The Next Chapter in the Book . . .: Chapter 326

I started the week out by dusting off the family beer tasting trophy I won last year and had a bit of white wine in it. I like it. I think I'll keep it for another year although Kyanne will be stiff competition. She had some reeally good stuff (as we all did) last year. The categories are due to be announced at Thanksgiving so my wheels can start turning then.

To tickle your memory, this was the line-up for last Christmas' dress-up competition.

Note winning contestant in forefront.

This weekend we went to Seattle for a Jaguar meeting and it was a beautiful PNW day indeed. There are a lot of cranes on the horizon and building is booming in the old logging town of Seattle.

We stopped at Starbucks on Lake Union to buy coffee for the meeting. The marina was a busy, busy place today.

This is the view from the front porch of Starbucks, opposite the marina. Ah the beauty of the American flag, coffee, and the Space Needle, in that order!

More cranes...

Being the conscientious cat owner that I am, I thought Nitro needed a walk in the frozen grass. He was ok with the cold grass until he tried to get a mouthful of grass for his cat-snack.

Ew. It doesn't feel right. "It needs a few seconds in the microwave before it'll be up to my standards." He says.

Ok. Done. My feet are getting cold.

But I wasn't done yet. I love frozen nature, when it's not inconveniencing me, so we continued around the yard to check things out. Aunt Karen used to notice the oddest things and always took the time to show them to me. I loved this stuff. As a direct result, I love to look for interesting little things in nature and through the miracle of pixels, I get to share them with you too. I have done this with my kids which has been both good and bad, in their opinions. I now see Carissa doing this with Reagan and I have seen Kyanne do it with her older niece and nephew. Aunt Karen lives on in all of us. Look at how the ice has frozen on the bottom of stones and grown up in little columns. Chelsea, I'm sure you'd have a fancy name for it, but it looks like straight up science fiction to me.

These crystals grew up in little curlie-cues.

This, this would definately be something Aunt Karen would notice. See how there are little columns of frost on each leaf instead of solid frost? I'm sure it has something to do with the moisture content of the different cells of the leaf, or some sort of fancy antennae, but don't ruin it for me Chelsea.

Frozen grass is just cool whether Nitro thinks so or not.

While I taking my walk through the back yard, and Memory Lane, Nitro has been not so patiently looking for warmer things to stand on than the grass. Namely my feet. Once he realize I didn't have a hold on his least, he decided to make like a tree and leaf. You can see he is dragging his retractable leash behind him.

Since I really need to be spending my time on the JagMag tonight, I'm not putting my pictures in any special order. This is some bridge in Seattle. Ballard maybe???

It almost feels ridiculous that while parts of the world are starving and war torn, I am riding through Seattle in an exotic sports car following an Amazon 1 hour delivery car. The fact that you can order something from Amazon and have it turn up on your doorstep two days later is still amazing to me. To be able to have an item delivered in an hour from your last mouse click. It's almost embarrassing.

Fisherman's Terminal where the big boys keep their toys. This is also where the Deadliest Catch guys like Sig Hansen keep their boats in the off fishing season.

We went to BritSports for our monthly tech session. I suppose it was heaven to someone that gave a crap,

but I found the signs in the shop to be of much more interest. Remember when Earl was advertising those $29.99 paint jobs. Just drive on through the paint spray with your wipers on is about what you got for this price.

I need this one on my desk:

This one is extremely true. It says "Here's what's wrong with your transmission. You have too much money in your checking account."

Afterwards we went to lunch at Hale's Ales Brewery. You can see what our crowd mainly exists of.

Beer is ok, but I really do like cream ale with nitrogen. It's creamy and fluffy. Yum.

Hey, someone. Anyone. Your pot is boiling over. You need to check it more often. The brewery's fermentation tank is certainly getting on with the job of making new little yeasties for the next batch of beer.

On the other end of the brewery, tanks were being cleaned out within and inch of their lives.

Hale's Brewery has the right idea. Each bathroom stall had a clip screwed to it with a page of the newspaper clipped to it. I wonder if it slows down the graffiti traffic since there wasn't any in the stall.

When we got home from Seattle, Reagan was here. Immediately she went to her toy room (once considered off-limits for children) and had a snack in her old Jaguar walker.

Check out those out-of-control pony tails. Wow.

Another angle of her enormous pony tails.

About 9:00 last night, I heard an authoritative German Shepherd bark. After a few barks I got up to see what was wrong. As I did, I noticed the two houses behind us light up and people stand in their doors to try to figure out what was in their neighborhood that sounded so deadly. I figured if there were any bad guys out there they'd be gone so I went out to find Bear had "treed" hisself a possum. That darn possum wouldn't move for anything no matter what I hit it with so I ended up covering it well enough Bear couldn't get to it if he went out in the night later on. Ironically enough, I moved the cat trap there hoping to get it away from the possum traffic in the front yard.