Just in case

I have reason to hope Chiara might be reading my blog today to see the NCN photos, so here's a little message just for her in (probably mangled) Italian.

Chiara,
Siete mia ragazza speciale. Sono così felice che siete mia figlia! Ti amo molto e stiamo contandoci i giorni possiamo essere nello stesso posto. Ciao, bella!

Ciao

Two trips to Sea-Tac later, Chiara and Elena are on their way home. We had a good visit—on the busy side and too short, but good.

From sea to shining star

Catch a falling star

And put it in your pocket

Save it for a rainy day...

We've been having some good times with "our Italian girls." (I don't know if they like being referred to thus. They are women, not girls, and they certainly belong to only themselves, but we can't help feeling a little possessive!)

I could write for hours about all they've been up to (EMP, SAM, parties, visitors, shopping), but I don't have hours, so I'll just share a couple of highlights.

Sunday, we caught the free ferry (a thrilling 90-second ride) over to Jetty Island and hung out on the beach for a while. The tide was going out, so they got to experience the incredible feet-swallowing sand/muck of the tideflats. What a treat! They also got to enjoy one of Puget Sound's rare sandy beaches. In the sunshine!

We came home on the second-to-last ferry back and decided our sea proximity had put us in the mood for sushi. Well, Chiara, Derek, and MJ were in the mood for sushi, Elena and Chloe were game, and Frank and I knew we could find something delicious and cooked to enjoy. So, we piled back in the van and went to Daruma, a nice little Japanese café right there by the Everett Marina. Yum!

Last night, Frank made us another delicious dinner, but with fish from the river this time. Trout! My very favorite! Our meal was accompanied by the very nice white wine Elena's dad sent to us. (And we still have a nice red to look forward to!)

After dinner, we went in search of some dark. It seems August 8th is the Feast Day of St. Lawrence, traditionally celebrated in Italy by watching for shooting stars. After being cloudy all day, the weather cooperated nicely and provided clear skies. There's too much light pollution in the city, though, so we piled in the van (we do that a lot!) and headed east. A park on Lake Stevens was our first stop. It wasn't perfectly dark there, but we saw an amazing meteor—with long, luminous tail—before we got kicked out of the park by the cops. (Yeah, we knew it was closed, but we took a chance moonpie.) Once they realized we were a family group rather than (only) a pack of "dangerous" teenagers, they were very nice and turned off their blinding spotlights. Then they directed us to Lake Cassidy a few miles to the north. It was significantly darker there—and creepy with mist rolling off the lake and making us all think of every slasher horror movie we've ever seen—but we didn't see any meteors to rival that first amazing flasher.

It was really fun, so we'll probably head out for more stargazing when the Perseids come through about August 12th.

And that's the news from Party Central!

A post just for Randi

Yes, I'm a slacker!

The visit with Chiara and Elena is going great! Our two airport runs Friday were complicated by heavy traffic and a certain lack of flight information, but by midnight, we had two Italian women tucked into our house and family. Yay!

Saturday was for sleeping off jet lag, settling in, and making contact with friends we haven't seen in two years. Saturday evening, C&E went over to Jared's house in downtown Everett to visit with buds from Everett High.

Sunday day was for family. We had a little festa out at the beach, letting everybody get acquainted with Elena and reacquainted with Chiara. Sunday evening, Ryan came over to show off his newest tattoos and entertain us all (we love Ryan). We finished up the day by watching "Love Actually," which C&E had never seen.

And yesterday, I dropped C&E off in downtown Seattle 'on my way' to work. They spent the day wandering through Pike Place and other shopping meccas, talking to "weirdos" down on the waterfront, and trying out the express bus home.

As for us, well, we're just happy. Our family is whole again. (If we could shake off the dregs of the cold that's been beating us down for more than a week, we'd be even happier.) And I'm loving all of the language-and-customs conversations we've been having. Chiara has lost just a bit of her English—she says she doesn't think in English any more and has to translate from the Italian—but all the slang is coming back to her quickly. She's a fricking genius! (that's an inside joke) And Elena's English is almost as good, so we're doing lots of talking.

Tomorrow, C&E are going to join us at our STUN gathering on the Pilchuck River. It's supposed to be 80, so we picked a good day for it!

Chiara is on her way!

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Chiara's flight from Paris is well under way. She'll be here in about eight hours!

Chiara's arrival date!

Chiara bought her plane tickets!!! She'll be arriving 7/27 and staying for a month!!! We're so excited!!!

Chiara de España

In my excitement over Chiara's plans to visit here next summer, I forgot to pass on her other big news: She has been accepted into another exchange program, this one for a year at a university in Spain. (I can't remember what part of Spain, sorry.) She says she isn't very excited about it yet, but I'm sure she'll get there. She just needs a little American recharge first. :-)

Chiara is coming home!!!!

W A H O O ! ! ! !

Chiara just called us. She's coming to visit us this summer! Chloe and I are the only ones home right now, but we managed to make enough celebratory noise for a housefull. Then I stood there in the kitchen and cried happy tears and called a bunch of people. We miss her SO much, and we aren't able to swing a visit to Italy this summer, so I was afraid we'd have to go another year without seeing her. But SHE'S COMING!! She'll arrive late July or early August and stay for three weeks or maybe even MORE.

YAY YAY YAY!!!!

Spring Slug Festival

I'm on strike and have barely done a thing for a week (except read, of course). I did manage to play taxi a few times -- I got MJ to and from Hope for Horses twice and ferried her and her cousins to the movies one afternoon -- and Chloe and I had a lovely evening walk the other day. But other than that, taking out the trash once has been my only accomplishment. It's been a pretty good week. I am finally starting to feel bored, though, so maybe I'll get moving tomorrow.

Tidbits:

We received the first installment payment on the boat on time. So far, so good!

Chloe is diligently working her way through the works of Diana Wynne Jones. She was especially taken with "Dark Lord of Derkholm" and its sequel, "Year of the Griffin," and now sees griffins in every cat we meet. (Griffins are called catbirds in the books.)

Frank finished up the latest deadline period for his work, so he's been enjoying the Spring Slug Festival with me a bit.

MJ finished a personal project of hers, rating the 1975 songs in her iTunes collection. She listened to bits of them while she entered her ratings, so we've all been listening to lots of varied music clips. I wish I could describe her amazing collection better. In addition to numerous genres of English-language music from a number of countries, she has songs in Japanese, Romanian, German, Spanish, Russian, Italian, and probably others. I'm especially taken with "Malagueña Salerosa" by Chingon (from the Kill Bill soundtrack).

We had a long phone chat with Chiara last weekend. She is doing very well, being quite happy with her independent university life in Milan and new romantic interest, David. We're looking into visiting Italy this summer, but it would be a lot (LOT) of Euros, so I dunno. There's some talk of just sending the girls to her to save money (and provide them with one heck of a fun time, I'm sure), but I would be SO jealous.

It's raining a lot here, but Spring is all around. The cherry trees are doing their glorious thing -- the girls and I want to get to the Quad at the UW and shuffle through the pink "snow" -- and all the other trees are leafing out. Love it. We took Rodney and Lestat out to the front yard yesterday for some fresh air and adventure. They are pretty tentative outside, preferring to peek their noses out from cover (with their favored cover being our legs, shoes, and clothes), but they got into the spirit and seemed to enjoy being plopped downhill so they could run up the hill back to safety. Rodney got cocky in fact, decided he didn't need us any more, and took off for some further exploration. Chloe rounded him up and we called it a day at that point. :-) He's about half Lestat's size but game.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Memories from February 2005

Chloe's amazing talent

Nick and Chloe on the Space Needle observation deck

Chiara and Ronnie at Priest Point

Brief e-mail from Chiara

Chiara wrote to say that she loves her new college life in Milan. She didn't share any details, unfortunately (e-mail being her least favorite conversational medium). I'll track her down and provide more info as I get it.

Doing the Evergreen

The girls and I spent yesterday at the Evergreen State Fair. We ate and rode rides until we were green around the gills. A fine day!

The high(?) points:

* The Scrambler!!! This is a family tradition -- it's always the first ride we go on. (Two summers ago, Chiara -- newly arrived in America -- found our passion for it just a bit puzzling.) The girls are big now, so they took the outside and I got the joy of squishing them for a change.

* Visiting the pig barn and admiring the cute little babies, then turning around to see recipe posters and pamphlets prominently displayed.

* Walla Walla burgers!!! It's all about the onions, baby.

* Shriners corn on the cob!!! It's all about the butter, baby.

* Riding the Yo Yo at sunset. Gorgeous territorial views!

* Taking turns swinging the sledgehammer-bell-ringer thingy. Macho we are not, but we all won prizes anyway. Mine is a big blow-up sledgehammer that says "Girl Power."

* Seeing the Clydesdales and Percherons all hitched up and doing their thing.

* Hearing bits of "Footloose" from the Kenny Loggins concert at the grandstand.

* Finding a booth that was selling Crocs and getting to see all the colors in person. They have silver now! And the baby-sized ones are adorable (but sticker-shock-inducing at $25/pair).

* Buying the girls tacky $8 air-brushed straw cowboy hats. Yee haw!

* Taking my junk-food hangover and the remains of my Mother Goose handstamp into meetings at Microsoft today.

The fair runs through Labor Day at the fairgrounds in Monroe. We give it three thumbs up!

More England photos, by request

In town


Phones near Picadilly Circus


The Piazza at Covent Garden


Taken from a community garden off Charing Cross Road (click photo to enlarge)


Fortuitous timing


The Millennium Bridge, footbridge over the Thames


Chiara and the boy who wouldn't grow up, Kensington Gardens
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In the countryside


Woodbridge, the village where we did our marketing


On one of the public footpaths


Somerleyton Hall, home of Suffolk's most eligible bachelor, the right Hon. Hugh Crossley, future Earl Somerleyton


A restaurant in Leiston, near Summerhill


Sign for one of the infamous roundabouts -- you're supposed to glance at it as you go by at 60mph and figure out which branch is yours. Sorry for the blurry photo, but this is about how legible these signs are at speed anyway. :-)

Photos plus London, day 1

Well, I can't seem to get in the mood for writing up a complete trip report, so I'll just post what I wrote after our first day in London. But first, here are some pictures (hover over pictures to see descriptions, or click the photos to see larger versions):

London

Mad cows of Ufford

Summerhill

Lowestoft on the North Sea

Saturday in London

Greetings from Lower Ufford!

Well, the cottage is everything it appears to be in the listing. It's very cozy and private, nicely appointed and clean and pretty. The 800-year-old Ufford Church is just behind us, the 18th-century Dower House is in front, a pink thatched-roof place is to the left, and a rabbit-inhabited shrub-and-grass area and the large Dower House daffodil garden are to the right. Dower House is a family home; there's a swingset and trampoline in their other yard, and their dog Molly greeted us when we arrived. She's very sweet and was thrilled to see us, but she stopped short of coming into the Granary's yard. We found out later that that's training; they don't want her bothering the guests.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Our day today didn't begin at the Dower House Granary, it began in London. Or in Slough, to be exact. As I said before, the hotel there was fine. We had a nap after arriving from the airport, then went down to the hotel restaurant for dinner. The food was unexceptional, the prices something of a jolt (and I thought I'd prepared myself for London prices). We ate, then went back to our room for Laffy Taffy and Snickers bars (courtesy of Papa Tom) and an early bedtime.

This morning, Chloe popped awake at 6 a.m., so we decided to get on our way. We were packed and checked out and on the road by 7, then I had my first go at driving on England's "motorways" -- aka "freeways" or "expressways" to my American compatriots. Well, motorways are a piece of cake! No roundabouts!!!! And at 7 a.m. on a Saturday, virtually empty. The only trick was remembering that here, it's "Keep *left* except to pass." Washington state drivers would fit right in.

Chloe and I had settled on parking the car at Epping, the end of of the Central Tube (subway) line. Turns out Epping is a quaint little village well outside of town, so navigating and parking were easy. Well, there was one exception: I forgot momentarily that right turns are the turns that require caution and cut right in front of some poor guy. Fortunately, he was alert and quick on the brake pedal, so we escaped mishap. I'm hopeful that the big scare I received has drilled a lesson deep into my tiny little brain.

With that excitement over, we popped into a Shell station to buy something, anything, in order to break a 20-pound note and have change for the Tube carpark (parking lot). We settled on some fabulous "biscuits" -- Jaffa cakes, they're called -- dark-chocolate-frosted cake cookies with orange jelly filling -- and a bottle of chocolate milk. Just the sort of breakfast a growing (in the wrong direction) girl needs.
So, we parked, figured out the Tube ticket dispenser, and got right on a waiting train. The trip to town took about 40 minutes, which we spent reading and being happy, then we climbed up to street level and got our first look at London.

We started off on Oxford Street and on down Regent Street. This is an upscale shopping and business area, with lots of snazzy shop windows to look in. Of course nothing was open yet -- it was about 8:30, I think -- but we had a lovely stroll, watching all the double-decker buses go by, down to Picadilly Circus. That, too, was fairly quiet, relatively speaking, but it's still a bustling area with lots of traffic noise. We took obligatory photos in front of Helios' horses and the central monument (I'm drawing a blank on who that was dedicated to), then continued walking.
Next stop was Trafalgar Square, where we saw some more impressive statues (George IV comes to mind) and took pictures of the National Gallery. One kind of funny thing: One of the lesser statues is of George Washington, donated to Great Britain by the Commonwealth of Virginia. It seems a bit strange for Virginia to have donated a statue of a man that Brits must consider a traitor, but that's us cheeky Americans for ya.

From Trafalgar, we headed up Charing Cross Road. This was one of the highpoints of Chloe's day, because we think we found the entrance to the Leaky Cauldron. It's described in one of the Harry Potter books as being between a book store and a music store, and we found just such a place, in a rather unprepossessing little cubbyhole on the otherwise trendy street. Just the sort of spot those wily wizards would choose to throw us Muggles off.

After a stop for lunch (at 10 a.m.!) at a nice little cafe -- we both had toasted sandwiches, mine cheese and tomato, Chloe's sausage -- we went over to the Piazza at Covent Garden. Loved it! Once upon a time, this series of halls -- huge glass-roofed bays that are mostly open air but lined with enclosed shops -- was home to bustling, crowded fruit and vegetable markets. Nowadays, it's trendy shops and arts and crafts booths, but it's still bustling and crowded. The architecture of the shops is a real treat. We went into one that had archways between rooms that weren't much taller than Chloe.

I imagine Brits take it all in stride, but the age of everything here is really impressive to me. There's a pub still in operation in Covent Garden that was founded in 1623, and the famous Punch and Judy Pub was established in 1787 or so. I remarked at one point that the brick streets off the Piazza are probably older than the USA.

From Covent, we followed my sense of direction (usually a pretty risky thing) and actually ended up right where we wanted to be: on the banks of the Thames. We passed through Victoria Embankment Gardens to come out right at Cleopatra's Needle. Chloe got very excited to see that, too, because it features prominently in the second Bartimaeus book. I got very excited to discover that it's a real Egyptian obelisk, from Alexandria, a treasure that was actually a gift from Egypt, bestowed by Viceroy Mohamed Ali, no less.

We then strolled along the Thames, watching the ferry boats and the big Eye of London mega-ferris wheel while eating soft-serve ice cream cones with yummy chocolate sticks as garnish. We saw a nice monument -- dedicated to those so few who did so much for so many in the Battle of Britain -- the Old War Office and Ministry of Defence (gorgeous, huge old buildings), and arrived at Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament just in time for the noon chimes. We couldn't have timed that better had we planned it!

Westminster Bridge and Great George Street were PACKED. Can't imagine what it must be like during peak tourist season. But we shuffled our way along and went around the other side of the HoP, where we got a nice bobby to pose for a photo with Chloe in front of a triumphant (and yes, Frank, probably misrepresentative) statue of a triumphant Richard the Lion Heart. They incidentally were also posed in front of several gorgeous 30's-era cars that were all parked at the HoP for some reason.

From there, we crossed over to Westminster Abbey. Neither of us was interested enough to stand in line to go inside, so we ducked into adjacent St. Margaret's Church instead. It was lovely and grand, and the organist was practicing, and we got to SIT DOWN for a while. A very pleasant stop. Oh, and our pew was labeled "Members of Parliament" so we got to have delusions of grandeur (?) for a moment.

After our rest and some discussion, we headed up Victoria Street to Buckingham Gate and across to Buckingham Palace to visit the queen. She wasn't "at home" for us unfortunately, so we had to settle for pictures in front of the gates like everybody else. The guards with the big furry hats were too far away to appreciate the way I wanted to, though. :-(

There was one moment of drama at the Queen Victoria Memorial fountain in front of the palace. Some tourist had left his big duffle bag unattended. By the time he came back for it, the cops had cleared the immediate area and gotten on their radios for a bomb squad (I'm guessing). Silly tourist was scolded roundly then sent on his way.

Chloe and I left the palace plaza by walking around the corner along the wall of the palace gardens. It's secure enough, with spikes and barbed wire and on-high motion detectors supplementing 12 or 15 feet of brick wall, but Chloe thought the big trees next to the wall looked climb-able (with some sort of spiked assistance), and from there, she figured she could do the squirrel thing to the trees inside the garden. I think if she were queen, she'd give it a try, except she'd do it to get out of the palace without anyone knowing.

Rounding out our first day in London was a stroll under Wellington Monument (a big arch), then we returned to the Tube and rode back out to Epping and the car.

And then we found our way back to the M11 and out a couple of secondary highways to Lower Ufford. I successfully negotiated about a dozen roundabouts and made only one wrong turn (easily rectified at another roundabout), so I didn't do too badly.

The market in this teensy little village closes at 1 on Saturdays, so we haven't yet stocked up on "self-catering" supplies. That being the case, we walked down to the White Lion pub for dinner. We both had fish and chips, and it was really terrific. We learned some things:
1) Carlsburg beer is really nasty, and Stella (or is it Stellar?) is pretty good.
2) Orange pop is called "Fanta" even when it's not Fanta.
3) The fish in English fish and chips (or White Lion fish and chips, anyway) has skin on it under the batter, but we love it anyway.
4) Ketchup is ketchup. Heinz and everything.

Oh! And the other thing I learned today that I just have to share: Crocs are the best shoes ever in the whole history of shoes. I walked for, what, 7 or 8 hours today, and my feet do NOT hurt. In fact, I took an evening constitutional tonight. Pretty impressive, eh? My bright yellow feet sure do get a lot of funny looks though! That might have something to do with Chloe's bright green feet being right next to them. :-)

Note to Schuyler: Thank you for the Highway Code link! That really helped!

Percolations 2

Here are some more previously unreported (I think) moments from our almost-cruise, in rough chronological order:

** Girls swimming alongside the dinghy at Cat Island. On one of our trips to shore, Marjie and Chloe decided to swim back to the boat ('though Chloe felt a bit nervous about being in the water with all the dolphins that had been around that day). It was a pretty long way, so Frank and I put-putted alongside them in the dinghy. When they got tired or we got bored (which came first, I can't remember), the girls grabbed on to the sides of the Tender, and we towed them. It was thrilling for all -- for them because they liked the speed and face-splashing, and for us because we felt like we were trolling for sharks with our daughters as bait. ;-)

** Getting turned away from Gulfport by the police boat. We stopped in there hoping to top off the diesel before the passage, but they met us at the harbor entrance and told us to go away. The harbor was completely closed due to Katrina damage.

** How good food tasted during the passage (once we quit barfing). For instance, we had one fabulous lunch – truly, one of the most delicious meals of our lives – consisting of crushed tortilla chips, Ritz crackers, salsa, and refried beans directly from the can. YUM!!

** Naples is a really pretty city. At the time, coming as we were from hurricane-ravaged Slidell, we were mostly aware of it being whole and undamaged. But now that we look back on it, having seen quite a bit more of Florida than we ever expected, we can “see” better how nice it was. It’s what people think of when they fantasize about winters in Florida, with pretty homes and quaint businesses; clean, palm-lined streets; a feeling that the whole world is on vacation; and an unmatched level of civic pride. I assume all that will soon be true again as they recover from Wilma.

** Walking to the Naples West Marine. When we pulled into the guest dock in Naples, they gave us a little city map. It says right on it, "Map is not to scale," but we figured it couldn't be *that* much off. It was. We set out one day to walk to West Marine, a distance of maybe 10 city blocks by the map and about 100 miles in reality. Okay, not 100, but it was a LONG way, and it was REALLY HOT. When we hit our moment of worst discouragement, lo and behold, there was a Joe's Crab Shack. We went in and had gigantic lemonades and a shrimp platter. You should have seen the waiter's eyes pop when he came back three minutes after serving our drinks to find that Chloe had emptied her lemonade glass already. Much refreshed and armed with the knowledge that we were actually close to West Marine now, we made the rest of the walk in good time and good spirits. A taxicab later returned us to the marina.

** Talking to Chiara. We miss our Italian daughter tremendously, every minute of the day!! But our phone conversations with her made for some of our best moments of the trip. The most memorable was that one lovely day at the Dry Tortugas. Totally fed up with being out of contact with her, I said, "I don't care what it costs!" and fired up the satellite phone one morning. We all took turns talking to her, and it was a happy, festive time. Afterwards, I was a little weepy but felt actual physical relief for having spoken to her. Then Frank and I got in the dinghy to go ashore and check the Wilma predictions. The forecast that morning said that the storm wasn’t coming to the Keys. It was erroneous but nicely timed to give us one lovely, relaxed day at Fort Jefferson.

** We aren’t the only clumsy sailors around. I had some moments on the passage of feeling like a pretty inept sailor, so it was kind of nice to sail to Key West with Delfina and see somebody else make some sailing errors. It was nothing major -- they made a couple of inadvertent tacks -- but it was reassuring.

** Visiting the Key West Municipal Library. My best friend, Stephanie -- who used to live in KW -- had a dream that we went to the Key West library. Not ones to ignore psychic vibrations, and since we had plans to go there anyway :-), we soon became regular patrons. They gave us a library card in exchange for $15, which seems pretty cheap now considering all the books, movies, and Internet time we got for it.

** Rain drills. Rain is always a major event on a sailboat in the tropics, because you typically have every port and hatch open in order to get some much needed ventilation. On the Zombie Princess (and a good percentage of the rest of the sailboats down there), this is compounded by a few leaky ports. So, every time it started to rain (once a day, on average), we had a mad scramble, "all hands" effort to close everything up and set out absorbent materials (diapers) under the leaky spots. We've been home for a month, in our nice waterproof house, and I still tense up and get ready for action when I hear it start to rain (17 times a day, on average). (Did I mention that we are currently enjoying a rain streak in Western Washington? It's rained at least once every day for something like 30 consecutive days, and rain is predicted for every day this week.)

** The Zombie Princess is one tough little boat. But I suppose you had all managed to figure that out, reading between the lines of this blog.

KQR

P.S. This may be the first time in my life I actually managed to follow through on a New Year's resolution!

Photo of Chiara (because we really miss her!)

Here's a photo from Chiara's graduation party, not long before she went home to Italy.

We miss you, K-Dogg!!!!

Some starter photos