Getting Things Done

 I had a little time this morning after my appointment so I went out into the garden to get some photos. The garden deck looked inviting, all dry and clean, but I kept moving. 

                  The witch hazel are still blooming.
Sunday we had our usual slow morning, I think. I can't remember. Oh, that was when Jill came over to continue cataloguing our family heritage treasures. I'm so happy that she is interested. She doesn't want any of them yet, though.

Then later we ate pizza and watched the Sounders win their home opener in the rain. We were glad to be watching from home.

                                                 Pretty Hellebore

On Monday we used our new washing machine. We didn't think it was filling with enough water, but later I read about it and the low water use is the new normal. Lots of housework got done.

                     Old style Hellebore with too many blooms to count. 

Tuesday morning is our Zoom meet up, and then we tackled the income taxes, with the aid of TurboTax. It was work, and took a lot of thinking, but we finished, filed with the IRS, and within an hour we got notification of acceptance. The refund was much bigger than we expected. It will pay the property taxes. 

We debated about watching the State Of the Union speech, but I am one who needs first hand information so I can form my own opinion. I watched 90 minutes of it before I gave up. I call it the Stolen Valor Speech. The president introduced one after another of folks with meritorious achievements or tragic circumstances, all the while soaking up the glory for himself. The State of the Union is diminished by him. 

      Oregon Grape is waiting for more warmth to burst into bloom. 

This morning, Wednesday, we were up early to get into the city to the medical center for my 8:00 Echocardiogram. My cardiologist is out of town so I'll get the results in a couple of weeks.  Now I'm blogging, and this afternoon Jill is coming over to do some more family history cataloguing.

Tomorrow I have finger surgery to remove cysts.

 Friday is breakfast and grocery shopping day.

 Saturday we will attend a memorial service for a long time friend. Jeanne was a teacher friend who suffered a lengthy illness from which she was finally released. We are happy for her. Later in the day we have another soccer match to watch.

We are so fortunate to be living here in the mild PNW while so much of the country is experiencing extreme weather.

Here the bulbs are popping up. Tete-a-tete daffodils are blooming. Others will soon follow, then tulips.

We count our blessings. 

Out With The Old...

 ...in with the new.

Some things don't last. Especially modern appliances.

When we had a repairman come out to fix the door on our dishwasher, Tom had him listen to the noise the clothes washer was making. The verdict - the bearings were going out. It would cost about as much to fix it as to buy a new one. If we let it just go until it died, we could end up with water all over the floor. 

We looked online. Washers were on sale at Lowes. Our repairman recommended Whirlpool. We went shopping. Our sales clerk recommended Whirlpool or Maytag. We studied and compared. We bought the medium size Whirlpool, even though I didn't really want the glass top. 

On Saturday it was delivered and installed.

Out with the old.

In with the new. With Tom doing a lot of vacuuming in between. Dirt accumulates. 

Getting it installed.

All done.

The crew was great. The product has been registered. The paperwork has been filed, and some old stuff removed from the file. 

Now I'm just going to enjoy the new washer and not think about the fact of how pi--ed off I am that the old one only lasted just short of four and a half years. :-/.

It has been slow going on this project. Eventually it will be something.

We were going to a protest rally today, but then we had to be home for the delivery, and then we got 40 degree rain, so we are staying home and are on slow mode. I had been doing a lot of walking, so of course I had to pay for that by developing heel pain. I can do time on my stationary bike, but it's not the same and the weight I wanted to shed is staying put. 

On a more positive note, the Sounders Soccer season starts tomorrow, just in time to replace the Olympics. We'll both be watching on TV now, so the cold rain won't matter, at least to us.

Go Sounders!

A Sunday In The Park, and More

 The title " A Sunday in the Park (With George) always makes me think of a famous painting by Georges Seurat, which is actually named "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte", that inspired a stage play by Sondheim called " A Sunday in the Park with George". 

My Sunday morning walk was nothing so grand, and fortunately I didn't have to wear bustles and corsets. 

The low winter sun was shining brightly, taking away the chill that still lingered in the shade of the fir trees.

This I where I walk three to five days a week, when weather and other demands don't interfere. The pathways are all paved, and circuitous routes give me my mile plus, with places to sit and rest.

Sometimes crows keep me company. Today there were also people to greet.

Dogs and their people play in the dog park. 

Lawn daisies are sprouting in our mild winter temps. 

It was a pleasurable escape this Sunday morning while I got my "gotta' keep moving" exercise.

When I got home I found Tom in the garden just finishing up a job, and we took a tour of the hellebores blooming here and there. 

These old varieties don't like to show their faces, but they seed freely. 

So Tom collected the seedlings to replant. This bed, a failed area from too much shade and tree roots, was perfect for planting seedlings. The are beginning to take on some size.

All of these seedings came from one plant, but look at the color variation!

Now the rest of the day has gotten away from me. I did get the Sunday paper read, and I fixed a photo problem on my desktop computer by finally editing and deleting many photos from my iCloud storage.

I'm making pozole for dinner and the fragrance of summering pork is wafting through the house. Time to go check on it and prepare for the next step. 

By the time most of your read this it will probably be Monday, but there will be left overs. :-)

Happy Valentines Day

 

The rain has stopped. The morning sky is clearing and the sun is shining. 

Happy Valentines Day!

We are going to a party this afternoon, but it's not a Valentine party, it's a 70th birthday party for a member of our garden club. I'll be happy for a little mix and mingle, a change of pace, and a function where I don't have to do anything but be a guest.

I've been watching the Olympics, going for my walks, and working on a sewing project.

These quilt squares are like sewing puzzles. I'm working on a small project with three of these. With my clumsy fingers, it's a challenge, but I needed a challenge. 

OK, time to get rolling. I have my "long program" of PT to do this morning.

I hope you are having a happy day, filled with sweetness.

Yes, They Were There

 Seattle held a big celebration on Wednesday. 

First, 50,000 ticketed fans packed the stadium for the Super Bowl trophy presentation, along with speeches and a lot more rah-rah. Jill, Cousin Andy, and Jake were there.

Then there was a two mile long parade from the stadium to Seattle Center through the city. Seahawk players rode on top of double decker busses and some players "escaped" to mingle with the crowds. It was a party. 

 Somewhere between 800,000 and 1,000,000 people packed in and lined the streets. Jill reports that everyone was just having a good time. 

Jill and the guys were at the start of the parade and then tried to get home. The light rail stations were packed and overflowing. They walked further south and got an UBER to get home. 

Jill reports that she was tired but happy with the experience. Seattle will be recovering and buzzing for days to come. 

I watched it all from home. 

You Probably Heard.....

 We won the Super Bowl! The Seattle Seahawks defeated the New England Patriots 29 -13 to win the title of NFL Champions in a game that, despite the final score, was tense until into the fourth quarter. 

Jill joined us for the game and brought nachos. We added a few things and snacked and watched, and Jill did a lot of pacing. She is a season ticket holder and had attended the last three season and playoff games. They were close and tense. The Seahawks scored four field goals before the Patriots scored, well into the second half. We were nervous until we had a 15 point lead. The Hawks got that and held it. 

The Seattle Times headline said "Redemption", because New England beat us in the 2014 Super Bowl with an interception in the end zone in the last  seconds, which left Seattle fans shocked. This was pay back. But for many of us it was just a good, hard fought game with a good ending. There will be a parade in Seattle on Wednesday to celebrate. If it is anything like the victory parade we had in 2013 there may be a million people there. Not me though. 

Those of you who watched have your own opinions of the half time show and the commercials, which are always debated.

I don't know much about Bad Bunny, but I thought the show was very well done, a good representation of ordinary life in Puerto Rico.

My favorite commercial was Budweiser's featuring a Clydesdale and Eagle. Like Bad Bunny's theme, it demonstrated love. That's good with me, and needed these days.

An now it's won and done. Celebrating will continue. It's good for our city and region. 

And I have the Olympics to watch!

How Should I Spend My Time?

 I'm way behind schedule today, but it's my self imposed schedule, so I guess I can blow it if I chose. 

Thursdays are good days because my PT routine is short, we have no usual commitments, and we often get up late, because we can. 

We were finally getting going when I remembered we have a 12 Man flag buried away. Tom found it and we had to get it up on the gate at the end of our driveway, where there is a chance someone besides us will see it. 

As you can see it's another blue sky day. It's Super Bowl weekend, the Seahawks are in the Super Bowl, and we count ourselves among the 12th Man contingent. 

Now Tom is outside doing more winter pruning. He is getting a lot more done than I am.

I finally got into that tub of fabrics last week and along with some I had left in my scrap bin, and some my sister gave me, I had sorted to color coordinate. I was nervous about actually sewing anything because it has been two years since I even touched my sewing machine. 

Years ago I found on-line quilt block patterns and instructions from Generations. I went back to them to relearn how to do Weathervane. It was slow going, but I did it!

With my next block I'll use more contrast, but playing with color is the fun of it all. 

I was going to be well into my next block by now, but  I still haven't started yet. I'll give it an hour before lunch time, but after lunch I have to go for a walk in the sunshine. 4:00 is when I usually quit, sit, and work my on line puzzles and catch up on emails and Facebook. Then there's dinner to prepare. 

See what I mean about spending my time?

 

Monday, Not Monday

Monday is usually housecleaning and laundry day, but we did that Sunday, because I had an appointment Monday in the city. It was a pre-op check up for finger surgery that I have scheduled for later in the month, to have a ganglion cyst removed from a finger. Small stuff compared to my usual chopping up. 

Getting into Seattle in the morning can be a hassle, but fortunately the traffic was light so we had plenty of time to make make mistakes in navigating the under connectivity of the medical center to find the right office. I got a walk in. :-) 

When we got back home the rain had stopped so I took a stroll around the garden.

It's Groundhog's Day and the report from Punxsutawney Phil is that winter will continue. Not so much here in the PNW.

Hellebores and snowdrops in bloom. 

Weighted down by raindrops. 

Moss coats trees. 

Yes, roses. We still have not had a deep freeze. 

Bejeweled primroses. 

Winter blooming cyclamen. 

Then I finally got into that bin of fabrics we brought home almost two weeks ago. I did some sorting and color coordinating. Some, like the Christmas fabrics, will just get stored away. For the rest, I'll just see what evolves. Tomorrow I'll get out cutting tools and sewing machine and go on line to refamiliarize myself with some quilt blocks how to. 

And now I see that I need to turn the page on the one calendar we still have hanging in the house, on the bulletin board right over the computer.

It's February, and more importantly, it's Super Bowl week!