Stop and Start Saturday

Saturday was a stop-and-go kind of day.    Mark and I woke early.   I had an idea that we might be on top of Spencer's Butte by 7 or 7:30, so I made some coffee for Mark.  One of the advantages of going to the gym is that Mark appreciates it when I mill his coffee beans shirtless--that is not a euphemism.  I amped up the drama by playing Scheherazade on the stereo as I presented the freshly brewed coffee.  But he was tired and fell back to sleep.

So I played with five-fold tile patterns.

We did eventually go for a walk-hike along the Willamette River North Shore Path, which meant navigating around the Art in the Vineyard show.  (I don't know why it's called Art in the Vineyard, as the event takes place in Alton Baker Park underneath high voltage power line pylons.)

Sometimes we see a lot of birds or other wildlife, but not so much this time.  Mark accused me of not mastering my camera--when I use the auto-focus, it tends to focus on high-contrast twigs in front or behind what I'm really trying to photograph--so I have to learn how to use the manual focus better.   It was a pleasant kind of date just walking in Mark's companionship.

Then we gathered The Child and I think we all took naps.  I thought I might take a nap in the lawn circle (with possible Crystal Vision Dreams), but first Smokey decided he had to groom me (which meant biting my scalp), and then he crushed my straw hat (which was shading my face), and then the sun came out from behind the cloud cover and started to fry me.   So I went inside and napped there.