whipping (23+ mile per hours gusts), the rain started pouring, the waves got crazy, the boat started rocking, and the wind was howling loudly. That lasted a couple of hours, and I was on the verge of seasickness. It was crazy. My Dad called earlier to check in, and all is well at home. Then my Mom and I made Ivar’s clam chowder and salad for dinner while watching ‘First Knight’. Now I’m writing this while watching the TV show, ‘What I Like About You’ and am going to crash soon. Not sure what's on the agenda for tomorrow.

Back to Washington – Day 6

My Mom woke me up to say they were going to go have breakfast at the café on the dock, so I could join them, or sleep in. I got up. When we left the boat we could hear the church playing "church music" loudly outside. Then I realized it was 'Yesterday' by the Beatles, then 'We've only just begun' by The Carpenters. That was kinda cool. So we went and had breakfast (eggs over easy, bacon, english muffin and coffee for me) in the dreary weather. We headed back to the boat and took off to go back to Anacortes. We saw an eagle on a little rock island, and a tug pulling a log boom on the way. Other than that, it was pretty uneventful. We had some downtime when we got back and saw ‘King Arthur’ was on, so we watched that. Then we had sausages, rice and green beans for dinner, using the dining room for the first time. Then just chilled out and watched some tv and I crashed early. Unfortunately though, I started feeling sick and started tossing and turning for 2 hours. Felt like a minor gall bladder attack, which sucks. But I eventually crashed.

Back to Washington - Day 5

So today they woke me up because we were heading to Roche Harbor (I was here back in June too, as well as Friday Harbor). And I like the parts of the trip where we are cruising and watching the scenery go by, so I got up. We just hung out in the pilot house/galley and watched the world go by. When we arrived, we made breakfast for lunch. Scrambled eggs with cheese, onions, and other good stuff I can’t remember, and bacon. Then we headed up to shore. We were up there maybe 20 minutes before it started raining. So we wandered a bit more, and went to the Harbormaster’s office to pay up for the night on the dock, then back to the boat. My Mom, Merlin and I were quite drenched when we returned. But a little rain isn't going to hurt us. We knew the Cal game was on today and my Step-Dad wanted to watch, and my Mom too. So we put that on as I got their Directv remote programmed and working. My Mom made this yummy hamburger, bean, onion, etc casserole that she does for dinner, and I picked up some cheesy bread at the store this afternoon to go with it. So had that as we finished watching Cal lose. Eh… I didn’t care. We checked to see what was on TV tonight and saw Hawaii Five-O. I never watched the original, nor had I caught any of the new series. But we watched it and I enjoyed it. If I start watching it, does that mean it’ll be canceled? ;-) I kinda had the Yahoo feed of the Sharks game on at the same time. Wasn’t paying too close of attention, but YAY, they won. We hung out a little bit longer, and I updated my Amazon with list, and checked out the wish list’s of family members. They crashed and I sat here and wrote by blog. I’m exhausted, but figured I’d get it out of the way while I still remembered the details of today. Tomorrow we head back to Anacortes, because they have a Monday am appt to get something on their car checked out. So hopefully Monday afternoon or Tuesday we can head out again to do something, as I fly out on Friday.

Back to Washington - Day 4

I got out of bed around 8:45am this morning, surprisingly. And it was sunny out… with some clouds though. We had thought we were going to take a drive to La Connor to bum around. But we soon decided, after checking the upcoming weather forecast, that today may be the best weather we see while I’m here. So we decided to go for it and take the boat out, for the first time since they bought it. We went first to get 400 gallons of fuel put in it, then headed to Friday Harbor. Much faster than Aquila would have taken us. So we got there in an hour and a half, and had some lunch on the way. When we got there, we just wandered around town a bit. We also saw Popeye, the seal who is blind in one eye and comes to the docks every day for handouts. And I found a great candy store. One that carries all sorts of random candies from the 60’s, 70’s, etc that you can’t get everywhere, so I bought a few things. Then we just headed back to the boat as it got dark. Fred got the idea in his head to transfer his Directv account from their old house, to the receiver on the boat. So after about 90+ mins on the phone with them, we now have satellite TV on the boat. So we watched some TV while having pork loin, mashed potatoes and fresh asparagus for dinner. Then I continued to watch some TV after they crashed, while writing this blog.

Back to Washington - Day 3

So last night I was laying in bed watching a TV show on my iPod, and it was freezing! I know it was 37 degrees outside, and it felt like that inside here too. I definitely turned off the heater in the boat too soon. It was pretty much just my hands and face not under the covers, and boy did I have to warm them up. Plus I ended up sleeping with a sheet, comforter and 2 blankets. Once I warmed up I was good though. Brrrr before that though. And something else I remembered while I was laying there, was that we had checked the info on the car when we came into town yesterday, and we had driven about 930 miles, and about 15 ½ hours of driving over the course of the 2 days. Wow!

Anyway… I definitely needed to catch up on my sleep last night after waking up every 2 hours at the hotel the night before. So I ended up sleeping until 11am, which definitely wasn’t planned. Today was an errand day, so nothing major happened. We got ready to head out, and went to West Marine to get their new stove top for the boat. We had some really great Chinese food for lunch, then went grocery shopping. When we got back we checked in the Harbormaster office for some packages we were expecting. One being my new Otterbox case for my phone, which did arrive and I’m happy with. Unfortunately though, we had to cart all these things back to the boat in the rain. We just unpacked everything, then relaxed for a bit and read magazines and such. Then we had pulled pork, mashed potatoes and peas for dinner as we watched Princess Ka’iulani. I really enjoyed it, great historical story that I didn’t know.

I have also been pondering a job that was suggested to me by a friend the other day, and decided to apply for it. Unfortunately being out of the state though, I had to search my e-mail for my resume and try to come up with a cover letter (which I am actually taking a break from to write this). So I’m going to chat with my friend tomorrow, who happens to work at this place, about some specifics. We’ll see what happens. Tomorrow’s plans are up in the air depending on weather. We may go drive to a little town and have lunch and check out the cute shops, or we may actually take the boat out for the first time ever (since my parent’s have gotten it). If we don’t take it out tomorrow, than maybe another day or two when the weather eases up.

Back to Washington - Day 2

Got up at 7am again for another long day. Went and had the free breakfast at the hotel, including biscuits and gravy, eggs, sausage, bacon, cereal, yogurt, waffles, coffee juice, etc (no, I didn’t eat all that) and got on our way around 8:30am. And it was another gloomy day as we headed out through more of Oregon. We stopped at one rest stop (mind you we also had my mom’s dog with us) and continued on. We planned to stop at the Mount St Helens Visitor Center on the way. We knew due to the weather that we wouldn’t see the mountain, but wanted to stop anyway. It was a nice center with a short but good video about the eruption. I was five when it happened, so only vaguely remember it being on the news, but watching the video was freaky. Remind me never to move close to an active volcano. The grounds around the center were pretty and the sky was amazing, so walked around and took a few pics. When we had gotten off that exit, we noticed a sign that said Burgers and Espresso that caught my eye, because how random is a burger and espresso joint? So we stopped there for lunch before getting back on the freeway/highway. Total hole in the wall place with a really nice early 20 something girl working there. The burgers were great, and we even got some ice cream for the ride. Surprisingly as we approached Seattle, the weather started clearing up and there were pretty blue skies. I checked the GPS on my phone and noticed 2 strips of high traffic areas, due to major accidents, coming up past Seattle. UGH… no fun. Probably added an hour to our trip, and it turned dark at this point. We just wanted to get to Anacortes. Think we arrived around 6:30ish. Then their boat (sorry… motor yacht) is docked about 1/5 of a mile down a couple of docks, so had to load up all of our stuff in carts and lug it down there. This is my first time seeing their new boat, since they just bought it last month I think it was. It’s beautiful and has so much more space than their last boat, more staterooms, more heads, more closets, more stairs, etc. They showed me around, and instead of being stateroom door to stateroom door with them, like on their last boat… I go from their stateroom, up the stairs to the salon, up the stairs to the galley, down the stairs to a hallway, then are 2 more staterooms and a head. My Mom jokes that I have my own wing, and that’s what it feels like. I’m on the opposite end of the boat. It was too dark to check out the upper helm or the bow, so that will wait til tomorrow. And we were too exhausted to fully unpack and straighten up, so pics of the boat will have to wait until tomorrow. So after we chatted a bit, I uploaded a few pics and wrote this and yesterday’s blog entries. Now being 11pm, I think I’m about to pass out. Night!

Back to Washington - Day 1

My Mom and Fred were picking me up at 8am, so I reluctantly got up at 7am after a few hours of sleep. It was an uneventful start of the drive, and made our first stop after a few hours, at a rest stop. The same one my Aunt and I stopped at a month ago on our way to Redding. We then continued for a few more hours as it started getting rainier and rainier. Our goal was to stop at a Big Bear Diner in Redding for lunch, just to find the place surrounded by cops and a fire truck. We tried to go in anyway, only to find a water line broke at the restaurant and they stopped serving people. We knew there was another one an hour up the road in Mount Shasta City, so we decided to stop there instead of finding another place to eat. As we got close, the rain started coming down and my Step Dad was noticing the temp outside was going from 35 to 34 to 33… and then we noticed that the rain seemed to be floating through the air. It was actually snowing. When we parked at the restaurant it was still snowing, but nothing heavy as it wasn’t sticking. I thought it was cool, because I love snow and rarely get to se it, while they were more worried about the pass in Oregon. After lunch we headed on into Oregon and made it to the pass. At this point there is snow on the ground on both sides of the freeway, and it was coming down pretty good. So much that the visibility sucked, and we even saw an over turned truck on the side of the road with emergency vehicles. Yikes! Once over the pass, the snow turned back to rain and we made it to Roseburg, OR. We checked into the hotel around 5:30pm, then my Mom and I wandered next to the hotel to a Petco and stuff. And they were actually selling ferrets. Unusual to see them in a pet store. We then decided to order a pizza to be delivered, as we were exhausted from the long drive, then just crashed.