Sunset from our vacation house in Sequim, WA

We're having a great time exploring the Olympic Peninsula.  Today we went to hike the Dungeness Spit.  Tomorrow we're kayaking in Port Angeles.  Tuesday we're going back to Vancouver for my birthday.  Wednesday and Thursday we're hiking in and around the Olympic National forest.  Friday we're spending our last day touring Seattle, and on Saturday we head back home.  I've been taking pictures with my fancy camera and forgot my adapter for it, so I can't post any of those pictures yet.

Lunch with Michelle in Vancouver

Vacation Time!

Well it was up in the air for a while whether I would be spending my 50th birthday in California with my brother or in the Pacific Northwest with other family and friends. My brother's medical issue has been resolved so it's northwest I go. The down side of this is I won't be seeing my brother or finally getting to meet Naomi Old Lady In The Hills, however, I will be meeting Michele from Knock Knock It's Cancer and spending time with Larena Life At 40 Something. In another month, Larena will need to change the name of her blog to Life at 50 Something. ;-) I will have intermittent Internet, so I'll try to post pix of Vancouver, BC and the Olympic Peninsula.

Man of Steel

We went to see the new Superman movie tonight.  I think they tried too hard to make it different from the original and wound up with a confusing mess.  They jumped forward and backward in time in the script, which in itself doesn't mean disaster for a film, but their jumping was not smooth, and it made a jumbled mess of what should have been a good story.  Now I'm not a comic book fan, and I'm not a Superman franchise fan.  I saw the original a couple times, it was good, although I did hate Margo Kidder in the role of Lois Lane.  I didn't find her attractive or lovable.  That said, I don't know if Amy Adams is any better  a Lois Lane than Kidder, because it seemed like her part in the movie was missing some chunks.  I wonder how much of her part got left on the cutting room floor, because she went from stranger to love interest of Superman with no screen time to connect how or when that had time to happen.  I did like Michael Shannon as the villain.  His acting seemed the best in the movie, followed by Kevin Costner and Diane Lane as the adoptive parents of Superman.  It also had way too many fight scenes.  I enjoy fight scenes that drive a story, and I enjoy special effects in fight scenes because, well, they're fun, but in this movie they spent way too much time in blowing shit up and destroying cities, it was just overkill, pun intended.  I would say this is a good enough movie to watch on the big screen for the action, but I'd make it a matinee and not pay full price.

Staying out of trouble

I'm not supposed to lift over ten pounds for the six weeks of my recovery, so I've been reading quite a bit.  That's not enough for me though, so I'm teaching two hours per day (sitting on my butt lecturing), and trying hard not to start painting, repairing, or doing any home improvement projects.  I've found I need to keep my hands busy doing something.  So I've been stringing beads, making necklaces, bracelets, earrings, and a keychain.  I'm only three weeks into my six, I'm not sure how much longer I can last.  Maybe I'll start sculpting in clay . . . Hmmmm?

Stir crazy

So I'm sitting here on my butt recovering from surgery.  I'm feeling fine by the way, but I have strict orders not to lift anything over ten pounds for six weeks.  This is frustrating for me because I've got things I want to do around the house, and nobody is home to help me, because M and B are at work.  I did get B to remove all the pollen laden furniture off the front porch this morning so I could hose everything down.  Now I have a clean porch, but all my furniture is sitting in the side yard because B didn't have time to put it back before he had to leave for work.  I'm finding myself sitting here looking at things and wondering, "is that less than ten pounds, can I lift it, move it, clean it, paint it?" This is going to be a long six weeks.

In a poetry kind of mood

And were that life - now gone from hand -
And I reborn - again
Would search the world -
for one brief glance -
That life - that love - that ken.

KS - 12/10/12

Happy May Day!

The May Day Fairies were up at dawn again this year and left a collection of lollies for good children in the neighborhood. For some reason I am very sleepy.

Spring!

One of my favorite scents of Spring is lilacs.  They remind me of the Lilac Festival in Rochester, NY when I was little, and our neighbor, Mrs. Fuller's backyard that had a wall of lilacs and you could smell them all over.  These lilacs are on my daily walk with the dog.  Every morning I stop to smell them.  You need to smell them as much as possible while they're in fresh bloom, because when they start to fade, the stink is unbelievable!  :-)

The old and the new

Today I went on a field trip with students in our Environmental Studies department. We took them to see an old grist mill and a new wind turbine. We also got to see an old windmill that was used to pump water. It was part of a greater Earth Day / week festivities in our area. It was interesting to see various types of windmills that ground wheat for flour, pumped water for livestock, and generated electricity for a community college. The old grist mill had cloth sails, but they could not be put on because the winds were around 15-20 miles per hour and that was too strong. The winds had to be between 5-10 m.p.h. Who knew? The water pumping windmill would operate regardless of the wind speed. The modern wind turbine had to have winds over 3 m.p.h. but not more than 80.