Get to Know VanWA

If you live here, you should get to know your Port of Vancouver. We live in an amazing place, alongside the Columbia River.

Columbia River seaports, especially the Ports of Vancouver, Kalama, and Longview, play major roles in the movement of exported agricultural products, including being the largest grain export gateway for wheat and second largest soybean export gateway. In 2011, these three ports had 861 vessel calls and shipped 20.2 million metric tons of commodities between them. (Washington State Legislature Transportation Resource Manual)

Eight million metric tons of that cargo moves in and out of the Port of Vancouver alone.

You can learn more about the Port of Vancouver by taking a free tour. I've taken it and it's fascinating. Julie Rawls led the tour and she was informative, knowledgeable, and entertaining. I not only recommend the tour highly, I would say it's worth doing a second time. The tour is an hour and a half long and very much worth your time.

Tours dates start in April and run through August. Reservations are required. For more information, see the Port Tours page on the Port of Vancouver USA website. Dates and times can also be found on the WUV calendar.

I don't think you'll regret your investment in getting to know VanWA.

Avoiding Work

Hubby makes fun of me when I try to make the bed while I'm still in it but it makes perfect sense to me. We have a king-sized bed and I can't reach to make both sides at the same time. I can pull up the covers on one side but then I have to walk around to the other side to pull up the covers over there. Then, of course, I have to walk back to the first side to straighten the covers, making it neat, with a final walkaround for last adjustments and smoothing.

From the middle of the bed, I can make both sides at once. Plus, pulling up the covers in the middle of the bed is far more difficult from outside the bed, at its edges. Once made, the only ripple is me and I can just slip out one side. Hubby accuses me of making the bed from inside as an excuse for staying in there longer and he's not entirely wrong. I maintain, however, that is simply efficient bed making.

Of course, if a cup of coffee appeared while I was doing this ... well, that's an entirely different story.

I wonder if it's possible to strip the bed from within the bed....

Ronald McDonald

In clothing, I have never paired red with yellow. I like both these colors but could never bring myself to wear them together. Independent of one another, they are joyful colors. I favor red for non-clothing objects (especially coffee mugs) with yellow being more dominant in my wardrobe. It's impossible for me to pair them together, however, without escaping the image of Ronald McDonald.

Someone gave me a bag of socks recently - joyful, colorful socks. Some were striped and some had polka dots. This is what kind of friend she is: She went to the trouble of removing all the little metal staple-like clips that pair socks to one another, she mismatched the socks, and then she clipped them all together again in pairs. Oh, the joy! (I have an affinity for mismatched socks.)

I've been wearing a new pair of joyful, mismatched socks each day, pulling the next pair out of the bag at random. Until yesterday.

Clearly, avoiding work.

Yesterday's were polka dotted socks, one on a yellow background and one on a red background. I set them aside and pulled out the next pair. I just couldn't get over my Ronald McDonald fashion phobia.

Today, for unknown reasons, I had a different outlook. Ronald McDonald wears strips not polka dots, does he not? I put on the socks and felt instant happiness. I was already wearing a red t-shirt so why not go with it? I donned a yellow fleece as well.

It could very well be that I have made some sort of psychological breakthrough here. It could be that I will embrace red and yellow as a badge of courage, smashing old preconceptions, giving way to new ways of dressing and color combinations, and clearing the path to becoming Chief Happiness Officer. I feel empowered to face the future, whatever it brings.

Unless, of course, I run across the Hamburglar. Then, never mind.

Out Box

I find when I turn my In Box piles (yes, piles) upside down, they seem a lot less urgent. Like, completely unimportant.

i  n  v   i     s     i     b        l           e



#AvoidWork