Blah Blah Blog

For years, I've had a bathroom filled with orange decor in each of the places I've lived. The one at the condo was quite understated, but the theme was still there. I decided a while ago that it'll be a long time before we can remodel the downstairs bathroom in our house, and what I'd really like is to wait until we can do a major remodel, updating the kitchenette and adding a bar, maybe even turning the shed into more interior space and changing the size of the bedroom I use as my office.

That won't happen any time soon, but there was an urgent need to refinish the bathtub. Since I had to empty out the whole room to do that, I decided to finally paint the room orange. That's been quite a process, and it didn't help that it was my first time ever painting a room. It looks pretty good, all things considered.

The woman at the tub refinishing business who scheduled the job said they don't recommend using any sort of bath mat on the new surface, but also warned that the new finish is very slick. I don't need any slip-and-fall injuries, so I asked if they can do a non-slip finish. She said yes, I asked for it, and she forgot to tell the guy who came to do it. So he's coming back today to finish that, and I can finally finish the room up.

I already had to do the first coat, a second coat, and touch ups, and now I need to do some more touch ups because I got some of the silver spray paint I used on the orange. It was worth it, though, because the old heater was tan and rusty, and looked terrible.

The cabinet doors are also silver, and I wanted to do the vanity doors as well, but I couldn't remove them. Neither the screws in the doors, nor the ones in the hinges would budge. Oh well.

More to come.

I'll have to scrape some orange paint off spots where it's not supposed to be, and use a little more to cover up some spraypaint I got on the wall while turning the heater silver, but the bathroom is done enough to show off.

BONUS Saturdogs

Many thanks to:
Animals Being Dicks
Señor Gif
k00l 4 k@+z
Almost Famous Cats
Cats, Beavers & Ducks
Derpy Cats
FAT CATS
FUCKYEAHFELINES!
CHEEZburger
Every Day is Caturday
Cats and Dogs
And everyone else who happened to put a cat or dog where I ended up seeing it this week!

My oldest sister's been in town because my niece just had her second kid, a daughter named Rauri. We met up for dinner last night at Avocados, and I really want this rooster from their front window.

I filmed with Live in Everett yesterday afternoon. I'm still losing my voice a lot, so the timing wasn't great. But I got a service I normally pay $45 plus tip for free (I tried to pay or at least tip but they wouldn't let me) so that was nice. I'll of course share the video when it comes out next week. The lobby where we were is so pretty.

Garrett and I went to our neighborhood joint for brunch for the first time in ages. Normally they open at 11am, but during football season, they open at 9am which is much more aligned to our schedule. And we finally realized we can swap toast slices so we can have two kinds.

Now that so much of the Northern area at Langus is gone, I decided to do the island and the paved part for the first time in a while.

Friday night I went to The Great Junk Hunt in Monroe with Melissa, Christina, and Georgia, and we had a nice dinner at El Lago before. I really like the big windows and view there. We paid extra to be able to go to the Junk Hunt on the first night and it was surprisingly crowded. I was looking for orange stuff for the bathroom and didn't really find anything, and all of us were looking for signs saying "laugh" because I mentioned it's possible to cut them and make them say "ugh." No luck for either. But I got Garrett some nice soaps, and found a cool pig tray, a creepy miniature face pitcher, and fireplace end irons which truly fit with our fireplace and decor.

Steve says hi.

They've removed a lot of the stuff at the ferry terminal construction site and moved the fences that surrounded the whole area in to just enclose the stuff that's still there. The project might be on a bit of a hiatus right now because the bids they received were all too high.

BONUS Saturdogs

Many thanks to:
Animals Being Dicks
Señor Gif
k00l 4 k@+z
Almost Famous Cats
Cats, Beavers & Ducks
Derpy Cats
FAT CATS
FUCKYEAHFELINES!
CHEEZburger
Every Day is Caturday
Cats and Dogs
And everyone else who happened to put a cat or dog where I ended up seeing it this week!

I figured it was time to revisit the other side of Langus near the boat launch again since it had not only been a while, but so much of the area I've been going to is gone now. And it's hunting season. This morning's thick fog made the river disappear, which was cool for photos.

Here are a couple of fun layout flips I made and the original photos.

More fall loveliness.

The fog was still quite thick and I love that my last turn in the video takes me right out of it.

https://instagram.com/p/BqDHOi8A3JL

Later we had a lovely brunch in West Seattle with a lot of friends we haven't seen a long time. The impetus was Brian's visit, he's the one who took this. Great to see everyone and we made pretty good time both ways.

Recently when I was at the waxing salon, I mentioned that I write for Live in Everett, and the co-owner Brandi who works on me said she really wanted to be on it. She also mentioned that she tried before to get the guys to come down and film, but neither of them would get anything waxed. Of course I volunteered!

I chose Waxology because they encourage men to come in, which isn't always the case with salons. It's also a gorgeous, inviting place, which is very different from some of the waxing closets I've seen in the backs of nail and hair salons over the years.

💍 Marriages: One. Our 8th anniversary was last week!.

💔 Divorces: None.

🍼 Children: Zero and I've never wanted any.

🐦 Pets right now: Two cats, Sam and Steve.

⚕️ Surgeries: None, unless you count a cyst that had to be cut out of my back.

✒ Tattoos: Lots, and more coming.

👂🏼 Piercings: All I wear now is one nipple ring, but I used to have lots of them.

✋🏼 Quit a job: Only one, technically. I quit the TTY relay when I landed my ad agency job.

🌴 Been to an Island: Lots of them! In fact, I walk at one almost every week. Been to three Hawaiian islands and lots of local ones, plus a few international ones.

🚘 What do you drive: 1996 Plymouth Breeze. It was my husband's grandmother's and I got it for free when she aged out of driving and living on her own.

✈️ Flown on a plane: Lots. I'm excited that my next flight could be from my own city! Commercial service begins here in a couple of months.

🍹 Favourite Drink: For hard alcohol, a fresquila, which is Fresca (grapefruit soda) and tequila, preferably Jose Cuervo silver. I also like red wine. For refreshment throughout the day I like ice water. In the morning I always have one hot cup of coffee when I wake up and an iced coffee later on.

❤ Fallen in love: Yes.

💔 Been cheated on: No.

🚑 Rode in an ambulance: No.

🎤 Sang karaoke: Yes, but it's been ages. One of the only things I miss about Seattle is Crescent Lounge, a dive bar that had karaoke early on Sundays. There's also a really cool private room karaoke bar called Rock Box I miss. There's karaoke in Everett, but I don't stay up late enough.

❄ Ice skating: I've never been good at it and it hurts my feet, which is strange, because I was practically born with roller skates on and used to love roller blading.

🏄 Been surfing: No

🚢 Been on a Cruise: No. I'm really sad that we talked ourselves out of the Star Trek Cruise. Our favorite band, Information Society, headlined!

🏍 Rode on a motorcycle: Not that I can remember. And I wouldn't care to.

🏍 Own a motorcycle: No, thank you.

🐴 Rode on a horse: Does a pony count? I've ridden briefly on a pony. My own pony! I had a pony and a goat for a while.

😲 Almost died: I don't think I was very close but one time I was in a lot of pain and thought I might die and made the decision to die in my own bed rather than try to get to the emergency room.

🏥 Stayed in a hospital: Never.

🍑 Favourite fruit: I don't think I could choose, I love a lot of them.

🌓 Favourite Day: It's hard to choose because Saturday is the one day I don't exercise and I get kind of annoyed not exercising in the morning, but Saturday's a better day because there's no work and no work the next day.

🌈 Favourite colour: Depends. Obviously I'm a big fan of orange since I have an orange bathroom.

📲 Last phone call: My old coworker who was supposed to meet me for brunch calling to apologize for forgetting once he saw the messages I sent him.

📱 Last text: My husband showing me his new office.

💀 Watch someone pass: No.

🍵️ Coffee or Tea: Coffee with salted caramel creamer.

🍽🍰 Favourite pie: Hard to say. Cake is better anyway.

🍕 Favourite pizza: smoked oysters and onions

🐶 Cats or dogs: Cats.

🌞 Favourite Season: Fall

🎃 Favourite holiday: Aesthetically, Halloween.

BONUS Saturdogs

Many thanks to:
Animals Being Dicks
Señor Gif
k00l 4 k@+z
Almost Famous Cats
Cats, Beavers & Ducks
Derpy Cats
FAT CATS
FUCKYEAHFELINES!
CHEEZburger
Every Day is Caturday
Cats and Dogs
And everyone else who happened to put a cat or dog where I ended up seeing it this week!

After Banh-Meetup and Independence Day Resurgence, we'd pretty much spent our entertaining energy for the year and decided to keep Thanksgiving small, just us and Garrett's parents. I got pretty frustrated leading up to it because I thought it'd be nice to scale down the menu a bit, but very few cuts were made. It was fun once Bev and Dennis arrived, though.

I started the day with an excellent walk at Langus. I've been doing the paved trail lately since it's further from the hunters.

Someone had their houseboat tied up in the river! I'd say docked but it wasn't at the dock, just tied to one of the posts in the middle of the water.

I wasn't originally planning on walking much of the island side, but there was a new poster up that had a map, and the map showed a trail along the river on the East side. I've long suspected there was a trail there but the path to get to it is terribly overgrown. My hope was that it had been cleared and that's why the path was on the poster, but I guess it was an old graphic. Or maybe nobody in charge of it realizes it's been overgrown for years.

While I walked, my time lapse camera was running at an industrial property on the road leading to the park.

https://instagram.com/p/BqfjMxlgd3a

And it was an excellent day for a hyperlapse of the drive home. I took the waterfront route home for more continuous driving.

https://instagram.com/p/BqfjX8xAGoA

Garrett's 2018 tablescape. We seat Bev and Dennis on one side so they can enjoy the view out the window. My vertical garden continues to thrive. We ended up moving everything a couple of times so we could play Skip-Bo, maybe next year we can just play cards at the smaller table.

Garrett couldn't resist picking these up for me.

Sam and Dennis.

Garrett and Bev.

The dinner. Wish I'd noticed the picture's a little blurry when I took it.

My (first) plate.

Steve stayed downstairs most of the day but Sam was around the whole time.

BONUS Saturdogs

Many thanks to:
Animals Being Dicks
Señor Gif
k00l 4 k@+z
Almost Famous Cats
Cats, Beavers & Ducks
Derpy Cats
FAT CATS
FUCKYEAHFELINES!
CHEEZburger
Every Day is Caturday
Cats and Dogs
And everyone else who happened to put a cat or dog where I ended up seeing it this week!

I wasn't in the mood for a walk or swim Friday after Thursday's excesses, and also stayed up way too late last night watching bad movies. So it was a rare Saturday walk instead. I didn't want to be out too long because we had brunch plans, but a trip North and back was a perfect three miles in the fog.

I zoomed in and took this from really far away because I almost never see more than one heron at a time unless it's at the spot where they all gather to lay and hatch their eggs. The rest of the year and everywhere else, it's almost always just one. And I knew they'd leave as I got closer.

The new end of the trail makes me sad, but at least it's pretty.

People really like this photo after I flipped and cropped it. Before:

After

My brother couldn't make it out for brunch because he was golfing, but Maria and Christina came and we had a nice brunch at Bluewater before heading over to the Everett Makers Market. It was the first one in a while and people obviously missed it because it was a huge success. One of the artists I know who sells there said she more than doubled her previous record!

After our company left, Garrett and I had a lovely day watching bad and weird movies. Swordfish, They Call Her Cleopatra Wong, and Gleaming the Cube. We learned about Cleopatra Wong in the Netflix documentary Shirkers, which I recommend highly. I think I might have liked it even more if I didn't know what it was about, so I'm not going to describe it, and you should just watch it without reading anything about it first. If you don't like highly specific documentaries, it may not be your jam.

That's a bit of an exaggeration, but moving is definitely not fun right now. Someone I know locally posted on Facebook about the Strength Together class at the YMCA and swears by it, so I decided to check it out yesterday. Unfortunately my lower back issues crept up because we stood in place a lot lifting weights, but otherwise it's a pretty cool class! And highly effective. I was very weak and wobbly after, and now I'm very stiff and sore.

That's totally expected, but now I'm very motivated to get my back feeling better so I can go back to the class and do well in it. That means it's time for more yoga. Ever do yoga while you're exhausted from full-body strength training? That's what I did yesterday and it was pretty difficult. Today was even harder now that I'm sore all over.

That was this afternoon. I started the day with some time in the hot tub, then swimming that included a lot of stretching in the water. I even came up with a new way to stretch my back backward!

Anyway, the whole thing kept reminding me of the show L.A. Doctors from 1998. There was an awesome scene where one of the doctors went to talk to another in her office, and she looked like she was paying far too close attention to what he was saying. He finally asked what was up, and she said, "I can't move." I can't remember why, but she was paralyzed in her chair.

I decided to look up who it was, and it turns out it was Laura Palmer from Twin Peaks!

BONUS Saturdogs

Many thanks to:
Animals Being Dicks
Señor Gif
k00l 4 k@+z
Almost Famous Cats
Cats, Beavers & Ducks
Derpy Cats
FAT CATS
FUCKYEAHFELINES!
CHEEZburger
Every Day is Caturday
Cats and Dogs
And everyone else who happened to put a cat or dog where I ended up seeing it this week!

Gentleman 1: Do you want to go to the chicken place and get a sandwich?

Gentleman 2: Yeah, that sounds pretty good.

Me: Are you talking about that new place on Hewitt?

Gentleman 1: What new place on Hewitt?

Me: It's a new chicken place called That Chicken Place, I think the opening has been delayed and I was hoping you had news. The name's not great.

Gentleman 1: I'm talking about that place on California with the giant chicken outside and chickens everywhere inside. It's called Wendy's, but you can't call it that because then people think you mean the burger chain.

Me: The name's not great.

Decided to push the distance a bit this morning by doing the paved loop at Langus and then all that's left of the Northern loop. When I turned around at the what's now the most remote part of the Northern section, I nearly missed a big change there.

The gates on the left are always locked and I've often wished they were open. If they were, I could set up good time lapses in that area without having to walk a couple of miles there first, and then walk a couple more to get the camera again. If this is a new entrance and parking area, that'll make the part of the park that's furthest out, closest. Pretty big change! Of course there's the possibility that it'll be parking for something else, so I'll have to wait and see.

That was two-thirds into the walk, though. Here's the rest.

Right before I got to the car, I had one of my closest eagle encounters. It flew into this tree just as I was walking up, close enough that I was surprised it didn't keep going.

There was also a car being towed away from the parking area where my car was when I got back. I'm pretty sure it was there when I got there, and I think maybe it was stolen or something, because the front was smashed in. I'm definitely curious how it ended up there, and if it was abandoned there, how the person who left it there got back. The island's very remote, and even if you wanted to walk all the miles out, a big stretch of the road drops directly off on both sides, so you'd have to walk on it.

It's really cold here at the moment, and of course quite dark in the mornings. I'm staying in right now because of a 7am call with Sweden anyway. Monday I went to the marina and took exactly one photo, my favorite fall tree by the boat launch. I posted it to IG but not flickr because I've gotten better photos of it before.

To fight the chill yesterday, I did Japanese Gulch, climbing up from the bottom. This is a view of Boeing from the tracks near the end.

There was a little light on the way down.

Near the parking lot I found a Japanese Gulch Runners sticker on the back of a sign. Love their graphic.

Several months ago, I noticed a sign at the empty Display and Costume near us and was so excited to learn it'd be our new neighborhood Grocery Outlet. It's always been one of my favorite stores, but except for the four months when we lived in Silver Lake, I've never lived very close to one. Our new neighborhood location is finally open, and I got to see it early because they partnered with Live in Everett to do a sponsored post and video! When they asked if I wanted to work on those, I was very excited to say yes. here's my blog post about it and here's the video that just came out today.