West Seattle and Mt. Rainier's Return

Poor poor West Seattle. It's on a little peninsula right across from big kid Seattle but the bridge has been out since we got here.

We finally made the journey for a very important reason: a city wide garage sale.

We stopped at a well regarded Mexican food truck called Taqueria la Fondita in White Center, WA on the way back.

Most of the parts of the Seattle area that I commonly traverse have a dearth of Mexican food so this was nice.

I think we must be crazy people because after some garage sales and a nice Mexican lunch we said to ourselves "let's drive to Mt. Rainier and go hiking". Why the heck not.

We have been here once before but there was so much snow on the mountain that we couldn't really get around in order to do anything because all of the roads were blocked.

The break down of dead trees in Washington's parks fascinates me.

This fungus looked like a delicious dinner roll.

Garage Sales, Gardens, and Kansas City BBQ

The day came for us to drive Lydia's sister Zoe to Kansas City so she could take the train back to St. Louis. But first, we went all over the darn place.

My main contribution to the day was insisting that we check out the town of Goodman, Missouri's town-wide garage sale. We rummaged the heck out of those people.

Lydia ogled this old Volkswagen Beetle until the owner came out and asked us if we wanted to hear it run. We did the running all the way back to the car.

We bounced back to Neosho to take in a little festival action. Neosho is surprisingly active in the fun events department. Let's hope it keeps up, or this could be a long winter.

We arrived in Kansas City with some extra time to kill so we did a bit of strolling in the Kauffman Memorial Garden. There were about three wedding parties trying to take pictures there at the same time. It was really sunny and hot, so I did not envy them. There were some really cool hidden fountain things going on that I liked a lot.

We were sad after leaving Zoe at Union Station. Gates BBQ did a really surprising job of filling the hole in our hearts though.

8/27/08 Back In Japanland

I made it back to Ashikaga unscathed late last night, and I am back at work this morning. What a trooper I am.

My 3 weekish long moment spent in the US was most excellent, short but very sweet. I enjoyed a bit of time with lots of friends and family. I did a bit of domestic traveling as well, setting foot in 6 different states.

One little memory that stands out is hanging out with some college buddies in Wisconsin at my friend Zeke's house. We actually woke up before noon on a weekend, so we figured it would be fun to go to a garage sale. In the Wisconsin area they are frequently called rummage sales, which we like to joke about.

My friend Seago has a fancy smart phone with GPS, which takes out most of the hard work involved in garage sales. We simply mapped out an address and followed the little blue dot. He hit a few mostly uneventful sales until we came across a big one, an estate sale. It feels horrible to admit, but I love estate sales. The stuff for sale is usually cooler, older, and cheaper than at a normal garage. Seago got a nice reel to reel player that folds up into its own little carrying case for 2 dollars. We later sat and listened to recordings taken from American Bandstand. There was enough thin brown tape in this little metal reel to wrap around a house once or twice, and we only had one spool, which meant a big messy pile of magnetic tape was left on the floor after listening. I snagged a betamax player for free, which contained part of The Parent Trap taped from TV. The best part were the old school commercials. One was Bill Cosby gibbering about his Jell-O Pudding Pops, straight out of the way things used to be.

We got to walk around this house and search for treasures as we wished. As we followed a nice lady through her deceased relative's house, I spotted a smallish movie film canister sitting on a washer or dryer. Already on the lookout for media to feed to Seago's machine, I took a closer look. The label was handwritten in German and was dated 1944. The only word that I could understand was Dresden, the name of a German city I only recognize because of the thorough bombing it received in World War II. I brought the subject up several times with the woman during my rummaging but she insisted that it wasn't for sale. What a find! I love estate sales. Does that make me a bad guy?

My poor laptop went inoperable during my time home, leaving me unable to put together anything here about the million things that I have been doing (tear). All of my pictures are still trapped on my digital camera. It's the worst! Hopefully it will be taken care of soon. Until then, I am forced to appeal to your imaginations with mispelled words instead of colorful photographs (unthinkable, I know).