Midwest2Westcoast

  I’ve always considered myself to be a journalist. I’ve also been a reporter, editor, director of communications, public information officer and a marketing coordinator. I was filling out a credit card application form this week, and under occupation, none of those titles were listed. This wasn’t a short list. It had 57 occupation titles. Among those were Arms/Ammunition Dealer, Cigarettes Distributor and Vending Machine Operator. Nothing relating to news, public relations, marketing or communications at all. I read the list again, very slowly. I was finally forced to select Musician/Writer. Writer fits. As for musician, I haven’t played my trumpet since my first year of high school. So journalist and closely related professions have dropped off at least some lists as even being a thing anymore. Job hunting has become so tedious that when I feel I absolutely need to just take a fun refresher break from it, I work on my income taxes for a while. I’m beginning to slow down on my tax...

We felt guilty about leaving Mary home alone all day yesterday, so today we did a hike in a place where dogs are welcome, Squawk Mountain State Park.  It was less than an hour’s drive away and had enough trail to make it worth it. We did a loop of about six miles, with around 1,700 feet of elevation gain.  The weather was typical - near 50 degrees and a chance of rain. It wasn’t raining when we left, but it set in pretty good a couple of miles into the hike. We met other people with dogs, and several trail runners, which made me feel slow for hiking.  I think it may be a better route for trail running than hiking. It was a fine hike, but it didn’t have a great focal point. I think there were a couple of vistas, but it was a little too rainy to see much. We sheltered under a tree for a brief picnic at the halfway point, and then hustled the second half of the trail back to the truck. We shed our guilt of leaving Mary, but if Mary could talk, I’m pretty sure she would tell ...

  I don’t know why I keep expecting the weather to be better at a place called Hurricane Ridge. I’ve got no legitimate reason to be disappointed. I know it’s the top of the mountain, and it’s February. And I was duly warned in the very name of the location. Yet… It’s not a short drive to Olympic National Park, but it is a pretty one. And it was around 40 degrees and raining, which is what it usually is here this time of year, so viewing nature for a couple of hours through the glass of the F-150 wasn’t bad. We showed the gate attendant our National Park Pass, and she warned us that tire chains were required to be put on for all two-wheel drive vehicles, and any four-wheel-drive vehicles unless they have snow-rated tires. She even explained that snow-rated tires have a symbol on the side of three mountain peaks with a little snowflake in the middle. We knew we were required to have tire chains with us from reading the rules on the website and from previous trips, but this was the fi...

  If you were wondering why this blog went dark for over a week in early February, it was because we had visitors. Although we thoroughly enjoyed having Ann’s parents here for a week, we could barely keep up with their rock and roll lifestyle and at the end of each day I was too exhausted to blog. For shear informational purposes, blogging wasn’t important that week anyway, as we weren’t doing our usual exploration of new places. This was more of a week of greatest hits, with trips to the Asian Art Museum of Seattle, Vashon Island, the beach, Cider and Cedar, the Tacoma Art Museum and a few other stops along the way. This was their second week-long visit, with the first being when we still lived at the house in Elbe. That visit was more about Mt. Rainier than Tacoma. We still left a lot of Tacoma for them to see on their next trip. 

 I’ve found since arriving in Washington, when people ask where I’m from and I say Missouri, the most common response is “Hmm, I’ve never been there. What’s it like?” The temptation is to talk about the weather, but I don’t think that’s really what they are wondering about. I thought I’d put my journalistic skills to work and interview Missouri as a state, so I have some better answers.   Me: How’s it going MO? MO: Why don’t you show me how it's going? Me: Ah, yes, the show-me state. Everyone is envious of your motto, right up there with Don’t Tread on Me. MO: Another good one. Me: People have been asking me what Missouri is like. I think they may be wondering about politics. So how’s Missouri doing politically? MO: Well, in our last big election in 2024, we just had half a dozen ballot issues, and we supported the more progressive position on five out of six of them. Me: Wow, that’s solidly progressive! So I guess you elect a lot of democrats? MO: Not a sing...

Ann used to make it a tradition of giving me a photo album of the previous year on my birthday. A few years ago when she didn't, I started making it a tradition of giving her one. Last year was the first year neither of us made an album. This year she picked up the mantle again and gave me one for 2025. To keep this true to the Midwest to West Coast blog theme, skip ahead to the last 1/2 of the album. Don't buy the album for hundreds of dollars, just click on the link below, then click on "View Fullscreen" and start flipping pages.  https://www.shutterfly.com/share-product/?shareid=cb4382db-4156-490c-9934-4d5747dcae87&cid=SHARPRDWEBMPRLNK

We live in Point Defiance Park, on the north side of Tacoma. The driveway to our parking lot is through old-growth forest, and there are several hundred acres of forest and great trails throughout. Although we’ve been here a few months, half of our six-month lease, there are a few elements of the park we haven’t gotten around to yet. Today we did two of them.  The first was at 8 a.m. We met with a running group that runs a 5K in the park every Saturday morning at 8 a.m. The course is mostly road with a little trail, and mostly flat with a little hill. I hadn’t run a 5K for time in a long time, and if you looked at my time today, you’d say I still haven’t. But it is always nice to get out and meet new people, and it’s pretty handy to have a running group in my backyard.  Post-run we had a berry crepe and meaty wrap at the Jewel Box Cafe, and then after changing clothes and letting Mary out, we returned up the hill to the other side of the park and went to the zoo.  It’s a ...

  And thus, the Beetle exited our world in the same manner that it came in seven years ago… strapped down on a trailer, heading to a buyer sight unseen.   I’ve bought and sold a lot of cars in person-to-person sales. In my younger years, it was via a paper published full of ads (no news stories) every week in central Missouri called the Ad Tracker. I always paid and received cash.  Later, it was Craigslist. Then Facebook Marketplace took over. But when I went to sell the Corvette last summer, it found that Craigslist still exists, and it doesn’t have much on it. So when I advertised the Corvette on it for all of $5, it was noticed immediately and sold right away.  Several years ago, I got into motorcycles. I would buy one that was priced undervalued, ride it for a while, then sell it for a little more than I paid for it. I did this more than a dozen times. I finally gave up riding, right around the time Facebook Marketplace started having more scams than buyers ...

  You may have heard that Expedia just announced they are laying off 160 in Seattle. Which is small, compared to the 330 people being laid off at Meta in the good old Puget Sound. Which is tiny, compared to the estimated 14,000 people at Amazon who are losing their jobs in Washington, most of whom are in my backyard. That’s marginally more than the 13,000 people Microsoft laid off here last year. All of this means I’m going to have some very smart, highly educated people serving me my coffee. Unfortunately, it also means my prospects of obtaining employment so I can pay for said coffee is waning. I applied for an editorial content specialist job with an international travel company that has an office in Seattle. It wasn’t that great of a job, and had some pretty specific criteria to be met in order to apply. They received more than 450 applications, and ended up only interviewing people who had worked for them before (I’m assuming part-timers looking to move up to full-time). I dec...

  Ann was clamoring to get back to the beach, so we again headed west, packing the Claminator, of course. I must disclose that Claminator is the actual product name of our clam gun, which I should also disclose is more like a post-hole digger than a gun. There is a lot of terminology to learn when one hunts the razor clam. When we drove out onto the beach at Twin Harbors and we only saw a couple of other trucks. Ann said, “Where is everybody?” We then parked near one of the other trucks, and as I was shutting off the engine, we heard what sounded like a substantial pride of enraged lions. “Is that the wind?” Ann asked. I tried, unsuccessfully, to open my door. “Apparently so,” I replied. The wind was harsh, and had just enough rain in it to immediately turn our glasses into speckled mosaics. Nevertheless, even though we were a little early according to the tides, we managed to spot a donut show fairly quickly and got our first. Then we got another, and another. Once we had three sp...