kvetching up

Things change. The Donut Shop at 1st and Pike went away well before I finished high school. I still haven't gotten over it.  Penneys on 2nd and Pike also closed back then. All the creepy X-Rated theaters and sex shops on 1st Avenue left. The SROs and all the old sailors and dock workers that lived in them gone the way of the dinosaur. Richard Peterson no longer wanders the downtown with his trumpet, a beloved figure for so many of my generation. As a kid who traveled on the bus downtown to get lunch delivered via electric train at the old Iron Horse and to the  old wax museum, the Zoo, the Seattle Center on weekends via Metro,  etc.,  I could continue to list all the change. I abhor what Seattle has become.  That said,  one loss puzzles me the most. For all of my childhood there were two things that Daydreaming. marked the advent of warm weather and impending summer, the University District street fair in mid-May, and the Pike Place Market Street Fair which...

29 days of vacation burning a hole in my pocket.  Where to? Fridays. I generally love Fridays--what worker chained to work Monday-Friday doesn't love the end of the week? Truth be told, however, I cannot wait for this Friday to pass--the my last one before Abby comes home as a rising senior from MHC.  I'm not sure if she is home all summer or for a brief amount of time--today is the day she will begin hearing back from museums she has applied to around the country with regard to paid summer internships. Summer is nearly upon us. I want to go somewhere, see things I haven't seen before. I am dreaming of Italy. Milan, Rome, Palermo.  .   . Or maybe just Parkland. I've always wanted to be on Cops.  .   .  

  " Leave the Gun. Take the Cannoli. "                                                          -Peter Clemenza from Mario Puzo's  The Godfather   My life has not always been boring. I have a habit of being on the edge of a chasm, only to walk across on a board that just fell from above, never knowing the risk I had taken. Mr. F@%king Magoo. I missed 9/11 by a day, boarding a plane the day before for a much safer, Montgomery, Alabama. I left Seattle the day before the WTO. I left Seattle the day before the last big earthquake. I always find such coincidence funny. Blessed? I don't know. There are two other wild coincidences in my life that I think about a lot more. First, back when I was a freshman in high school--two of the guys I spent a lot of time with were Robert Huffman and Rey Baruso. We had a lot ...

So many years gone. Time evaporates like sweat on a summer morning in Death Valley. I was cleaning my office last week when I came across a hard drive of images dated from 2905 to 2016. Video too. Images capture time like a mosquito in amber. I could look at some pictures and tell you the date--not simply birthdays and holidays-but special days. Yesterday I brought the hard drive downstairs and plugged it into my laptop .  Looking at these images of the family in happy times touch my heart--to be sure. However, clicking through the pictures I felt like an archeologist looking at a lost civilization. The children are adults, not the kids in the images. My mom, Jenny's parents dead, but smiling back at me in picture after picture. On the Photo from an old hard drive . computer screen.  My happy, beautiful family. Jenny engaged in parenting like a hummingbird bird harvesting nectar hovering over a flower. Traveling in Canada, the East Coast, New York, Europe, San Francisco, Lake ...

Mornings, Saturday mornings especially, are my favorite time of day after pitch darkness. Fresh news to listen to and read, a cacophony of birdsong--almost a gentle fury--drowns out even the highway noise at 5 a.m., and the sense that Willow and I are alone in the world. It all makes for the perfect start to many days.  This morning Willow had me up after 3. After crating her last night and ignoring her protestations of lockdown, her anxiety turned way, way down. By this morning the only remnants of the drugging are the intermittent shaking of her head--making her ears flap loudly on the sides of her head, and the more than occasional obsession with her bottom. She has been to the vet 2x in the last two weeks, so I am certain she doesn't have mites in her ears or some urinary tract infection, but I am fairly certain we are going back to the vet this week to make sure the behaviors aren't evidence of illness.  I gave Willow a treat at about 3:15 a. m., when I woke to her whimpe...

8:09 AM  Willow the Pillow I'm early. I'm almost always early. Its the worst when you know you don't want to be early, but can't help leaving so that you can get there early. The vet said get here at 8:15. I hate late, so here I am. Willow hates the vet's office and knows we have arrived. She is making her discontent clear; her whinging understandable given her first contact with the vet's office in a year was last week, which consisted of shot after shot. She wasn't behind on her vaccines, in fact she was on schedule, but she had a shitload to get and got them she did. So, now I am afraid of getting her out of the car, for fear she will drag me at 20 miles per hour away from here.  8:58 AM  Back home. Work is as crazy as ever. I am hating this being alone without Willow--this is the first time since we have had her where she isn't home with me or out on a walk. Wild.  Willow has been groomed precisely twice in her life. The first groom, done by a mobil...

Here in my fortress of solitude, I am feeling more and more like Marlon Perkins. Between the golden Chinese ladybugs that overwinter in the nooks and crannies of the eaves, sneaking in the house somehow and birthing their fucking annoying babies, or the invasive Chinese stink bugs who also show up in the fall looking for a warm place to sleep for a few months--is tiresome.  It isn't just aix-leggrd critters that annoy. A woodpecker in the last couple years has systematically knocked out the screens from these circular holes that go along the eaves of the house-front, sides and backs, such that it has become a vast rookery. I have all the bramble in the area we found coyotes knocked down near a 10 foot stump of a long dead 50 year old elm, only to have trash pandas move in three weeks later. Why couldn't it be something cuter? Willow almost caught one the other night-it had the temerity to be on the wrong side of the fence --Willow was a second away from a fight she would win, b...

In 2012, having been diagnosed some years earlier as diabetic, I went to a check-up at my doctor in Riverside, California. She did not have the best bedside manner. My weight was 147. 147. I am not certain how I pulled that off--but it was the lightest I had been since I was probably 23. I was based, amped, and stoked. I celebrated in front of the doctor. Her response--and I paraphrase: Don't get too excited. Your body is full of fat. If you'd like, we can schedule an MRI and I can show you. She told me that, like Wagyu, my body was marbled, there was fat everywhere interstitially.  MGM Grand, Vegas, 2012 I didn't thank her for raining on my parade nor did I criticize her.  .   . at least not to her face. I told the story to anyone who would listen. I have never ballooned up like I was back in the immediate post-child having years. When I worked as general counsel, I used to eat lunch regularly at the Renton Uwajimaya, which was just across the parking lot from the o...

" (Tick Tock Tick) Doo Doo Doo-Doo "  Friday night. It's lovely and quiet. Willow and I spent a lot of quality time in the yard. She was sniffing at things and occasionally playing with me which entails running at full speed across the yard and back again. She also likes to run between my legs. She either finds it hilarious or  Backyard on 4.3.2026 she knows (and also finds hilarious) the terror I hold that she might see a squirrel as she is running between my legs.  So, I am alternating between terror and belly laughs, when I look up into a Douglas fir on my property. And there it is, big as life.  I pull out my camera and start snapping. No telling how long he'd been there. We were outside for 45 minutes. S/he just sat there looking majestic. Fearing Willow might spook the animal, I coaxed her inside. I snapped the image above from my living room window.  It's been a stupidly long week. A good week, but extraordinarily lonnnnnnnnnng. That said.  .  ...

 I'm tired  of drinking weak coffee. I am tired of posting weak stories. I am tired of the insanity of my job. I am, to put it more simply, tired. It's 6:30 in the morning, I woke up on the couch. Whenever I wake up, be it from a middle-aged accidental nap at 3:00 in the afternoon or to nature's call at 4 a.m., Willow is instantly next to me, begging to be let outside or for a treat. This morning I stirred at 5:02 a.m. Willow was soon punching me--always with her left paw( the size of a children's catcher's mitt)--is she a southpaw? Can dogs be "handed?" Work, which I never write about, is fucking relentlessly stupid. It constantly keeps me on edge. So many reasons. The current fiasco has the leaderless department--reassigning the work of my colleagues and I. I now have more territory than anyone else, and more difficult territory than my colleagues. They gave my smooth running turf--that took me years to get in order--to someone who isn't pulling thei...

For 30 years we were together. For 30 years, if there was a family event, from a small dinner to a large holiday celebration, I went. My sisters-in-law both have spouses. They would show up at all the large celebrations, but often, for smaller occasions, they would not attend. So, it would be Jenny, Omi, our kids and me. When I would on occasion find out my analogues in the family weren't attending a given event, I would sometimes suggest to Jenny I skip the event. It is not as if these were rare occasions. Jenny was always offended and never agreed. To keep the peace, on all but maybe one or two occasions--let's call them excused absences (pretty much only sick or work obligations)--I would just attend.  This isn't about Jenny, believe it or not . The question I have asked myself over the last several years is why I didn't push back harder. We had serious arguments over this, the few times I suggested I not attend. When I would point out my cohorts were not attending, ...

I never thought about the education and entertainment I would get living in a shy acre in the Duwamish riparian zone.  Coyotes, possum, the occasional raccoon seem to be ubiquitous in Seattle now. The eagles, hummingbirds, Northern flicker woodpeckers, bald eagles, coopers and red tail hawks, barn owls and last night the second bat I've seen in the last 5 years. Field mice abound, which is why I love the birds of prey. Between them and my traps, they have not been a problem for a long time--knock on wood. The California Scrubjay and sparrows occupying spaces in the roof in the back, the stellar jays in the front are lovely, but need to be evicted. You can hear their bird feet scritch-scratching early each morning.  On the adjacent property to the South stand 2 or 3 large Alders right on the property line. There at particular times of year, you could shoot scenes for another Omen remake--this given the 100s of crows who roost there in the early morning in the spring, and in the...

Fall 2025, Key Tower 54th floor   Sometimes, when I curse the weather and the unrecognizable changes that make me question why it's even called Seattle anymore, I just need to look at this picture taken from my desk at work. That 500,000 year old mountain in the distance is young in geological years. It endures. Beauty endures. Don't miss it.  Mysteries abound. Today, while looking at Seattle Public Utility satellite images to see if I could find any evidence of a stream. My lower yard is unwaljable October through May or so given the saturated soil. A bit of a spoiler alert, it turns out the wind storm and snowfall were not the only contributing factors in the demise of the late plum tree. Mar, who I call my handyman, came and chopped up much of the tree today. When he got down to look at the stump damage it was clear that water is flowing under the tree. It isn't coming off the slope of the hill above. I think some wise guy buried a stream here many years ago  it i...

  This morning, quite soon actually, I am heading to meet the cardiac interventionist. I keep asking myself if I feel lucky. I have no pot at the end of the rainbow awaiting me, no fired up joint, no hope for a better day. This morning looks to be uneventful, apart from receiving a date for the heart procedure. Sigh. Happy fucking St. Patrick's Day.  I took the whole day. Given that Abby is home, we will go out and see the c herry blossoms today in the Quad. I haven't done this since Jenny and I took the kids and Buddy, back in our Ravenna days. I miss them both today, terribly so.  In honor of my 65+ percent plus Irish DNA, I say, "Lá Fhéile Pádraig sona daoibh!"