Return from the inland empire

What is up with this rain? It was a pretty dramatic reversal yesterday: it was hot in Spokane Saturday morning, and got progressively cooler as we came back through the pass; when we came up from the Mercer Island tunnel on I-90, we were greeted by a spectacular view of Seattle in the rain. And it doesn't appear to have stopped raining since!

The trip itself was a success by any count. Otis and I got up and headed out of town early, and enjoyed an easy ride over to the east side, passing an extraordinarily high number of motorcyclists, or so it seemed. The most wonderful Gweekers and Mikey have got their plates full with all kinds of life right now, but they were glad to see us and extended their usual high hospitality. We brought take-out lunch with us, so we spent the shank of the day on their porch, just catching up.



In the evening, we all headed into town to the Elk, an old grad school haunt, and met up with the delightful Nellie (another grad school pal) and her hubby ProgrammerScott, who joined us for dinner and coffee-afters and up-too-late talking.

On Saturday morning, the four of us took a walk over to a local street fair (which featured such extravaganza as a troupe of eight-year-olds in pink poodle skirts just murdering “Book of Love” and a wiener dog race) and then had a yummy brunch at a nearby café. We spent a little more time visiting with G&M before they had to head out to family reunion (Mikey has about four generations on each side in the Spokane area), and decided to come back a little early rather than kick around Spokane because, well, we just missed the rain so much, I guess.

We got home early enough to make nice with the cats and to fit in a viewing of The Birds (I guess you can tell whose blogs we read) before we hit the sack. (Oh, yeah, Yojimbo – we tried The Librarian with Dr. Carter, and it sucked so hard that it moved the furniture in the living room. Yeesh. We needed some Hitchcock just to scrub our brains.)

Today will be filled with the w-word: I have papers to respond and Otis has no appointments but lots of chores, so I guess rain today isn't such a bad deal.