Month: April 2012

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Seattle Views

It was a beautiful day. Blue sky and sunshine all the way and what a busy day we had lined up.

By my reckoning there are five great views of Seattle and across the course of the day we saw three of them. The first one we went to check was up at Newcastle golf course. A recent find, it is close enough that we can just pop up there if the weather is good and today it was. We went there after Toby had a swimming lesson and while Harry was at Evan’s undertaking a mightily impressive Easter egg hunt. Although it was windy up at Newcastle the view was pretty impressive:

After leaving Newcastle and collecting Harry, we went to Chittenden locks to look at the boats and the salmon. There weren’t many of either but it wasn’t too much of an issue as we couldn’t stay there long as we had an appointment at Ray’s. The view from there was also very impressive. The Olympics stood tall and made the perfect backdrop for a lovely lunch.

From Ray’s we took the usual short trip up to Kerry Park. Seattle-ites were obviously enjoying the day as there were plenty up there checking out the view. And who can blame them, it’s not bad:

Next stop was the Space Needle. We’d spent plenty of time admiring the Space Needle so now it was time to go up it. Although the clouds were starting to form, the view was still pretty impressive – particularly Mount Rainier:

The other two views of the Seattle come from Salty’s and on the ferry to Bainbridge but they will have to wait for another time – today was busy enough!

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Thin Eyelids

As some of you may be aware I suffer from a dreadful medical condition known as thin eyeliditis. It probably has a suitably impressive latin name had it been officially recognized however it hasn’t made it’s way to Wikipedia yet so it remains known only as thin eyelids.

I have suffered with it for many years as the mountains of alarm clocks in storage in the UK, the skips full of alarm clocks thrown away when we moved and the handful of alarm clocks in drawers around the house in Bellevue will testify. The trouble is the light they give off is sooooo bright! It stops me getting to sleep and sometimes they even wake me up because they are deliberately target me!

I had hoped that the current version would be ok – it had 3 different brightness settings on the clock – but even on the lowest setting it focuses the light right into my eyes.

These last couple of nights in the middle room seem to have made the condition even worse! The wireless router, although probably 9 ft away woke we up the other night shining brightly into my eyes. I wouldn’t have minded but I’d put a book in front of it to stop it before I went to bed but at some point in the night the light managed to move the book and then direct it’s full glare straight at me. I had to spend the rest of the night asleep under the duvet shielding my eyes.

That very same night the lights from next doors house was upsetting me. It was either that or a star somewhere. Trouble was that the blinds were pulled but the slats were slanting into the room and pointing downwards and this let sooooo much star light in.

It has now evolved into quite a complex night time routine. I have to make sure the blind slats point upwards, make sure the alarm clock light is set to low, make sure there is no bottle of water in front of the alarm clock as some how this refracts the light and burns it straight at me, make sure the wireless router lights are hidden behind a book or piece of paper and make sure that an object of some sort is positioned in front of the cable modem.

I haven’t worked out how to block out the light from the bathroom where the light has to be on all night to keep the boys happy. Who would have thought sleeping could be so stressful? I’m starting to sympathize with Aunty A and her sleeping issues!

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Zzzzzzz!

This was meant to be the latest edition of jet lag watch but the jet lag myth has been busted! Even the Aunty Arnold theory that only women suffer has been destroyed! Which, on a side note, makes Aunty A’s suffering look even more pathetic!!

On Monday morning, Tracy and I were clearly worried that the latest visitors weren’t going to make it through customs and onto the plane as we were both awake before 4am wondering how they were getting on! We needn’t have worried because a little over 12 hours later we were at the airport and Nanny and Grampy were coming up the escalators. And with their usual luck, the rain had stayed away, Mount Rainier was out to welcome them, as were the other mountain ranges. The devil clearly looks after his own!

The highlights of Nanny’s first ever flight were, firstly not even noticing that they had taken off, and secondly being so upset from watching War Horse that she had to spend some quality time watching In the Night Garden! Not even the grand children watch that any more! But they were new episodes and she enjoyed herself!

Anyway, having arrived and delivered a chocolate mountain into the house the time soon was upon us to decide how much sleep they would get on their first night. They went upstairs at 9:45pm with my guess being they would be awake by 1:30am and Tracy guessing 2:30am. How wrong we were. When I left for work the following morning all was still quiet. Something was clearly wrong! As it turns out, Grampy slept to about 4am and Nanny until 7am! What’s that all about!?

Still, not to worry – the second night is always the worst! The jet lag was sure to strike then. But oh no. Bed by 10pm and sleeping through until 4am for Grampy and 5am for Nanny. It’s a very impressive performance. I’m sure if we reviewed Aunty A’s performance we would see that they have slept more in the first two nights than Sally slept in the first two weeks! Which just goes to show, when I told Sally to “pull yourself together” I was right!