It has been the tradition in the past that the day after Thanksgiving my mom and my sisters and I go out shopping. But over the past few years, with all of us being gone every other year with our respective in-laws, and with there being less and less at the sales I’m interested in, that tradition has died a slow death. However, I still thought it would be nice to have something for just the women in the family. First my little sister and I suggested we all go get pedicures but the others weren’t too thrilled with that idea. Then I suggested we all go for tea. I tracked down the one teahouse in Sacramento that serve formal high tea, found out that it offers hats and gloves and shawls for ‘dress-up’ purposes, and suggested that we all go for tea, just us girls. It sounded like something my little niece might like too, especially since she’s old enough now – at four – to start being drawn into some of the women-only traditions.

So late this morning I headed over to my parents’ house and my sisters and my mom and I all piled into one car and we headed off for Sacramento.

The teashop was not too difficult to find, and it was quite charming inside. We arrived a little early so there was time to browse all the little tea-related things that were available for sale. When they were finally ready for us we all picked out a tea (with the exception of my niece and my older sister, who opted for pink lemonade instead), and then we were given the option of choosing hats to wear, and were told to pick our own tea cup from a cabinet full of beautiful china. Then we were seated at our table and our tea was brought out in individual pots. A little more time to sit and admire the décor, and then out came the food and it was time for the tea to begin.

They had quite a selection of little sandwiches and goodies to nibble. It never looks like very much on the tea plates, but I’ve learned from other teas I’ve attended with the tea group that looks are often deceptive. There was a tiny little pecan tart, and scones – one even shaped like a turkey in honor of Thanksgiving. There were tiny little white chocolate cookies and cheese spirals and slivers of persimmon, and of course the required cucumber sandwiches. There was lemon curd and clotted cream for the scones, and at the end a selection of either eggnog ice cream, or cheesecake with a swirl of butterscotch.

My niece wasn’t too sure about wearing a hat at first, but a delicate peach number won her over, and she wore it the entire tea (and didn’t actually want to give it back at the end). Her mom allowed her the luxury of adding sugar cubes to her pink lemonade, and she nibbled at her scones and provided entertainment for the rest of us. I’m not sure my mom or older sister had ever done tea before (although I think my little sister had), and I felt bad because it was obvious pretty early into the tea that my older sister wasn’t finding the experience very fun. So I guess if we want to find a new, non-shopping women-only outing, we’re going to have to come up with some different ideas for next time. We’ve got two years before we’ll all be together again for Thanksgiving, however, so that should give us plenty of time to come up with something better. I hope.

This year for Thanksgiving the entire family descended on my parents’ house, which meant that Richard and I had nothing more to do than bring the parts for the green bean casserole and make pumpkin bread. Since my mom ended up buying a few loaves of bread from the church bazaar this past weekend I didn’t even have to bake! A big change from the stress of two years ago, when I had 17 people coming, a house full of furniture to rearrange so we could somehow fit all 17 people around two tables, and a turkey to cook.

I tried to sleep in, but my internal clock is set too early for that to work most of the time. So instead I got up around 7 and puttered around, checking email, doing a little knitting, petting the cats and trying to keep them occupied so they didn’t go skittering all over the bedroom to wake up Richard. I finally called my parents to find out when breakfast was going to be ready (my mom’s homemade cinnamon rolls), and poked Richard awake so we’d have time to take showers and gather up everything we’d need for the day before they were out of the oven.

My little sister, Bil-2, and my little niece arrived last night fairly late, so they were already up and wandering around by the time we arrived for breakfast. We all sat around the table and stuffed our faces with homemade cinnamon rolls fresh from the oven, getting a good start to the traditional day of eating. Later on, my older sister and her family arrived, bringing my two little nephews – much to my niece’s delight – and I’m not sure the noise stopped for the rest of the day.

They’re still young enough that they can all play together – and look forward to seeing each other, and none of them care that one is a girl and two are boys. My niece is a little headstrong (it seems to be a common trait among the women in my family – heh), but the oldest nephew can match her in stubbornness when he puts his mind to it and the youngest seems blissfully oblivious to being ordered around by his older brother and cousin. So for the most part they spent the day happily playing with each other while the rest of us parked ourselves around the house with books and magazines and me with my knitting (of course).

We did the traditional lunch of fruits and veggies, crackers and cheeses. The kids, and some of the adults, took naps. Bil-2 opened some belated birthday presents and received, much to his 6-year-old son’s delight, a Monopoly game. Turns out he and his dad have played Monopoly on the computer, so he knew what to do. So Richard and both brothers-in-law and the little 6-year old played Monopoly. He needed a little help making change from time to time and he’s a little young to have any true grasp of the financial concepts included in the game, but he was having a wonderful time. And the rest of us were having fun eavesdropping on them.

I decided, rather belatedly, that I should make the three kids hats again this year – and this time add in some scarves. Admittedly the decision was driven by the fact that I happen to have a pile of sock yarn that I needed to use up, but still, I think this could be a fun tradition to start. So I worked away on stripy brown hats for most of the afternoon.

Thanksgiving dinner was full of all the traditional foods, including the grape Kool-Aid in the ugly green plastic pitcher. My little sister had gone out to my mom’s herb garden (or rather, what’s left of the herb garden, since there is a fairly massive tomato plant in the middle of it attempting to take over the world) and picked an assortment of fresh herbs for a centerpiece. Unfortunately they came with a few ants, so my older sister and I had fun surreptitiously squashing ants throughout dinner.

Later there was pumpkin pie and apple pie and the pumpkin spice cake I brought (because I do not like pumpkin pie and can only work myself up to apple pie on rare occasions). The cake was apparently a great hit, especially my youngest nephew, who practically inhaled his first piece, and gobbled down the second without hesitation.

The kids eventually wandered off to bed and we adults were left to sit around and try to recover from all the eating. There was talk of a rousing game of Balderdash, but I ended up dozing off on the couch and realized that I probably wouldn’t last very much longer, especially for any kind of game requiring thought. So we headed home, where we were greeted with six cats who insisted on getting extra attention to make up for the fact that we left them all alone all day.

Two weeks ago I started poking around on the wishlist program Richard wrote a few years back for both our families. Last week I selected a few items (and got ideas from the list for the rest), and late last week we made a bunch of orders. So almost every day this week there have been boxes in our mailbox, or sitting on our porch – boxes from all manner of places, all bearing the same marvelous thing. Yes, folks, this year we managed the unthinkable. We have successfully done every single bit of our Christmas shopping online!

It gives me a little thrill each time we open another box and pull out another soon-to-be-present. We’re carefully stacking everything away in a closet (and saving all receipts, just in case), and as each box arrives I check off one more name on our list. By the time Thanksgiving rolls around we should have every single gift accounted for. By the time December hits, all that will be left to prepare for the holidays is filling out and mailing the cards, putting up the decorations, getting and decorating a tree, and doing all the required baking. It’s still a lot of work, but my little early Christmas present to myself this year is the gift of mall avoidance during the pre-holiday season. No searching for parking in an overfull lot; no jostling with hundreds of sweaty, tired shoppers and their screaming kids, no forced exposure to tacky department store holiday music (otherwise known as ‘how many different ways can we expose shoppers to ‘Jingle Bells’ before the first one goes postal?’). Ah, what blissful relief.

Because we both had to get allergy shots after work, Richard and I decided we’d carpool. It’s something we wish we could do more often, but with our offices on opposite sides of Sacramento, doesn’t always work for timing. But every once in a while it’s nice, and since we had to head for the same place anyway, we figured yesterday was as good a day as any.

It being the end of autumn, it’s not uncommon to see flocks of birds winging their way across the sky, in their uneven V formations, heading for warmer climates somewhere south. However, as I looked up at the evening sky on the way to the allergy clinic yesterday I was shocked by the sheer number of birds in the sky. Usually they pass in clumps of a few dozen, but last night there were literally hundreds in the air above us. The massive flock formed and reformed into all manner of random shapes as they passed overhead. I’ve never seen so many birds flying together like that.

Maybe this was the discount flight. All the wealthier birds, or the birds with frequent flier miles to burn, left earlier, in the smaller, more comfortable groups, and this was for all the ones who were left. Whatever it was, it was impressive. I’m glad Richard was the one driving; if it had been me I probably would have veered off the road from gaping at the sky instead of on the cars around me like a good driver should.

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This morning I got a late start to work due to washing machine issues. Our model has a little device that sits on the rotator bar in the middle, into which you pour the fabric softener. Every so often that device gets disgustingly clogged and we have to pry it off and then go through great effort to return it to its former, ungooped condition. This morning I ran it through the dishwasher on the hottest setting, but it still was gross when I pulled it out. So I spent half an hour running it under the water, shaking out more nasty gunk than I ever wanted to see. I know more about what happens to fabric softener that’s been left to molder for years than I ever wanted to see. Ick.

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It’s been foggy today – so thick this morning that it was hard to see far in front of the car, and oncoming traffic without their lights on were a constant and unnerving surprise. I passed a cyclist coming down the other side of the road, his tiny little bike light flickering, and caught a glimpse of his face as he pedaled by. He looked like I am sure I would feel if I found myself having to bike down back roads in such conditions – as if he was gritting his teeth for all he was worth in the hopes that he would make it to his destination before someone hit him, and more importantly, that he was hoping desperately that the fog would clear by the time he headed home.

Due to some mix-ups in the schedule, we didn’t get to Apple Hill last weekend like we’d hoped. However, we ended up with one more free Saturday, so we went today instead.

It’s a yearly tradition to go to Apple Hill. When my sisters and I were kids, and our family still lived in Roseville, we would all pile into the car at least once or twice each winter and go to Apple Hill. If we didn’t make it during the autumn, we would still get there in early December, to cut down our Christmas tree. The house we lived in had a 13-foot cathedral ceiling in the living room, and most tree lots don’t sell trees quite that tall. So we’d head up to Apple Hill, find a tree farm, and cut down the biggest, cheapest tree we could find. Since taller trees tend to be more expensive, we would usually end up with the cheapest kind –the one that gave you welts on your skin if you touched it with your bare hands. All throughout college it was a tradition for the boyfriends to come with us, so all the men could flex their muscles and kill the fatted tree (or something). And then we’d bring it back home and put it up – a procedure which usually involved at least two ladders and at least one person on the top of the tallest ladder swearing as he nailed the top of the tree to the beam that ran across the ceiling.

Now that we’re all further away, and more importantly, now that we have a Christmas tree farm within minutes of our house, there’s no such need to go up to Apple Hill to find a Christmas tree. Instead, we go up there mainly for the food.

There are two main places to stop and get food when you are in Apple Hill. The first is High Hill ranch, where they make the most marvelous caramel apples. We always go there first and go directly for the sweet stuff before we do anything else. Once the caramel apple is consumed and we’re sufficiently coated in sticky goo, we next move on to check out all the apple-related goodies and all the crafts. In nicer weather there are usually lots of kids and their parents fishing around the big pond down the hill, but today it was a bit too chilly, and perhaps too late in the season, for any of that. Instead we meandered around the craft tables and then swung by the fudge place (which was not very exciting at all) and finally got back in our cars and continued on to our next food destination.

Kids Inc. is the second important stop along the route. There they make the best apple pies – huge monster pies full of up to 5 pounds of apples. I think one of their regular pies could feed a small army. Since I’d promised to bring back something for my office we picked up two of the smaller pies (one for my office, one for Richard’s), and settled on little single-serving (ha!) pies for ourselves. Even those are huge – I think next year we’ve decided we’d be better off just splitting one, since I don’t think either of us managed to get through even half of our own pie.

There were more little craft booths to wander through, and we made a few more stops at a few more places. But after the caramel apples and the donuts (did I forget to mention the most amazing apple donuts?) and the pie we were so full we could barely move. So instead we drove around the little roads between all the farms and admired the fall foliage and the pretty trees and eventually made our way back home to take a food-coma induced nap.

I was supposed to go down to my almost-twin’s house this evening for a girls’ only party, but by the time we got home we were both exhausted. Richard’s been sniffly and stuffed up and I’ve been feeling draggy, so I called and reluctantly backed out of going, and instead we drove off to pick up a few more shelves for those bookshelves we got last weekend, and then went home and took long and lazy naps and are looking forward to spending the rest of the day in blissful laziness and not eating any more apples or apple-related foods for at least a few days.

I’ve been getting the allergy shots now for about three months, and with two exceptions, I have gone in dutifully, twice a week, because I am determined to stick to the schedule they gave me and get through this as quickly as I can. It’s not always pleasant, of course, since I tend to get lots of nifty reactions from the stuff they’re injecting under my skin, but I keep thinking about those damn sinus infections I get every year and that’s been enough to keep me on track.

Today when I went in, the nurse told me I’d progressed enough that I now only have to come in once a week. I’m not quite sure how they measure progression, since I have yet to have a single treatment where there haven’t been lovely hives at the shot sites, and about once a week or so one of the shots causes my arm to swell up, or gives me a serious case of itches all over my arms and neck. But aside from the swelling (which can sometimes last a few days before going away completely), the reactions have been only minor inconveniences. That is, of course, until today.

It started with the usual itching and hives that I get around the injection sites. But then the itching spread, and this time, instead of just dissipating after an hour or so it kept getting worse and worse. By the time I made it to the sushi restaurant where I met Richard for dinner, I was itching everywhere, and rashes were popping up on my arms and neck. I even had rashes on the palms of my hands, and they itched like hell. I tried to just eat sushi and hope it would go away but no such luck. By the time we were done eating I was about ready to peel off my skin in order to relieve the itching, and the rashes had been joined by some oh so lovely hives. I left Richard behind to pay the bill and headed home to take some antihistamines and then sit and wait and hope that it would kick in fast, all the while trying desperately to not scratch.

It took about half an hour before the meds kicked in and I finally felt like I was starting to get back to normal. There’s no more itching, although a few of the nastier rashes (like the weird ones on my palms) are still hanging around just to taunt me.

I’m really hoping this was just a one time fluke; that after this my body will adjust to the new dosage and the new schedule and go back to just occasionally turning one arm into one huge hive and leave the rest of me alone.

We were supposed to go to Apple Hill today. We sat down and looked at the calendar and figured out a free weekend and also factored in the knowledge that going up there before Halloween would mean crowds and heat and not so much fun, and this weekend seemed to be the best one. However, that only lasted until this past Wednesday night, when the representative from the Board of Trustees announced during the Admin Council meeting that they would be stripping and refinishing the linoleum floors today, and that Richard was in charge of coordinating that. Um. Oh really?

So…no going to Apple Hill today. Instead Richard got up early and joined some of the other men of the church for breakfast at our local greasy spoon (where they leave the toaster on the table for you and they tell you what you really should be ordering, just in case you thought you might want something they don’t agree with). And then after breakfast he headed off to the church and along with a small crowd of other guys, spent about six hours working on the floors.

I, meanwhile, decided that I might as well take advantage of all this free time I suddenly had. So I went to the grocery store and loaded up on baking supplies and came home and spent many hours baking pumpkin bread for the church bazaar in a few weeks. In between stirring and pouring, while the bread was baking, I sat upstairs in one of the glider rockers in our master bedroom’s bay window, and turned on the fireplace to warm up the room, and worked on the cardigan I am knitting for myself in a colorway called, amusingly enough, Pumpkin.

Pumpkin bread is a required food this time of year. It is dense and it is rich and there is nothing the remotest bit diet friendly about it, save for the fact that there’s about half a pound of pumpkin in every loaf. The whole house smelled divine the entire afternoon. I didn’t pay much attention at first, but when I ran out to get something later in the day and came back, the smell hit me the instant I opened the door. I kept telling myself that this was for a fund raiser, and somehow managed to wrap up all the loaves and stash them in the freezer without taking a single taste. There will be plenty of time for pumpkin bread later this month, once Thanksgiving rolls around the great day of overeating is upon us.

When Richard got home, I called around and found a place that could rent us a truck, and we headed off to Vacaville to pick up some shelves. I’ve mentioned before that we are gradually turning our spare room into a library. Someone on the Freecyclers list posted last week that he had a huge set of bookshelves to get rid of and I jumped at the chance. So after much emailing back and forth we settled on this afternoon for pick up. They are huge and heavy and far sturdier than anything we currently own. These are not kit bookshelves – these look like shelves that were built for an actual library at one point.

The pieces are all currently sitting on our front porch, where we put them for lack of somewhere else, in order to clear out the rental truck so we could get it turned in before they closed. We’ll move them upstairs into the library probably tomorrow afternoon and at some point in the next week or two we’ll put them together. They’re not perfect, by any stretch of the imagination. They are old and they are beat up, and they’re not exactly the style we’re hoping for in our long-term vision of the room. But they are free and they are big, and for now – at least until we can track down a good carpenter and the funds to have what we really want custom built, they will do just fine.

It is Halloween, and we are sitting on our couch, watching various shows on HGTV, and occasionally hopping up to go toss Tootsie Rolls into bags held out by various costumed children. Our screaming doormat died on us last year, so this year we must make do with a marvelous skull that says clever and witty things when it senses shadows. This has the advantage of acting like an early warning system – if the stomping of small feet climbing the steps to the porch wasn’t warning enough. With few exceptions they are usually sidetracked by the talking skull and quite often spent a few moments trying to figure out how it works – giving us a few extra seconds to drag ourselves out of the couch and make our way over to the huge bowl of candy and open the door.

I played the piano in church today and although I very much wanted to play Danse Macabre at some point during the service I managed to find enough maturity to realize it would probably not be appropriate, and so successfully refrained.

Yesterday went to the kick-off party for Nanowrimo, which was held in an apartment in Sacramento surrounded by streets where you cannot make u-turns. It took us a while to eventually figure out just where the heck it was, but we finally made it. We recognized a few of the faces from last year’s Thank God It’s Over party, so we weren’t the only ones insane enough to try it again.

The coordinator had a few little games to play, ending with a contest for who could write the worst starting sentence. It came down to another woman and I – she eventually won because she pulled in the hamster sex card – but I think if it had been judged on sheer number of words in one sentence alone I would have swept it without any difficulties at all. I am nothing if not good at writing extremely long sentences if I put my mind to it. I’m sure it’s a skill that will serve me well at some point in my life. Or not.

This afternoon we voted. We’re both permanent absentee, which means if we were actually on top of things we could fill out our ballots and mail them in. But last year and this year we have left it to the last minute, and so instead of relying on the mail and hoping it gets postmarked on the right date, we’re just going to drop them off at the polling booth on Tuesday instead. So many issues to consider. So many ballot measures to ponder. So many things that reiterate just how incredibly close-minded and stupid the general public can be.

Over the past two days I have spent more time in a car than I ever really wanted to in the space of 48 hours. See, we had this grand plan that on the way home, instead of going the direct route, we’d meander down the Oregon coast, check out all the cute little coastal towns, and eventually make our way through the redwoods once we hit California, and end up back home refreshed after having such a scenic adventure.

Ha ha. This plan did not, of course, take into account that there would be a storm involving much rain and dreary grayness and people who do not know how to drive in the aforementioned rain and grayness, and also fog.

We got an early start yesterday, giving hugs goodbye to my little sister and niece, and drove off, armed with various maps of the Oregon coastline, graciously provided by my brother-in-law. It was starting to look a little ominous in the sky at that point but we didn’t think it would be that much of a problem. Ah well.

The Oregon coast is gorgeous, but then anyone who’s ever driven that way knows that. It’s lined with dozens of charming little towns full of nautical themed shops, and adorable bed and breakfasts. We stopped in Seaside for lunch because I wanted to check it out as a possible spot for future whole-family gatherings, but by then it was raining and pretty dismal. So instead of wandering around, checking out the town, we found a parking spot and dashed into what turned out to be a lovely little restaurant, where we had clam chowder and salads and homemade bread for lunch, and contented ourselves with perusing the tourist publications about the town instead of seeing it for ourselves.

I think if it had been decent weather we would have made far better time down the coast, but that wasn’t to be. We took a brief stop in Tillamook and found a little place that sold cheeses and jellies and other edibles, to pick up a few thank-you gifts for my parents, who looked after the feline horde for us while we were away. But then it was right back in the car, driving and driving and driving.

There are sea lion caves just north of Florence and we’d been hoping to get to them in time. But the storm-induced delay meant that they’d closed by the time we made it there. In fact, to make matters even more fun, not only did we have to contend with the storm, we also had to contend with impending road construction. Even though the highway wasn’t going to be completely shut off until later in the evening, a tunnel just before the sea lion caves was being worked on, and they only were allowing one lane to go through at a time.

Driving along the ocean is, at least, pretty impressive when it’s stormy. If there’d been more time, I would have liked to stop and just admire the view of the waves crashing against the rocks below. We did stop, briefly, at the sea lion caves, and peered over the railing, but didn’t stay outside very long because the wind was pretty fierce by that point.

After peering at the map and figuring out how much further we had to go, we eventually decided that continuing down the coast was probably not the best idea, especially if the storm didn’t clear up by the next morning. So instead we headed inland, back toward I-5, and ended up finding a lovely stretch of road that most tourists probably don’t see. It was off the regular route, so what few spots of civilization we spotted were mainly mining or factory type towns. But in the evening, with the fog rolling in, and the mountains and the trees all around, it was just gorgeous. We made our way to Eugene and tracked down a fast food place for dinner, managing to get pretty soaked in our brief dash from car to restaurant, since it was pouring by then. And then once we finally figured out how to actually *get* to I-5, Richard called ahead to the place in Ashland we’d stayed before. Luckily, it being the off season, they had a room, so we slogged on through the rain and got to the hotel to spend the night.

Today, of course, the weather decided to play nicely again – probably because it knew that we had given up on our coastal meanderings and so there was just no point in all that grey and gloom any more. The drive was fairly uneventful, because I-5 just is not the most exciting highway to drive along. But there was one nice surprise. As we headed through the mountains, and came up on Shasta, we started seeing snow along the road. Turns out that storm (or perhaps an earlier one we conveniently missed on our drive up) had dumped quite a lot of snow in the area. The plows had obviously already been through, so it wasn’t a problem on the road (lucky for us since we don’t have chains for this car!), but it was just breathtaking. Eventually I couldn’t stand it any longer so we pulled off at the next exit and found a place that looked mostly untouched, and we got out to tromp around in the snow and take pictures. It was as if we were walking around in the middle of a Christmas card. There was a little path I could see, off the side of the road, and I surprised myself by managing to take this shot, which turned out far better than I could have hoped. The fog was just clearing from the trees, but enough remained to provide that misty feeling. It made me miss living in snow.

So now we are home again, having put close to 2000 miles on the car. The cats are thrilled to see us, of course. There is laundry to do and mail to sort and groceries to purchase before we get back into our regular routine. I wish we’d had more time to explore – there was so much of Oregon we didn’t get a chance to see. But that will have to wait for our next road trip, which is not going to be for a while because I think if I have to spend another 18 hours at one stretch in a car, no matter how lovely the scenery outside, I may go ever so slightly mad.

After spending a fairly relaxing day just hanging out with my little sister and her family, we spent today (or most of it) running around Seattle. Richard had never really seen Seattle, and it’s been a very long time since I’ve done more than just drive through it in passing. So this morning, after inhaling a marvelous homemade coffee cake, and large quantities of coffee, we all piled into two cars and headed off to the city.

My little sister and my niece rode with me, which suited my niece just fine because there were toys for her to play with and things to chatter about. The drive into the city wasn’t too bad since it was a weekend day (and thus less rush hour traffic).

We started with Pike Street Market, since any trip to Seattle must include at least one trip there. I remember wandering through this with my uncle, back when we used to go up and visit him, but it’s been quite a long time. Richard got a kick out of the fish market (and the way they fling the fish), and my niece was quite taken with the big brass bear that sits just outside the market.

We mostly just meandered through the market, and then through various shops around the market. There was a brief detour into a tea store, where Richard bought some kind of tea that is very, very strong, and only he liked (the rest of us took a whiff and shuddered). Then we had to stop by the chocolate store right next door, which apparently just opened. We picked out an assortment of truffles to try for later, and escaped before any of us broke down and ran screaming amid all the goodies, smearing chocolate all over our faces and taking bites out of everything. But it was close. Chocolate stores are dangerous places, after all.

It was fun wandering around all the little shops and booths, checking out all the merchandise. We found a little Italian place for lunch and had calzones and cheese pizza, crammed onto rickety stools around a tiny little counter in the very back of the store. We found a coffee shop and drank coffee and chai tea and split huge pumpkin cookies while waiting for Lark in the Morning to open so we could meander around all the really cool musical instruments. And then there was a hasty lesson on how to use the Seattle bus system, since it was getting to be nap time for a certain four year old niece, so we hugged my sister and brother-in-law good bye and found a nearby bus station, and they left us in Seattle to entertain ourselves for the rest of the day.

Richard really wanted to check out the new Science Fiction Museum, and I thought it would be fun to at least meander by the Space Needle. So we managed to figure out the right bus to take, and it took us straight to the City Center. Since it’s Sunday the place was mostly deserted, but that was actually rather nice (neither of us is big into crowds). It was actually pretty cool – although it might be kind of boring for the non-nerd type. Mainly it’s exhibits – classic books, manuscripts, television shows, costumes and props from various productions. The museum was set up to walk through the progression of science fiction in both print and film, focusing on different areas of the genre, such as horror, space travel, alien encounters, and so on. It was kind of fun to walk through and read all the snippets here and there. They have one of the (I think) life-sized aliens from the Alien series, stuck in a huge glass enclosure, and it was properly realistic enough looking to make a few of the younger visitors a bit wary.

After the museum we just wandered around the Seattle Center. We checked out the fountain, and stopped to chat with a man sitting on a bench playing his tuba. We ate ice cream in a huge food court area and watched little kids clamboring around in a play area down below. We found the little sculpture garden and walked through that. And eventually we figured out which bus to take to get us back to our car (made easier because I had carefully marked where we parked on the map).

We drove around downtown Seattle for a little bit, just to see more of the city. It was kind of cool to drive right by the new library, since I’ve seen pictures of it (and actually worked on an article about the building, and some of the rather unique architecture involved). And it was fun to play tourist, peering out our windows at all the buildings.

There was nasty traffic on the drive back to my sister’s house, and we did manage to get lost once, but eventually we found our way back. After my niece went to bed we watched Desperate Housewives, which Richard and I had not seen before but will now have to watch every week because it is so very funny and clever, and divvied up all the chocolate truffles (because the raspberry chocolate torte was just not enough for the weekend), and it was a fun day.

Richard and the cutest little four-year old niece, ever.