Juddmansee.com

Phew! So much has happened in the last few days and I’ve finally managed to have time to write about it. Also, we had enough free time to run to Office Max to get a USB flash card reader so we can download our photos to the laptop.

On Monday after the last blog posting we drove to North Cascades National Park for a very short afternoon/evening of poking around. We took a couple short hikes from the visitor’s center and took a few nice pictures along the way. This shot is a view of Picket Ridge.

After leaving Picket Ridge we headed up the Skagit River to the dam and saw a nice little flower garden and a pretty spectacular series of waterfalls.

We drove back to town and managed to grab dinner before the sidewalks rolled up at 9pm.

On Tuesday we had meetings in the morning and afternoon. After our last meeting we drove out to Fidalgo Island which is home to the town of Anacortes. Susan’s grandparents spoke fondly of their trip out west for their 50th wedding anniversary in 1987 and how beautiful the Anacortes area was. We drove out to Washington Park on the west side of the island with views of the San Juan Islands and the surrounding water. Next we drove up Mt. Erie which had great views of Mt. Baker and of Mt. Rainier far to the south. The first picture is Mt. Baker and the second is a view over the islands to the south. Though our eyes could just barely make out Mt. Rainier the camera did not pick it up.

On Wednesday we had meetings until 2pm and headed back to Anacortes to go on a whale watching tour. We had no idea what to expect from the trip and ended up having (according to the boat crew) a very lucky viewing experience. Just that morning they had to travel 2 hours to Canada to watch the whales for 1 hour before driving 2 hours back to port. On our trip we saw our first whale about 30 minutes out of port and watched for 3 hours. My camera can’t do justice to how neat it was to see the backs of orcas surfacing between 20 and 1000 yards from the boat with the occasional breeching and subsequent splash.

Orcas live in matriarchal groups of pods. The pods are designated by letters and the whales by a number. We saw mostly J Pod whales with an L pod whale thrown in. The first picture is of J-5 who is a 70 something year old female. She surfaced within 20 yards of the boat and I managed to snap a picture of her with Mt. Baker in the background. The second picture is of Mike (forget his number) who we saw most often. The third picture is of me just missing a full breech by a whale. The splash is still impressive. Though I couldn’t get a decent picture since they were mostly 200 yards away, we spent a lot of time watching Slick and her newborn (J-42) swimming and surfacing together to breathe before diving back under the water.

After the whales decided to head off in a different direction in search of salmon the boat did a little tour of other sites in the area. We saw harbor seals sunning on the rocks, bald eagles hunting for fish, and even a peregrine falcon circling his aerie. The boat also drove us to Deception Pass with its famous bridge before heading back to port.

Today is a much slower paced day as we’ve taken time to do some things around La Conner itself. We did some souvenir shopping, toured the quilt museum, and saw the resident turkeys in town. The turkeys apparently moved into town several years ago and decided to stay. The locals at first thought about having them removed (mmmmm with stuffing) but decided to adopt them instead. We found them in someone’s driveway right where the receptionist said they’d be.

The final shot is one for Susan’s family. The Skagit Valley is very fertile farmland with a great growing climate. There are so many tasty fresh greens, berries, and other local goodies that we’ve eaten very well (and healthy) while being here. Below you’ll see a picture of Susan with her favorite (haha) vegetable.

Tomorrow it’s on to Mt. St. Helens and to visit Corinne and Mike!

We’re going to try to update the blog as we go along so we’re not overwhelmed by one tremendously long post at the end of our trip. Right now it’s just after noon PDT on Monday and we’ve managed to free some time to write our first update. This is Brian writing, even though I’m logged in as Su from her computer.

We left from Boston on 9am on Saturday on JetBlue. Other than the short layover at JFK (ugh what a stinking pit of an airport) the flight out to Seattle was very pleasant. This is the first time I’ve flown JetBlue and I’ve heard good things about them, all of which are apparently true. We landed in Seattle about 3pm local time, got our rental car, and drive to our first stop visiting Isaac, Ashly, Hannah, and Eli Sheldon. We had a tasty dinner and sat and talked for several hours catching up on life. We finally crashed about 10:30 pm (1:30 Boston time). The next day we had breakfast, said goodbye to Ashly who had a training session planned for her upcoming triathlon, and headed to Rattlesnake Ridge with Isaac and the kids.

Rattlesnake Ridge is only 45 minutes from Seattle and is a nice 1 hour climb to a ridge overlooking Rattlesnake Lake, Mt. Si, and the mountains up toward Snoqualmie pass. The first photo shows Mt. Rainier from the I-90 bridge on the drive to the hike. I haven’t been to Seattle in approximately 10 years and I’d forgotten how absolutely huge Mt. Rainier is. The other photos show the ridge we hiked up, the Sheldons at the top, Rattlesnake Lake as viewed from the ridge, and Su and I with Mt. Si in the background.

After we got back to the city we said goodbye to the Sheldons and did the hour drive up to La Conner, Washington, where Su is attending her training sessions. We’re staying at the Channel Lodge which is a lovely little lodge right on the water with an awesome view of the Rainbow Bridge from our room.

After a nice dinner we went to bed early, woke up and ran, and attended our first session. Now it’s lunchtime and off to Mt. Baker later this afternoon.

Brian and I spent the week of June 27 – July 6 visiting our family in the midwest. To have had such a relaxing trip, it sure went fast! As has been our recent trend, we stopped partway through the drive each way, helping to maintain our sanity.

Saturday: We left Saturday evening, drove as far as Batavia, and stayed over night.

Sunday: We drove the rest of the way for Fort Wayne. We visited with my parents for a while, then took a walk to stretch our legs before retiring for what would be a great week of restful night’s sleep.

Monday: We went to visit my Grandmother in St. Mary’s, stopped at Tastee Twirl, went for a drive around town, had lunch with Mom at Pullman Bay (great fried chicken and peanut butter pie!), then watched a girls softball game. The “Little Thunder” (ages 5-8) won! It was such fun to see the girls play at that age.

Tuesday: Dad and Brian changed the locks, we built a picnic table, and cooked steak. I got in a little gardening too – we shelled peas and took green beans, beets and onions with us the next day.

Wednesday: Pack up the car with my scrapbooks and various “stuff” and head to Toledo. We had dinner with Grandma Hume and Uncle Greg, and finally I got to meet Aunt June. She tells great stories and I really like her perspective on things. We stayed up late talking and watching the thunderstorms.

Thursday: We visited Grandma Krueger. I was surprised and touched that she said “Su!” when she saw us coming down the hall. We were glad to hear that she had a really good week recently; Aunt Diane is so patient and caring to visit her every day. We went back to Aunt Diane and Uncle Mike’s for lunch, and Steve joined us. Barb made us tasty chicken cacciatore so we had a relatively quiet evening together.

Friday: It was time to head to the farm in Edon for the annual 4th of July shindig! My parents came out to visit too, and meet Grandma Hume’s family. Lynn and Larry are wonderful hosts. We stayed up late playing cards and chatting with aunts, uncles and cousins. I was amazed at the fireworks too – gotta love Indiana outlets.

Saturday: Where does a week go? We got up, played more cards, enjoyed holding Jack, then had to leave after lunch. This time we stopped in Weedsport on the way back. We saw lots of deer!

Sunday: We decided to take Route 2 instead of the Mass Pike from Albany. It was scenic, hilly, and a change of pace. We saw lots of woodchuck/groundhog creatures in the morning. We made it back and went for a run while we were inspired.

Then, back to the normal work week. The electrician came on Monday and the A/C got turned on Tuesday. Brian’s really been enjoying the air conditioning this week

The flowers enjoyed our vacation, which coincided with a warm week of sunny weather and showers most afternoons in Newburyport. Brian staked the tomatoes and mowed the lawn, and snitched a couple snap peas as a reward for his work this week. We enjoyed our first fresh salads of the year. In addition to the flowers, the green beans are also blooming. It’s a colorful yard!

The purple Salvia is blooming, as are the Autumn Sunset Mums (color, not season). The yellow coneflowers (black eyed Susan) are close.

The beebalm will also be blooming soon! It’s red and spikey.

The hanging basket of impatiens is blooming again, the tiger lilies are blooming, and you can see the nifty new stakes Brian found at the garden store. The idea is that the main tomato stalk is supported by the swirling metal spike. I think it looks artistic! Brian was short one cage/spike so the brighter stake is a broom handle Brian found to support the 11th tomato. You probably can’t see them in the photo, but a the original canna is growing, and he’s got a friend now – a second canna has sprouted behind the lilies. I am really pleased with the colorful flowers we have this summer!

It’s been quite the week with all of the contractor fun going on at the house (see our last two posts) plus trying to get ready for a vacation to see our families. During all this chaos, I got a chance to see my best friend from high school, Hans, who was in town for a training class. Being a baseball fanatic, we had to make a trip to Fenway. The weather was perfect for baseball. We saw Wakefield pitch 7 innings of shutout, 2 hit ball, saw a homerun over the monster, and got to see Papelbon mow down the last batter with the bases loaded to preserve the shutout. It doesn’t get much better than this.

The contractors arrived bright and early today for their second day of exploration – I mean installation. I got up even earlier so I could dig up bulbs in the side yard. I didn’t want them to get covered by the condenser when it gets installed. (And for those early birds out there, yes there were plenty of worms to be found digging in the mud at 6:30am)

We start today’s photo montage from the 1st floor bathroom. The cabinets were removed to make room for ductwork. You can see the fine wallpapering (ahem) behind the cabinets. Next, the contractors cut a hole in the ceiling. Brian took a photo from the hole, looking toward the back of the house down the rafters toward the big chimney. There is a considerable gap between the bathroom wall and the pantry, and also a gap between the ceiling of the bathroom and the floor of the linen closet on the 2nd floor.

You know what you can do with extra space in your walls or between floors? Here’s a clue. Yep, that’s just random debris. We got several more looks inside the walls. For example, here’s a shot of more junk but also showing the wall joint. Brian let his engineering instincts loose here, measuring the size of the beam, and also noting the first floor ceiling was originally between the 8 and 10 inch marks.

I am avoiding the temptation to drop something from the attic down behind the dryer. It’s a straight shot through the linen closet! I could even throw a tennis ball through the hole in our bedroom wall and you know where it would come out? Behind the dryer. I would love to turn our house into a giant Rube Goldberg machine at this point. Luckily the temptation will subside tomorrow when the rest of the vents and returns are completed.

Thank you Beej for keeping me posted on the construction activities during the day! It is fun to follow along viewing the pictures.

The contractors spent today working on our new HVAC system. They removed the old boiler and excess ductwork from the basement. Brian can stand up without bumping his head in several new areas of the basement. I’ve been told this is only temporary, as they contractors will be installing a more efficient branching scheme tomorrow. Note the dryer lint on the one duct; the dryer still vents to the basement and I don’t think there is much we can do about it until we move the washer and dryer.

The A/C unit was delivered. It is large. It’s 3×3 in footprint, as advertised, but it is also 4.5 feet tall. Luckily it still fits within our property line on the church side of the house (we measured).

For the most part today’s exploration of vent and return placement went well. I had no idea there was so much dead space in the house. That shot is behind the built-in china cabinet. Evidently there were a set of shelves (that picture is looking down at the shelves from a hole about ceiling level). Why someone would enclose the shelves and then put in new ones is a bit of a mystery. I chalk it up to the weird contractor who lived here a dozen years ago.

I did suspect that we lacked insulation. This photo – my favorite of the bunch – proves it. Brian took this shot reaching behind the cubby in the guest room (above the kitchen, behind our bedroom). This crawlspace goes behind the back chimney, across the width of the house. I was told that the guy who crawled in there was between Brian’s size and my size, but very skinny. I believe it!

The final interesting point of the day was the cat. He was very chill when I got home, which was a surprise given that strange men had been tromping around the house, drilling holes in walls and making lots of noise. Brian mentioned that the cat spent most of the day in the attic. The thing is, the ladder to the attic was removed. That means the cat jumped a good 5 feet up to the landing of the “good morning” steps in the attic. Good kitty!

In the garden, we have three roses growing. The big climber that has been most robust in the past seems to be taking the year off (note the dead looking rose at the right of the photo below). One small rose that we thought was dead, but replanted anyway, is growing! I think it’s reverting to an old variety, since it sprouted from underground instead of the main hub, but we’ll have to wait and see. The little climber is ready to bloom.

The perennials are doing well. I think we lost a poppy, and the cannas are still being coy, but otherwise everything is thriving.

The vegetables are very happy. The peas are up to the trellis, so we are training them to climb. The tomatoes, peppers, green beans and swiss chard all look good. The greens have four leaves now.

The window boxes have been doing strong work. It’s so nice to come home to a splash of color in the front of the house.

The hole is even bigger than we thought. Brian excavated again yesterday. It is a full circle, not just the the semi-circle area we first uncovered. It’s about 6 feet in diameter at at least 4 feet deep, from what we can see at the moment. He didn’t get to the bottom of the structure, but he did discover the second chamber behind the wall, which is just as large and round as what we had already found. We decided it was time to ask someone from the historical society to take a look. I’m still leaning toward a well/cistern of some sort, but it would be fun to know why it is domed, and what the approximate age is. It may also be a kiln. Brian found an old-looking bottle, some hand-made nails, and more pottery in it.

It was a long week despite only having two days of work. Monday was non-stop until we packed and got to sleep. Tuesday we traveled to Indy, drove to St. Marys, then greeted family and friends at the funeral home. We talked with many of my mom’s cousins and one remaining aunt who came by, some neighbors, Rotarians, Grandpa’s coffee club friends, and some friends of my grandparents I had not seen in 20 years. My favorite part was hearing stories of kids who had bought penny candy or traded baseball cards with my grandfather at his dime store and grew into local businesspeople who were involved in Rotary with Grandpa years later. There were also friends who had grown up and gone to high school with Grandpa in Jay County. Wednesday I had a little quiet time to say goodbye, then we had the funeral and burial. I was able to share my thoughts at the funeral, as did my Dad, and my brother read scripture. We experienced such an outpouring of support and shared happy memories during those two days.

Thursday was a much-needed day of “down time.” Dad was committed to work at the Food Bank so Brian and I went with him to set up and have breakfast with the crew. They are all quite different – different ages, different reasons for being involved – but they enjoy good humor and the fellowship of working together. I picked some strawberries, ate lunch with Mom, then headed back to the airport.

Friday seemed like just another weekday. Brian had a hectic day in court (volunteering for Jeanne Geiger) and I traveled to DC for my first meeting at DARPA. On Sunday I enjoyed dim sum with the Shuldiners, Frank and Jodi, which involved the handoff of the potted lilies.  The holly bushes are planted at the San Clemente’s so we’ve nearly completed the plant hand-offs.  Only two more to go!

This week we’ll be saying goodbye to my grandfather, Arlie Sommer. I’m really lucky to have had a grandfather who lived almost 93 years, and was married to my grandmother for 71 (exactly – he died on their anniversary). I had to chuckle yesterday as I was reflecting on one of our favorite stories about Grandpa. People would often ask him and Grandma whether it seemed like they had been married so long – after all, Hallmark stops making up new anniversary themes at 60 years. Grandma would say that time goes fast, and it “seems like it was just yesterday” that they were getting married in the parsonage living room. Grandpa would mutter “and you know what lousy day yesterday was!” in a joking way. I thought, well, Friday really was a lousy day, it’s hard to imagine a lousier day than Grandpa passing away. It’s like the final punchline to his joke.

Grandpa was diabetic, but was able to manage it well with a restricted diet and regular exercise, and lots of sugar free foods. He survived cancer in the 1980s, when he had to drive an hour each way to the hospital three times a week, and the radiation treatments left burns on his skin. He had a 5-way bypass in the 90s, and his heart stopped on the operating table, but they got it going again and so he kept of living an active life for another dozen years. He had gangrene in his toe from lack of circulation about a year ago, but with some clever re-routing and roto-rootering of arteries and veins, he was able to recover and enjoy pink healthy toes again. Grandma would carry a list of his surgeries and medicines with her, in case he had to go to the hospital, and it amazed me. I think of Grandpa as a miracle of modern medicine.

I’m sad to not see Grandpa again, but I also feel so lucky. Lucky that my parents went to pick him up Friday morning for a doctor’s appointment, so they were there the day he died. Lucky that he didn’t suffer or have a drawn-out hospital stay. Lucky that he and Grandma lived together, in their own place, their whole married lives. Lucky that Brian and I just visited last month while we were in Indy. My brother called me around noon on Friday to tell me they’d taken Grandpa to the hospital. I had two proposal papers due at 5pm, and I really had to concentrate to get them done; I said a quick prayer and vowed to think about Grandpa after they were submitted. So, I was lucky to be thinking about him when he died at 5:02pm.

The calling is Tuesday and the funeral is Wednesday. I hope to get my thoughts together to be able to speak at the funeral, tell a few stories and share what Grandpa meant to me.  For now, we’ll be sad for a while, travel to Ohio to say goodbye, and reflect on Grandpa’s long and full life.

Our amazing string of sunny weekends was forecasted to end today. And it did – it’s now pouring thundershowers outside. That meant we had to do some weekday and early morning work to get everything done before June 1.

Tuesday the spruce tree disappeared! Brian said the tree guys cut off the lower branches, climbed partway up to cut a notch, then cut a notch on the other side and pulled the top down diagonally, avoiding the newly planted perennial bed. We now have blue sky! And Brian finally met our neighbors who live behind us.

Friday evening we got the new lilac, poppies and lenten rose planted in the back bed. Now that the garden is safe from contractor trampling, we also planted the peppers, swiss chard and as many tomatoes as we could fit into our small space.

It was forecasted to start raining last night, but as of 7am when I woke up there was no rain. So, I went out with a shovel and started trying to move the azalea. Luckily Brian got up around 8am because my digging progress was very slow. There were lots of tree roots between the maple tree and the former location of the spruce, requiring me to either hack at them or snip them with pruning shears. Brian dug a bigger hole and made quick work of the azalea. On to the rhododendron! It was trickier, with less room to maneuver and a larger root system, but it too was moved. We started moving dirt piles and getting the yard back in order.

Just then we started hearing thunder. I scampered into the garage for the trowel, so I could plant the 2nd perennial bed, where the azalea and rhododendron had been, before the rain. The plants have been doing ok but are much happier when in the ground, not in their little plastic flats. Whereas last time I got out a tape measure to map out the bed and ensure the plants were far enough apart, this time I quickly dug little holes, stuck the plants in them and kept going. I also plunked the rest of the tomatoes in the back, in a small open space bewteen the lillies and the hanging basket.

Here’s one picture of the back fenceline where you can see (right to left) the rhododendron in its new home, the azalea in its new home, the spruce tree stump, the hanging basket, and the little tomatoes, and the new lilac with poppies in front. The cannas are planted behind the lillies but they aren’t up yet. We’ll get more pictures when it’s not raining.