thedaveandkimmershow

[thedaveandkimmershow]

Sunday I said was a logistics/travel day as well as an opportunity to reflect on our time spent with family.

Our key takeaway from the experience is that it felt like three experiences.

Part 1, Saturday, was a travel day as well as being thrown into the midst of a big birthday party we didn't realize we'd be attending. We wound up being there from 3-9pm. Ish.

Sunday was about picking up our escape campervan in Inglewood that involved a train ride from Irvine to Union Station, lunch at historic Olvera Street, a bus to terminal 1 at LAX, walking over to the transportation hub and catching an Uber to the campervan lot then using that van for shopping and dining excursions on our way back to Irvine. We spent each day with Kimmer's cousin and nephew, especially mornings and evenings.

Part 2 was our camping experience, Monday afternoon through Thursday afternoon, at Crystal Cove, the Moro Campground above Laguna Beach 

Part 3 was back at Kimmer's cousin's place but without her cousin there because he'd pivoted to an archery event up north... so it was just us and her nephew.

Each of those parts, each of those acts, if you will, felt different. In a way, they didn't seem connected. They didn't flow seamlessly, one into the next. Because of that, I believe, our vacation felt like something more than eight days. Part 1, in fact, seemed like part of another week, a previous week, as if these were three separate trips not just three parts of a single trip.

Curiously, the thread running through our trip from beginning to end (although not the middle while we were camping) is our couch experience. As in, we spent a bit of time on the couch together watching the final two episodes of The Residence on Netflix. On the other side of our camping experience, we watched all twelve episodes of Season 2 of Shrinking on AppleTV as well as the pilot episode of Resident Alien on Netflix.

I mention this because it's a classic family experience. With these shows, we have the same appreciation for drama and the same sense of funny. So we are having the same experience together.

Anyway, that's our vacation. Definitely an adventure. Definitely a unique mix of camp life and domestic life. 

Definitely family.

☺️

[thedaveandkimmershow]

Our 9th and last day of vacation was really a logistics/travel day for us. A day of getting from here to a bunch of there's across a single day. It was a day, too, to think about our experience that, I won't lie, seemed longer than the eight days through which we just lived.

On the logistics/travel side of our day, my phone alarm went off at 5:30AM and I got up at 5:30AM. Had I continued to sleep instead, a similar alarm woulda gone off at 5:35 and then the most cataclysmic alarm would've hit at 5:40.

So.

Just setting that alarm is apparently enough for my subconsciousness to take the first alarm seriously. 🤨

5:30AM, then, shower, clothes, continue packing for both of us with Kimmer reorganizing five bags into four. Then a nuked Starbucks Americano from the day before for Kimmer and, by 7AM we're done packing the two big camping bags and the two duffles.

The bigs, by the way, clocked in at 37 and 40 pounds and, after waking up Kimmer's nephew for our goodbyes before he went back to sleep again...

,,,we rolled away from our home for the past week coming up on 7:30.

Now, we've gotta return the campervan to Inglewood but the play we learned that works best is to drive straight to LAX, park, then check in our four bags leaving us with just our rucksacks. So we get to LAX about 8:25, check in, check our bags, then Uber to Inglewood by 9:20, return the campervan, get a bit of refund, then Uber with Jocelyn (Disney Land & Sea during the pandemic, looking forward to Epic Universe next year)... so Uber with Jocelyn back to LAX by ten to ten, then onward to TSA, through TSA, continuing into the terminal with a quick pit stop along the way until we reach our gate where Southwest already boarded everyone in the A group so we get right in line, B group 36 and 37, taking our seats on this first of two flights home at 10:35.

The timing could've been tighter, sure...

But not by much.

Part 1 of our journey home ends at five past noon in Sacramento where we take a beat at Peet's coffee for half an hour, board Part 2 afterward, and we're back in the air at quarter to two, winging our way home to Seattle.

We land at 3:30... and the thing that signals the end of our vacation comes as our plane approaches the gate and has to stop and wait for a minute. In that moment I look up through our window to see a classic Pacific Northwest Welcome Home: the exterior of the window wet with raindrops while the scenery beyond it is an overcast, white atmosphere, rainy, soggy day.

Yup.

We're home.

The sweet thing about our journey, though, is a thing the head steward of our previous flight said as we prepared to leave the plane:

"Go out, be kind to each other. Have an amazing life."

❤️

[thedaveandkimmershow]

Our last full day of vacation here starts at quarter after eight in the morning with me downstairs making the hot water Kimmer 'n I use for coffee 'n tea. While we're embarked on this traditional start to our day, we figure out the mystery of the Cheetah Cup.

The Cheetah Cup?

Yeah. You see the previous night when her nephew 'n I were cleaning the kitchen, we came across this metal mug:

Immediately Kimmer's nephew proclaims 

"My dad would never own something like this!"

And I say

"I'm pretty sure we didn't bring any mugs with us."

Unless, of course, we bought it at the local GoodWill and left it here every time we went back home to Seattle.

Hmmmmm.

So while we're starting our new day, I ask Kimmer about this mystery and she tells me

"It's one of Jacquie's mugs."

There you go, then. You see Jacquie's Kimmer's aunt who passed away in November of 2023. Jacquie is Kimmer's cousin's mom. And many of Jacquie's possessions found their way to family members upon her passing. One of those households, of course, is that of her son. Which is how the Cheetah Cup wound up in her son's home even though he would never own something that looked like this. 😉

After breakfast, Kimmer continued her doctoral studies while I tweaked Thursday's beach walk photos online until a quarter of 9.

After that, we're out in the garage sorting out, organizing, packing and repacking our big black camping bags.

Back in the kitchen's a bowl of fruit Kimmer's sliced up for eating on the fly.

10:50AM I check-in for our morning flight the next day from LAX to Sacramento, Sacramento to Seattle.

Around 11, we call it good in the garage and move on with our day.

By 'n by, I find Kimmer and her nephew going through a bag of her aunt and uncle's possessions. Her uncle, because I haven't mentioned it yet, passed away at the tail end of  2022 so anything that wasn't retired or donated wound up with family. And some of that wound up with family in order to be considered at a later date, tucked away sometimes in unlikely locations. In this case, it's a bag of mostly watches and jewelry and empty jewelry boxes that Kimmer discovered that are now being considered on the living room floor.

In a way, these possessions have been lost until now. Some of it has financial value. Some of it has emotional and nostalgic value. And some of it's just stuff.

You know?

The watches, interestingly, are hit and miss. They're not personal possessions, really, they're items Kimmer's uncle intended to sell.

Fortunately, in terms of the sorting process, Kimmer's nephew determines the analog watches are the ones of value while we can donate the digital ones out of hand.

Even so, not all of those analogue watches make the cut, as Kimmer's nephew points out:

"You can tell some of these aren't very good watches."

"How?" I ask.

"Because the hands fell off this one in the original packaging" comes the reply.

Ultimately, we produce two large bags of donations placed by the front door. I even manage to match some of the digital watches to some of the empty jewelry boxes.

Quarter past twelve we return to packing for a bit until 1:00 when I move the campervan further/closer down the hill on which it's parked after grabbing a few items we left in there.

1:30 it's lunch! featuring the meat pies we bought the previous Saturday at Trader Joe's after Kimmer's cousin and nephew picked us up from John Wayne airport. Now, these meat pies are a meal we have at least once a week back home. This time, though, Kimmer cooks 'em with an air fryer that makes them extra special tasty. ☺️

2:00 Kimmer's nephew 'n I head out to the local GoodWill to drop off the two bags of donations. We've also got a hit a Trader Joe's for whatever Kimmer still needs because we're going to a friend's house for dinner later in the evening with our friend and Kimmer dividing the cooking responsibilities.

Fortunately, Kimmer's nephew finds a Trader Joe's I didn't know about not four minutes away from the GoodWill... so we're back at the house by 3:30 where I join Kimmer in our bag packing endeavors while her nephew walks the family Chihuahua for a bit.

Now, for a few days now we've had it in mind to pick up a friend of Kimmer's nephew to go miniature golfing at a place called Boomers.

Upon checking out Boomers online, though, it turns out that Boomers is more than just miniature golf. It's laser tag, bumper boats, and a bunch of other stuff that makes the entrance fee on this Spring Break weekend insane if all we're gonna do is miniature golf. On top of that, the friend can't make it. On top of that we have an ever shrinking window of time to go anywhere between the packing we've been doing and the cooking that's gotta happen prior to showing up at our friend's place at 6:30.

So.

We ditch our Plan A, Kimmer starts making the cake from scratch (white on the inside, vanilla frosting on the outside) that her nephew requested as part of his pre-birthday celebrations, and, at 4:22PM we head out to that Starbucks a mile and a half away...

On foot.

Because that's our Plan B.

Okay.

So why is the exact time and our mode of transportation important to our story?

Well, because that Starbucks, the closest one, closes at 5PM, 38 minutes from when we left the house... and it's not clear to any of us if we can cover that distance within that amount of time wearing flipflops.

Best case scenario?

We arrive within minutes of the store closing.

What actually happened is that we hustled our way there, Kimmer's nephew 'n I perpetually many many steps behind Kimmer, until we walked through the front doors of Starbucks at 4:47.

Twenty-five minutes later.

One and a half miles.

In flipflops.

😁😁😁

By the time the store's about to close, we've been sitting at a table outside on the patio having nearly finished our iced drinks.

At some point, Kimmer goes inside as her nephew and I continue to enjoy our drinks, the warmth of the California sunshine, and the music from overhead speakers.

A coupla minutes to five, the music suddenly cuts out and, from inside the store, we hear Kimmer wish a cheerful "Have a good evening!" to the baristas inside.

The timing of those two events was impeccable. ☺️

And then at five o'clock the doors are locked, the store closed.

Five minutes later, we finish our drinks and head for home, arriving there a little over a half hour later.

Inside, Kimmer gets right to continuing the baking of the cake she promised her nephew, even going so far as to giving him the barest minimum taste of the frosting she conjured just for him. Her nephew and I collaborate on the Caesar salad as well as slicing the veggies for the veggie tray. And, by six thirty we've got it all done, packed up properly, and ready for transport.

A little after six thirty we leave for our friends house by car... arriving ten minutes later.

6:45.

Our friend's kitchen conveniently has able set for four where we immediately settle in for some fried appetizers and dips (sour cream and blue cheese). After that it's the veggie tray with the Everything Bagel Greek Style dip which is where Kimmer's nephew gets into trouble. You see he apparently can't get enough of the veggies and, by the time it's pizza time, he's already pretty full.

Whoops.

In front of us, our friend's got two pizzas he's teeing up: one pepperoni, one cheese ('cause his daughter likes cheese pizzas). The pepperoni, though, has so many pepperoni slices piled on top that it's decided to take summa those and cover half the cheese pizza with 'em.

Once the pizzas are done, we all fill our plates with pizza slices and salad and, thus, the main course is begun. Of course Kimmer's nephew by now is struggling to make it to the finish line given that he ate so many, you know, vegetables. 🤣🤣🤣

After that?

Cake. And ice cream.

Oof.

The poor kid's really having a hard time. 

In the end, though, all is well. The conversation's all over the place and our friend is one of my favorite storytellers regardless of the subject. In this case, the subjects were door to door solar panel sales people... the pitfalls of apartment management... and the circus that is local government.

Huzzah!

Coming up on 930PM, we say our fare-thee-wells, bid our goodbyes, and make our way home for the night.

Dropping Kimmer and her nephew at the door, I park the campervan further than the top of the hill on the street. The farthest yet that I've parked.

By the time I walk through the front door, Kimmer's upstairs studying while her nephew 'n I hang out, spending our time talking this 'n that, comparing notes, considering the future a little.

Eventually Kimmer comes down to join wherever we are in the discussion and then we introduce her nephew to season 1 episode 1 of Resident Alien.

Which.

He. 

Loved.

His kind of comedy, just as we thought. 😁

By the time that show's over, it's nearly 12:30AM so we head upstairs, pack our last little things, and call it a night.

Our last one.

😕

[thedaveandkimmershow]

Our first full day back in Lake Forest, I wake up at quarter to nine to find Kimmer already sitting up and studying.

We have our usual fruit breakfast. In California it's bananas, green grapes, red grapes, mandarins, and apples. Across the next few hours Kimmer continues her studies while I do some writing. Eventually showers are had and around quarter after noon we walk with Kimmer's nephew to the local Starbucks that's about a mile and a half away. Our walk takes us passed a friend's house who lives close by and we indulge a conversation with them a little before continuing on our way. Our Starbucks go to, by the way, is, for me, a venti chai tea latte, no water, oat milk, with an empty tall cup on the side so Kimmer can have a little of mine, too. Kimmer's go to is a tall Americano/dark drip coffee along with half of my latte. 😕

After our hot drinks and walking home, we all jump into the campervan a little passed 2:15 for a quick visit to the local Chase Bank just up the street after which we walk across the parking lot to Ralph's to pick up dinner fixins Kimmer needs for the evening's stroganoff dinner.

An hour later, we're back at the homestead taking the groceries as well as the food left over from camping to the kitchen and then pulling out our camping gear into the garage.

After parking the van up the hill on the street, it's time for ice creams and an episode of Shrinking from season two.

After that, Kimmer starts prepping the stroganoff and we snack on veggies with an Everything But The Bagel Greek Style Yogurt dip. Way more tasty than you'd think, by the way.

After that it's Shrinking season two episodes 5, 6, and 7 followed by Kimmer finishing up the stroganoff and broccoli while I pitch in making a fluffy Caesar+ salad. Top it off with an NA Blue Moon for the two of us and we have ourselves a dinner with yet one more episode, number 8, of Shrinking from season two. 😁

Now, we do have some unfinished business to which Kimmer still wants to attend. So around quarter to eight we all jump back in the campervan and take off for The Micro Center in Tustin to return the laptop charger we purchased the Sunday before we left for camp.

Why?

Because the laptop charger didn't actually charge any of our laptops. Plug the thing in and out laptops started charging the charger. In other words, the charger drained our laptops of power.

Not okay.

9pm we're back in the living room working our way through Shrinking season two episodes 9, 10,.and 11 while Kimmer retires upstairs to continue her doctoral research.

Once we're through episode 11, Kimmer's nephew 'n I have standing directives from Kimmer to clean the kitchen, load and run the dishwasher as she'd cooked the main stroganoff event earlier. ☺️

It's an interesting discussion in the kitchen because I do have an interest in the future on which some are newly embarking. I'm also interested in what those with big brains can do across the spectrum of their career (or careers), and I'm interested in the kind of people in college who would share and pursue whatever objective that career (or careers) is attempting to solve, to pursue, to transform.

Once we're done in the kitchen, Kimmer joins us for the season two finale of Shrinking.

Totally worth the binge watching we've done across the day. ❤️❤️❤️

Quarter after midnight we're done and off to bed.

☺️

[thedaveandkimmershow]

This is our final morning waking up at camp and it is a glorious morning. Completely unexpected. The forecast last week suggested the good weather on the coast would burn out by now.

But no.

Kimmer's up at 830. I'm outta bed twenty minutes later. The visiting teens from last night are already on their way home so we're down to just Kimmer's nephew.

Nine o'clock we're at the picnic table  enjoying the pancakes and bacon, hot off the grill courtesy her cousin. With real maple syrup also courtesy her cousin.

When finally he's done with all the cooking and boiling of hot water...

It's time for him to go. So he sets about breaking down his side of the camp, eventually pulling away the canopy above us, the canopy above our breakfast picnic table so that suddenly we're exposed to the full light and heat of the sun.

Still lovely, by the way. This day will be defined by the perfect balancing act of temperature, wind, and warmth that's playing out along this Pacific coast.

Ten o'clock, Kimmer's cousin and nephew are pulling away, heading for home. Her nephew's gonna hang there for the afternoon until we join him. Her cousin's gonna pivot, resupplying and packing for an archery tournament taking place at a ranch over the next few days.

So now it's just the two of us and a day along this sunshine coast to consider.

Our first order of business is walking the three loops that house each of the campsites as well as cars, trucks, bikes, tents, trailers, and all manner of recreation vehicle from teardrop trailer to massive rock band buses. It's a bit of Show 'n Tell that's lovely to indulge, lots of opportunity for inspiration, and a lot of neighborly "Hello's" along the way including one alarming discussion that spring from the question "do you know what a baby rattlesnake looks like?"

Kinmer took that question, if you're wondering.

Quarter to eleven we're back from our walk. Kimmer sets up her laptop at the picnic table while I reset the campervan for our daytime use. It takes me about twenty minutes after which Kimmer moves to our table inside while I scan the ground if our campsite for any stray garbage, mostly small to tiny, that needs to be removed.

When I'm done and back inside, Kimmer's taken to researching a Death Valley camping trip.

Death Valley???

Yeah.

It's a thing Kimmer's cousin does and we've been invited.

Apparentlly.

So now Kimmer's taking a pass at figuring out RV possibilities from different companies and different starting locations. While she's doing that, I take one more look around our campsite for anything that doesn't belong because we're about to leave. Check-out's at noon and it's almost noon.

Are we leaving?

We're leaving our campsite for sure because our pass will have expired at the end of our stay. Our pass, however, is still good for going down to the beach. We can park at the bottom of the hill near the tunnel entrance to the beach. And our pass is good for the rest of the day. So noon ends up being the end of our stay but the beginning of a little afternoon beach exploration. What will turn out to be three miles of beach exploration as it turns out.

Having parked down below, we take a moment for some grapes and mandarin oranges and hanging out inside what's becoming an ever warmer interior of the campervan. Then I change into shorts for the first time this week because the weather's perfect for it and, by one o'clock, we're headed toward our beach adventure! 😁😁😁

By the time our three miles of walking first to the southernmost end of the beach then backtracking a little and heading north to the Crystal Cove Beach Cottages, the Crystal Cove Shake Shack 'n back, three hours have come and gone and we're back in our campervan, leaving this beautiful park a little after four.

On our way back to the homestead, we make a quick stop at Sally's by the Sprouts we always go to across the street from the Goodwill we always go to. After that we return to that Salvation Army we hit earlier in the week where Kimmer scored a whole bunch of stuff she was looking for including a Kimmer green carry-on piece of roller luggage. This time she wasn't as lucky but I did score a pair of black Vans for nine bucks. 😁😁😁

Back at the homestead a little after five-thirty, Kimmer checks her watch and celebrates the 17,599 steps she (and therefore we) racked up during the course of all our walking about across the day.

What I haven't mentioned yet is that the homestead is without power. Completely without.

Why?

The local utility is upgrading the neighborhood grid and, until they're done, no one has power.

Supposed to come back on by 7, though, so...

Fingers crossed.

Moving along, we set about moving our stuff inside from the campervan after which I park it on the street up the hill a bit . Then it's time for hot showers (because the hot water is powered by gas not electricity) and coming to grips with the fact that Kimmer's beef stroganoff dinner plans rely on, you know, electricity so we punt and decide on the Mission Viejo Taco Mesa for dinner.

7PM comes and goes, by the way, with no restoration of power so we hit the road and, eventually, partake of tacos and quesadillas until, lo and behold, 8PM comes and goes and Kimmer's nephew learns that power's been restores.

How do I know?

Because in that moment he learns, he suddenly lifts his face to heaven in profound relief because Instagram Reels work so much better when there's, you know, power. 😉

So of course now it's time to head out which we do... stopping along the way at Ralph's for a Breyer's for us, a Breyer's for Kimmer's nephew, and then a bag of Hershey's chocolate chips we can melt to pour over the Breyer's for us. 😁

We partake of our ice creams at the homestead while relaxing on the couch watching episode 2 of Shrinking season 2 after which Kimmer heads upstairs to do research for her doctoral program while her nephew 'n I kill two more episodes.

It's Shrinking, you know. And we can't get enough.

Afterward, the conversation turns to broadcast television, predicting the future based on past and present, personality types, brain types, the elements of a good career, the things we enjoy that are foundational to who we are and how that can at least draw us toward opportunities that match who we are and pull us away from opportunities are profoundly not for us.

What can I say?

I'm really old and love a captive audience. ☺️

[thedaveandkimmershow]

Okay so Wednesday was our last opportunity for a whole day of full blown sun.

And the day did not disappoint.

So far, our experience involves mostly overcast, windy, and sometimes straight up cold weather. No rain so far, thank God. At most, the first night made everything damp (including Cookie the dog). About as close as we got to the dreaded R word.

This time we're both up around 830 with a quick morning walk followed by splitting an amazing breakfast burrito Kimmer's cousin made then saved for us. He made it around 7AM so it's not warm... but that doesn't matter. The taste, the flavor of it still rocks. ☺️

I finish my breakfast with a black cherry berry tea we brought from home, then at 930 I reset the interior of our campervan for daytime use, packing the bed linens and pillow, collapsing the bed back into a bench seat, and putting up the table between the bench seats.

After taking a longer breakfast hanging out with her cousin at the picnic table, Kimmer sets up her mobile office at the picnic table around quarter passed ten so she can begin the process of creating the Power Points to accompany the presentation she'll share with her online doctoral class at two that afternoon.

In the meantime, her cousin and nephew have already taken off to swap out the SUV for the truck as well as catch showers at home. Afterward, they're gonna pick up another friend after school's out at 12:37.

Oddly specific time, I know. But that's when the particular high school lets out this day.

Now I said before Kimmer has an online presentation to deliver for her doctoral cohorts and that presentation's not gonna happen from the beach or the picnic table or the inside of the campervan.

Yeah.

We're going back to the homestead, Kimmer's cousin's home about thirty-five minutes away. So we're back on the road coming up on noon, arriving at the homestead forty minutes later.

First things first: make sure all our electronics are charging.

Next up: shower and a change of clothes.

After that, I've got to move the campervan onto the street for parking. While I do that, Kimmer preps for her 2PM PowerPoint presentation that's coming up fast at this point.

The presentation ends at 3, an hour later, and Kimmer tells me that the professor who divvied up subject responsibilities had taken a little off the top of Kimmer's presentation and indicated Kimmer would also be touching on a subject she's not prepared for but does, in fact, know. So while the professor's speaking, Kimmer's getting rid of the PowerPoint slides she no longer needs and prepares a few new ones on the fly that she will need. And for all the juggling she did, her presentation turned out well. Ever the doubter, Kimmer even listened to the recording of that presentation and decided it actually did go well.

Huzzah!

Afterward, we take the afternoon slowly, getting ready to leave and out the door ten minutes to five.

We roll back into camp at 5:30, discovering that Kimmer's nephew's friends have returned for some digging holes down on the beach in the sand and surf as well as a traditional pre-birthday celebration at the local Ruby's Diner. With that objective in mind, Kimmer and her cousin jump in his truck while I follow with four teenagers doing their teenager routine on the road. 😉

A good time is had by all, of course, at Ruby's with burgers, super burgers, shakes (each with another half of a shake in a metal tumbler on the side), turkey sandwiches, and one turkey sandwich with the turkey replaced by chicken instead and with avocado on the side. 🤔

We're there from 6:00 to 7:00 enjoying each other's company as well as food and drink. It's a pretty busy time. There's a family with crying baby and a dad who takes that baby off of his mother's hands and walks about to calm him down. He and his baby even go outside to enjoy the warmth and the palm trees. There's family next to them, a pretty big family, that's a pretty interactive bunch. There's another such family next to us who are having a lot of fun together. There's even a family with four kids on their way up the stairs to the roof top seating. Not sure if all the kids were part of the family or if it's some combination of kids and friends but it was a very live crew and it was going to be a very fun meal on the roof under sunny California skies.

By 'n by, a dad and his two little girls walk into the restaurant. The little girls are each walking with a screen that's playing cartoons. They sit down at a booth and continue watching their cartoons while the dad puts on headphones for a while and then takes them off to order and leaves them off. It's obvious, though, that he doesn't connect with his daughters. It's almost like he's unaware that they're even there. I don't think that's a failure in the way I usually think of failures. I think this is a genuinely disconnected human being. And that's kind of a depressing thing.

Back at our table, I find myself not necessarily jealous but I think it's very sweet that this group of teenage boys goes back to kindergarten. They've known each other that long and it's obvious they know each other very well, their strengths as well as their profound weaknesses. 🤨

Seven o'clock we're out of there. We're back by 7:30 with the boys settling in for a game of poker at the picnic table since it's not gotten too cold yet.

About a half hour later it does get that cold and they move into their tent. Which is sad because we all got used to a lovely hot day. ☺️

Kimmer and I retreat to the campervan for a while. We walk an incomplete piece of our loop around 8:30 talking about the possibility of joining her cousin in Death Valley for Thanksgiving. We've done this before many many years ago and it was a mixed bag then. The days were fantastic. The evenings and early nights were a wonder of infinite constellations in a perfectly dark sky. And the rest of the nights were stone cold freezing. The coldest night dipped down to 28 degrees Fahrenheit.

And that's not okay.

Since then, a lot of years have gone by and a lot of technology has blossomed to meet the challenge of keeping warm on really cold nights. So we talk about heat. We talk about electricity. We talk about different RV layouts, what those RVs provide, and what those RVs require.

Afterward, we return to find Kimmer's cousin setting up a propane fueled campfire. Once the fire is blazing, he sits down on his camp chair, places his chihuahua, Cookie, on his lap, and covers both the dog and his lap with a warm blanket.

We get some hot chocolates going after heating up water on the grill, and the boys join us around the fire with some sitting, most standing, and we talk away the night a little bit, alternating between questions and biting commentary fit for teens. 😆

Kimmer 'n I are back in the campervan a little after 9 because she still has studying to do and she wants a study buddy. ☺️ She's able to sustain her study for an hour and a half before we call it a day, transform the campervan for night time use, and, by quarter after 11:00, watch another couple episodes of Malcolm in the Middle.

Midnight, we turn off the laptop, turn off the lights, pull up the blankets, and close our eyes.

Ready for our last day at camp.

☺️

[thedaveandkimmershow]

Our first camp morning, Kimmer's up at 8AM ready for the day. I'm up at 9AM ready for my breakfast burrito as prepared by her cousin masterfully working the grill.

The morning's sunny, not cold. Although there is an ocean breeze that's violently whipping the table cloth covering our picnic table, making metal canopy legs shiver and the blue nylon covering shake and blow until you start wondering if it'll leave the ground like a sail propelling itself into the sky. The camp garbage bag, hanging off one of the cross metal beams near the top of the canopy, is flying like some odd looking urban flag and, of course, all the bushes and plants around us are doing individual wind dances.

In the midst of this weather, we sit at the picnic table beneath the canopy and have our breakfast. My description of the weather might characterize being at the table as a frustrating experience. Interestingly, since it's not cold outside, the wind is merely moving comfortable air around us as we enjoy our expertly made breakfasts. ☺️

After that, we retreat to our own abodes, Kimmer's cousin to his tear drop trailer with side door open to the sun, Kimmer's nephew into his tent, fully enclosed, and we to our campervan, both side doors flung open to the sun, where we enjoy my our morning hot drinks whilst studying, researching, and reading.

By the way, where we call home, the Pacific Northwest, you can't always feel the sun even when you can see it. So this down here is a very lovely (and warm and welcome) experience.

Eventually, our new reality sets in because it feels like no one else is here.

It feels.

Like no one else.

Is here.

That's not true, of course, there are other campers, other families, couples, cars, RVs, and tents here.

It just doesn't feel like it.

This impression is embodied by the fact that Kimmer's cousin and nephew took off around ten-thirty to pick up something from home (thirty minutes away) as well as pick up some friends who're joining his son out here for the next couple days. On top of that, the spot next to us is empty and, looking beyond that, all we see is flora, ocean, and a distant outcropping from the PCH. All we hear is the wind, the frustration of Pacific Ocean waves against the beach, and the occasional motorcycle joyfully speeding the Pacific Coast Highway.

We're eventually joined by a ground squirrel that we have to shoo away several times but, by and large, we feel like the only ones here. 

It's eleven o'clock right now.

A quick environmental lesson we learn right about now is that, with the back of the van facing the ocean, leaving the van's back doors open allows wind to blow straight into the cab. And yeah. It's a cold wind we feel that courses off the Pacific straight at us. Close those doors, though, throw open the side doors, and now it's the warmth of the California sun flowing down upon us into the campervan and it.

Is.

Lovely.

Eventually, 12:45 is upon us and it's time to get ready for the day with actual hot showers for which you buy tokens: two minutes per token. So we buy ten tokens for five bucks and each use three for six minutes a piece of magnificent hot water remaining down on us.

After that, new clothes all around, a bit of un-mangling our hair, and now we're once again presentable human beings ready to greet Kimmer's nephew's friends who are on their way to join us in the afternoon.

Eventually they arrive having already had lunch so we retreat to the campervan for hummus dip and veggies around two-thirty where we peacefully lounge until it's something like quarter to five

Somewhere in there, though, it.l dawns on us that the camp around is has filled, slowly or suddenly, with life. A lot of people walking by. A lot of kids playing. Adults flying fancy kites to the amazement of little children, one of whom hopes that throwing her mom's kite into the air with both hands will miraculously cause it to fly.

We also hear a baseball game in the distance (there's a school and play field that neighbor's the north end of the camp, also along the Pacific Coast Highway). It's from way over there that we hear the sounds of adults playing baseball with a crowd cheering them on.

Dinner fast approacheth by this time and we're tasked with scoring new crushed ice from a nearby grocery store, Pavilions, that carries sixteen-pound bags of crushed ice for five and a half bucks each.

We buy one.

Back from our crushed ice escapade down the PCH, we rejoin our camp by 530 for dinner.

Dinner?

Yes. Dinner for six featuring Frito Tacos.

Basically with Frito Tacos you roll your own. You grab a bowl, throw in a handful of Fritos Original Corn Chips (a staple of my grade school years), throw on top shredded lettuce then the seasoned taco meat that was expertly grilled at the head of the table, then guacamole, then sour cream, then shredded cheese to top this culinary magnificence. 😁

So that's all of us around the picnic table. Three adults. Three teenagers. Each of us living our best lives in this moment. 😉

After we finish (around quarter passed six), we clean our plates with special wipes designed for this purpose, then we head back to our abodes.

Actually, Kimmer 'n I head back to the camper van where she takes up studying. I'm in there a few minutes before joining her cousin at his teardrop trailer next to us. As I walk up to him, he encourages the boys to run over to trader joe's, a mile up the pch, to grab chocolate. His son isn't super thrilled at the prospect of walking, but one of his friends is down to do it and, with his dad offering his debit card, the deal is done. So the guys head out on foot has a couple dads kill some time talking about Dad stuff until about 15 minutes later when the boys return.

Why were they back so soon? How could they be back so soon?

"There was a DO NOT CROSS sign" Kimmer's nephew offered.

So Kimmer's cousin offers his son to take the car instead so off they go once again, eventually returning with goodies for themselves as well as a pound of dark chocolate for the dad who financed their expedition.

Somewhere in here, I take a moment to just appreciate where we are.

Afterward, the boys retire to the big tent where they actually have a poker table and chips set up. We could hear them in there for a while, boisterous as you might expect.

Were they any good?

Well, on one occasion someone won the hand with a pair of kings. On another occasion.someone one by having the highest value card. A ten of something, I think.

So no. they weren't good at playing poker.

That plus the fact that no money's involved is, I suspect, why they have such genuine (and loud) fun together. 🥳

We settle ourselves back in the campervan around seven for a peaceful evening that concludes around ten with a walk, getting the van ready for the night, followed by a pair of Malcolm in the Middle episodes, all of which takes us to 11:30...

And the start of a good night's sleep.

☺️

[thedaveandkimmershow]

Whereas our second day was an adventure, our third day, yesterday, was mostly logistics.

Logistics?

Yeah. After waking up a quarter after eight, we turned our attention to our campervan that seemed to be running harder than it needed to while we were driving city streets, navigating arterials, pulling into parking lots. So I called the campervan people a call and, after they spoke with Kimmer about specifics, called us back after talking with one of their mechanics, then called us again after figuring out some logistics of their own, they got a replacement campervan ready and sent someone down to us to make the swap on our end. Which was really really nice and not just a little bit convenient as hell.

Our original campervan, by the way, was called "Snapshot". Our replacement, the one in which we're driving around now, is called Bubbliscious. I'm not sure that's the best name for it. For sure the graphic design wrapped around the campervan is both three dimensional and colorful. There's nothing about it, though, that looks like or evokes bubbles. To us, it looks like brain synapses.

Either way, we now had a perfectly running vehicle for our camping travels by 11AM.

To trial it out, though, we ran some local errands, hitting the Goodwill from the previous day and then the GW Boutique next door. We were there at the Goodwills for about a half hour before running across the street again to Sprouts.

Sprouts was a bust so we hit the Salvation Army just down the street where we hit the jackpot with, right off the bat a Kimmer green carry-on roller bag she'd been looking for, some suwheet! clothes Kimmer'd also been looking for, and then another pillow for me. :-)

After that, we were on our way back to the homestead but I missed our turn so we continued to Starbucks instead for coffee 'n latte.

So we're there killing some time with business talk and profession talk when the barista goes

"I have a question."

We turn ourselves towards her.

"Yes?"

Then she says

"Would you like a chocolate croissant?"

To which Kimmer says

"I wouldn't but my husband would."

Oh you BET her husband would. Which is how I ended up with a chocolate croissant, heated, and on the house.

Man, you gotta love moments like that. :-)

By the time we wrap that up, we're back at the homestead by two when Kimmer starts baking, I grab a shower and start packing, and her cousin 'n nephew finish their preparations and hit the road maybe quarter to three/three o'clock while we sit down to absolutely, positively, watch with rapt attention the final episode of The Residence in which All Is Explained.

We wrap that expience by 3:30 and, ten minutes later, start loading our campervan, grabbing Kimmer's nephew's forgotten pillow in the process.

Four-thirty we're on the road after scoring batteries at The Dollar Tree for our Uno Attack! game machine and forty-five minutes later we're pulling into campsite 58, our home for the next three nights.

Her cousin already has his camper situated and has a burgers on the grill well under way to which we add a Trader Joe's Mediterranean salad, we each grab our own drinks stashed for some time in a cooler and BAM. We're having dinner above the Pacific Ocean.

What's interesting about the experience is that I'm not cold. It's an overcast day with some lingering fog. There's a slight breeze coming off the Pacific. The temp's something like 58 and we're all comfortable. If this was the Pacific Northwest we'd be miserable next to Puget Sound.

But here?

It's lovely. Peaceful.

Most importantly... NOT cold.

After dinner, we lounge in the van, eventally Kimmer's nephew joining us. Seven-thirty the three of us head out in the campervan for a quick trip to Trader Joe's where, among other thins, we score some ice cream and stroop waffels for dessert.

By the way, we WILL have to finish the icecream the same night 'cause we don't have anything that'll keep it straight-up frozen any longer than that.

So there we are, enjoying ice cream and stroop waffels in the campervan while I throw on Shrinking Season 2.

Why?

Kimmer's nephew had made us fans of Season 1 but hadn't gotten around to Season 2 himself. So we set into Season 2 Episdoe 1 immediately. :-)

By 9:30 we're done, he heads off to bed, Kimmer sets up the campervan so that the middle section's now a bedroom with our double bed and comfy blankets, nothing but the Pacific and the occasional sounds of children nearby playing games in their tent. Above in the sky we can see the full moon, only a sliver of which is bathed in light, the rest of which is black but something less black than the sky. Seeing that with my own eyes I can imagine I'm actually seeing the dark side of the moon. Of course that's not true... but it's a seriously cool look for the moon.

Then ten o'clock rolls around and we're cozied in bed.

Done for the day.

:-)

[thedaveandkimmershow]

Okay so yesterday was an adventure.

Up at 7 like on a school day, boiling water for coffee and tea, our first appointment of the day was gonna be catch the 9:21 for Union Station and LAX.

I'd spent part of the previous afternoon  looking up how we were gonna do this. Turns out the only thing I really needed to do was use Google maps with origin, destination, travel date, and arrival time and BAM. Sunday, 9:21, Track 1. So now, the following morning, all that was left was to buy our tickets with the Metrolink app and actually, you know, get on the train.

Kimmer, in the meantime, indulges more studying until it's time to shower, get dressed, and catch a ride from her nephew who drops us at Irvine Station where we find ourselves along Track 1 ten minutes early, waiting for our train to arrive.

The train, I think, pulled in a coupla minutes early and was actually on its way north again at 9:21. Good timing, that. Plus, when we boarded the train, we immediately went to the upper deck where we scored a booth with a table and a pair of outlets underneath. Yes!

It's a lovely ride that takes about an hour during which we both indulge a little studying/research/reading as the scenery slips by. The only slightly annoying thing about the ride was this professor sitting across the aisle a few seats back who was talking on his phone the whole time and, because of the interior material and curvature of the ceiling, he seemed to be speaking right next to us so that we could clearly hear every word of his conversation.

How did we know he was a professor?

We didn't. He was just this old guy traveling on his own and talking about travel and family and taxes and enough about his youngest son's upcoming marriage that we know his son's in his late thirties/early forties, that this isn't to be a religious service but a civil service, and that the "professor" and his wife would be attending.

That's definitely sweet...

But more than we'd prefer to know.

Still, we got our research/studying/reading done and we even managed to roll into Union Station fifteen minutes early, about 10:25, which was perfect because Kimmer wanted to score authentic tacos at Olvera Street so that gave us an hour and a half to do that before we had to be back at the bus terminal to continue our travel to LAX.

We stopped at customer service first, though, to verify there was nothing that would screw this plan and, after confirming it was solid plan, we ventured toward the front of Union Station, scoring a Wetzel's Pretzels pretzel in remembrance of her aunt Jacquie who loved them dearly. So we split one and made our way, eventually, out the front of Union Station, managing to capture pictures of this iconic landmark as we went. 😊

Our objective, though, is Olvera Street for tacos. Fortunately for the time we have, Olvera is right across the street.

After lunch, exploring, and purchasing some housewarming gifts for our daughter and her boyfriend, we walk back to the top of the street, turn left down a short hill, and then back across the street to Union Station where the Starbucks that was packed on our way out is conveniently empty now that we're on our way back in.

After scoring our drinks, we reach our bus stop (across all those tracks behind Union Station) with ten minutes to spare.

Rolling away from the station a little after noon, the bus makes its way across Los Angeles with us (on our way to Escape Campervans) and everyone else (on their way bearing luggage to the airport) arriving at terminal 1 of LAX about thirty minutes later.

We walk around inside the terminal for fifteen minutes thinking there might be something interesting to do in there to kill some time but it turns out all the good stuff happens after the TSA checkpoints... so we head out of the terminal to the transportation hub next door where we catch an Uber with a young guy named Hector who tells us a story about a fifty-something year old man who complained that Hector had charged his car long enough so was trying to disconnect it from the charger. Hector wasn't traumatized by this, it turns out, because, you know, old crazy dudes. 😆

We talk a little camping after that and, before you know it, he's dropping us off in the Escape Campervan lot a half hour before our scheduled pick-up. Fortunately for us, this wasn't a problem and we drove off the lot at 1:30, the actual time of our scheduled appointment.

Now, there's some stuff we had in mind to do and first up is Micro Center in Tustin where we roll in a little over an hour later and, with the expert help of two customer service reps, Kimmer scores a new set of over ear ear buds as well as a brick that, once fully charged, will charge her laptop while we're camping.

Three-thirty we're having lunch at my favorite Taco Mesa (that I didn't even realize was a Taco Mesa) four miles away.

Back on the road a little passed four, we're back at the homestead a half hour later to check in on proposed meal plans and shopping lists for our upcoming camping adventure. Five-fortyfive we hit the local Goodwill where I get a pillow 'cause we were packed too tight to bring mine. Half hour later we're across the street at Sprouts for serious grocery shopping. Back at the homestead at 715 for dinner and Episode 7 of The Residence.

A little after 830 Kimmer's gotta retire from these events to take in a lecture and then take a test. While she's upstairs partaking of these doctoral pursuits, I'm downstairs filling in her nephew about my AI tests in post-production. He asks if this stuff is posted anywhere for him to see and, next thing we know, I'm at his desktop showing him each of the AI generated videos I made using tools from RunwayML, explaining how and why each shot was crafted the way it was.

His response?

"To be honest, I didn't know AI was this far along."

By 'n by he heads upstairs to chat up Kimmer for a bit and, by the time they're done, and by the time Kimmer's done and, by the time her cousin's back with ice cream, it's eleven-thirty as she, her nephew, and I settle onto the couch with our bowls of ice cream topped with chocolate sauce to watch the season 1 finale of The Residence.

Unfortunately for us, especially Kimmer 'n I who've been embracing this whodunnit over the last week, this epiode's gonna run an hour and a half... and we all start struggling with being, you know, awake about an hour into the show.

Not good.

Certainly not a helpful state of consciousness in which to take in and appreciate a finale of such import.

So we call it a night. Admit defeat coming up on quarter to one A.M..

And go.

To.

Bed.

☺️

[thedaveandkimmershow]

So it's the end of March and it's—

FAMILY CAMPING TIME!!!

We actually eased into our journey during the days leading up to it with ever increasing amounts of preparation and packing so that by Friday night we had a lot of gear and clothes packed with most of the rest packed by the end of the night and the rest ready to go. Our friend, Ryan, even stopped by after work so we could go over some new things and hang for a little bit.

And by midnight...

We were in bed.

Yesterday morning, Saturday morning I'm up at five to get Kimmer up by five-thirty. She's actually up by five-fifteen and, after breakfast in bed, finishing the last of our packing and house cleaning, we manage to get ourselves and our bags out the front door and into our UberXL by 647, landing us along the side of the Paine Field terminal with two minutes to go until 7AM.

The morning's not a hugely busy morning at the airport so we make it through check-in and TSA quickly although I'd taken/disassembled so much of my carry on so that nothing had to be scanned twice... it took a little longer than usual to get myself and my bags back in order before continuing into the terminal.

Now, we're traveling with six bags: our two monster black bags with all the camping gear, our rucksacks (black and green), and two other nylon bags (blue and green) stashed with our clothes. The black bags we naturally check in intending to carry on the other four. This is actually a clever move on Kimmer's part because when the flight is full, as this one is, the crew at the gate starts asking if anyone has carry ons they're willing to check in 'cause otherwise there's not enough room in the overhead bins.

For free, by the way. They're willing to check the bags for free.

So we check the bags (to be handed over at the nose of the plane when we board outside) and now we've got just the two rucksacks that'll fit under the seats in front of us once we're settled in. ☺️

By the time we take to the air, it's twenty after eight on a lovely sunny morning. A couple hours later, 10:30ish, we're on the ground in Orange County's Santa Ana International Airport. A half hour after that we're meeting up with family at baggage claim where they've already got all four of our bags off the carousel and now we're all walking to our ride in the parking garage.

On the road in Irvine, we've gotta drop Kimmer's nephew off at a local bowling alley for a friend's birthday party. After that, we're at our traditional stop at Trader Joe's 'cause that's what we do for every trip we take when we're traveling among the states.

Twelve fifteen we're at her cousin's place where we're staying a couple days before heading out to camp. Almost immediately Kimmer takes to the kitchen to whip up some smoothies while I figure out the Metrolink plan for tomorrow 'cause we've gotta get to the Escape Campervan location near LAX to pick up our rig for the week.

Quarter after one Kimmer settles in for a power nap while I settle in for a power hot shower.

Two thirty we're on the road again 'cause we're going to a PARTY!!!

Did not know that until we actually landed at John Wayne and were treated to a—

Guess what?

This isn't a complaint, by the way. But it does explain how we came to be thoroughly wiped out by the end of our first day.

Three o'clock we're the first to arrive at a mutual friend's home for a partially catered, partially home cooked, full bar, full sodas in a cooler, and two different kinds of desserts birthday celebration.

We started with a lot of flat bread slices adorned with our choice of hummus or any number of dips, plates and bowls of which are strategically in the kitchen and around the patio (the one with that magnificent view of the valley).

I scored a bottle of a dark, Mexican beer while Kimmer scored a red of some other brand.

Heaven.

The moment I realized I was in trouble was when I spied a monster brisket being sliced by our host. And then huge kabobs are delivered. Then roasted, sauteed vegetables. Then a full bed of rice.

Yeah.

I had not paced myself out properly for my stomach to accommodate this incredible turn of events.

The afternoon stretched into evening stretched into night, though, so I had plenty of time to pace these entrees out in a way that didn't leave me with a massive stomach ache. Huzzah!

The only food we have yet to account for, of course, is dessert. Two different ones: a Greek pastry kinda thing and the official birthday cake, a cheesecake tinged with tiramisu through and through.

A single candle's placed atop the cake and we all sing Happy Birthday before digging into the creamy deliciousness.

It was a big party, by the way. A lot of adults. A few kids... teens. Maybe twenty people by the time we all arrived.

The interesting thing about this group, though, is that it's a cohort with a long history, some of which stretches back to highschool. There's an obvious familiarity. An ease of laughter. A lot of referencing different parts of their shared history during conversation. The conversations also easily break up and come back together in different configurations with a different friend or group of friends. And yes. There is a touch of chaos to it if you happen to walk in during the midst of this gathering.

But everyone at the party?

Totally at ease with it. Enjoying it. Cherishing their friendships.

The end of the night it's getting cold but there's a fire pit on that lovely patio so we're all gathered around soaking in the warmth of friendship, camaraderie, and a blazing fire.

Kind of made it hard to leave because as soon as you step a foot away from the fire... you feel it. As well as the gravitational pull to return into the fire's close orbit.

We probably started "leaving" around 7 but it just didn't or wouldn't take. We were always drawn back into conversation around the fire. Forty-five minutes or so later, though, we managed breakaway velocity, bid each one there our gratitude and farewell...

And left the party.

We got back to the homestead about an hour later with the intention of finishing the night with episode 7 of the eight episode first season of "The Residence" because we wanna know...

Who done it.

Unfortunately for us, we couldn't maintain a steady state of lucidity... so our experience of "watching" the episode was a patchwork experience at best.

So with that, our first day came to a heavy close as the lights of our consciousness winked out and we finally got the sleep our bodies were craving.

☺️

[thedaveandkimmershow]

We had an appointment along South Lake Union yesterday after which Kimmer dropped me off on the fly on her way to the onramp to I5 north.

While we were deciding where she should drop me off (she almost pulled the trigger on just driving onto campus), we caught a red light at the corner of NE 42nd St. and 7th Ave NE, right there at the end of the express lanes north bound offramp. So I grabbed my stuff, jumped out of the car, and started walking. At which point the light turned green and she was on her way back to the house.

Quickly I realized there was something familiar about the apartment building next to which I was walking: University Manor.

I didn't get it at first but soon enough I realized a college friend used to call one of the apartments here "home". One of the memories I still have is coming down here so we could then go see Ferris Beuller's Day Off playing at one of the local theaters.

This would've been 1986.

He passed away in 2020 and this building is what I've come to think of as evidence of someone who's no longer with us. As soon as I had that thought, of course, I was reminded of all the others. All the other friends, family, kids who should still be here.

But aren't.

Susan, Bill, Jacquie, Dave, Josh, Michael, Emily, Scott.

They should all still be here. Somewhere in our lives. For sure there's evidence for each of them that once they were here. And we still run across that evidence. We do. Randomly, which can be a little unsettling. Catch us by surprise.

Like finding out they died all over again.

Even being on campus, even visiting the Graduate Reading Room at Suzallo Library's a tricky thing to do.

Why?

Because we shot a major music video for VH1 in there. We had to do it over night, loading in all the gear, setting up, shooting, tearing down, and loading out. So it was a long night and an intense experience. Our first gig with a record label.

So even just the space is stamped with our friend, Scott's, presence.

That's not a bad thing. I'll be right up front about that. None of its bad. None of its fraught. It's all just lost opportunity, missing our friends, and imagining a present that could've been, should've been more complete.

[thedaveandkimmershow]

Even though I know music has a profound effect, I forget on a regular basis the depths at which music reaches into us and transforms us.

Of course I'm reminded of this clever magic (also on a regular basis) every time I'm at a concert.

Last night, for example, we were at The Crocodile in Belltown. The headliner was The Little Lies, the premiere Pacific Northwest Fleetwood Mac tribute band. The opener was Madman Across The Water, an Elton John tribute band we were experiencing for the first time.

We weren't that far into the open of the show when I realized people were singing the lyrics to many of the songs. Especially toward the end of the set when the audience had filled in, it was obvious. Then The Little Lies took the stage and, of course, "Landslide" is everyone singing as if the song is their song. Beyond that, I didn't notice as much singing the lyrics as during the Elton John set.

You know what I did notice?

Dancing.

Not just people dancing but couples dancing. Having fun. Feeling joy. Letting the music move through them. There was a letting go vibe to the experience. There was a different reality, a part of our lives that can only be experienced through music and gathering together and experiencing the same moment in the same way.

This is a unique human experience is what I'm getting at. And it's a powerful one.

Why?

Because however it was each one of us arrived at The Crocodile at the end of our week, our work week, at the end of this day, this work day...

We were transformed.

Seriously. Literally.

A transformation inside each one of us. Not only during the performance but (speaking for myself) the next day, today, when I had a lot of Elton John music and lyrics on repeat in my head. Most of the time the song was "Someone Saved My Life Tonight". Later today it was "Mona Lisas & Mad Hatters" on repeat through my Bluetooth speaker. Elton John was my soundtrack today because I took a deep dive with Madman Across The Water last night. It's an experience that triggered all of Elton's music I tried learning on the piano when I was a kid. It's an experience that triggered all those times I played 1974's Elton John Greatest Hits record on my dad's turntable over and over and over again. It's an experience that triggered all the discussions we had at the Art Institute about these classic lyrics written by Bernie Taupin, especially Yellow Brick Road.

So yeah.

I've got history with this music. As did most of the audience.

And even though I know music has a profound effect, I forget on a regular basis the depths at which music reaches into us and transforms us.

☺️

[thedaveandkimmershow]

I won't lie. I thought yesterday was February 29 when it was actually March 1. Which totally explains why Linzy had to be out of her apartment on the hill on Friday. Literally the last day of the month.

I'm caught up now, of course. Took me a little by surprise but I'm totally on board now with Sunday, March the 2nd.

Thinking back on February, though, it's hard to put my finger on exactly what transpired during the month. Fortunately, I have calendars, photographs, and posts that are my breadcrumbs through time and which serve as evidence that yes... many, many things happened in February.

For starters, I missed the stars. 

Huh?

You see in the run-up to February, the end of January provided crystal clear skies. As crystal as it gets in a metropolitan area. Because of that, on our nightly walks we could look into the sky and see the stars up there night after night after night.

Wait.

The stars are just up there, unchanging, aren't they? The Big Dipper's the same shape in perpetuity. That's why it's been the Big Dipper all this time, right?

Well sure. The x-factor this time around, though, are planets. Venus. Saturn. Mars. All of which we can see right up there in the sky at night. Mars, especially, 'cause of two things.

1. It's actually got a reddish vibe to it, and

2. You can see it's on the move from night to night to night.

How?

Because when we first noticed it, it was the bottom dot of three dots in the sky that formed a perfectly vertical line. Over the course of a week, though, that bottom dot moved and kept moving to the right and up until one night it was no longer a straight line in that section of sky but a perfect right angle with sides of equal length.

So heading into February we were bona fide sky gazers, looking up each night to see what had changed. 

Then.

February rolls in and with it... snow.

Did not see that coming.

The clouds producing that snow, of course, threw a cover across the entirety of sky at which we'd been gazing. So we spent the week strolling through the cold and falling snow, snapping the occasional photographs of this winter wonderland.

Aside from the snow, there was the usual, of course. What's always going on with Kimmer's tenure at Ballard Psych paired with a full throttle pursuit of her Doctor of Science in Integrative Health. Papers. Reading. Research. Classes. Tests.

Rinse.

Repeat.

It's part, I'm sure, of why 2024 seems still ongoing. As if we're in mystery months that appeared after December 31 but before January 1. Our stargazing also adds to the feeling. Aside from the wayward planets of our solar system, the constellations are so fixed in the sky. Unchanging. So when I'm not paying attention, it's easy to forget 2025 is well under way.

Such as it is.

February 7, I joined a UW Video celebration at Duke's Restaurant on South Lake Union. These get-togethers are always fun, always tasty, always involve desserts... and whenever we're at the South Lake Union location I marvel at the fact that I can see my old high school high atop a hill through the windows: Queen Anne High School.

I don't know what it is about seeing this once upon a time relic that's now a high-priced condo. It's not the Space Needle... not iconic. Instead it's a bit like St. Mark's. The two buildings have an enduring quality about them. With all the change Seattle's undergone since I was a kid, these two are solid, unmoving rocks in the flow of time.

Yeah. I don't know what it is. I always just marvel at my old high school from this vantage point in place and in time.

Linzy was off the road in February. It was all solo gigs at the Palisades in Magnolia and Willows Lodge in Woodinville. The missus 'n I spent our Valentine's evening together in the Fireside Lounge, listening to Linzy's lovely music sets and relaxing in the fine wine and dining moment.

Actually... it was all solo gigs in February but for a single Little Lies performance at The Spanish Ballroom on Friday the 7th that was, by all accounts, one of their best performances.

I'm guessing that's inevitable with all the road and stage experience they're racking up. 😊

In my professional life, I took some time figuring out if it was possible to make a short travel video using nothing but photographs and AI tools.

The short answer, by the way, is yes.

The somewhat longer answer is yes with RunwayML to transform photographs to video, DeepSeek to generate the script under my direction, ElevenLabs to read the script with a pretty convincing voice provided by "Sarah", and royalty free music and sound effects courtesy pixabay.com.

Yeah.

Totally doable.

The objective was to discover if something like this piece, crafted in the way all such pieces are crafted, raises any red flags for random viewers. As in, does the AI set off any alarms?

No. As it turns out.

Of course you do see its imperfections if you know before you watch the clip. But if you don't... 

If you don't...

If you don't know you're looking at AI generated footage, as a viewer you accept what's presented to you in the way it's presented to you: a travel series introduction to the city of Venice.

I followed up that demo/test with screen grabs from old shows that runway turned into new footage of the same subjects. Then I dipped into what happens when you give runway video to transform, not just stills. It's an effort that quickly turned into me pretending to be a security bot on a spaceship that runway turned into an actual security bot on a spaceship.

Motion capture is what this is. Runway knows what's moving, how it's moving, and can change everything about how it looks while maintaining the motion.

Dang.

Which brings me to the last week of February during which Linzy moved off Capitol Hill after living there through college and the start & blossoming of her career, after living there through a time of riots and years of pandemic. Plenty of good and terrible to go around. Infinite memories. There deep roots here, no question. And the week spent dismantling and moving this home was, in its own way, a drawing of the curtain across this part of her life in preparation for opening it again in someplace brand new.

Saying goodbye...

Before a new chapter starts.

And our story, once again, proceeds.

😊

[thedaveandkimmershow]

Last Sunday was the BIG day of helping Linzy move the majority of her belongings and definitely all the big, heavy, awkward-to-carry stuff.

It was our only time (so far) conducting a move in the rain, cold, and wind.

Gotta say: I'm not a fan.

Still, we got it all moved out of the old and into the new. Bam. Done.

Except...

Small stuff and cleaning on Thursday night and Friday night. Finishing the move and assuring as much as is possible the return of the apartment deposit in full.

Fingers 'n toes crossed.

As we prepared to leave the apartment for the final time, I was struck by how much we invest a place with Home. By "we" I mean people. Each of us imbues a place with that specific feeling of home even though the physical space itself isn't inherently home. Not really.

Why?

Because you can definitely see and feel the difference as we strip our homes of the life we invested in it. Our belongings. Our memories. All our works in progress. Without which...

It's just a place.

It's just a space.

Even the sense of what it once was resides only in our memories, the physical connection otherwise severed. Maybe once a year I drive passed my childhood home and I don't feel possession of that physical place. It's nothing like what I remember. It doesn't match up to my imagery and emotions. Therefore there's nothing about it that I perceived as mine.

The real test of this experience turned up when we moved from our house in the county to an apartment in Seattle. I just couldn't imagine it. I just couldn't imagine calling a fraction of our home space home. And yet several years later when we moved back to our house, I couldn't imagine doing that either. Our apartment lives were so specially tuned to everything we did.

Home, therefore, is wherever it is we are. It's where we plant our flag temporarily or permanently. It's where the minute-by-minute works in progress of our personal and professional lives unfold. Which is pretty much what I told Linzy as she contemplated leaving this enormous piece of her late teen/young adult life in her wake. When she walked out her front door and then left her building for the last time.

Certainly there's a finality to the experience. Certainly we emotionally build up that sense of finality. Can't help that. It's just how we sentimental fools roll as humans beings.

But home.

Is where we are.

Home is where we are.

It's where the details of our lives unfold. For us, those details unfolded in Lake City, in Mukilteo, in the county, in Bellingham, in Seattle.

And even though, in the grand scheme of things,, that was a bunch of moving...

It was Home.

Every time.

☺️

[thedaveandkimmershow]

Living on Capital Hill wasn't just a change of location it was a change of how our personal and professional lives played out on a daily basis.

Seriously.

It was different life.

So. In no particular order...

The new location was central to our professional lives. In a way, pretty much halfway between all the places we work by car, by bus, by light rail. Ballard. The UW. Madrona. And, of course, the dot at the center of that universe, our apartment that, because of the pandemic, became a location that was also a work place in a way none of our other homes had been. A location from which we would remote in.

Thank you, pandemic. 😑

It really was striking how tight that professional circle was geographically. Which eventually made it hard to imagine leaving it.

Another thing that was different is that there were more places that were regular parts of our days. The QFC on Broadway that I walked passed every day so, for example. During the week, I'd stop in for anything we ran out of or that we forgot to pick up on the weekend. The U.S. Post Office down the street a half block from the Capitol Hill light rail station. I passed by ever day so it was easy to stop in to drop off some mail or buy some stamps. And then of course the Capitol Hill light rail station itself. I chose a lot of different routes to walk there and back from our apartment to keep things interesting.

Early on we'd stop in at Cafe Barjot a half block up the hill from our place to score some lemon crepes with which to breakfast on our glassed in deck Sunday mornings. We also occasional stopped in at the Roy Street Cafe next to that Kinko's on Roy & Broadway. It's gone now (as is Cafe Barjot), but just sitting at a window sipping a hot drink was a super peaceful way to exist. We had dinner sometimes at Deluxe Bar & Grill across from Kinko's. Ordered out from there during the pandemic.

We took the longest regular walks we ever did. We started from the parking lot at the southern tip of Lake Union, walked to the ship canal bridge and back. About a three mile round trip. Along the way, sometimes we'd stop in at the Starbucks at the shore end of Highland Drive. On special occasions we stopped in at Caffe Umbria across the street from that Starbucks.

Speaking of across the street, across the street from where we parked our car prior to these walks is Tapster. This is a tasting room in which you authorize an amount to spend, then you go about to the different taps to sample away. For a while there, there was a food truck selling the tastiest mexican food ever. Speaking of which, we also made more of a habit of going to Cactus restaurant a few blocks south. It was either the first or second restaurant at which we ate during the pandemic. And we ate there outside on the sidewalk under a tarp and a heater. And we loved it.

Maybe the biggest difference living on the Hill is that there were always people around us. Wherever we went. Of course there were. QFC was always hopping, especially during any holiday. Broadway's always busy. South Lake Union too, especially during the summer. It's crazy busy during the summer. Swimming. Boating. Sunning. Enjoying. So we randomly talked to more people during these years. Especially that one year it snowed on Valentine's Day and we went out walking our neighborhood that night and every adult seemed to be reliving their childhoods with sleds and tubes, racing down icy streets (of which there are plenty on the Hill).

I'd actually run across people I knew. One of them was sitting outside The Deluxe having dinner when I crossed the street and wound up right in front of him. I ran into Linzy a few times a block from Kerry Hall near the Roy Street Cafe. Other people too, especially around Top Pot Donut (the original). :-)

It was definitely a different life we led on the Hill. Mostly because of the Hill, mostly because this was urban living... but also the course of events. This is where we were during the Black Lives riots. While cars burned in downtown Seattle and business fronts were smashed. This is where we were, the north end of Capitol Hill, while at the south end a section of town had been taken over and confrontations with police at the east precinct were happening every night.

This is where we were.

For better and for those bits of worse.

This is where we lived when our dear friend, Susan, finally passed away.

Maybe the most significant part of our time there was the fact that we lived about seven blocks from Linzy's apartment. When she lived on the same block as Kerry Hall, we lived about four blocks from Linzy's apartment. This was a period of time during which she began building her career. Performances at The Lookout about two blocks away. And then she connected with SoFarSounds that booked secret gigs all around town. "Secret" because the bands and artists weren't promoted but the dates were and, at the last minute, the venues. The bands and artists themselves were a complete surprise to each audience time after time. It was a unique experience and it was fun. And those were always fantastic audiences whether we were in a brick walled loft in Pioneer Square, the backyard of a home a little north and west of Northgate, office spaces in various downtown Seattle high rises, a winery barely a block south of the Magnolia Bridge, a crafts store a block east of the Ballard Locks, or The Shop, south of the former Kingdome and home to all manner of fancy vehicles and one memorable space in which to feature musicians.

The Hill was sort of central to all those locations so they were easy to attend. Part of the urban vibe of it all.

The biggest deal about living that close, of course, is that we went through the pandemic together. She'd come over to our place. We'd go over to hers. We were even at her place when she graduated Cornish College of the Arts in a virtual ceremony. We were our own little cohort, our tribe that navigated this most catastrophic of unknown circumstance as we ever exerpienced.

And we did that together. From the moment all her gigs went up in smoke (along with the gigs of every other musician in town)... to when live shows came back with a bang and then she was playing gigs with a band.

In the end, our overlapping time living on Capitol Hill isn't only a different personal and professional experience and lifestyle...

It's also a time capsule for us as a family and for Linzy as student, a professional, and a young woman whose personal and professional life is quite in impressive motion.

At the end of this week, the chapter closes. Our Capitol Hill era comes to an end as she bids farewell to her apartment and begins her next chapter:

Off the hill.

:-)

[thedaveandkimmershow]

An era of our family life is coming to a close.

The era in question?

That would be our Capitol Hill era.

This was not a planned thing for our family, by the way. Linzy spent her first year at Cornish College of the Arts in campus housing but, as you might suspect, that gets old real quick...

...so the next year she moved to an apartment building on Capitol Hill overlooking South Lake Union (the neighborhood & the lake) with a roommate.

A year later, she had the opportunity to move into an apartment on the same block as Kerry Hall, the center of the universe for all Cornish music students...

...so she took that opportunity. The roommate stayed to complete the remainder of the lease... but then was also presented with a better situation north of the city.

So that happened. With two-ish months left on the lease. And like that! Suddenly there's no one living in the unit, no one paying for the unit, and oh yeah. We're the ones who guaranteed the unit.

Whoops.

In a brilliant move of switcheroo, Kimmer offered our house to a dear friend of ours who was living in assisted care but could live on her own with an assistant stopping in every couple days.

Our friend would then take over the house payments while we—you guessed it—moved into the apartment to both occupy and pay the monthlies.

Now the idea was to simply ride out the two months. But moving our center of gravity to Capitol Hill in April of 2019, overlooking South Lake Union, was a better fit all around for all the different places we go and work.

So we stayed.

About a year later, a unit on the corner of the fifth floor opened up and Kimmer jumped on it. What I mean by that is she called me on my way home, we looked at the place when I got home, and we signed the lease right after that. The terms were generous enough that we were able to retain our apartment on the second floor, have full access to the new place on the fifth floor, take the month to move everything from the one unit to the other, and only have to pay for the new unit once that month was up.

That was a November, by the way. Meaning... we had two apartments for the whole month. We had two kitchens that whole month. Which definitely comes in handy for Thanksgiving. ☺️

We lived there until May of 2023 when the cost of living on the Hill was clearly, obnoxiously, and obviously too much. More than if we simply lived in our own house. It wasn't only the rent for our unit but also the rent on not one but two parking spots because we'd long since understood that we needed both cars on location.

So yeah. We left the Hill in May of 2023.

As for Linzy, I don't remember how long she lived in her postage-stamp apartment on the same block as Kerry Hall but I do know that she was in her best place, the current place, on the Hill by the time she graduated from Cornish.

Why?

Because that's where we celebrated and experienced her college graduation with her because this was the pandemic and everyone's graduation was virtual.

Yeah it sucked (compared to the actual in-person graduation they were afforded at Benaroya Hall a couple years later) but it's part of our story of living on the Hill and that's how it goes.

By this point, now, we've been back in our house a couple years. Linzy's packing up the remains of her Life tomorrow after last night's farewell party with friends to celebrate the most excellent apartment she'll ever have. That's not a judgment about future homes, by the way... it's a judgment about this place intersecting with a specific time in her life. And tomorrow marks both the end of an era...

And the beginning of one.

The era, though, isn't just about this place we lived, not just about the where of us...

It's also about how differently our lives unfolded while we were there...

☺️

[thedaveandkimmershow]

It's fascinating the connections our memories have to each other. 

Most recently, walking around our neighborhood in the snow triggered a collection of snow memories shooting all the way back to my childhood.

Of course until snow actually fell and we went walking around in it, those memories were tucked safely away.

Even more recently, today, in fact, a collection of memories regarding things that compute (smartphones to laptops to desktops) came immediately to mind, stretching all the way back to the first years of being married.

Why not to childhood?

Because we were married in the midst of an absolute absence of that technology. Ish. It simply didn't exist like it does today. Today, there's a universe of tech. Back then, though, there was basically a rest top along the side of the road. No smartphones. No laptops we could afford. No desktop computers we could afford.

By 'n by, though, prices plummeted and we had everything. Windows. Mac. Android. Apple. Laptops. Chromebooks. Netbooks.

All of which died in one way or another.

What set off these memories is that we have yet another bit of hardware, a laptop, that's in the midst of dying. Its replacement arrives in a few days. Which triggers two observations.

The first is that you absolutely used to have to go to the store for that kind of thing.

Second is that this tech used to cost a fortune. Like thinking about whether to buy a care or not. No joke. At the very least, the specs of what we bought for what we paid were waaaaaaay out of whack.

Crazy out of whack.

Heck. We paid much less for our phones than for our first desktop computer. And our phones have waaaaaaay more bandwidth and ability than that first desktop.

Okay third observation: we bought the desktop, our first computer together, at CompUSA.

Which no longer exists.

What remains in its wake, though, is a quick story. You see, at the time Kimmer 'n I finally decided to take the plunge, we went down to the store and quickly identified what we had the money to buy. So we went over to a sales associate who informed us they were out of stock on that model.

Oof. Bummer.

And then I hear Kimmer ask if they'll sell us the floor model we've been looking at and, after a quick conference with their manager, the sales associate gives us the green light and we leave the store with the first computer we owned together. ☺️

Anyway...

That's what popped into my head when we ordered the new laptop today.

🙂