King Tide, Good Conversation and a View

Last week someone sent me a link to information about something called King Tides. These are really high tides and I was intrigued. We live not far from a bay with a land bridge called a sand spit. On high tide it looks like you could drive right off the road onto the water. If the tides are high and the wind is blowing, that water can get really rough and I love it when it's like that.

I told Chuck about the high tides and how I'd like to be out there to see it. He suggested we go to dinner at an Italian restaurant that sits at the end of the sand spit. It's close to the edge and has large windows with water-view seating. As we drive over the spit on a windy day when the tide is in, the spray comes up really high and we can see it splashing the windows of the restaurant.

After a meeting last night we both had to attend, we went out for a nice dinner and glass of wine. I enjoy having some time alone when we can really immerse ourselves in conversation without interruption. It's rare for us.

We were scheduled for a high tide last night at 8 p.m. It was Tuesday night, so it wasn't very busy at the restaurant. We got a great window seat and had a good view of the water. It was really dark though, so we couldn't see much unless a car drove by and the headlights lit it up a bit.

We were finishing dinner when the wind was picking up and it was starting to get a little wild out there. We could see the spray starting to splash, but we've both seen it do more. We went outside and it was kind of cold. The wind was fierce and the spray was getting us if we got too close to the edge. We only stood there for a minute huddled together. It was enough to let us know we were alive,  and we decided we'd had enough.

On the drive back we agreed we have to go back in the summer during another King Tide and eat at the same place.
Wish I could have gotten pics, but it was too dark. We're supposed to have even higher tides tonight.

Dignitaries and muck

My job is demanding. I am either in front of the computer for hours, or I'm on the road covering an event or showing up at some dinner or meeting to be seen in the community.
Sean has gotten very used to this lifestyle. If he's home, he has to tag along to all these things. I typically let him do his thing at these events and today was no different. Sean was on school break today for President's Day.
He first said he would wait in the car, but I knew that wouldn't last long. I was standing in the cool 40 degree Puget Sound breeze as we waited for the ribbon cutting of a new wharf and turned to see Sean across the road on an embankment.
At that very moment, Chuck was arriving in the command vehicle and saw that I was trying to both coax Sean to me, yet wanting him to stay put until traffic went by. Chuck was able to grab him for me and get him to an area where he would be entertained. THE BEACH.

While I was shaking some hands and snapping some shots of dignitaries just in case I need them for the paper, Sean was digging in the muck. Wearing his $100 jeans from his grandma. They got a little muddy.

He found a hermit crab and brought it up to show me and I didn't realize how far down it was to the beach. Chuck and I walked around to that side and I asked how in the world Sean got down there.
"He's a boy," he said. "He climbed down." Sean was so excited. That beach was full of little crabs, so he was turning over rocks and watching them swarm and catching some of them. He ventured closer to the water and said, "I found an eel!" He came back up with this little guy.

He showed it to a couple of people and said, "Be careful. He's tired." He let me take a picture of it, then I suggested the eel was probably ready to go back home because they don't really like to be out of the water.
He said when he put it back in the shallow water it found a clam hole and was so fast he couldn't catch it again.

Predictions of a New Language

So get this. Back in about 1993 I was working for a little publication run by a group of four forward-thinking young college kids. I was in college too. We were all 20somethings and ready to conquer the world. (I've been meaning to write this post for a long time and it keeps slipping my mind.)
They had this idea for a great newspaper that would cover the news in ways our local paper wouldn't and couldn't because it was one of those "real" and stuffy newspapers.
So we ran stories on local elected officials who were seen at the strip club placing dollar bills in the G-strings of lap dancers, corruption, and many other juicy stories. We were fearless. That paper also had entertainment, interesting photographs, and it was paid for by advertising. It was delivered free to drop racks throughout the region.
I give you that little bit of background just to set the scene for you.
Newspapers attract the people who need to be on medication. Not just the people who work for newspapers, but people in the community who go off their meds call us. They want to talk about all sorts of weird things, rant and rave, cuss and fight, or just drone on and on for sometimes an hour about everything their cat did that day and how their neighbor keeps peering over the fence, or a particular color keeps streaking across their television screen and they're sure the government is doing it to track their movements.
So back in about 1993, way before the Internet was in every home, before cell phones we use today,  and before text messaging was invented, we got a letter.
In this letter, this guy went on and on about a new language that was going to emerge. He spelled all the words in this letter the way he believed this language would take shape.
Here's an example, though I can't remember any of what the letter actually said verbatim.
U r shur 2 b n 4 a supris. It wil chng th wa we comunicat nd pepl wil stop riting n propr nglsh.
We all thought he must be a little wacky. Why would we all shortcut our words and make them garbled like that? Just to save time, he said. He claimed everyone was getting so busy and trying to do so many things at once that the common language was just going to be too much. Too many letters for people to use in each word, they'd shorten everything so they could get the message out faster. Gone would be the grammar rules.
I wish I had a copy of that letter. What a visionary. And we thought he was crazy.

Weekend wanderings and wonderings

Saturday I took Sean to Chuck's and we all had breakfast together before I had to hit the road to meet someone for coffee and conversation about school-related stuff.

This man is truly a wonder. He had cinnamon rolls ready, the table set and french toast ready to go when we arrived. It was delicious. He kept the kids at his place for a while and then we were going to meet for a local library grand opening after my meeting. We met up at the library and it was crazy. Packed.
We all left there with the plan to meet back up for dinner, but Sean wasn't feeling well so we skipped dinner.

I had marked the meeting for the wrong day on my calendar, so I sat alone in the cafe that morning for a while and sipped on a green tea. It was a new experience and I soaked it in. I liked the atmosphere there and enjoyed watching some of the people sit, and come and go. I've always had a soft spot for cafes because I used to work at one back in the late 80s and early 90s. It was definitely one of my best jobs ever. The people were great, the boss was phenomenal and the food was oh, so good.

Since I wasn't familiar with the area, I got back in my car and drove around to see what there was to see.
As I drove I listened to some programs on public radio. I don't remember the name of it, but one show was about new evidence that people in a coma are really in there.

They did some brain imaging and compared the brain activity to that of a healthy participant. They told the person in a coma to imagine they are playing tennis, to rest, play tennis again, rest, play tennis again.
Their brains lit up just like the healthy people.

The guy providing the information said they can prove they have brain activity, but cannot prove that these people have no activity. He gave an example of someone who is deaf, and what if they are brought into the hospital and we don't know they're deaf and they're in a coma. The same scenario could lead the doctors to believe that deaf person had no brain activity, but it's not that, it's that they can't hear what the doctor is saying to them.

It got me thinking about the implications of this.
What will this information do to all of those people who have made the decision to end a life because they were told the person has no brain activity? And what now? What do we do with this information?

The next radio show was "This American Life" and it focused on the possibility that the recipe for Coca -Cola has been found. What was most interesting to me is that Coke still has cocaine in it, it's just that the coca leaves are de-cocainized in some plant in the U.S. How bizarre to think that a controlled substance is allowed to enter the country in mass quantities for the recipe of a soft drink.

A little Chinese Culture

I was in Sean's classroom on Feb. 3 as his teacher spent the day introducing them to the Chinese New Year. She is half Chinese, though she doesn't speak the language. She said her mom doesn't speak it because her grandparents didn't speak it in the home when her mom was growing up.
A real shame. Sean has had Chinese (Mandarin) language classes and knows a few words, but I'd love him to have more.

I was helping the students with weaving that day. I brought in a project I've used before and worked with some of the kids who didn't get to do it last time.
I had planned to be there for only about an hour, but the project takes some time to set up and more students wanted to work with it so I was there until after lunch.

My aunt Bennie donated a bag full of yarn, and Chuck and I gathered the sticks from his property that we used to hold the yarn in place. We use 12 strings of yarn and tie them around the stick. We could have used pencils, but the kids really like the sticks. Chuck cut them to size. They can either tuck each end into their front belt loops, or I use another piece of yarn as a belt to attach to each end of the stick so it is held around their waist. Then the loose ends are tied in a knot and attached to something sturdy to allow the yarn to stretch out taut. These kids LOVE hand work. I love that they have the freedom to do it, and I think it is beneficial on so many levels.

While I was helping a couple of students with the yarn, Ms. Diamond read a story about Chinese food and the customs used while eating at a Chinese restaurant. Then she randomly assigned students to groups by pulling names written on popsicle sticks from a box. She read a poem about a Chinese New Year celebration for them a couple of times and they were to organize a drama based on the words of the poem.

She gave them a few minutes to plan the drama and then each group performed as she read the poem again. They were all awesome. It was fun to watch.  Sean and another boy hopped around with their hands in the air. When each group finished their performance others asked questions or made comments about how to improve it.
Ms. Diamond asked Sean why they were running with their hands in the air and he said, "Oh, we were the guys inside the dragon making it move."

I had to go because I was starving, but they had a celebration at 1 p.m. that included Chinese food and each child got a red envelope. She said she still gets a red envelope from her mother for Chinese New Year.

When we got home Sean's friend Kyle came over for a while. I fixed pot stickers as part of the celebration to reinforce what he had learned that day. Kyle stayed and had some pot stickers and we talked about the Chinese New Year and all of the things Sean learned about it that day.

Drive bys

It was a beautiful day yesterday, so I went for a drive and did some drive by shooting. There are many reasons why I love living here, these are just a few. We are surrounded by gorgeous views. Almost anywhere gives me a smile. We live in a more remote area, but we drive by these scenes at least weekly, if not daily.

Look close on the left, almost even with that SUV and you'll see Mt. Rainier. It was so amazing yesterday, but photos didn't do it justice. The snow blends with the clouds. But in person it is something to see.

One of my favorite landmarks.

It takes longer, but I drive this route when the sun is shining. It just does my soul some good.