11/28/06:
HAPPY BIRTHDAY MY DEAREST JAY!
Today is Jay's 55th birthday. One of the presents I gave him was a 1937 Badger Mutual brass paperweight. I look for unusual, neat badger items for Jay. He enjoyed this one very much.
I also gave Jay three books his Great-Aunt Dorothy Koert authored or co-authored, primarily about Whatcom County history. I picked them up at a nice used book store in Bellingham and was lucky enough to get one that belonged to Dorothy (it was inscribed as a gift to her), one she had signed as the author for someone and a third that had related historical newspaper clippings from the '70s and '80s in it. They were good finds that I enjoyed giving.
Click on the picture of Jimmy Carter with the 55mph speed limit sign to see pictures of Jay with his presents.
If you live to be a hundred, I want
To live to be a hundred minus one day,
So I never have to live without you.
— Winnie the Pooh
More 11/28/06:
So, I was supposed to go back to work this week, but have not so far. Every 3 or 4 years, or sometimes a couple of years in a row, we get a lot of snow. A lot of snow here is not a lot of snow back in Michigan, where I come from. The difference isn't just that folks here aren't used to it and don't know how to drive in it, or that the snow removal equipment leaves something to be desired. No, the difference is that it is different here. The snow is usually sudden, wet and heavy, and it leaves a glaze of ice over everything. Driving here is treacherous and still would be, even if people did know what they were doing. I stayed home yesterday because of the snow, and I stayed home today because of the ice. Today it is clear and sunny— the snow is beautiful laying about, covering everything outside. Usually it stays around freezing when it is cold here, but today it was 10 degrees at 6:30AM, then it made it up to 12 degrees by 10AM, and now, at 12:30PM, it is a whopping 20 degrees outside. Even so, the ice and snow are melting off our vehicles as they bask in the sun.
At the front of our house, in addition to the road or lane our house is on, is a small highway. It runs right up next to our house, between the front wall and the large spirea bush that grows so prolifically. It is used exclusively by neighborhood felines. This afternoon I went outside, stood on the front porch (the picture up to the left is of me as I stood on the porch) and took a picture of the footprints left in the snow on our feline highway. 
When we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness— and call it love— true love.— Robert Fulghum
11/26/06:
Wow man! The world outside my door is full of big, wet flakes of snow. The snow hangs on the trees, looking like a Christmas card. Very timely indeed.
Earlier today it was 36 degrees outside and we knew it was snowing a fair amount up in Bellingham. Still, it came as a surprise when I walked into the kitchen and saw out the window the pine tree loaded with snow— "what the heck is that?" I said out loud. Further inspections out other windows and a look at the thermometer outside's reading of 31 degrees cinched the diagnosis. Snow. Snow, indeed.
The New Yorker cartoon I ran across later, now to your left, seemed all the more fitting. Click it for a couple of pictures of our snow. C'iao!
The birth of a man is the birth of his sorrow. The longer he lives, the more stupid he becomes, because his anxiety to avoid unavoidable death becomes more and more acute. What bitterness! He lives for what is always out of reach! His thirst for survival in the future makes him incapable of living in the present.— Chang-Tzu
11/25/06:
I am away from the office a lot and so frequently eat lunch out. This allows me to explore regional ethnic restaurants to my heart's content. Recently I ate at an Indian lunch buffet and for dessert had some dumpling things in syrup. I mentioned these to Jay that evening and he then mentioned them to his boss, who is from Pakistan. Zahir knew exactly what Jay was talking about and very kindly brought in a can of the delicacies for us shortly thereafter. Turns out they are a dumpling made with cream or cottage cheese that is deep fried then soaked in a thick sugar syrup. You would expect them to be kind of like a doughnut hole soaked in syrup, but the crust or surface of the dumpling balls has an interesting resiliency to it, which made it so unusual and therefore memorable to begin with. They are incredibly, incredibly sweet! They are so sweet that if you eat more than one, or especially more than two, you may experience gaseous by-products like those Will finds so interesting… .
Even he, to whom most things that most people would think were pretty smart were pretty dumb, thought it was pretty smart.— Douglas Adams (English humorist & science fiction novelist 1952 - 2001)
11/24/06:
Will Clegg was a good friend of Jack Rule, my boyfriend my senior year of high school and the first three years of college. Will would come visit us now and then wherever we were and hang out. We lost contact for a few decades then, via the internet, reconnected back in 2001. Will offered me emotional support during some tough times, and then honored me by performing our wedding at my parents' home in 2004. He continues to pass on bits of wisdom and pieces of information gleaned from various sources, with a special interest in gaseous by-products of biological nutrient processing systems. For example, he sent me the very interesting cartoon to the left recently. Click on the cartoon, scroll down the page you find yourself on, and read the helpful 11:43AM 11/22/06 entry.
Thank you Will, you have set the informational bar high. Looking forward to more. :)
I have proved, times too numerous to enumerate, to my own satisfaction at least, that every human brain is both a broadcasting and a receiving station for vibrations of thought frequency.— Napoleon Hill
11/23/06:
Today is Thanksgiving, my 54th. I don't remember my first Thanksgiving, given that I was only about a week and a half old, but I do remember many Thanksgivings after that. As a child we went to my grandparents' homes for lots of feasting with aunts, uncles and cousins. After moving out here we spent Thanksgivings with just us and the kids, and later took some trips over the holiday, letting someone else fix the feast.
It was nice having my folks out here last week; we certainly did our share of feasting. For the rest of the visit pictures, click on the holiday picture up to the left.
Today I finished making pies and cobblers of the rest of our apple harvest. We had hot apple pie for lunch. I am making lasagna for our feast, made of pesto, artichokes, and lots of cheeses.
Hope you have a happy Thanksgiving and holiday weekend.
The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this is true.— James Branch Cabell
11/22/06:
My folks are home, and to get over their wild stay here they rested much of the weekend— me too. As most of her family and friends in Michigan know, my mom likes hitting the casinos. She enjoys getting out, watching people, and the chance to win big.
She likes the slot machines and one time won a few thousand dollars from one. My neighbor across the road had told me that the small local casino, The Swinomish Northern Lights Casino, has a senior lunch buffet on Tuesdays. Needless to say, that is where we headed last Tuesday. I invited Mrs. Becker to come along, but she already had plans to go with her own family and came over to meet my folks while we were eating. It was quite the spread for $2.99 (same price for me, yikes!), with pork roast, ham, salad, rice, green beans with bacon and cake. While there we played some slots: I lost $1.50, mom lost $10 and dad came out with $25 more than what he went in with.
After the casino buffet and slots, we went antiquing in Anacortes and ran across something perfect— an automatic toaster. Jay's birthday is the 28th and he is interested in old toasters. My parents have one they use all the time that belonged to my grandmother and Jay really liked using it when we visited them last spring. My folks bought a similar one for Jay's birthday present at Left Bank Antiques. He was tickled pink— click here to see pictures of his joy.
And, as always, more later...
Whatever you may be sure of, be sure of this, that you are dreadfully like other people.— James Russell Lowell
11/20/06:
We had a nice visit with my folks last week. Jay worked during the week, so my parents and I were on our own during the day.
On Monday we did a little shopping and had lunch out. My parents bought me a couple of things for my birthday at Linens & Things: a garlic peeler and a utensil pot clip, both of which work great. We checked out things at The Red Door antique store then went for lunch at The Calico Cupboard where, as always, we got a good meal and, as always at the Mount Vernon location, it took forever to get seated, forever to get waited on, forever to get served and forever to pay our bill. Afterwards we browsed the book store next door. For supper I re-warmed doggie bag leftovers from our huge meal the day before, added some hashbrowns and baked one of my frozen apple pies. We still had enough turkey (or was it chicken?) left over from my parents' meals to make soup for supper the next day!
Enough of this excitement! Why do I have the old ad to the left posted? Hmm, more on that later, but if you click on it you will go to a puzzle to put together— it is a bit hard but fun. Then, for a laugh at ourselves as we get older, click on the picture of the couple at the right. Both the puzzle and interlude are courtesy of emails my cousin Diane recently sent me.
It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.— Alfred North Whitehead (1861 - 1947)
11/18/06:
Well, my folks flew out yesterday and got home late, after being delayed in Minneapolis. They were pooped but made it home safely. We had a good time while they were here, despite not very good weather. However, now they will really understand when I tell them it has been windy here.
My birthday was last Saturday, the 12th, so I turned 53 during their visit. I am hoping the fact that I turned 53 and I was born in '53 make this an especially good year. We celebrated my birthday by going to a fun musical production, Seussical, that was well-done despite a flawed sound system. 
From there we went to my favorite local restaurant, The Farmhouse, to have too much to eat, including a special birthday freebie of my choice of dessert. Of course I asked for their creme brulee! It was served with a song, a candle and surrounded by strawberries and whipped cream. I made a wish and blew out the candle, then dug into the creamy custard as Jay helped me (at my request) by eating the berries and whipped cream. It was a good day, and a good week. More later … c'iao!
Nobody has ever measured, even poets, how much a heart can hold.— Zelda Fitzgerald
11/11/06:
My folks arrived safe and sound today. Their flight was a little delayed leaving Minneapolis, but they arrived here no worse for the wear. We enjoyed a nice meal in north Seattle and then hit the road to Mount Vernon. Now they have settled in at the hotel to rest up for the big day tomorrow— celebrating my birthday! More later….
I look in the mirror through the eyes of the child that was me.— Judy Collins
11/9/06:
Guess our area here made the national news this week. The graph at the left is of the Skagit River's height as it passed the Mount Vernon gage. The river crested Wednesday at above 33 feet, below the 36 feet level we weathered October 2003.
At these levels the river flows into a park area across from downtown Mount Vernon and you can see it sitting just a teeny bit below the top of the dikes that line it— like the one we can see out our kitchen window.
The bridge we normally take to get into town and to get to I-5 was closed Tuesday, but we have alternate routes that are not too cumbersome. Going over the bridge Wednesday, one could see an incredible amount of water flowing under it and actually feel a surprising, awesome energy prickling the air.
It is not likely that the river will spill over the dikes by our house, but it is always possible that the river will leak through or even that the dikes will give way. I mentioned earlier that we are planning to add on to our home. We thought we had settled on a plan to attach a garage with stairs up to living space on a second story above it, but are now reconsidering our original idea of raising the house and adding on to it at the same time. The county would love this plan. I had been leery of having to go up stairs in our old age, but it seems preferable to swimming to the living area… . The ground level would consist of the garage, some utility/work space and an entry with a stairway. All the living-in areas would be on the second floor, high and dry. As always, we will see. Meanwhile we await my folks' arrival Saturday. I don't think they have seen a town with sandbags about before. It will be fun.
We were confused and they were confused, but we were more accustomed to being confused.— Wade Marshall
11/5/06:
The news this morning included the piece of information that Saddam will be hanged for his crimes. I guess they must have almost run out of lawyers there in Iraq by the end of the trial. My thoughts about my country's policies have not been kept to myself, by and large. I have also spoken out loud, at least in print, about my curiousity at how that "forgiven" thing works, how a person can be so forgiven that they can continue breaking commandments, the Golden Rule and other ways we are told to be when we are young. I remain curious, and confused.
I do not understand the workings of those righteous minds who have come to understand their own superiority. How did they come to understand so very clearly how only they can truly recognize the demons of this world and how insignificant human rights are compared to the security only they can provide? What process did they go through to figure out that they were not the demons they so lobbied against? At what age did they realize that they themselves embody the way?
Who says I am not under the special protection of God?— Adolf Hitler
My meager mind cannot wrap itself around these intricate concepts of forgiveness, demonization and the way. Once again, I am puzzled: How much blood does it take to wash off blood? Is there truly no price to pay for deeds such as these when God's name is invoked in the doing? Does God really chose sides in a football game? In an election? In a war? Or are games, elections and wars of our own doing as we live this life, this opportunity to be tested? We don't know, or maybe more accurately, I don't know. The answer to the riddle of life's mission will become crystal clear soon enough, when, I fear, I will miss the gentle touch, and learn what, if any, price those dear to me will pay or not pay for actions taken in their name.
LADY MACBETH: Out, damned spot! out, I say!— One; two; why, then 'tis time to do't;— Hell is murky!— Fie, my lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?— Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?— Shakespeare, Macbeth
11/4/06:
It has been blustery here last night and much of today; some locals were without electricity for a while. We went out and enjoyed checking out three antique stores in Conway and got some ideas about adding onto our home from one of the store owners. Meanwhile, I picked up yet another vintage rhinestone pin :)
The Seuss book cover links to a joke, the acorn squash links to a recipe I made last weekend for curried squash (with apple) soup—it was yummy and easy. We haven't grown any squash, other than zucchini, but will next summer with some saved seeds. Fall is great for soups and chili. Hope you too are enjoying the season.
In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily.— Charles, Count Talleyrand
11/3/06:
Well, one mystery has been solved! Last January I wrote about a monument of sorts that Jay and I had run across in a Mount Vernon square. We had no idea how it came to be where we found it and could find nothing about it searching the internet archives of the local paper. Last Wednesday's paper, however, provided some answers for us, almost a year later.
The Argus is a free local paper delivered weekly here. The November 1st edition included an article on page 8 about Mount Vernon's salute to veterans that will occur November 11th at the Pine Street Plaza and include the unveiling of a plaque honoring WWII veterans. The new WWII plaque was purchased by our local Hawthorne Funeral Home and Memorial Park, which has lovely flowering hawthorne trees, with their deeply ridged, twisted trunks, that bloom each spring along College Way. The article goes on to say that last year a Veterans' Day ceremony was held to dedicate the monument to WWI veterans after it was moved to the plaza (from its prior location at the school district admin building). The mystery is solved.
We continue to make war, turning more young men and women, striving to serve their beloved country, into veterans. Where would we be without our veterans? I have no idea. Our veterans have served us well, our politicians and others who have steered us into war have not always served us well. The costs have been enormous, and uncounted. I have met people approaching one century of living who could not now, all of these years later, speak of those days when they lived through WWII. Brothers, lovers, futures lost. The pain of war, and its concomitant losses, colored their lives for decades and even today remains unspeakable. Yet those who can speak of and reminisce about those long-gone days too retain a pain that is in the background, remaining immeasurably present.
Recently, watching the World Series, I was reminded that half of the game's participants will lose. The best outcome, the only outcome we now know of, requires that half of the participants will lose. It is the same in war, yet in war even some of the participants on the winners' side will join some of those on the losers' side in experiencing death as a direct result of participating. It is a very interesting way that mankind has chosen to settle differences, to approach disagreements, to solve ego's control issues. 
Even though half of any war's participants will win, it seems like even the winners' booty consists mostly of the war then being over. Finis. I think there is a better way, and I think mankind will find it, or die trying.
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.— Anne Frank
11/1/06:
Goodness, can you believe it? November already. It has been a mild and pleasant fall here, but the last two nights have plummeted down to below freezing—it was 24 degrees outside the kitchen window this morning as I did breakfast dishes. Brr! Oh well, it gave clear skies for the Trick-or-Treaters. A last nod to Halloween with the dog-dressed-as-spider to the left.
As always, November brings birthdays for both Jay and myself, plus the Veterans' and Thanksgiving holidays. November this year brings the added, special treat of my folks coming out for a visit.
Looking forward to a good month. More later :)
It is vanity to desire a long life and to take no heed of a good life.— Thomas ă Kempis
Jardot's World: November Edition, 2006
All pictures on my page link to somewhere... go ahead, click!
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