Where's my?

 

 

Viking "highly recommends" using Bluetooth tracker devices in your checked bags. And so does every other travel expert out there.

I bought a four pack because Apple rips you off when you purchase just one. (There's a reason why Apple is a 4.5 trillion dollar company.)

Another bit of technology to supposedly give you control over something you have no control over. Anyway, if your checked bag doesn't make it on your plane, you can spent the flight worrying about it. So much for peace of mind-- but they are supposedly helpful in locating lost luggage more quickly. 

We're spending the weekend packing and getting stuff in order around the house and yard. So much planning and preparation goes into an international trip like this-- nothing like our little vacation jaunts to Twisp. I'll be glad when we're finally on the way. 

The growing season

 

The Fatsia japonica by the deck has just exploded in growth this spring after a severe hacking back. That bright evergreen tree to the left (about 15 feet tall) started life as one of those Trader Joe decorated Christmas trees. 

With the exception of the laurel hedge and fig tree, I'm responsible for planting everything over the last 45 years. The good, the bad, and the ugly. 

In fact, generations of plants have come and gone in just about every spot. Never a master plan, just years of impulse planting along with trial and error. Now, the yard is a wild and random hodgepodge. Martha Stewart does not like hodgepodges. Ask me if I care. The birds love it. 

 

We had pasta with homemade sausage sauce last night, priming the pump for Italian food next week. 

Actually, just a quick taste of Italy-- 2 nights in Milan, then a day tour near Lake Como, then off to St Moritz for 2 nights (Alps train and gondola experiences) before boarding the Rhine River boat in Basel, Switzerland.  

Talk about hitting the ground running! Although this a guided pre-cruise tour offered by Viking, and the transportation and hotels are taken care of. We'll just go with the flow and get a handle on the jet lag. 

And this is a learning trip for us. It might be a once in a lifetime experience, or the start of many river cruises.   

The European weather forecast looks beautiful next week, quite hot actually. I'm determined not to overpack. For once haha. 
 

Fiddling away the time

 

No newsy blog this morning, I’m on my iPad trying to figure out how to upload iPhone photos into Blogger posts while we’re on vacation. Google and Apple get along, but in a most begrudging way. I think the word is frenemy. 

Anyway, so far so good. 

Relay race champs

 

Maya (bottom left) and her friends are having a really successful middle school track season. Good for them! So many benefits, both physical and mental, for girls participating in team sports. 

It wasn't always that way. Nova and Maya look at me like I'm crazy when I tell them this:

Title 9, the 1972 federal civil rights law, prohibited sex-based discrimination in school sponsored sports. Now taken totally for granted by this young generation, that requirement for equal treatment in high school sports was an earth shattering change at the time. 

At our small Colorado high school, the boys played intramural basketball and the girls had segregated gym class and joined "pep club." That was our only participation in sports. 

Few families had money to spare, and the dorky, old fashioned pep club uniform (remember this was the mini skirt 60's) was quite an investment: stitched down, below the knee wool pleated skirt in ugly kelly green, formal blazer, and, yes, white gloves and Keds. Wool fabric was cheap then and the clever girls tried to sew those complicated skirts in Home Ec class, with varying success. 

It wasn't like we were entirely excluded-- the pep club trouped along with the basketball team to away games, hours on the road late at night in a dark bus. Trust me, we had fun as teenagers do, but the sexist roles were sharply defined: the boys played, and the girls cheered them on from the sidelines. As Nova and Maya say, "Nana, that's CRAZY." 

I have a tendency to bemoan change, but who would ever want to go back to those days?

A little slice

 

Here's our answer to the "affordable housing crisis" in Seattle. Take a tiny lot, tear down the bungalow, and build three or four wildly expensive townhouses looming over their modest neighbors. Street parking, because everyone takes public transportation here. Ha ha ha.

Single family homes are considered politically incorrect (even selfish) in our socialist leaning city. There's yet another of these housing complexes going up near us, so more bang, bang, bang and our street blocked with construction. 

 

 

The way of the future, and glad I won't be around when entire neighborhoods look like rows of lunch boxes. 

Anyway! What's the point of complaining about things you have no control over. Despite the steady loss of backyard habitat, West Seattle is still beautiful and our backyard nature preserve is gorgeous in May and June. 

Is there a flower more perfect than an Calla Lily? 

 

Georgia O’Keeffe 

If springtime were a painting... 

 

Our resident bunny, who decided our yard is a fine place for low income housing. He lives under the hedge, and comes out to sun himself on nice days.

Donburi means bowl

 

Donburi is a rice bowl dish, an everyday staple of Japanese cooking, consisting of vegetables and meat simmered together and served over rice. 

The secret, as they say, is in the sauce. On the internet, where you can easily find recipes for anything, they were all wildly different. There's about as many kinds of donburi as Cambell's soup.

But the basic sauce ingredients are pretty much the same: soy sauce, saki, sugar and mirin. I just cobbled something together by taste. The good news is, it was good. The bad news is, I couldn't  make it the same again. (If you're too lazy to write down a recipe, just call it creative cookery.)

A steak and caramelized onion donburi is called "gyudon." And a perfect way to stretch a small piece of quality steak I had stashed in the freezer. 

 Good weather for donburi-- chilly, breezy and wet for the next few days in Seattle.