2013 Annual Report

Patti spent Christmas last year in Barcelona with Scott and Joelene and Michael and Andrew.  She enjoyed her short trip there so much that she's renting an apartment in Barcelona for a week in May, along with Arkansas (by way of Arizona) chum Claire and whomever else they can drag along.  I'll be back here watching the dogs and (maybe) the cat.  We were all back together again at New Year's for a belated feast.

At the start of the year I finally bit the bullet and decided to do something about the weight I had gained over the holidays.  I had been dropping about a pound or so a year for the past dozen years, but unfortunately the holidays in question started around Thanksgiving, 1964, so I had a ways to go.  I spent the first half of the year obsessed with losing some (well, actually quite a bit) weight .  The keys were hitting the gym three or four times a week (plus our daily walk), MyFitnessPal.com, and (particularly) the aforementioned obsession.  Here's the food pyramid I religiously followed, loosing about 55 pounds in seven months.

Patti and I read a report which said that people who walk strenuously, vs. people like us who just saunter along, live significantly longer.  So we immediately tried to do our daily three mile walk in the woods at a much brisker pace.  That didn't last long, we seem to be back to sauntering, but I'm sure it's good for us anyways.  I've also increased my trips to the gym to four or five times a week, and Patti's doing various stuff there too.  Desperate attempts to slow the aging, I guess.  One morning along the trail Lydia came sprinting past me and into the woods.  I heard barking, then growling, and then she came trotting back down the trail, quite contented.  Right there in the mud was a bear track!

On a drive around the Skagit up north I took a photo of an eagle, but carelessly didn't notice the tree branch across his face.  I took some advise from a Facebook friend and photoshopped the branch away, but once again I wasn't very careful.  (More pictures in the Best Photos section.)

We decided it was finally time to sell my Corolla (19 years old, 195,000 miles, but still reliable) and get a new car for Patti, a Toyota Prius.  Her Subaru Forester became mine, great for hauling the dogs and garbage, and it will have even more room when I take out the rear seats, like I did with the Corolla.  It's got 160,000 miles on it and is running fine.  I remember as a kid that cars never lasted past 100,000 miles.

In April I headed off in the Subaru on a cross country road trip; this time down to Big Bend in Texas.  Camping out and long hikes aren't Patti's cup of tea, so she stayed home tending the garden and the pets.  I had a good trip, marred by some miserable food poisoning down in Texas.  Plenty of photos.

from Facebook, May 21: Patti asked how could I spill ketchup on the back of my shirt. Like the time at work when I caught my neck in a three-hole punch, some things are best left unexplained.

I managed about a dozen hikes in the Cascades and elsewhere this year, putting in nearly 100 miles  (plus the approximately 850 miles of daily walks with Patti and the dogs).  Pictures from the hikes are in the Best Photos section.

June 15: On "Car Talk" (of all places) on NPR this morning a caller spoke of herself and her "partner". When it turned out that her partner was her husband of seven years, the guys wondered why she didn't call him her "husband". She said that she didn't consider it fair that she should be able to call him her husband, when other perfectly happy couples were denied that right by the laws of marriage, in some states. So from now on Patti is my Partner.

On July 10, in honor of Nikola Tesla's birthday and Scott's new car, I updated my Facebook photo. (I put a special outlet in the carport to make it easier for Scott to visit.)

In August a year's worth of planning came together with a gathering of nearly all of Patti's family in Yellowstone National Park.  We had a great time exploring, looking at the beasts (with much thanks to wolf watchers Kate and Ger), picnicking, and hiking.  I managed to sneak in an overnight backpack with Ger, complete with a bear, a bison, and a pronghorn.  Pictures and details at Yellowstone 2013.

At the end of September we took a long-awaited vacation to Peru, visiting Cusco, Machu Picchu, Andean cloud forests, and the headwaters of the Amazon (where we learned the hard way about piranhas).  Patti made a friend, Vanessa, who she really wanted to bring back with us, but I was pretty sure she'd be over the weight allowance.  Our trip was interrupted a couple of times by strikes, etc., but we had a great time (and got a little money back, thanks to trip insurance).  Here are photos and a report, a map of our route, my bird list (221 species!), and bird photos.  (I see that one of those birds, the Oleaginous Hemispingus, was named the most awesomely named bird in the world by the editors at the ABA, beating out Lazy Cisticola and Forty-spotted Pardalote, among others.)

Newlyweds Andra and Jennifer came up from Berkeley once again for a Thanksgiving visit.  We had a big feast, of course, with all the grandkids, Allison, Joelene, and friends Sue and Doug also partaking.  There were no Thanksgiving serious injuries, for a change, but a couple of weeks later Michael (age five) broke his leg jumping down some stairs.  Ouch!!

Patti kept busy throughout 2013.  Here's a potato harvest from her garden, an art class at Gasworks Park in Seattle, and some birds from her artwork.  There were many outings with the Garden Girls, sometimes involving food and drink.  She also found something useful to do with the blackberries overrunning our front yard, and she and Barb discovered caramel apple custard pie at American Pie in the Georgetown area of Seattle.

Plans for 2014 are starting to take shape.  Patti's heading to Barcelona in May; I'm thinking about doing a birding/dinosaur museum trip around Montana in June; watching the World Cup will take up a good part of June and July; and we're looking at a trip to Alaska in August.  And there's always a good chance we'll get too tired of the winter gloom and head down to the Southwest some time before Spring.  I've also got to find time to do some repairs at Dog's Breath Acres, such as refinishing the floors and getting new appliances and maybe rebuilding the deck.  Plus plenty of hikes.  Should be a busy year.