Winter is Coming...

But there is still some fall beauty left. Here are a couple pictures of autumn in downtown Seattle. At my office building, to be exact.

Diega and Corky Come to Visit

Last Saturday my sister Diega and her boyfriend Corky came to Seattle for a visit. They live across the water in Port Townsend, and it had been about 15 years since Diega has been to Seattle, so this was a special occasion indeed! We had a great time playing tourist in our own town.

Here is a photo of Diega and Corky at Pike Place Market in front of a stand that sells peppers.



And here they are with a nutcracker from the Nutrcracker March. We saw three different nutcrackers between the waterfront and my office. A quick check online reveals there are 50 of them scattered about downtown. This may require a digital camera hunt!



It turns out it was relatively easy for Diega and Corky to travel here by ferry. We hope they will come back soon.

Happy Thanksgiving!

We had a great Thanksgiving, spending some time with my mother in Lacey. It occurs to us that Clay and I have a lot to be thankful for this year:

-- good and improving eyesight!
-- lots of family and friends who love us
-- special people in our lives who help out in amazing ways too numerous to mention
-- each other

Really ... No Glasses!

Clay's recovery from eye surgery continues, and his eyesight is doing pretty well. There are ups and downs, but the last few days have been mostly up. As you can see from the picture, the good eyesight days also put him in a good mood!

His old glasses don't work for him so he's walking around without glasses for a while. Even without glasses he sees well enough to be pretty functional. He's doing laundry today, for example. I know I will just get used to how he looks without glasses and then he will get fitted for a new pair. It's exciting to think about how well he will be able to see then!

A Week Off, Now Back to Work

I was off work for a week starting the day of Clay's surgery. While at home we got a few things accomplished.

Early in the week we were scurrying to clean the apartment for apartment inspections. The building owners come in once a year or so to make sure everything is okay with the apartment, fix anything that's broken and wasn't previously reported, etc. If you know us, you know we always do a major cleanup prior to inspections because I am not the best of housekeepers. As a result of our meeting with the owners' daughter we are getting a couple of things fixed and they are replacing our dishwasher! If you want to hear a funny story, ask me how the old one got broken. :)

On Wednesday we both got our flu shots (which didn't hurt a bit this year). Today is back to work. Yikes, there was more work waiting for me than I thought!

Picasa Software for Pictures

Sometime I want to try out Picasa which is available free from Google. What interests me most about this software is 1. the ability to add captions which will be saved with my pictures; and 2. supposedly super easy photo editing capabilities.

While reading reviews I found a negative comment that indicated you cannot change the dates associated with a picture. They have made a fair number of changes in this product since those reviews were writtenso maybe that is no longer the case. Something to test.

Look Ma, No Glasses!

We have a great report after Clay's appointment today. They took the patch and tape off his eye and he was able to open it. The first thing he noticed is that he could read his watch without his glasses. His watch has big digital numbers, but he could not read them before the surgery unless he had his glasses on.

Overall his sight now without glasses is about what it was before surgery with glasses. It's different, though. He describes it as looking through a fish eye. He has to get used to having more depth perception than before. But he is actually walking around without his glasses and not running into things! I imagine that after the eye heals they may fit him with new glasses which would make things even better. He's busy looking at everything to see what he can do with his new and improved eye. Things are looking really good. He has at least achieved the 50 percent chance of improved eyesight. Yay!

For further updates see Comments on this entry.

Clay's Surgery - All Is Well

Today was the big day. Clay went into surgery around 3:00. About 2-1/2 hours later his surgeon came to talk to me in the waiting room. He said everything had gone well and exactly as expected and hoped (Yay!). Clay spent some time in recovery and then I brought him home. He had previously practiced walking around the apartment with his eyes closed, so navigating with the patch over his seeing eye is not a problem. His eye is a bit uncomfortable, but not too bad. Tomorrow morning we go to the doctor's office to have the patch removed and see how things look. Everyone is eager to know the full outcome of the surgery, but only time will tell.

Eve of Surgery

We heard today that Clay's surgery will be delayed by a couple hours tomorrow, which puts it at about 3:15. He says he's not nervous, but I can feel the anxiety building. I think we will both be glad when it is over and everything comes out well.

My Favorite Goblins

My favorite part of Halloween is seeing the little ones in their costumes. Here are my three favorite goblins:

First we have the lovely Nikka in her Kitty costume. She is SO tiny - it’s hard to believe she is 3-1/2 years old now.

And here is Miss Cameron looking beautiful in her ballerina outfit. Cameron is 18 months now!

And of course the stunning Elena as princess of the kingdom. Elena also just celebrated her 18 month birthday.

Autumn in Seattle

Here is a picture I took in our neighborhood along the street where we like to take walks. This photo is a couple weeks old. Today the leaves on the trees are more sparse and with the arrival of Seattle’s rainy season everything’s a bit more soggy. I want to remember it just like this.