Perils of Caffeine in the Evening

The world finally slowed down a tad, before turning on its heel and hurtling into 2010.  I’ll recap December a bit, then turn and face the new year head (and blog) on.

The month started, I think, with a cold, enough of one to make me postpone a business trip to eastern Washington.  It was still lingering a bit on a Friday afternoon when I boarded a plane for a week away from home, first to visit my mom in Toledo for a weekend, then on to Milwaukee for a week of work.

We had a really pleasant visit.  I did something over that weekend I hadn’t done in about 40 years - practiced my trumpet in the basement of the house I grew up in.  See, I’ve been hauling it on my business trips since I’ve been playing in this band, because laying off for a whole week would just kill any progress I’ve been making all fall, and our holiday concert was coming up the next weekend.  (In the hotel rooms, I put my cup mute in, sit on the floor and point the horn under the bed. On a good day, it might sound to anyone in adjacent rooms like space alien sex.)

We made a trip to visit the Toledo Art Museum.  It’s one of those venerable old civic institutions endowed by industrial barons of the gilded age (in this case, Libbey Glass), and has a surprisingly extensive collection.  I would say it’s easily twice the size of Seattle’s.  Toledo was known for a long time as the Glass City, owing to its housing the corporate headquarters of Libbey Glass, Owens Corning, Owens-Illinois and Libbey-Owens-Ford.  It’s no surprise, then, that one of its featured collections is glass art and artifacts, dating from ancient Egypt.  They opened a Glass Pavilion annex a few years ago, and we watched a glassblowing exhibition and perused the exhibits (Click any photo to enlarge):

On Sunday, I did a few odd jobs, including hanging some curtains, that required me to go out to the garage and riff through my dad’s tool shelves. They are laden with tools that date from the 40s and 50s, and the sight of them stirs some of my oldest memories. My dad was a delegator, and when he was doing some job around the house, he always wanted one of us there with him - ostensibly to learn the particular task or skill, but more to the point, to run to the garage and retrieve tools as he needed them. As I touched them, I could hear his words: “electric drill; brace-and-bit; 3-in-one oil; Phillips screwdriver (this one confused me for a while, as they called me “Philip” in my early years). The tools remain there even with the infrequent use they get now, a shrine to a doggedly resourceful DIY guy.

On Saturday, we played tour-guide for a friend from high school whom we had not seen since 1980. In fact, we’d only exchanged sporadic Christmas cards for most of that time and, since we stopped sending them altogether a few years ago, even that exchange was entirely one-sided. For the last 5 months, I’d been carrying her 2008 card around, meaning to respond via some sort of snail-mail device, but I just couldn’t figure out how to use a stamp you can’t lick.

A couple of months ago, however, she found me on Facebook, and two-way correspondence resumed. It turned out that her husband has been commuting to Seattle from their home near Boston, teaching for a semester at Bainbridge Graduate Institute in the idyllic Islandwood setting, and she wanted to use it as an opportunity to make her first-ever visit to Seattle.

Her intended arrival last weekend coincided with the last weekend of her husband’s semester. She’s a person who makes decisions and gets things done, and by the time we started talking dates and times, she had an itinerary put together for her and her husband that included a day in Seattle, a jetboat trip to Victoria, BC for a day there, and a float plane trip from there to Vancouver for two days in that lovely city.

Saturday turned out to be their Seattle day, so I picked her up at her downtown hotel in the morning and we hustled down to a ferry bound for Bainbridge and an opportunity to see her husband’s teaching venue. As luck would have it, Saturday’s weather started out gorgeous and then improved as the day played out. Mount Rainier stood completely disrobed and dominated the southern horizon to our left as the ferry left the terminal, and the Olympics beckoned us from the west.

We found the Islandwood venue, and her husband guided us around the facility. It occupies about 250 acres of second- or third-growth timberland that became available in the mid-90s and was secured as a quasi-wilderness encampment for school children’s outings, corporate retreats and the like. It was designed and built out using as much “green” technology as was available at the time. They even treat their own sewage.  I remember reading about it when it was first endowed, but this was my first opportunity to see it.  It’s nice to see an opportunity like that capitalized upon.  It’s a sweet setting, and will only improve as the trees thicken back to old-growth dimensions.

We had lunch there amongst faculty and students, and it quickly became apparent that her husband had been a huge hit.  So many faculty and students engaged us as we walked around that I started to feel like I was traveling with Mick Jagger.  It was very gratifying to see the mutual enthusiasm he and they had for each other.

We were finally able to tear him away from the facility and spirit him onto the ferry back to Seattle, where Mrs. Perils was waiting to meet us for some city tour-guiding.  We had intended to head directly for Pike Place Market, the levitating fish, etc, but Mrs. Perils advised by cell phone that the place was mobbed with participants in some huge cheese festival.

We decided to instead walk along the waterfront to the Olympic Sculpture Park, an outdoor exhibit sponsored by the Seattle Art Museum.  It’s been around now for about two years, but we hadn’t yet seen it ourselves.  Pictured below are three pretty interesting pieces:

• Eagle by Alexander Calder, 1971
• Typewriter Eraser by Claes Oldenburg, 1999
• Perre’s Ventaglio III by Beverly Pepper, 1967

(Click any photo to enlarge)

I’d like to go back after I’ve done a little research into what’s there.  I left Saturday thinking that it could host a few more pieces, but after perusing their web site, I see that there was a lot of stuff that I missed, probably due to the multi-level design of the place and the amount of socializing we were doing.

Once we’d zig-zagged through the Park, we headed back up Western Avenue to the Market, which had by then thinned out to the point where it was somewhat navigable.  Fish were thrown and observed, the original Starbucks store photographed and a fascinating cavalcade of people rubbed and bumped against.

We initially wanted to have dinner at Etta’s, a seafood restaurant right next to the Market, but their waiting list was too long, so we diverted across the street to a place called Cutter’s, where we noshed on sushi and other delectables and sipped beverages.  The sun was setting gloriously as we settled up, and we walked outside to Steinbruck Park for one more look at the Sound:

Anecdote from the wayback machine: I was in the company of our friend and Mrs. Perils on the occasion of my closest opportunity to participate in a bar fight.  Our friend was in Columbus to join her parents to watch the Ohio State-Michigan game, and Mrs. Perils was in town visiting me as well.  The three of us were out on High Street sampling the campus bars, and had landed in the Heidelberg North, a dingy underground grotto of a place with the ambiance of an ill-maintained urinal.  As we sat at the bar drinking beer, we were approached by a fellow who apparently felt that I had no business in the company of even one gorgeous woman, let alone two, and made it plain that he intended to prise one or both of them away from me.  I stepped between him and them (afraid to give either of them the opportunity to voluntarily ditch me) and told the guy to buzz off.

Fortunately, he was so drunk he could hardly stand.  After some unintelligible insults, someone guided him gently away for a nap on a distant barstool, maidenly honor was saved and I was spared the ignominy of dying on the floor choking on sawdust of dubious provenance.

To Mrs. Perils today. I won’t divulge her age, but I will say that she misses Truman.

Since I’m living the high life gallivanting around the country, I’m going to make sure to save her some extra snacks from the airplane on my way home Friday night.  Perhaps our son will do something festive in my stead.

It’s nice that it falls on the Veteran’s Day holiday.  Way back when I worked for the state, I even got the day off.

Have a fine day, dear!

Over the weekend, I got a birthday card from my mom, and tucked inside was a reminiscence of the October days in 1949 surrounding my birth. My mom and dad met at Ohio State, my mom a year or so out of high school and my dad a veteran attending on the GI bill. My mom tells of how intimidating it was as the university culture was transformed by this flood of vets, predominantly older and all male, and how the faculty seemed to gravitate to them and became dismissive of women “pursuing their MRS degree”.

My parents married in September of 1948, and I was conceived within sight of Ohio Stadium, a product of malfunctioning contraception (sorry, Mom!). They spent the summer of 1949 living with my paternal grandparents, and my dad returned to OSU to graduate at the end of fall quarter while my mom remained in the clutches of her inlaws. In her words:

This lovely October day brought back so many pleasant memories, I wanted to share them with you.  Whenever I experience a warm autumn day, the memories come flooding back.  That summer, your dad’s dog died.  He had had this Scottie since he was the age of 12.  The dog was 15 and going strong until the night he went after a ham bone and in the process of bringing it home, was hit by a car.  We were coming home from visiting some friends when we discovered him on the road.  This was so sad for your dad.  He cried like a baby. 

It wasn’t too long until he found another Scottie puppy.  The rest of the summer, your dad really worked training him.  However, since I was home with the dog and since your dad had to go back to OSU for another quarter, the dog and I became great friends.  When I came home from the hospital after you were born, the dog was so happy to have me there that he ran around and around me so I could scarcely move. Much later, I felt really bad as that was the end of my total commitment to the dog as I was busy trying to learn the ways of motherhood.  So I forgot the dog. 

Your dad left for school and then when you were about to make an appearance, the grandparents took me to the hospital.  Grandpa was so excited (on the way to the hospital - ed.) he had a slight accident by running into the back of a car.  The fellow told him to go on as it was just a bump.  Your dad was on his way home for the weekend and didn’t know what great things were happening.  When you and I came home from the hospital, your aunt Margie (Mom’s sister) came up to stay with me.  Good thing, too, because your grandma and I were really ignorant.  Margie had stayed with a friend of hers who had had a baby, so she knew what to do.  Therefore, we all survived.

Thus I lurched into the world 59 years ago today, raised on love and, apparently, hearsay, with the good fortune to slip in between two beloved dogs.  Thanks for making the effort to write that, Mom (as well as the effort to have me)!

Today also marks the 34th annual recurrence of the day Mrs. Perils made an uncharacteristic lapse in good judgment and became my bride. Backstory here.

When I travel, I usually hoard a few packets of pretzels and peanuts to proffer upon my return. This innoculates me from higher expectations that might involve expensive trips to duty-free stores. I’ll have to check my luggage pockets, but I don’t believe I’ve retained any from this trip, and it’s going to cost me.

We have anniversary dinner reservations at a neat little neighborhood restaurant, Tilth, which features eclectic organic fare, and is owned and chef-ed by a woman that Mrs’ Perils knows from her climbing gym. (She’s the last person you’d think of as a social climber, but there you go).

I’m thinking we might do a little bit of urban hiking this afternoon, and arrive at the restaurant in good spirits and with healthy appetites.

Update: I found a couple packets of airline nibbles I saved from last weekend:

I think I’ll take her to dinner anyway.

This weekend, back in my hometown in Ohio, they held my 40th high school class reunion. I had originally planned to go, tagging on a hop across Lake Michigan after working last week in Milwaukee. It would have worked out nicely, since my mom still lives in town and I could have combined the festivities with a visit with her and chores around her house. However, my client decided he wanted me in Milwaukee a week earlier, so I sent my regrets.

Since my high school social life revolved almost exclusively around the band, my friends were drawn from 5 or 6 different classes (older and younger) rather than just my graduating class. And while it’s true that Mrs. Perils and I met in high school band, she was in the class of ‘69. For these reasons, plus the fact that we’ve lived in Seattle for the last 33 years, I don’t have super-strong ties to anyone from my class. There are people I’d enjoy seeing, but it’s not like we correspond, or even send Christmas cards.

Still, it’s a milestone of sorts, another chink in my armor. The reunion committee did a really nice job of reaching out to find people, and I got nicely reacquainted through a website they set up to post photos and stories. Some of the stories, of course, were startling in their portrayal of lives that you could never have imagined for certain individuals.

Maybe I’ll make the 50th. From my senior class yearbook:

(Click to enlarge)

Guess I wasn’t what you’d call a varsity athlete! Pitiable male pride probably led me to list “Intramurals”. Sheesh. Also, they misspelled my name - it’s one “l”. Yeah, I was on the yearbook staff, but I did the sports. Still, you’d think I’d check my own entry.

And here’s one from the Perils archive - that’s me and Mrs. Perils gettin’ down at the senior prom. Please be gentle if you comment: