Soccerrrrrrrrr

Today was a soccer day. A wet day to start.
It started with a very small gathering of friends on a pitch. The rain was light and kept many away, so we moved to a different field with others that play rain or shine. Carl did not participate to save his legs for another day.
When the small game ended kids were arriving for the late morning games. One of the first girls to arrive did not have a ball to play with, so Carl shared and kicked a bit with her. He ended up playing goalie while the team waited for balls and more to arrive. Kind of a fun little bit of unexpected play.

Big soccer event of the day – the Major League Soccer Championship: LA Galaxy vs Real Salt Lake. A few pictures:

Start – March to the Match. A Seattle tradition (for all of one year). Passing by. Notice the wet pavement and sunshine in the background.

March to the Match - 2009 MLS Finals

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Warm-ups: the best I could get of Beckam was his butt.

Beckam - LA Galaxy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Start of the game: a bit of the fal-der-al to get things rolling with a bit of pagentry

Starting line-ups

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The game was tied 1-1 after 90 minutes of Regulation Time. The game was still tied 1-1 after 30 minutes of extra time. On to penalty kicks. Real Salt Lake wins! after 7 kicks. They really deserved to win this game. They seemed to play harder and just had more action going through most of the game. It was fun to be in the stadium. Cold, but dry and buzzing. One of the best aspects was that we were not rooting for either team. Just a good game.

 

Fall Flowers

I had not really paid much attention to the fatsia in the backyard lately, other than to prune it back. But today you will note that it is flowering.

Fatsia flowering in the fall

As I was picking up leaves off of the lawn (we do not rake yet, we pick) and looking for any other rodent activity or damage some motion caught my eye. It was a hummingbird! I don’t know if I have ever seen one in our backyard. But it was flitting around the fatsia flowers.

You may notice there is no hummingbird in the picture. By the time I had retrieved the camera, it was gone. It added interest to an otherwise uneventful time in the backyard. Leaves were picked and only one area was found where it looked as though some animal was trying to find out what was underneath the new grass. No watering today. Not much rain either, but I figure the soil could use a day of dryerness, and it is supposed to start raining again tonight.

Moon

I saw the moon on the way home from work today.
This could be a comment about how dark it is by 5 PM, but that was not my first thought.

The moon this evening is the first heavenly body I have seen all week, not counting Carl of course. It has been so dark and rainy, and windy. It has been hard to lift your eyes towards the sky, much less see anything other than the drops falling down with the few remaining leaves. The moon almost surprised me. It was just a sliver. I don’t know if it is waxing or waning.

The weekend is supposed to be a mix of rain and rain breaks, maybe even a sun break.

This is sounding a lot like a weather report. Hmmm. Must be reflective that all I have done is work and drive to and from. Not much else to go on about. Looking forward to checking out the lawn tomorrow. No watering today. My current thought is to not water all weekend and let nature be the primary provider. She certainly has been doing a great job since we got the installation down.  (oops – back to the weather)

Reading

I read every day. I read a fair amount.
I don’t often get to read for personal fun right now.
Most of that is my fault. I need to make time. I used to have many things that kept me out of the house in the evenings. Not so much anymore, but I got out of the habit.
I read a lot at work. But I don’t often get to read the myriad of periodicals and papers that fly in to my in-box. I even made a reading in-box. But that box is full. So at closing time I decided to clean out the reading box and do some reading. Well really more perusing and ready the occasional article. I probably got through half a dozen before I decided it was time to head out into the elements.

And speaking of elements – no watering with water we pay for today. Rain most of the day. I haven’t really seen the lawn since Sunday. Leave and arrive home in the dark. Have to wait until the weekend to see how it is doing. Not worried about it drying out. Now I am worried about it floating away.

Meetings

That one word sums up my day.

Meeting 1: Carpooler. Surprised me on Monday (we did not carpool) when he beat me to work. He is not normally an early riser. Drove separately to work on Tuesday morning, and I drove him home Tuesday evening. Wednesday we agreed to a pickup at 6:50 at the coffee shop across from his apartment. I arrived at the meeting spot. Did not see him in the shop so called his domicile. He answered with that tone of rushed, late, grogginess, “I’ll call you back in a few minutes.” I explained I was on my cell phone, already there. He was obviously not, so I moved out of the coffee house and into the Park and Ride lot to wait. Ate the peanut butter toast Carl had prepared. It was about 7:10 when the meeting finally started. It was a rather quiet meeting, other than discussing the best route given signs regarding accidents…

Meeting 2: 8 AM meeting with others on our ER planning committee. Had time to turn on my computer before the meeting, and that was about it. Many discussions. I have been feeling opinionated as of late, and am letting it fly. 9:30 AM left meeting and headed toward my office.

Meeting 3: 9:30 AM Met my consultant/friend as I left the previous meeting and walked toward my office. She was coming in, and accompanied me to my office. I took a moment to fill a coffee cup (and hit the loo). This one lasted until 2 PM. The high point for me was figuring out why a rearrangement of a spreadsheet had not added up to the same numbers as before the rearrangement. Equations, sleuthing, like debugging a program, only not. Also got assignments, realized how horribly behind schedule this plan really is. At 2 PM I was ready to dive into my assignments while they are fresh in my mind (and the schedule slip as well). But…

Meeting 4: Took the reviewed and marked up HR manual into a review meeting. (2nd one – hope to cover more than 20 pages this time.) (Also took advantage of the venue change to use the loo.) Lunch during meeting. At 4:30 my carpooler appeared outside the room.

Meeting 5: Took about 1/2 hour to really leave the building, including adding a bit of air to tires. Carpooler drove the leg home. Wet, windy, crowded roads. Carpool lane helped immensely, and we ditched the freeway when we hit Seattle.

Meeting 6: Home – meeting with my partner, breakfast and lunch packer. Good hug. Dinner cooking.

Walk much?

Yes, of course. Want to take a walk?
Well, not so much today. My weekend warrior exploits are showing up all over me today. I can hardly stand up from sitting without grimacing. Even when I walk I look like I’ve been riding a horse.

I know the best way to recover is to do some exercise, like take a walk. I kept watching the weather in the morning. Windy, rainy, a typical Seattle November day. Figuring out whether I had it in me to brave the weather. I was saved from making that decision by a customer who arrived at 11:58 AM and wanted 5 minutes of my time. He and his friend left at 12:40.

I will have the same question tomorrow at noon. Except that there are very high winds predicted tonight. So much so that we have our power outage contingent ready to go if needed. (Can’t have those lift stations overflowing in the dark. It’s much easier to avoid the flow when you can see it.) So I may have other items to contend with through the lunch half-hour.

Grass day 3 – no extra watering, just what fell from the sky.

Grass – day 2

Trying to follow the directions so the grass will survive. We are watering in the rain. I doubt today’s rain will reach the required 1-inch on its own.

We are in recovery mode here at home. Creaky and sore.

I am a bit anxious about the soccer game this afternoon. My hamstrings are yelling. I know the moving about will only be helpful in the end, but it is the short term pain that concerns me now. That and the fact that there are teammates that could care less about why I am sore and will still expect me to do my normal meager attempts at defense. Much of this requires a few good sprints near the start so the opposing team thinks that I have a chance at making a play, and am not just a post to be run around at will.

We were also completely out of food (there was still oatmeal, but …) so we went out to breakfast. Then purchased a toilet part replacement and tons of groceries. At least the bags felt like they each weighed a ton.

The toilet part replacement job should be up on the list soon. I guess part of my job working for a water and sewer district means that I should automatically know how all of the plumbing bits work. And I have pretty much figured out the toilet thing. Just ask my kids. I always wanted to show them how to stop a toilet from overflowing or running, so when (not if) it happened to them they could react appropriately. But really, I can’t stand it when toilets run on, and this is not a simple flapper replacement. So – we will see how it all goes this afternoon,  soon, really – I will not look for other things to delay the task. Although, I have to make garlic bread for our soccer team get-together following the game. And the toilet is not running right now. Last night when I just couldn’t stand it, and couldn’t face climbing up and down the stairs one more time I tied the float arm to the towel rack over the toilet with dental floss. I can still flush, just have to reposition the floss link afterwards. (Ingenuity or laziness, you be the judge.)

GRASS!

If you have read many posts you might remember that I hate fences and that we took two trees out of our backyard.

So now we have removed the remaining grass and weeds – with much help from friends and neighbors.
Had 10 yards of topsoil delivered that we spread around the backyard- again with much help from friends.
Rolled the soil – with help of a lawn roller.
Tried to till the new earth – with the help of a friends roto-tiller that turned out to be the bain of one afternoon, after which I returned it to said friend, who had one of their neighbors check it out – and it worked like a charm for them…..
Waited three weeks for a “dry” weekend.

Today was the dry weekend. At least one day of a dry weekend.
So we borrowed a spreader, and re-borrowed the dreaded roto-tiller.
Spread 80 lbs of lime and 4-5 lbs of fertilizer.
Tilled said lawn.

Sidebar: I got the rototiller out, and started it all by myself, playing with the choke, throttle and pulling on the thingie that makes it go. It took a few trys, but I did it. And this is only special because this is the first small gas motor tool that I have ever used. Really.

Raked tilled dirt.
Laid down 81 5-foot x 2-foot pieces of sod.
Rented a roller and rolled said lawn.
Bought a sprinkler and watered said lawn. (We haven’t used a sprinkler in years, so we really did have to go buy a new one.)

So now, because of all of the fences and visual impediments in our backyard, and since we have a lawn that we can now sunbath topless without worrying about anybody seeing.

Topless Sunbathing

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For me – it was just too cold out.

Too cold and tired to move

floating

As I was crossing the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge, I glanced away from the drill rig to the north. I had suspected it was getting soil samples from the floor for piers for the new proposed bridge. I was wrong, at least partly. They are testing different techniques for drilling for the new piers to see what their noise effects on the surrounding neighborhoods will be. But as I said at the beginning, I glanced away to focus on a seagull. The gull was just floating over the southern rail of the bridge, about 30 feet in the air. Just floating. It looked very serene. Two thoughts came to mind.

1. Standing over the heating grate in our upstairs floor, feeling the warm air rush upwards. (Picture Marilyn Monroe without the voluptuous figure or platinum blond hair, and substitute an oversized T-shirt for the dress.)
2. Floating in Lake Superior. After one of the kids had been born I was still wearing a maternity suit, and could fill the extra material with air and lay on my back in the water. It would support me for several minutes. Weightlessness in the cool water is a wonderful feeling.

Soccer!

Two soccer games today. One professional, one very un-professional.
One loss, one win.
Nice fall weather – chilly if you are not moving – SO MOVE.

The Seattle Sounders lost to the Houston Dynamo today in the first round of the Major Soccer League Playoffs. It was a great first season for the team, and they should be proud of what they accomplished. But since they are professionals it is probably not that easy. We watched the game with our friends and some of their neighbors. Fun, good noshing, and close to where my soccer game was.

So 20 minutes after the Sounders’ game ended we were on a local pitch. I played OK, but can do better. For the first time in a long time Carl came to the game. He played with a players young son, listened to a bit of the Lions v. Seahawks game on the radio (Seattle tried to let the Lions win, but in the end it just didn’t happen that way), and chased some balls from our game that were kicked over the fence and into the woods. Oh, and he watched a little bit of our less than professional play.

Not a bad weekend all in all. Got some homework done, but not the big backyard project. [It did rain all day yesterday.] That will hopefully happen next Saturday.