Summertime

I'm giving the title of "Summer Mixed Media" to this work. Robbie made me a flower using rocks and sidewalk chalk on the concrete a few days ago.
Summer is in full swing; warm afternoons and longer days have arrived. We spend a few hours a day in the front yard on our rusting fleet of bikes and big wheels that Robbie has nearly outgrown. We got Robbie a larger bike without training wheels last summer but we don't have enough safe space in the front to ride it. For now, they seem to be happy working with what we have.

Return of the cone

Summer is here; the boys are out of school for the next two months. We started our vacation Friday morning by dropping off Cal at the local pet hospital. A few weeks ago he ruptured his "doggy ACL" and needed it surgically repaired. I was still reeling from the hit to my credit card balance and admittedly did not think about his recovery until after the procedure. It's tough! We brought him home late Saturday night, coned, still a bit drugged, and stressed from more than a day caged in the clinic. It took me about a half-day to realize he won't go to the bathroom (quickly) with his cone on, so we are probably going to have to take it on and off for a week or more until he gets his stitches out. And then for most of the next 4-8 weeks I'm supposed to carry him around to keep him off both legs so he doesn't harm his recovery. Another thing I want to avoid (and I'm told it is common with these injuries) is rupturing the doggy ACL on the other leg, or make it more likely to happen in the future. I'm really going to need a vacation from my vacation this year.

Enough already

OK, this is my last Seattle post. I think! I’m nearly out of post-worthy images on my iPhone 3 camera roll and I think you, my faithful one or two readers, are tired of my Adobe Photoshop Express iPhone app image processing that I've used and abused this week. (I do have to give a shout-out to the Effects > Vignette Blur tool – a combination of its “Vibrant” color tweaking-effect and the classic vignette. I love how it makes the colors deeper and really pop! The vignette gets old fast, but I like it here in the photo of the pig tracks, steps from the pig statue at Pike Place Market.)
I’m considering a new theme for next week – maybe some foodie posts?

Pig at the market

This is a pretty well-known statue that sits at one of the entrances to Seattle landmark Pike Place Market. I know there's a story behind this, but I'm at bit busy at the moment to look it up. Just got back from the boys' elementary school's annual May Day show. Pre-schoolers sang and danced to "Alligators All Around." So cute!

More from the fish market

I'm not much of a seafood eater, but family members that picked up fresh fish and shellfish at the market said it was yummy. We also had rainbow trout but we didn't get it from the market. My nephew (with the help of my uncle) left a fishing line on the dock and he caught a small lake-stocked trout. For the record, seeing a four-year old with the catch he waited fairly patiently for is a lot of fun.

More tulips

Flower vendors at Pike Place Market were selling tulips - and lots of them! They're at the end of the blooming season in the Pacific Northwest and stall after stall had buckets of tulips for sale. I didn't know it until this weekend, but the Pacific Northwest has a similar climate to Holland, therefore tulips thrive in the region this time of year.

At the Pike Place fish market

Holly girl

Holly is my uncle's sweet, loving, and faithful Golden Retriever. She makes the perfect lake dog, safe in and around the water, and always present whether you're in the boats, on the deck, or on the docks. She doesn't need a leash and never wanders.
What a difference from our two beagle mixes who roam at will and we have to keep near-constant tabs on. Twice in the last six weeks one of Robbie's school mates has knocked on our door with our dogs in tow, saying they were on the loose around the neighborhood.
Comparing Holly to our dogs makes me think of the time when we took our dogs to training and dog obedience courses in Maryland. The instructor had a mature, well-behaved, and unleashed Golden by his side to demonstrate training techniques. I cried foul. Come on, a Golden is known to be the perfect, obedient breed. How hard was that to train?

Leaving on a jet plane

Spent the past 4+ days in a mostly sunny Seattle. Only on Saturday night did it start raining and lucky for us, that was hours after we spent a really nice (read: warm, bright, and clear) afternoon walking around Pike Place Market, taste-testing local vendors at the Cheese Festival, and having a fabulous lunch at the Steelhead Diner. Flew home to HNL early today and now settling back in to the local humidity. Here's a shot of a restored plane that hangs just beside the Hawaiian Airlines check-in counter at Sea-Tac. The rest of the week I hope to post more shots of the quick trip from my phone's camera roll.

Pacific Northwest tulips

Happy Mother's Day

It became very clear this week that Robbie is not very good at keeping secrets about what he makes at school. He said one afternoon that he "made a ribbon for me." I didn't know what he was talking about until he came home with this on Friday. A lovely addition to my wall of art, using paper plates - my favorite elementary school craft medium!
Robbie comes home with a lot of not-quite-finished items. Note the white border on the top. He's a very thorough guy and he takes a long time to finish things, especially where solid coloring and painting is involved. I think his classmates finish their items faster and his teacher tells them all frequently to wrap up what they're doing before Robbie has completed his piece.

How do they do that?

Amidst all of the hype surrounding the Royal Wedding, not a single media segment about how those darn hats STAY ON!? Fashion reporters and style watchers, you have let me down. They defy physics and I can't take my eyes off them. This blooming blue crescent moon was stunning; definitely one of my favorites. What sort of surprised me is that hats are required yet there appears to be no requirement for them to match what the woman is wearing! A good portion of the women in attendance were impeccably coordinated, of course, but then a select few hats were laugh-out-loud color and texture clashes. It made for fun television viewing. The actual ceremony? Not so much. All hail...TiVo.

Where's the fruit?

We went to dinner last night at one of the many restaurants around town that offer a "Kids Eat Free" night. They also have a play area for kids right next to the lanai tables which seals the deal for us. They might soon be on our "black" list, although the management and wait staff are so nice it makes it a tough call. Food was so-so last night; they made the kids' chicken fingers with poultry seasoning and they didn't quite taste right. Even the fries were a little off. They also messed up my order. What really might be the final blow? They provide the typical kids menu which doubles as a coloring page. One section features pictures of a couple of fruits with the words, "FRUIT is good for you. What's you're favorite?" Nice, yes? But look over at the side choices for the small plates and there is no fruit offered! Three veggies sides are listed, but for my two picky eaters good luck with the tomato and cucumber salad, green salad, or collard greens options. We are not in an area where fruits are hard to obtain, so this kind of baffles me. If we go again, I just might point this out. As nicely as I can, of course. ;)

Happy Easter

Guess who colored this bunny puppet?

Along the coast

While participating in the monk seal count last weekend, I was walking on a trail just above a beach and came across this spider. I don't know what type it is, I'll have to do some research. I paused and took a long look at it because I loved the natural, bold yellow body. (Stare too long and it becomes a bit of a Rorschach test!) It was not too big nor scary, but I did stop in my tracks when I saw it and stepped around the web it was building.

At the market

I picked up a bag of these small citrus fruits last week but I can’t remember what they’re called. (One average-sized fruit is the same as a large gumball, about an inch to an inch and a half in diameter.) I had seen them before but passed them by many times. I thought they might be similar to limes – a Hawaiian key lime, perhaps? But no, to my surprise they’re a lot more like a small Clementine orange. After sitting on the counter a few days, they're less green on the outside, too. When I thought they were more like limes, I wanted to make a localized version of the classic lemon bar. After realizing they’re not as tart as I thought they would be, I’m rethinking my plan. For now, I’ve juiced them and the juice remains in the freezer until inspiration strikes.
This Sunday the Mililani market is closed due to Easter. That means I have to make the trek into town and beyond for the KCC Saturday market. Bummer! ;) I’ve wanted to try out this market for years now, just never had the time or a good excuse to make the long drive on a Saturday morning. I think I have the time and the good excuse now.

Spring monk seal count

Today I took part in the Spring state-wide monk seal count. My "zone" included mostly beaches adjacent to some industrial areas here on the Leeward side. I don't think I covered all that much but it sure took me forever! I found one seal (with the help of volunteers who had already been to the area on an earlier scout). He's the same one that I saw a week and a half ago at Nimitz Beach. Cute little young male from Kauai who first was spotted our way a few months ago.

The early bird gets the...

Cheap, fresh local basil. Yep, at our local Sunday Farmer's market, one must get up and out of the house early and beat the crowds to get it. A healthy bunch at a few stands costs from $.75 cents to a dollar. At a higher-priced stand, the same amount will set you back $2.25. Seems like quite the mark-up, especially since I buy basil nearly every week to make pesto. That's $50.00 a year, more or less (a conservative estimate)! Still, when I miss out on the cheaper stands, $2.25 is better than the grocery store price of $2.25 or more for a fourth of what you get from the local farmers. Pictured here are Molokai sweet potatoes. They are deep purple on the inside and outside, and very sweet. These are left over from last weekend's haul. I will roast them soon for sweet potato fries or a simple mash. The white "spots" are natural juices dripping out. The spots appeared just after I had sliced one open before snapping the picture so you could get a peek inside.

Foul ball!

We made it out to Manoa last night for another UH men's baseball game. While the boys and I were at the concession stand getting more water, Noel got a foul ball. I can't believe we missed it, but truthfully, I probably would have freaked out if I saw a ball heading in the direction of exactly where the boys had been playing before we left. Missed the excitement yet better in the end for my nerves.

Sittin' with the monk seals

Did some volunteer time with the Hawaiian monk seals earlier this week. Thankfully it was on a sunny day with no rain. Today the rain has come on in a big way. Even the dogs are not going outside. Towels remain standing by, placed by each door. My ability to identify a seal on the beach remains comical, even on good days with binoculars in hand, a long lens on the camera, and the seals' markers in clear sight. I had none of the above this Wednesday. I realized when I hit the beach that I'd forgotten my binoculars (crucial for narrowing in on their flipper tags containing an ID code). I should have just turned around and went back for them, but I didn't and paid the price. Missed cues about who was what and who was where... I couldn't even make out male from female. I'm thinking I'm going to need my own web redemption soon. But I had a great day nonetheless, spoke with a lot of interesting and nice folks, and enjoyed the coast. My favorite question from a visitor concerned with one seal in a deep sleep: "Do they need to have water poured on them?" No, but I knew if something like that was needed, these kind people who were in enamored with the seals at first look were ready to pitch in.