Technology and Nature: The Untameables

Cloudless sunrise over the Cascades this morning revealed thick fog over south Puget Sound and behind downtown Seattle.  I wrestled the spotting scope off the tripod and replaced it with my old Nikon film camera equipped with telephoto lens.  I've been unhappy with the results from my little digital camera, trying to capture the variety of boat traffic on the Sound so rescued the old SLR from storage.  Hoping the rising sun would glaze Mt. Rainier with a rosy glow like it did some months ago plus light up the towers downtown, I made coffee and waited, but no luck, the fog moved in and the scene got hazy.  Took a shot anyway and when I finish the roll and put it on a disk I'll see the results.  We get so spoiled by digital technology!

Speaking of technology, I've had my share of failures in the last 24 hours.  First, a very embarrassing email went out with my ragged, rough notes from the gallery meeting instead of the  three page polished to near-perfection version of the minutes it had taken hours to write. Panic!  Fortunately, the finished version was still in Documents, in some strange form that didn't allow it to be attached.  Those nasty notes kept attaching in my experiments.  After a call to my Mac guru, GVW, the problem was resolved and the minutes went out to the gallery members.  Huge sigh of relief as I poured a welcome glass of wine to go with my comfort food dinner (blue corn tortilla chip nachos).  Relief was short-lived because the internet connection soon failed.  A long phone intervention by the ISP tech repair determined that the problem was in our Time Capsule router, so I called Apple, but they were gone for the night.  That was last night and now this morning it's fixed, thanks to Apple tech repair in Ottawa.   Correction: It was not fixed. I had to take it back to Apple and then the new one didn't work right, so I had to take it back, and fight with the store manager because I didn't bring the box it came in.
The world is in financial meltdown but we still have the internet.  How cool is that?  The last techno issue is the satellite TV.  This morning a repair guy is coming to see why it suddenly shuts off plus I'm hoping he can improve the picture quality.

David left early in the morning to keep an appointment with the insurance adjuster for the boat and Jacob had gone back to Seattle the night before, so I was alone all day except for when neighbor Janet came over with two more balls of homemade butter.  When the internet connection failed, I suddenly felt so isolated.  It makes a big difference when living kind of remote like this. 

Yesterday was lovely prior to things messing up.  I was outside all day, landscaping.  The bed along the woodsy side of the house is finally done after digging down and sifting out an astounding amount of pebbles, stones and vinca roots.   Neighbor Joe's handy sifting screen really did a job!  The horrible, invasive vinca is now replaced with azaleas, pieris japonica and a single Yuletide camellia in the center between the windows.  In five years or so, it should look great!  After lunch, I went back out and worked on a border of beach rocks that used to be imbedded among grass and weeds in the flower beds.  Now they're placed in a partial ring over cardboard and landscape fabric around the former fire pit transformed into a drought tolerant garden.  I had used leftover plastic from construction materials under the rocks, but garden guru Dori advised me against that, so they all had to be moved and washed.  Today I plan on doing more digging and sifting out of rocks and gravel and planting the last azalea.    The wax myrtle still needs a home in the ground.  Jacob was here so briefly I didn't get him to dig the hole.  David doesn't do gardening.  Lucky I love it!  It's a beautiful day and time to go out and play in the garden.