Wet

Went through the wash several times today, at least my shoes are cleaner, and my rain jacket is still keeping out rain. It just started up again, I can hear it hitting my window.

Worked a catering event this morning at 7 am, and then watched the Wim Wenders' documentary Pina which was great. She (Pina Bausch) was a German dancer/choreographer, and it's interesting to see it now as I can see her influence in most of the performance art/dance I've seen in the past year. There's a lot of love present in her work, and that might be the result of the company being together for so long, or it might just be her. My favorite work was Café Müller which involved chairs and the dancers dancing blindly, but just the way they move and connect is beautiful in general.

After that, I went to MOHAI http://www.mohai.org/ for free museum day, which is my new favorite museum. It's a fairly "eyes wide open" look at the history of  this city, warts and all, and it makes me fall in love with Seattle all over again. It's a relatively new (and much larger) space for the museum, and it's so well-curated. And it's fun. (And now I have the Seattle fire song stuck in my head.) It was also pleasantly crowded, aided no doubt, by the miserably wet weather (windy and over an inch of rain already today) and the free passes. I left during what I thought was a lull in the rain, but as soon as I'd walked about 50 yards, it started up again. Was going to go to another museum, but time was running short, so I caught the bus home.

The bus ride was long, delayed, crowded, on the wrong route and people were pretty stoic. I pulled out (a different) art mag and dropped peas on the seat then onto the floor. This packet of peas (seeds) broke open in my bag a while ago (um, when it was still planting season...um, yikes) and I haven't emptied them out yet. I explained that to the very serious man across from me, and in my embarrassment, made him laugh. Clown-ish.

Want to go to a puppet show tonight, but might skip it: there are two college football games in town tonight, one now, and one at 7 pm south of downtown, and that combined with the rain, the new bus schedules/route drivers, and I think it's gonna be a mess trying to get anywhere. There's one next weekend as well, but I think I'm busy all next week. Am actually free tonight. I want to see more puppetry, I've always kinda' liked it. I guess it'll depend on if I can get there avoiding the stadium traffic.

Think we are about to lose power, lights are flickering. Oh, no. Just the last of my over-priced light bulbs giving up the ghost. Don't know where to get more either. Thankfully, this IKEA lamp bulb has lasted forever, and is still working. Here's a silly picture of ducks resting on one foot. Maybe I'll stay in and do laundry.

Break in the rain/L Herlevi 2013

A couple better photos

Here are some birch trees I passed by on the very long and scenic route home today. I needed some wildlife and forest time. It took me more than two hours to get home this way. (These are taken with the old, point-and-shoot digital camera.)

Birch trees, late afternoon/L. Herlevi 2013

And a mama mallard and very tall baby that walked up out of the canal and came up to me. I think something might have been wrong with the female, she was making squeaky noises at me and her feathers were kinda' a mess, like something had gotten on them. It used to be a landfill, so it's a little toxic, still. She walked the baby to the ditch on the other side of the road, it went into the water, but she remained standing in the road.


Ducks/L. Herlevi 2013

Ducks/L Herlevi 2013

Saturday-Free

as is often the case, I ended up randomly gardening.  Turned some soil, pulled weeds and the endless growth of the leek-garlic-who-knows-what hybrid; transplanted some self-seeding kale-things (I don't know what they are) and so am glad that it started to rain so they can get watered in. Water hasn't been turned on yet for the season.  Detoured home by way of Greenlake so I could look at the ducks.  Lots of coots, beaks and feet bleached out, a lone one running from the water to the flock across the sand and reminding me with it's lurching gate over it's massive webbed-feet of a man staggering across the desert in search of an oasis. Mallards were sleeping in the weeds, and two mergansers bathed in the company of a bufflehead couple.  There were crew races across the lake and the cormorants had collected themselves on an unused swimming dock away from the action, but alert and watching.