May Day: Maypole, Family, Picnics, and Fun

May Day Picnicking

The family had a good time May Day. I left work around three, as the commies & pinkos had threatened to close the town down at four and, since I take the bus, there was a serious chance I would be trapped between the unions, the immigrants' rights people, and the anti-war kids. As it turned out, my commute was trivial.

The warning that the city core was going to be overwhelmed reached a lot of people, because the freeways going around the core were also clear as all four of us drove back up the viaduct^[?] back to Woodland Park, where the Fremont Arts Festival hosts an annual Mayday Maypole. Along the way, we passed the Church of Scientology's little block here in Seattle, and there were about a half-dozen Carnival of Anarchy people out front, all wearing Guy Fawkes masks. Very cool. We drove past them so quickly that I didn't have time for a photograph.

The celebration is really just an excuse for Pagans and other weirdos to get together and eat chicken together, touch base for the Spring and Summer, and have fun. We arrived during the picking of the May King and Queen, so we sat down and ate our quickly acquired ad-hoc picnic. Having an instant picnic basket is a real boon to moments like this.

Unfortunately, Yamaraashi-chan had been naughty about doing her homework and had to finish it before she was allowed to participate. She sat on the blanket with her notebook and a pencil and finished. She was done about halfway through the Maypole ritual, so she missed joining in.

Y-chan's Mom

Yamaraashi-chan's other family was there: her mother, her mother's boyfriend (looking wonderfully butch with horns and a kilt), and two of her three elder sisters. Her mother's been complaining about her health recently, but it didn't seem to be slowing her down; she did the entire maypole ritual, bobbing and weaving in and out of the pattern as well as everyone else.

Y-chan's sister.

Had a lovely talk with Yamaraashi-chan's older sister, too, and snapped this great photo of her and her boyfriend. I'm not sure why she doesn't generally liked to be photographed; she has really good cheekbones and photographs really well. The eyes in this pic are wonderful.

After the Maypole, there was a chocolate fountain with strawberries, pineapple, and chunks of sponge cake and marshmallow treats. Both girls had way too much sweets before we packed up and went home. While I was cleaning up, I found a huge worm had snuck onto the blanket by putting my hand down on it. Yuck!

Still, we all had a really good time. It's so picnic weather.

Saturday Morning Frenzy!

Most of what I did Saturday has been well documented, but one of the things I didn't mention was the sheer amount of running around with my head cut off I did. I got up at 8:30, had to get Kouryou-chan up and fed, cooked pain perdu for the two of us, then had to run into Seattle near Boeing's main plant to grab Omaha and rescue her from Tina's clutches.

Omaha had gone to help Tina set up while she lobbied some labor & union types for their endorsements. Just about every major politico in the state was there; Seattle's industrial base is the biggest in the state, and having Seattle's unions behind you is a big deal.

While we were there, Kouryou-chan when hurtling through the crowd and ran, head first, into Christine Gregior. This Christine Gregoir. Well, that's one way to make an impact in politics. Fortunately, Kouryou-chan barely masses 25 kilos wet, so no harm done.

Saturday afternoon: Hiking at Flaming Geyser Park with Lisa...

The Flaming Gashole!

I had long ago made a date with lisakit to go hiking in Flaming Geyser, a gorgeous little park that's just a short drive south east of where I live. The park is in a little rural section right outside of town. I met Lisa at her home and she chose to drive, so we took the Interstate south and then 18 East, and soon she was driving me through some of the most beautiful country we have in easy reach while she told me wonderful tales of her own rural childhood in the land through which we drove.

Too cute

I think nature makes baby animals so cute so we won't eat them too soon. This is one of the many critters we passed on the way to the park: horses, cows, and of course llamas.

We reached the park and chose the riverside path. We walked up even as the rain started up, and she told me that the river claimed the lives of stupid kids who innertubed it at the worst times of year.

Lisa's hard-core. She walked barefoot. It was fifty Farenheint (ten centigrade), it was raining, it was muddy, and she was trudging through it all with ten toes to the wind. She even stepped on a slug. I mean, my doc told me to try barefooting it more often, but with the rocks and the slugs I think shoes were more my style that afternoon.

Moss on Ridge Path

After doing the riverside trail, we decided to do the harder High Ridge trail, which took us up the hillside and into the deeper woods, filled with moss and slugs and spiders. It rained harder; I was grateful for my hat. Lisa had a harder time of it that I did, but my knee was killing me by the time we were both done with the whole trail. We drove pretty much straight home, and I was grateful for a chance to grab ibuprofen and hit my legs with the shower massager too darned hot when I got back to my house.

I took about eighty photos, and only picked out seven that I liked when I was done. You can see them at my flickr set of the hike.

Fifty. Fifty? You're too hot to be fifty.

The evening, Omaha and I had arranged to have Lisa watch over Kouryou-chan while she and I went out and celebrated with our beloved friend desiraes at her fiftieth birthday. That was, to be frightfully honest, a bit stunning. Desirae has always been hot and sexy; she still is. She is not fifty.

I've always had mixed feelings about Desirae. I cant figure out if she's more complicated than she seems, or if I'm just too complicated to figure her out. I've always been inexplicably drawn into her orbit, only to wonder why the chemistry there feels so darned confused.

But we had a wonderful time. Tried out some lovely cider, and found some fabu Seastack cheese from the Mt. Townsend Creamery, which is over on the Washington Peninsula ("No man is an island, but I have a great peninsula!"), and watched the modern Bond Casino Royale. Hung out with their very cool friends, and had a very grown-up evening. There was even alcohol involved.

She's still one of my favorite cougars. Now if only I had time... and a clue or two.

Sunday! Bicycles and stuff.

What a glorious day! Today was truly the first beautiful day of Spring, and Omaha and I spent it appropriately: after cleaning up the front yard and driveway, we started fixing our bicycles. Mine was in remarkably good shape, and after changing the tires to city-wides and greasing up the chain, Kouryou-chan and I went on a few quick rides: up to the park, out of the subdivision and into the greenbelt, and finally back through the greenbelt and down to the grocery to pick up some milk. I also picked up a $3 wedge of Maytag Blue, the first popular blu cheese made in America. I discovered that it's perfectly possible to ride a bicycle wearing a kilt. I also discovered, contrary to my physical therapists' assertions, that it is perfectly possible for my knee to keep working, hurt like hell, and complain about bicycling rather than walking.

After I got home I made grilled cheese sandwiches for everyone. I used the blu in mine, and it was an interesting experiment. I'll have to try with other cheeses in the future. (QFC, the local grocer, touts that they have "250 different kinds of cheese." I've been to one of jaylake's cheese tasting parties. That man is a cheese god, and QFC's got nothin'.)

I hacked a little on Tina's website, hooking up her flickr account, when the little girl next door who's Kouryou-chan's age asked me if I could fix her bicycle. I supposed I could, so I went outside and pumped up her tires, tightened her chain, and tore off the old and somewhat mangled training wheels that were still on it. Hey, she has a bike again, and Kouryou-chan has a riding partner.

lisakit called and begged me to visit her for half an hour to pound the pain out of her back. Our hiking trip yesterday had taken more out of her than she anticipated, and I obliged, giving her a solid backrub with some massage oils she had in the house. Then Omaha came over to Lisa's house for their bi-weekly D&D game, and I headed out to run some errands.

My first stop was the Great Wall Mall. They still sell 20lb. bags of rice there, and I picked up two, which was the buyer's limit. It wasn't my favorite brand (Niko-Niko), but I've used this kind before and it's fine.

Omaha and I were commisserating about how Uwajimaya has become so commercial. It used to be this cool Asian grocery store with a Japanese bookstore hidden in its attic, and you had to be "in the know" to know how to get to the bookstore. Now, the bookstore is a huge multi-ethnic, gaijin-pandering Barnes & Noble with the biggest damn anime section you ever saw, and the grocery now has wide, comfortable aisles and comforting lighting.

The Great Wall Mall is what Uwajimaya used to be. It's an indoor micromall with a grocery store, "99 Ranch Grocery", in the back. It feels like old-school Waji's, with tiny, narrow aisles, random layouts, bright harsh lighting, and a constant crowd. The mall itself has three DVD places (Hong Kong chinese, Korean, Vietnamese), two comic book stores (one sells American comics to Asians, the other sells manga), a ton of video games scattered through the main floor, a Morning Glory, five Asian restaurants, a Chinese herb store, a weird robo-massage place, and even weirder, a place that sells one thing: toilets from the future. More on that tomorrow.

After buying the rice, I went over to the hardware store and bought a new "never flat" wheel for the wheelbarrow. I got home, fixed the wheelbarrow, put away Omaha's bicycle, then did four loads of laundry, mopped both the kitchen and dining room floor, took out the trash and recycling, cooked dinner for myself and Kouryou-chan (who spent most of the day with the neighbor's kids after we were done riding), emptied the dishwasher, wrote four blog entries and sorted through about two hundred photographs, fed and watered the cat, did my own nightly exercises... and now Omaha has come home and it's bedtime. My hands hurt; I've used them too much today.

But still, riding a bicycle with Kouryou-chan was very, very cool. It's the first time I've had a chance to do it since she mastered the art of riding without trainers. We'll be doing much more of that for the next six months.