Tubal Cain

Because she is awesome, Alison invited Ben to go on a backpacking trip with her and Myles. Well, she is awesome, but she also claimed that Ben was going to be their cougar-bait. There was a cougar attack in the general area a few weeks ago. Of course, Ben runs faster than Alison so that plan may not have worked out for her if there was a cougar. But, spoiler, they saw no cougars.

It's been almost a year, but with some digging around in the house we managed to pull together his gear. The pack was pretty heavy, but Michael offered to give Ben and his pack a ride.

I was super sad not to be going, but glad he could go.

Photo cred to Alison for the rest of the pics. Their campsite was near an abandoned mine and the site of a plane crash (not recent).

Pretty dang cool. And Ben said there was the added benefit that the mosquitoes seemed to prefer  Alison and Myles over him.

July on FB

Proof that this child will watch anything if it is on the TV: he joined me this morning while I watched YouTube videos about metadata  

Summer sky at the beach in Washington State in July.

This morning's Lego challenge: build the tallest tower.

We've been adopted!

Just kidding. Shortly after this we all went inside, washed our hands, and changed out of any clothes that the cat had touched

Another unscientific poll: do you wear shoes inside at your house or go barefoot?

Two steps forward, one step back. 

Someone needs to talk me out of eating chocolate frosting out of the tub.

Spending some quality time watching the trailers of the Batman movies with the boys. We ultimately decided the best Batman is Lego Batman. 🦇

Legos and art activity

Kalaloch, or A Comedy of Errors

Kalaloch has been on our list for years, but it is a pretty popular spot so this year was the first time we got reservations. Unfortunately, I got the reservations on January 5th.

So much has happened since January 5th.

Not only did we not foresee the foot drama that would shortly ensue, but we also didn't know at the time when Jason's DC trip would be. In hindsight, we chose poorly. My foot is still in early days of recovery and Jason's DC trip turned out to be too close to the camping dates for him to come.

Oh, and Josh and Michael ended up taking summer school classes.

By the time July 5th came around, it was just me and the two younger boys going on the trip. Which definitely makes the packing situation much easier, but made some things harder. Luckily, no burn bans in the park, so we were to make as many FIRES as we wanted. 

Our trip dates had been selected to coincide with the lowest tides of July. Low tides = tidepool fun! This being the PNW, it meant cloudy tidepool fun but that still worked for us.

Shortly after I took the picture above I was walking up the beach when the sand liquified under my heal and I wrenched my ankle. And by my ankle I mean the one encased in a brace with all sorts of muscles weakened by atrophy. It was not excellent. So we took a break on some driftwood and ate gummies. As one does.

Ben decided to bring out his inner Frankenstein and created a hideous gummy bear hybrid.

Isaac worked on his optical illusions.

And then it was back to the campground for more fire. Between my long covid pain from campfire smoke and my wrenched ankle, I made the tough decision to end our trip early. The boys were a bit disappointed but I promised them one last fire after we packed up our gear. We were trying out a new kind of marshmallow this year and decided to make the last fire a memorable one by using up the whole bag.

Our first experimenter was disappointed that the chocolate in the middle did not get melty even as the outside started to burn.

Subsequent attempts lead to slightly disturbing outcomes.

And this is when I decided that these marshmallows do not count as "food". The outside would blacken and enlarge and then start shedding from the main marshmallow not unlike a snake shedding its skin.

It was a gross but amusing end to our trip.

My brain must have been disconnected on this trip. We have been camping for years and I always do the prep and planning. And yet, we found ourselves at Kalaloch without flashlights, blankets (to go under my sleeping back on the cot), and a pot to boil water for our last dinner. Oh, and I managed to leave my glasses in the tent as we rolled it up and packed it away. 

For. The. Win.

June on FB

How do you know if people are really your friends? Well, you invite them to meet up at 6:30am on the weekend and then go run at 10k for your birthday. Happy birthday to our one and only child who thinks that running is fun!

Just started a summer school class and this sentence in our first reading assignment is when I started to question my sanity: "Effective design in this model is based on appropriate normalization of database tables to maximize storage efficiency, balanced with optimization for query performance." 

Our Father's Day started with Jason Miller having breakfast in bed followed by a heart-pounding search for our youngest...who, after some heart attack-inducing minutes, was found in the front yard attempting to make friends with the feral cat that was trying to catch the birds in our tree. Cue tears from the rejected child who was then placated with watching other people play videogames on YouTube.

Happy Father's day to my love and co-parent of these confusing children. 💜

What's this? Both of my feet in the same footwear? Weird!

This might actually make a bathroom reno worth it 💜💜

So lucky to get to see a wonderful friend/cousin many times removed while in Chicago. It's been too long!

That's right, my friends, the folks at library conferences are pretty wacky. 😉

Michael Surgery...This Time It's Nasal

It was just over a year ago when Michael and I made an early morning drive up to Tacoma for a little heart ablation action. That experience was not, to put it mildly, his favorite day ever. Aside from the anesthesia fun, his leg "burped" out blood and got an extra 40 minutes in the recovery room as they convinced his body to clot at the catheter site. Michael was a champ through it all, but it was rough.

Fast forward to this spring when the ENT showed us a CT scan of his nose and pronounced his septum extremely deviated. Oh, and they have a surgery for that. At first, Michael was opposed to the idea. However, the thought that he could breathe through both sides of his nose and the subsequent benefit to his crosscountry PR times won him over. 

Once he was on board, the trick was finding a date the ENT had available and that didn't interfere (much) with Michael's numerous extracurriculars and the end of the school year festivities. We settled on the Wednesday right in between the end of the school year and the beginning of summer school. Unforunately the date still conflicts with the crosscountry pre-season training (yes, it's a thing) and he'll have to pause his weightlifting routine, but you do what you can with what you've got.

This morning found us checked in and chilling in the waiting room. One of us had eaten breakfast, the other spent a lot of time discussing food options for after the surgery. 

Intially he had big plans involving Pizza Hut. The anesthesiologist was skeptical that he'd feel that way later, but cleared him if he wanted it.

He was less interested in that option after the procedure. It was a quick one (about 30 minutes) and there are no hilarious stories about him coming out of the anesthesia, but he was feeling woozy and his throat was sore from the intubation tube.

In the end, we settled on a Blizzard with a dose of Tylenol and Vicodin for good measure. With the post-op swelling settling in, he likely won't experience the full benefits of the surgery until next week but the ENT said everything went well. 

Later I told him that he needs to have his wisdom teeth removed but we'll do that next year because I think he should only have one surgery a year.

Michael is 17

What 17yo doesn't want to run a 10k early in the morning on their birthday?? Well, probably most of them, but ours was definitely interested in early morning exercise. After the half marathon, Michael decided that a 10k is the sweet spot for racing distance. Wandering around the internet, I found a 10k that happened to be on his birthday. I JOKED that he should do it for his birthday and a few DMs later the joke turned into reality. With two brothers and three friends, Michael ran his second 10k on his 17th birthday. 

After I got everyone registered, it occurred to me to ask Michael if these were his cross-country or track friends. It turns out, no, no they weren't. And none of them had run this distance before. So kudos to them for agreeing this weekend adventure!

Having said that, it is not surprising that Michael crossed the finish line first.

Followed by Ben long legs.

And then Michael's friends with Josh "I-don't-take-my-allergy-meds-anymore" Miller coming in last from the group.

This was a small town race with a total of 35 folks running the 10k and spectacular views of Rainier along the paved trail system. The kids all seemed to have a great time and Michael's friends were still his friends afterwards. 

Michael and his friends spent the afternoon watching the latest Spider-Man movie and wrapped up the day at Nana's house. Nana was kind enough to make dinner (stuffed shells of course) and host us all for some JackBox games.

Hope it was a great day for a great kid!

California Library Association: Sacramento

Two weeks after the spring semester ended and two and a half weeks after my foot surgery, I found myself at SeaTac with a weekend of California library fun ahead of me. I had been lucky enough to score some funding from the iSchool to attend the CLA conference and present with Dr. Chow and the LTI Lab team. I was excited to see my ALASC (ALA student chapter) folks in person, but first I had to tackle steep ramp to the small plane while using my iWalk. Because...of course.

Luckily, I made it on with no mishaps and was on my way to see T and S in person!!!! We spent the evening doing presentation prep for the next morning. Based on the number of "likes" on the conference app, we were predicting we'd have about 13 attendees.

It turns out that was a horrible way to predict attendance and we had 35 people come to our session. I was thrilled that several of those people were friends from the ALASC and some of my classes, but still, it was a big group!

Photo cred: Rachel F

We split the audience into three groups and got into the tech. And we only hit two people with the drone from my table!

Photo cred: CLA Flickr

We have a great team!

The rest of my California trip was spent at sessions, the SJSU reception (below), and the exhibition hall (below, below). 

Photo cred: SJSU event photographer

Photo cred: CLA Flickr

It was an exhausting trip to take so soon after surgery, but it was a lovely experience and almost has me sold on attending CLA next year instead of WLA.