Disaster Area

Pet Peeve #1 (of thousands)

Today's Mariners game featured an epic late inning failure resulting in snatching defeat from the jaws of victory at the last gasp. But no, that's not the pet peeve. The final blow in such an epic defeat is often referred to by many of my fellow Americans (especially,  it seems, radio commentators) as the "coop de grah" intended to mean of course, the coup de grâce (/ˌkuːdə ˈɡrɑːs/). The variation on the first word "coup" is substantial - it's occasionally pronounced correctly, but just as often pronounced coop. The main failure, though is in the pronunciation of grâce as "grah". As the Wikipedia entry points out, this is known as hyperforeignism, an interesting concept. Wikipedia continues:

in French, this mispronunciation sounds like coup de gras, which means "blow of fat", or cou de gras, which means "neck of fat". Furthermore, this confusion is compounded by the name "Mardi Gras."

Mardi Gras, means, of course, Fat Tuesday, but the connection (or lack thereof) between that and grâce  is lost on most people. There is one further option Wikipedia misses - the "coop de grah" mentioned above, which translated becomes "cup of fat". Nice. I hate to think what sport might have the Coupe de Gras as the prize...

Six Day

I've been back from Six Day for over a week and enjoyed my first July 4th as an American citizen. Looking back, here's a fond memory from a couple of weeks ago at camp... (see if you can spot me and the two bishops...)

Meandering Back...

Wow, it's been almost two weeks since I posted. It's been a busy time, with not so much sitting around time to write on the blog. Not thatb I lack for ideas. The yard is going phenomenally well (with the weeds giving the real plants a good run for their money), there's one more story from Orcas Island to cover, and then life is about to get crazy for me as I have a UK professor coming to stay with me for 6 weeks (and work with me), and also one of my brothers and his two kids are coming for 3 weeks, coincident with the last 3 weeks of the professor's visit.

So life will be hectic through the end of July. Oh, did I mention that I'm off on Thursday to staff 6-day as usual?

I'll try to keep up with at least photos as I wind my way through all this activity. Meanwhile, let's all enjoy summer this year, eh?

Orcas Island

One of the hidden gems in the Pacific Northwest is the San Juan Islands. Orcas Island is the second most populous, after San Juan Island itself. Orcas is pretty interesting. It has a state park, an olde tyme once upscale resort and a mostly hippie-ish culture. The fact that it takes an hour long ferry ride to get there from the mainland (as is the case for most of the islands) and access is pretty limted due to a fairly minimal ferry schedule, means that it remains sheltered from the massive development that comes to most vacation areas. I was able to spend a weekend away on Orcas the past weekend, for maybe the tenth time in the past dozen years. Here are some pictures. First, the peaceful view on the ferry ride over.



Then there's the local flora:



And the Garden House, the best place to stay:

 

Organ Donor Memorial

Last Saturday the local organ transplant organization, Lifecenter Northwest, held its annual donor appreciation event. I wasn't able to make it last year, and so was eager and curious to see what it was like this year. As it happens, a friend of mine from church who lost her husband three months after I lost Sue was also going to be attending, as her late husband had been a donor too. The event was quite fabulous - a truly meaningful way to honor those who gave and the families that remain behind and grieve their loss. The event was held at the old Seattle Town Hall. The auditorium was set up like this:

Both the national and local transplant organizations encourage donor families to make quilt squares in honor of their loved donors, and what you see flanking the screen above are two of the quilts made up from those squares. The ceremony included speeches by a recipient mom, a donor wife, a college professor who teaches on grief and loss, a quilt square pinning ceremony, a candle lighting ceremony and a slide show honoring the donors. The latter two were particularly meaningful for me and are depicted below. The next picture is of my candle being lit in honor of Sue.

This last picture is of the slide of Sue that was in the donor tribute. It's a fabulous picture that remains the quintessential picture of her.

Yard Coming Along...

Got some more planting done in the back yard yesterday. The results so far:

Three Purple Splendor azaleas, a Mexican orange tree, a guava plant and a few ornamental grasses, and the corner isn't looking so bare.

Further round, a couple of Spring Bouquet Viburnum Tinus sit in front of the pyramid dogwood, while two Capistrano rhododendrons and two Hino Crimson azaleas flank the palm tree.

Finally, at the upper left of this picture you can see the paperbark maple tree and the barberry between it and the azaleas.

There's plenty more to plant, but two solid hours planting and weeding was all I could take for one day. One final picture - this crazy ornamental grass:

Flamingoed again!

When I arrived back on Monday, my front yard was infested with flamingos. It's a fundraiser for our mission trips, so all in good fun. They do go away after a couple of days, though...

Back At Last

The last two weeks I've led a music team on a church weekend then flown to England for a work trip and my mom's birthday. Somewhere along the way I seem to have acquired a viral throat infection - yay! Well, not so much on the enthusiasm. It has been quite debilitating.

On the flight back earlier this week I was able to get some decent pictures from the airplane. I liked this one, of a whole line of British Airways tails at Terminal 5:

Then a great shot of two Rolls-Royce engines and some Pacific Northwest landscape:

And then the Highway 520 bridge over Lake Washington as we descended into Seattle:

Back to our regular programming once this infection has worn off...

All Those Impossible Things Can Happen Now...

If you were waiting for pigs to fly, well, now they have -  it's all over the news - swine flew...

Missy Higgins

Once in a while you hear a song that just floors you.

The latest to get me is one that has been doing the rounds of the adult contemporary stations for the last couple of months. As always, it's incredibly hard to figure out what the song is or the artist because radio stations either never tell you or they tell you while you're paying attention to your driving (I pretty much only listen to the radio in the car.)

So it appears that the following song - Where I Stood by Missy Higgins - who just happens to be Australia's favorite bisexual singer songwriter (not that there's anything wrong with that.) The song has been featured in the TV series Smallville and has started to develop a following for the artist in the US and UK.