Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Aliens, Lava, Mermaids -and a Crapper.

September 28, 2010 Tuesday

Up early to run errands. We pull up to a remote gas station/post office/grocery in the back woods to mail some letters. While waiting for the post office to open, Oli forgets his headlights are on and when we finish and start to leave, the battery is dead.

We pull out the extension cord to start the battery from an outlet (we have a converter), but the folks inside say they have no outlets! “They’re all taken.”

O.k. .

So we ask a guy in a truck that pulls up, for a jump with our cables.

He says it looks like we have a bunch of crap on the car, and then says ‘Ask someone else.’

O.k. . .

This morning seems to be balancing out the wonderful, kind, warm, friendly-filled day we enjoyed yesterday.

Finally things start to turn around when a nice guy with a truck pulls up and he gladly helps us start the battery. Took just a second and we were on our way. Doing laundry before we visit with Pat ‘Pinky’ Erickson. On the way, we see a guy standing on the corner wearing no shoes. (Just tube socks.) He carefully crosses the street. At the laundry mat we are visited by a gentleman that worked at Area 51 and has flown missions to Alpha-centuri. Another character tells us about his time traveling, and body reconstructions, which helped him look like the aliens so that he could spy on them for global security. He still has scars inside his mouth from the morphing, he says. He also helped build space ships for government operations.

And it’s only 11:30am. Our day is young.

Gotta love Seattle.

Pinky’s: We arrive at Pinky and Steve’s at 12:15. Pinky is out the door to welcome us! So good to see her, she introduces us to a house full of family. Even her Sister Sue takes time away from work to come and meet us. We are so happy to meet every one of them. They are an amazing family; they rally behind Pinky’s ideas and get ‘er done! It’s a wonderful afternoon, lunch is salmon and fruit salad and bread and molten lava cake! Delicious! The company and conversation exhilarating. So much to talk about and catch up with and share. All the while we are entertained by Stella, Pinky’s 3 year old granddaughter. She had just returned from her first trip to Disneyland and had all kinds of stories to tell about the princesses. There’s a puppy in the house too, Speedy a Corgi, you know, the Queen's dog!

It’s a fun afternoon that ends with Jacob, (Pinky’s son), Pinky and Steve each getting a ride in the time machine. We say our goodbyes and depart for the Underground.

Underground Seattle Tour that is. It’s a fun tour under the streets of downtown Seattle.

We park under the freeway, and take a quick peek inside ‘Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe’, which Oliver remembers visiting back in 1986. It still has the mummified man, and a couple of Fiji Mermaids! What a fun, bizarre shop. We find Pioneer Square, with a glass and steel 1909 ‘Pergola’ built as shelter for a cable car stop. The history is fun, Jim the guide talented and the architectural history is fascinating. Did you know that Seattle used to flood with the tide, burned to the ground and to correct the flooding issue the streets were raised which meant that the second story of buildings became the street level entrance? Also, when the roads were raised shoppers had to climb up ladders because the sidewalks were not raised until years later! Also, Thomas Crapper invented a flushing toilet which became popular in early Seattle times. Sound familiar?

Yeah, I know, cool stuff! We finish the evening with spaghetti dinner with Misty and Toby.

Tomorrow we meet Faisal Jaswal, the assistant Dean of student programs at Bellevue College for what he’s calling a “friend raiser” fundraiser for TeamFox!

1 comment:

Mike said...

How could you pass up the chance to jump start a time machine? And you should have told the alien guys that you were the reincarnations of John Lennon and George Washington.