Looks like it's our turn...

I'm not a hot weather type of guy, and while most of the rest of the country has been dealing with the effects of global warming, I've been very careful not to rub in how comfortable the weather has been here in the Pacific Northwest, because I didn't want to be the one responsible for jynxing us.

Looks like it happened anyway, with temps here expected to be over 100 for the next few days, and not expected to be less than 95 before July 20th.  The only positive one can take from this is that IT IS a 'dry' heat, and it means things might be slow at work...you find yourself in a 'heat stress' situation pretty fast when you have to wear PPE and Respirators. 

Or supervise folks doing that. 

You gotta trust a guy named Guy.

Having been relatively 'good' the first few days of our vacation(eating the 'free' continental breakfast at the hotel, and then one cheaper meal and one decent meal(or better than decent) meal out, a timely TV show allowed me to convince my wife to splurge the last day.

We I watch A LOT of Diners, Drive-in's and Dives around here.  It's just a convenient 'background' type show, along with Man vs. Food, Mythbusters, Deadliest Catch or Dirty Jobs.  I know the host, Guy Fieri, isn't everyone's 'cup-of-tea', but he's turned into a great advertisement for a restaurant. 

The first season the show was on, they visited a place on Bainbridge Island that my wife and I had previously eaten at, and greatly enjoyed.  Based off that trust, the next time we ate in Seattle, we made sure to try breakfast at Voula's Off-Shore Cafe after it was featured on 'Triple D'.  Since then, if we are road-tripping, I've tried to keep an eye out for a Triple D endorsed restaurant if we are traveling. 

It was fortuitous then, that while we were watching TV in the hotel room Monday night, Triple D featured a place in Coeur D'Alene called Capone's.  I couldn't remember seeing that episode before, and neither could my wife...but man, did their pizza look good.  It didn't take much work on my part to convince my wife that we should just pack some bananas and animal crackers for the 4 hour drive from Deer Lodge to CDL, so that we arrived in town ready for some pizza.

Capone's was as good as advertised...we had their Garlic Chicken Pizza and a 5-Cheese for the girls.  It was some good, good pizza, with a GREAT crust.  The roasted garlic on the pizza was 'like butta'.  Sometimes, when a place puts whole garlic cloves on a pizza, they are still crunchy...this melted in your mouth. Capone's also has about 30-35 beers on tap, and that was good, because it helped me take a late afternoon nap before trying to stay up to watch the fireworks.  Service was very on the spot.  If there was a negative, it was that the pizza did not store very well...something happened chemically with stuff as it sat in the fridge, and man, did it make me stinky.

The following morning, stomach all back together, we went to breakfast at a place called Jimmy's Down the Street, which I had scouted from DDD.  We were up and going in a timely manner on the 5th, and got seated right away, which was great...when we left, there was a 20 minute wait.  Service was GREAT, and you could tell the waitresses, all who looked to be in their 50's, were enjoying their job.

Was the food good?  Oh yeah...

The plate might have looked more 'breakfasty' if the gravy was smothered over the plate instead of being in a bowl, but, I actually kind of liked it better with not everything being drowned.  For my heart, I actually think I used less of the gravy...but it was good...and the biscuit, which I missed in my picture, was THE BEST I've ever had.  The rest of the meal?  It was good...I got chicken fried steak strips, and they were good.  As good as the biscuit?  No...can't even say the chicken fried steak would make my top 5...but, that doesn't mean it wasn't good...just not perfect. 

My wife also enjoyed her breakfast...a sour cream and chive scramble...as she agreed with my opinion of the biscuit as the BEST EVER.  My kids ordered french toast sticks...but what they really got was fried dough strips, and yummy, yummy, yummy. 

Along with Scrud's, that was three pretty okay restaurants in CDL...can't wait to go back. 

Voting Third Party

Since voting Libertarian hasn't been working out so well for me, I thought I would try a different 3rd Party this year...

If voting for the lesser of two evils doesn't work, than why not embrace the Greatest Evil.  

Home

Ah...we made it home...and it IS nice to make it home.  We found a few surprises waiting for us from our kitten(one plant knocked off the window sill, and one of my wife's needle felt dolls ended up on the floor and destroyed. 

A quick tour through the back yard showed that my container tomatoes were 2-3 days away from disaster...the dirt was dry, and one of them was showing signs of wilting, but only a few hours after a good watering, it's already perking up.  The rest of the garden is looking good...too good.  I'm seriously thinking of doing some serious tomato sacrificing.  I've done some pruning and trimming, trying to avoid cutting off anything with flowers or tomatoes on them...but, things are getting awfully crowded. 

I had 5 zucchini waiting for me, and another 3 or 4 will be ready to go in a week or so.  The small ones will get used tonight or tomorrow, the two bigger ones will end up in bread, muffins, or fritters.  I sense that the zucchini are getting ready to start coming faster than I can handle...time to start looking at a few pickling recipes. 

It Looms.

Quiet, dark hotel rooms are a great place to think. 

I'm sitting here in the dark because the rest of my family is sleeping in after we all stayed up late to watch the fireworks on Lake Coeur D'Alene last night.   I've tried sleeping in, but it's just not something I have the ability to do.  Much more than about 7 hours, and my body thinks it's time to get up and get going.

We should be rolling into drive-way sometime mid-afternoon, and as much fun as the last five days have been, I think everyone is looking forward to it, even me, a bit.  The girls are looking forward to seeing the cats, and being able to watch NetFlix On Demand on a real TV, and being able to jump up and down and make noise without mom or I glaring at them because we are on the 2nd floor of a hotel.

My wife's looking forward to being able to work on more homeschooling lesson planning, and being able to tell the girls to 'Go to the family room if you want to make noise' instead of just telling them they can't make noise, and having a bedroom with a door she can close, and a bathroom with a tub she can use without having kids come in to use the bathroom.

Me?  I'm looking forward to all those things because it makes them happy.  I'm kind of curious about the cats, and I'm really curious about how my garden is doing...I've got this fear that my sprinklers died, and after 5+  sunny days with no rain all I'm going to find is charred cinders.  I'm also looking forward to being able to cook a meal at home...not that it's not fun to eat out, but the vacation budget is just about spent.  I've also got some projects to work on, and a dump run to make.

What I'm already NOT looking forward to is Monday.  That's when I go back to the bad place.

I'm pretty happy with my life...very happy actually...my life, as far as my wife and kids goes, is fairly close to perfect.  Oh...occasionally, because  of behavior issues that all kids have, I'd be willing to trade them for a used candy bar wrapper, but, it would have to be a short trade.  When they brighten up, I wouldn't trade them for anything.  Watching my 6-year old(7 in October!) dance and cheer and say 'WHOA!' for 20 minutes straight during the fireworks right now allows me to put up with a lot of bad behavior.

It's kind of like that at work...do the positives let you deal with the negatives?   So far? 

Yes...the negatives are many, and varied.  My wife tells me not to go into them in too much detail, but mostly they are tied to an attitude that has been allowed to flourish long before my arrival...like, the last 15-20 years.  An almost(almost...things ARE getting better, so I'm told) institutional resistance to anything resembling more than minimum effort.  A lack of job satisfaction(in the Shipyard, you would see a boat you fixed go to sea...I didn't realize how much that mattered).  More that you would have to see to believe.

What positives counter this?  Just one...the fact that this job gives me 700 hours more time a year with my family...13+ hours a week.  That's huge...and it's the only reason I haven't given up and moved us all back to the Kitsap area. 

Now...if they ever create a pill I could take daily that would just allow me to not remember anything that happened between 6:30 and 4....that would be pretty cool...I mean, let my body and mind do the right thing....just have it all instantly go away as soon as I drive back through the gate in the afternoon...I would buy that pill.

Until then, there are vacations, and memories....and lottery tickets. 

Independence Day.

I don't have anything deep or introspective to say about Independence Day.  I'm just seizing it as an excuse to post this picture of this house that my wife and I fell in love with in Bozeman.

We, ummm...we kind of fell in love with Bozeman...at least some parts of it.  Maybe it's just the unexpected nature of it...neither my wife or I are what you would call provincial, but prior to this week, I don't think either of us realized that Bozeman had anything like the North Tracy or Bon Ton Historic Districts. 

As much as we liked Bozeman, we also found nice sections in Missoula and Coeur D'Alene.  One of the common things about these cities is that they all have colleges.  Maybe not big colleges, but having a college or university in a town helps...gives at least a touch of culture, and it keeps a stream of young blood flowing through the town. 

Does is matter right now?  No...but, one of the things my wife talked about over the last few days is that we just don't see ourselves retiring in the Tri-Cities.  It's too brown, and too flat.  Right now, it's where the job is...and I'm okay with mountains and trees being an hour and half away.  When money stops being an issue?

The area from Coeur D'Alene to about Deer Lodge, Mt is really, really nice.  You get much past Deer Lodge, and things get kind of brown again.  Not Tri-Cities brown, but, not as rich and green as the Silver and Clark Fork Valley's.  The area around Bozeman greens up again, but to get there you need to make it over the Continental Divide...

I guess it's something we really don't need to revist until we actually win the lottery, or retire...but it's something new to dream about.  

And, I'm spent.

After 4 days of driving, and 3 nights in a hotel, today at 3:00, we completed our primary objective...touring the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman. 

To put it as simply as possible, the girls had a blast...all the girls.  As much fun as my daughters had looking at the dinosaur stuff, my wife had in the Tinsley House Living History Farm. 

Inside, once you went upstairs, you found a room taken over by two sweet old ladies working with the Fiber Arts...one running a spinning wheel, the other a weaving loom. 

My wife was in heaven.  I think she was flat out jealous of our daughters when the sweet old ladies let them sit down on the loom.



What you can't see in this picture is my wife trapping sweet old lady #2 in a corner for about 20 minutes talking about The Fiber Arts. 

Good time had by all, it was back on the freeway, heading west...each mile taking us closer to the real world.