Goodbye, aughts

When the twentieth century began, that first decade from 1900-09 was known as the "aughts" as in 30-aught-6 (the only place I ever heard it, some type of gun). Oh, and about that snowman: I saw him while in Leavenworth, and he looked to me like he was sadly saying goodbye. That's the only reason for his picture here.

I went looking on the internet for the name of the decade we are just now leaving, to see if anybody had ever come up with a name for these years with zeros. It was so helpful to all the New Years Eve revelers who wanted to have glasses made out of those zeroes. I would put a picture up but I think I'm glad to see the last of those. There never did seem to be a name for this decade. People are beginning to notice, as they try to decide what to call it. I did find this really cool blogger who writes for the Buffalo News, Anne Neville, and give you a quote from her blog (although the above link gives you the whole post if you are interested):

As the millennium dawned, nobody had an iPod or an iPhone, much less an app. Google, YouTube and blogs were all nonsense words. Texting was unknown; we communicated instantly via IMs while sitting at our computers. Twitter was something a bird might do, not a person. If you bought something on eBay, you paid with a money order -- no PayPal. Imagine life without Facebook -- some 300 million people worldwide can't.

It amazed me to realize the truth of all that: in 2000, our blogosphere was just being born. My mind is boggled at how much the world can change in the space of ten years, and it can't help but make me wonder about ten years from now. Anybody who says they can tell us is either misguided or ready for the loony bin.

Not to mention where I will be. Hopefully, like Abe Lincoln (a favorite blogger) over at Pick a Peck of Pixels, I might still be plugging along at 77. I just can't even imagine what the world of 2020 will be like, but it's fun to think about it. Change does seem to be accelerating in speed as I begin to walk more and more slowly. But at least I'm still walking!
:-)

Galbraith Mountain

Today, eight Seniors showed up for a sunny Christmas Eve hike on Galbraith Mountain, which is the common name by which North Lookout Mountain is known. This open space privately owned multiple use land is nestled between Bellingham to the west and Lake Whatcom to the east. There are views of Bellingham Bay, the San Juan Islands, and Mt. Baker. There are bridges and sometimes logs over frequent streams. Click any picture to enlarge.

The many miles of mountain trails (40, to be exact) are used and maintained by a mountain bike coalition known as WHIMPs. (I finally found that it stands for WHatcom Independent Mountain Pedalers! They even have their own website here.) This mountain is covered with logging roads and, today, trails that extend for miles and miles. Most of them have names like "Cheech and Chong's Wild Ride," "Shawn's Aneurism," or "Woopsie Woodle" with ramps and drop-offs to scare even the most experienced mountain biker. It's also a nice place for hiking (which is what we did) or trail running. It is world renowned as a primo place to mountain bike. The owner of the land, Trillium, has installed several sculptures at various places on the mountain, which are great landmarks. Here is the group standing in front of what is known as the leggo blocks.

It was such a nice day, and we shared the trails with other hikers, runners, lots of people on mountain bikes (although not as many as I would have expected; it must have been because it was Christmas Eve and people had other things going on). We hiked just under eight miles and up (and down) just over 1,000 feet in elevation. And in this last picture, I'm standing in front of another sculpture, wearing Judy's new hat (see yesterday's post: I finished it!). It was a wonderful day and a fine way to spend Christmas Eve Day. Now I get to spend the evening and tomorrow with Smart Guy.

:-)

Senior freedom

One thing about being retired and not going to work any more is that I can choose what I want to do with each day. Thing is, what might that be? Obviously, lately that has involved knitting. Just look at this array! First it was a scarf (the purple one), and I liked it so much I made another (the pink one, same pattern but longer this time), and then a hat (the purple and blue one), and I liked that one so much I made another (to the left of the first hat).

And now I'm knitting one for a present, since the second hat is too small for my friend's head. (It was originally going to be her Christmas present.) This new one is more like a true toque, with lots of room for her voluminous hair. Now if I like this one as much as I think I will, I may be forced to make even more of them. You can never have too many hats, right? And then there's those homeless people who always need them.

This hat uses three different colors and also has that roll-up brim (see the beginning of it here). You can enlarge any picture if you want to see all the details. The biggest problem for me in knitting in the round is that I have to pay attention to the end of the row, since I am following the pattern according to numbers of completed rows. I've gotten around that with two nifty helpers: markers that tell me when I've come back to the beginning, and a row counter! (My new row counter is that pink plastic thing in the first picture.) That way when I finish a row (by slipping the marker onto the other needle), I just reach over and hit the top of the counter and it gives me a new consecutive number.

The only other problem I have with hats is that they get finished way too quickly, and then I'm forced to sit around and twiddle my thumbs until I get a new pattern. Right now, as you can see, I'm ending up with lots of extra yarn that might force me to make up my own patterns. This appeals to me, because who knows? I might end up making fantastic hats that are sought after all over Bellingham! Well, maybe.

So this senior (me) is free to play with her yarn, her birdies, and look with great anticipation into the near future to see what it might bring. I get lots of ideas from my bloggy-klatch buddies as I sip my coffee. Oh yes, I also wanted to say thank you to my dear sister for having become a follower and actually making comments now and then. Who knows, Norma Jean, you may be moved to become a blogger yourself! But I won't hold my breath.
:-)

The conversation

This picture was sent to me by my husband and I couldn't resist sharing it with you. It's entitled "The Conversation," which he discovered on Reddit, a very interesting website that gives people the opportunity to share all kinds of information with others who might be interested. This picture is at first startling, then you realize these two creatures are obviously separated by a pane of glass, but they are definitely communing. I wonder what is going on in those heads?

Which leads me to a question I have for you, my dear readers. You can answer, or not, but I realize that one of the reasons I write is to be able to find out what I think. Judith Warner has written a column for the New York Times for years, called "Domestic Disturbances." She wrote her final column this week, and here's a (to me) relevant quote from it:

Often, writing here, I didn’t know fully what I felt — about things going on in my own life — until I read what I’d written. And very often I didn’t understand what I’d written until I heard it coming back at me.

Well said, Judith. I think this is what blogging is all about for me. I'm trying to understand why I am writing here, why we all are writing here. I think it's important to ask this question now and then, and sometimes I am surprised by the comments you make. We all have such different lives, and I enjoy the variety so much. You often give me a template to understand decisions I've made in a different light.

The conversation we share is personal, within limits, because we are all out there hanging out in cyberspace where anybody can read what we write. I censor myself sometimes and try to keep controversy to a minimum. You don't know my politics, my religion, whether I have ever done anything illegal, or even if I've gone skinny dipping. It's because I am afraid of offense, or worse yet, having it come back to me as it did to Andrew Feldmar in 2007. He is a Canadian psychotherapist who is barred from ever entering the United States again because he used LSD in 1967 (when it was legal). The border guard googled him and a paper he had written came up.

He has been married to Meredith Feldmar, an artist,  for 37 years, and they live in Vancouver's Kitsilano neighbourhood. They have two children, Soma, 33, who lives in Denver, and Marcel, 36, a resident of L.A. Highly respected in his field, Feldmar has been travelling to the U.S. for work and to see his family five or six times a year.

Not any more. Here's a link to a fascinating Alternet article that tells the whole story. He tried everything to regain the ability to come into the United States again with no luck. If you have ever admitted to any drug use, and they find out because you wrote about it, well, too bad. So I try hard not to write about anything offensive or remotely controversial.

I know that if the border guard were to google my name, this website would come up, along with several others from the time I was on the Board of Directors of the United States Parachute Association. It's really sad that we here in the United States cannot hold conversations even in our emails that are totally and completely private. I guess we can thank the Department of Homeland Security for that.

Now before I go off on a rant, I just wanted to say this to you: I cherish your comments and am really happy that our conversations are as open and honest as they are. My readers give me a sense of community that would be otherwise lacking in my life. I love to read about your exploits and strive to make my posts interesting. My question: given the parameters laid out, what can I tell you about me that you don't know and want to know? I sometimes wonder that about you, as I try to glean the person behind your own blog posts. Who are you really?
:-)

Winter solstice

I was wondering what I might use as a picture for the winter solstice, and I found this one on line by a fellow Bellinghamster. (I don't know her, but her Flickr site is at hopeisalot, well worth a visit). She took this one today of Bellingham Bay, at the winter solstice and named it "Stormy Sky." The solstice occurred here in the Pacific Northwest at 9:47 this morning, while I was in my exercise class.

You know how some days you wake up and all seems right with the world? That happened to me today. The wind was blowing hard but it was 54 degrees F when I walked out to catch the bus. The weather forecast said the wind was blowing in a cold front and that the temperature would drop all day. It's now 42 and raining, but the wind has stopped. At my workout session, we all seemed a little perkier and happier than usual today, with lots of well wishes for the season and remarks that now the days will start to lengthen. We have reached the nadir of darkness. Funny, I haven't really minded it, but it sure has helped to have those excellent Thursday hikes and good weather during most of them.

When I got home from the gym, I fed the birds and noticed how many there are. I must have close to a hundred of different species who see me as the Bird Lady. The chickadees always talk to me and have no fear when I'm filling the feeders. Sometimes they will even land on the far side of the feeder from me and peer over, with a lot of happy chirps, as I fill it. The other birds all stay away until I'm done, but I notice that the bushtits are getting very used to me also and get a little braver each day.

I feel so incredibly blessed to have my blogging friends, and I notice how often we leave comments at about the same time on the ones we follow. I started following some because I would read a comment left by a (then) stranger and I just had to get to know that person. I would pop over and read the blog. Now many of you feel like family. And although Facebook can be somewhat of a pain to keep up with, my friends and family made my birthday such a pleasure with all the comments. I must have re-read those birthday wishes a half dozen times and filled my cup of joy each time.

So today, the Northern Hemisphere winter solstice, Christmas week and the end of the first decade of the 21st century, there's not a whole lot in my life that I would change. Thank you for being part of my life.
:-)

Leavenworth

 Early yesterday morning, my friend Judy and I climbed aboard a Hesselgrave tour bus for an all-day trip to Leavenworth, a pretend Bavarian village in the Cascades. The 49-passenger bus was almost full, and I had been warned that Leavenworth is pretty much of a tourist trap. I had no idea what I was getting myself into, but it was a good thing to do once and experience... once.

We climbed through small towns with picturesque names like Grotto, Gold Bar, and Skykomish on our way over Stevens pass. This pass through the mountains is at just over 4,000 feet and had a ski lodge at the top, and lots of snow. When we arrived in Leavenworth and were shunted into a secondary parking lot for buses, I looked out and saw quaint Bavarian style houses and... people. Wall to wall people. Apparently they were all there for the final Saturday's lighting of the Christmas lights. Here's a picture of me after we arrived. The crowds grew from this point.

We had been given a tip to find a place for lunch off the main street, which would allow us not to fight the shoulder to shoulder crowds. We found a lovely little place called The Alley Cafe, and sat down to a beer (for Judy) and a glass of wine (for me) and a very good lunch. When we left our little cafe, we found that even MORE people had arrived, and there was little to do but follow from one shop to another, fighting to make your way through the crowds. It's worth enlarging the following picture just to capture the day's feeling.

We did find a bookstore, but even that was impossible to navigate. We thought we could just park ourselves at a bookstore and browse, but there were too many people everywhere to do that. So, after a few hours of difficult crowds, we made our way back to the Alley Cafe and parked ourselves there for a small snack. Once it got dark, we went outside to see the lighting of the town's buildings, listened to Christmas carols and made our way along with the rest of the cattle to our bus.

I left the house yesterday morning at 7:30 am and returned home at 9:30 pm, glad to finally be back home. I got another taste of how different the world is today than it was when I was young, just in sheer population numbers. I thought of an old science fiction movie called "Soylent Green" that showed people shuffling joylessly along from place to place, following the herds of people.

I did have the chance to spend the day with Judy and we talked and reminisced about the old days. All in all, I'm glad I went but I'm also glad I don't have to do that again.
:-)

Fragrance Lake

Today the Senior Trailblazers went up to Fragrance Lake from the trailhead at Larrabee State Park. There were fifteen of us, and we intended to do a relatively short hike so we could get back early to have our annual Christmas party at Amy's house.

Yesterday here in Bellingham the weather was atrocious. It blew all morning and when the wind began to die down, the rain started. I think we must have had at least three incredible deluges that would have been very uncomfortable if you happened to be out in the weather. But today was gorgeous! The weather gods cooperated by giving us sunshine and clear skies when we started out, which then changed to a few clouds and a light breeze.

The view above is of the bay as we hiked up the more than thousand feet of elevation gain. There were quite a few downed trees, and this tree, which we had to climb over, had the most incredibly brilliant bark and I couldn't resist a picture. (Any picture can be enlarged.)

Although the hike isn't very long, we went about five miles round trip and had quite a bit of uphill in the form of switchbacks at the beginning. Although it rained all day yesterday, it was hardly muddy as we walked through quiet green peacefulness.

When we returned to the trailhead, we made a beeline to the Senior Center to get our cars and head to the potluck at Amy's house. We had pizza, salad, shrimp, and lots and lots of homemade Christmas cookies. It was a wonderful time, and we couldn't have asked for a better day: sunshine, beautiful scenery, and good friends.

:-)