Why does it smell like smoke?

Yesterday in one of Michael's messages from home he mentioned he could smell woodsmoke, but could not figure out where it was coming from.

We are entering the dry time here, and the possibility of fire increases every day.  But we live in the city now, so the most likely type of fire is a grass fire along I-5.

When I got home, I could smell it too - a lingering smell that was very much like a campfire.

So weird!

Shortly I took the dog out for his evening walk.  One of his favorite routes is to head to the other side of I-5 on the overpass.  There's a wide view from there, and I didn't see any lingering smoke in the air.

But when we got to the other side of the overpass - mystery solved!

A couple of months ago there was a house fire at the very first house across the overpass.  A lovely 100-year old house went up in flames one afternoon.  Recently they've been cleaning the house out, and yesterday I saw they had removed the entire front porch.  Workers were sweeping inside the house, which appeared to be pretty gutted.

I'm going to guess the smell was wafting across the way as they deconstructed the house and threw all the burned wood into the dumpster or a truck to haul away.

Poor house.  I'll be interested to see where they go from here.  It looks significantly damaged.  Will they rebuild exactly as it was?  We'll see...

Life in the Convergence Zone

A few months ago we moved to a new home much closer to my work.  The shorter commute - 15 minutes rather than an hour and 15 minutes - is wonderful.  My body is especially happy that it's not sitting in a car all day.

The weather is much different here, even though as the crow flies we're not that far from our old home.  North Whidbey is in the Olympic rain shadow, and is strongly affected by the westerly winds off of the water.  Temperatures are usually 5-10 degrees cooler than along the northern I-5 corridor.

Now we live in the area where the Puget Sound Convergence Zone occurs.  When it happens, the weather can get a little wild, including thunder and lightning.  T&L was a rarity at our old home, so I'm excited to live in a spot where it's more likely to occur.  We already had one very loud storm wake us in the middle of the night a couple of months ago.

Yesterday when I arrived home from work these almost mammatus clouds were lurking above our house...

They were trying!  Some did form down in Seattle earlier in the day.

In 2007 when we were visiting South Dakota the day we went to the Badlands was quite stormy.  I had fun with one of the photos I snapped as we were driving along.

Bring on the wild weather - I love it!

A lust for paper products

Hello friends - I have a problem.

It's not an horrible problem - certainly not life-threatening in any way.  Unless the buildup of unused and half-used notebooks becomes so large as to crush me.

I suppose it could happen.

For two years I subscribed to Field Notes.  They're lovely little items, and while I'm using many of them for different things I'm still giving them away.  Though looking at what I have unused, I'm pretty much down to what I want to keep for myself. Aren't they lovely?

Then along came Cognitive Surplus - I've restrained myself and only have one of their notebooks, but I am so tempted by them!

Ants!  I love them so.

This morning I was suckered into clicking on a Facebook (damn you!) advert for a company called INK+VOLT.

Swoon.

So many notebooks and planners.  This one, however, speaks to me.

I must use up some of the other notebooks before buying another, or so I tell myself.

Thank goodness it's time to get ready for work, otherwise I may succumb to my weakness for paper!

Good morning!

Last night I made reservations for another camping trip, to Rasar State Park in August.  We didn't go there last year, so are really looking forward to it.  While the above picture was not taken there, it does look very much like it in spots.  Great trails for walking, and you can get down to the Skagit River.  Very lovely!

The online reservations process is pretty easy, but it seems like they're constantly getting a "new" system.  Last night I selected the site we wanted (only one left for those dates!), and was prompted to create a new account.  I did so, and when I went back to the reservation page and signed in the site I wanted was unavailable - because the non-account me had it in my cart!  Oy.  I had to wait about 20 minutes before the site freed up, and then I was able to properly reserve it.  Usually when I'm shopping online, if I put something in the cart and then log in it's still there.  Oh well.  I used the time to think about where we might stay on a short hotel trip to the Peninsula...

Happy Monday!

Dusting off this thing

Have I really not posted for over three years?

Why yes, that is correct.

I'm so disenchanted with FB, and have been enjoying writing a bit more lately.  Seems like a good enough reason to resurrect this thing.

Rowland agrees.  He's had enough of the FB shenanigans and says blogging is the new FB.

We'll see.

Cheers!