additional vacational highlights(onal)

Incoherently, I bring you:

1. There was a really cute guy at one of the wineries we were visiting in wine country. Cousin Brian set up his camera to do an automatic picture of us, but I opted for the talk-to-the-cute-boy route, and asked him to take it for us. I show up with a smile that is somewhat more electric than the situation warrants:

And then, of course, I had to take a picture of the "vista"...(That's the cute guy in the corner.)

2. Don't forget that Ella (age 6) had headlice. So since I was staying in her bed, I was pretty convinced I had it, too. That meant a large number of hours were spent scrutinizing my head. I didn't find a single louse, but I'll tell you what -- I have a LOT more gray hairs than I thought I did.

Not happy about that.

3. Late-ish one night, on our way home from picking berries, Piper (age 3) fell asleep in her carseat. After a rousing chorus of Europe's Final Countdown (and the hysterical laughter that ensued), she woke up and said, "Stop. You're making me drool."

4. Guess which gate my flight from O'Hare left out of.

K7. (I wish it were K8, though.)

5. In Seattle, four thirtysomethings rode the swings. Three of them wanted to get them going in unison, but I know all about what happens to bridges when soldiers march over them without falling out of step, so I wasn't about to join in. I did, however, hit The Bumps. (kind of freaky at this age.)

6. Thursday night, before leaving Portland, we went to a concert at a pick-your-own berries farm. The objective was to get some berries to take home, but I found that the most efficient method of transport was just to store them in my mouth (and eventually my tummy). They were so amazingly good right off the bush!

7. Seattle is a strange city. (I say that with love.) There was a huge fire in 1886 (maybe 1889. I forget and am too tired to look it up) and afterwards the city said, "gee, this hill sure is steep. Let's regrade the hill and then rebuild the city." And the merchants all said, "Um, no. Rebuild my store or I'm leaving." So they rebuilt all these buildings, knowing full well that they were going to have to raise the streets and sidewalks after the buildings were built. So the city told them all, "OK, we'll rebuild, but somewhere between 8 and 32 feet above your current ground level, there's going to be a new ground level. So plan for that." And within the next 25 years, that happened. It's kind of crazy.

Anyway, they rasied the streets first, and left the sidewalks ten feet below. (Meaning that you had to climb a ladder to cross the street.) Eventually, they covered over the sidewalks with new sidewalk, but the construction was really fast and things aren't exactly connected to one another.

Basically, Seattle is held together with spit, luck and perhaps some rat poo.

8. We had an incident at the Wauconda Motel. It was truly worthy of its own post, though, and I hope I can get to that in the not too distant future. Let's just say that the Surgeon clan is not particularly welcome there in the future...