Perils of Caffeine in the Evening

We exercised our franchise at midmorning, almost certainly for the last time walking over to the Good Shepherd Center (a former Catholic home for “wayward girls” now owned by the City) and down to the basement, where the voting booths have been for decades in the Wallingford Senior Center.  Although we live in a large city, this electoral experience resolves the compound equations of society into their elemental x’s and y’s, and there’s an unmistakable small-town feel to the activity. (click any photo to enlarge).

The polling place has generally also been manned by seniors, often the same folks keeping the book for the same precinct year after year.

We’re one of the last counties in the state to still have polling places to go to. Next year, unless there’s a glitch, we’ll most likely be voting 100% by mail. I’ll miss the Shirley Jackson-esque ritual of walking to the GSC with a cheat-sheet in hand and the serendipity of running into neighbors I haven’t seen in months, neighbors who, despite whatever they’ve got into their houses or their driveways, are brandishing that same single vote in their pockets that I am, a precious coin granted by parents and grandparents and legions of forbears who’ve made that same quotidian trek to the voting booth.  Looks like others feel the same way.

For the last couple of years, I’ve been receiving an absentee ballot anyway, because I’m so often out of town, but, when I can, I carry it over to the polling place on election day instead of mailing it, just for the feeling of physical participation.

Results are starting to roll across the country towards us in an inexorable wave, and I’ll try not to stay up past midnight waiting for just one more state to fall.

I welcomed November by getting up uncharacteristically early for a Saturday and heading to the Olympic Peninsula to kayak along the Dungeness Spit, a 5-mile-long sandspit that extends into the Strait of Juan de Fuca near Sequim. It’s a National Wildlife Refuge, and I’ve been wanting to paddle there for some time, but it’s a longish trip requiring a ferry ride.  One of my email paddle groups, South Sound Area Kayakers, had the trip on their schedule and provided an excuse for me to haul my butt out there.

Turns out it was a good thing I was in the company of experienced paddlers, because the wind kicked up from the northeast and sent 3′ - 4′ waves to bedevil us.  I’ve never been kayaking in wave action like that, and I actually found it exhilarating.  Paddling in it was more like rock climbing, as I watched the waves coming at me and picked where to sink my paddle.  On the trip back to the launch point, winds were gusting to 30 mph, and I had a tough time keeping my boat tracking on course as the wind came from the side.  At one point, I was almost pushed ashore, but I got myself pointed directly upwind away from shore and clawed my way back out to sea.

(Click any photo to engorge):

The spit was teeming with birds, including this rainbow assortment of species all taking advantage of this avian park-bench:

At the end of the spit, there’s a nifty lighthouse you can visit.  As with most lighthouses now, the Coast Guard doesn’t staff it - we encountered several folks who were members of the Lighthouse Keepers Association.  They were there for the week, giving tours and doing light maintenance (well, not maintaining the light, exactly - cutting grass, etc.).

Here’s a view of the spit looking south from the top of the lighthouse.  Those are the Olympic Mountains in the distance:

For all the unnerving weather we encountered, we were treated to a nice sunset at the launch point:

Here’s my GPS track for the trip (click on the “Larger Map” link for a better view).  I was thinking it might register a lot of elevation gain cuz of all the bobbing up and down I did, but it wisely registered 0.

And here’s a slide show with a lot more photos.

Halloween arrives on our porch:

And a neighbor punk(in)s the Republican ticket:

Struggling up out of the murk of sleep this morning and shedding the patina of dream residue (I usually never remember my dreams), a bit of flotsam remained that could both make my fortune and open the exciting world of video gaming to us sedentary sods who have trouble winning at MS Solitaire.

It’ll be called The Editorial Wii.  Wielding the Wii remote like an angry red pencil, the player will slash furiously as a stream of execrable prose comes at him from the console.  Points will be awarded for sniffing out “lead” for “led”, “It was a dark and stormy night”, “A pirate ship appeared on the horizon” and “share with you”.  One of the buttons on the remote will plant “awk” adroitly on clumsy passages.

An advanced version of the game, and something that will get some hardware sales going, will feature electrodes at the end of each finger and thumb.  With these, the player can indulge the play-editor’s greatest fantasy, air-typing withering rejection letters.

I think I’ve really nailed it this time - leave your congratulations in the comments, and start nursing your jealousy.

Unless I’m mispronouncing “Wii”.

We’re off to a Halloween party - I have to leave a 3-3 Penn State-Ohio State game at halftime (click to enlarge if you can stomach it)

After assiduously avoiding sight-and-sound political chatter this season, and being about 99% successful, I inexplicably found myself, along with Mrs. Perils, at a downtown Seattle luncheon featuring Al Gore in support of Governor Chris Gregoire, who is in a close re-election race.

We were lured there by a young friend and former employee who has been working on Democratic campaigns this fall.  She was a “table captain” for this event, and I believe it’s the first time I’ve been in a situation where she out-ranked me.

Our table was a Silver table (the lowest contribution level), and while we were located in the same area code as the Goreacle, it may not have been the same electoral precinct.  Nonetheless, I was able to grab these photographs, with the aid of the zoom on the S3 IS (Click to enlarge):

While I’ve always agreed wholeheartedly with the goal of reducing carbon emissions and inhibiting global warming, I’ve tended to think it was a pipedream, owing to burgeoning populations and development in the rest of the world, as well as willful myopia domestically.  I’ve sort of resigned myself to its inevitability, as I believed that it could only be avoided by a severe dampening of economic activity that would have miniscule political support anywhere in the world, even Seattle.

Then, yesterday for the first time, a nickel sort of dropped about how an initiative might actually move forward.  And, while a nickel won’t buy you the whole candy bar, here’s how you might get the other 95 cents: Al compared the push to develop alternative fuel sources to the industrial revolution of 19th-century England, a period of rapid dislocation and transformation, driven by a perceived necessity. I started to see that an economy, an alternative economy, might be built on the pursuit of alternate fuels and more efficient use of carbon fuel, spurred by the specter of Peak Oil.

I think it’s still a long shot, but for the first time I thought I felt a zephyr of a fresh wind blowing.  Here’s a video of Al winding up his speech:

As I was leaving the event, I had the most humiliating and frightening experience. I was at at ATM machine when I was approached by an old lady wearing a McCain button. She beat me senseless with her cane, pinned me to the sidewalk with her walker and drew a big, red “M” on my forehead with her lipstick. If this doesn’t scare you about who will be running the country in a McCain administration, I don’t know what will.

Yeah, the police didn’t believe me, either.

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)!

Click to enlarge

It’s been downright balmy here in Milwaukee the last couple of days, and I’ve gotten out on bike rides each of the last two nights.  Last night, I took a detour down to the shore of Lake Michigan, and was rewarded with this moonrise - the Hunter’s Moon, I guess it’s called.  Actually, the full moon is tonight, but I probably won’t see it because it socked in and started raining this morning.

I have just one more presidential debate to avoid, and I think I have a pretty chance of succeeding - I have to go to dinner tonight with a gaggle of my client’s salesmen.  I doubt that the debate will be showing at any of the possible venues we’ll be haunting.

Glacier Peak from my plane on Sunday.

I’m not sure what happened, but Wordpress apparently didn’t like the company I was keeping and decided to turn on password-protection to my comments section over the weekend. After reading about it in Wired, I quickly remedied the situation, so please stop in and leave your scent.

Winging my way to Milwaukee today, another weekend prematurely torn asunder by the arrival of the airport shuttle.  While Saturday began as a perfect fall day, I wanted to do nothing at 8:30 except quaff some more sleep.  I awoke at the awkward hour of 11:30, awkward because any hope of a grandiose kayak outing involving a drive or ferry ride was out of the question in the stinginess of these post-solstice afternoons.

I dithered away another couple of hours trying to figure out how to salvage the remains of my only weekend day when my son said he was thinking of going on a bike ride.  It never even crosses my mind to ride with him, as he’s hella strong, without an extra ounce of body fat and I’m … going on 59, remember?  But my sense of panic was galling me, and I asked him if I could go along, noting that the pace would have to be a bit leisurely.  He was surprisingly accommodating, and we decided to strike out for Seward Park and a spin along the shore of Lake Washington.

He was a gentleman about the pace, and I drafted him greedily.  It was chilly but sunny, and the lake and mountains in the distance made a pleasing backdrop.  I even took a couple of “pride” pulls at the front, and he genially dropped back and pretended to draft me.

Here’s a view of Mt. Rainier over Lake Washington from Seward Park (click to enlarge):

And here’s a picture of my son at Seward Park as he waits for me to quit gasping and bleeding out the ears:

I once again ginned up my GPS in order to chronicle the ride, a map of which can be seen here .