New Library

I am at a new library today to check on things since the Seattle Public Library is closed this week due to budget cuts. Bummer!

I am still waiting anxiously to hear from the Editing Certification people. I feel pretty sure that I'll get accepted, but I hate waiting to hear about it!

I ended up driving home yet again this weekend! My parents are thinking about selling their house to buy a new one up Mount Angeles Rd. and a new office building for my dad. He's got this wild scheme going on, and everything should work out perfectly, but only if they can sell our house for a certain amount. So, they had a realtor come and check everything out on Saturday morning. My old room at home has been a sort of storage space for the past 4 or so years and REALLY needed some cleaning out. I tried to do as much as I could before the real estate people came, but it was still pretty cluttered. My mom has been working her butt of trying to clean out the other areas. I can only imagine what it will be like when it comes time to tackle the attic!

We spent Saturday afternoon and evening at the lake with the Bosses, Pete and Michelle, and Boompie. Michelle hosted a pickling party, and we ended up making over 40 jars of homemade pickles! It was a really interesting idea, and we made some darn good stuff!

My friend Stephen was in town with some friends this weekend, but I didn't get to see him. While he was at the Ridge on Saturday, I was at the lake. While he was at the lake on Sunday, I was at the Ridge...or near it. On Sunday (which was my mom and dad's 34th wedding anniversary), my dad and I went hiking to the Moose Lake area. It was a pretty good day for hiking. It started out clear, and we hiked out to the place where the trail splits and followed a hiker-made trail up and down these dangerous rock formations across a couple ridges before descending down into the valley from the opposite side of the original trail. The air was really chilly at the top of the ridges, but in the valley it was pretty nice. We could see the clouds start to roll in, and my dad was thinking that we might get caught in a storm. However, it stayed pretty nice while we hiked down into the valley, past Gladys Lake. We stopped at Moose Lake to have lunch and watch this enormous black bear eat his! Since the blueberry crop did not work out this year, we didn't expect to see any bears, so we were surprised when we came across this one! It was pretty darn cool! We also saw some deer (including a few cute little fawns), several blue grouse, 10 or so marmots, and an enormous hawk that almost got a little baby marmot out of his hole (don't worry, he missed). After lunch, we hiked out past Grand Lake and made our way up the switchbacks, but we missed the frog pond going back up, which was disappointing. As we climbed, we saw misty cloud start to form in teh valley. By the time we made it back to teh car, the valley was completely shrouded in fog! All in all, it was a pretty awesome 10-mile, mostly up-hill and exhausting hike. What other kind is there when you're hiking with my dad?