Ponder: The Pied Piper

The Pied Piper ©1999 by Ridley Pearson is a kidnapping crime thriller featuring Lieutenant Lou Boldt and Dr. Daphne Matthews of the Seattle Police Department. The book is so titled because a serial kidnapper leaves behind a toy flute as his signature of having taken a child. This echoes the tale of the legendary Pied Piper of Hamelin who was hired to rid the town of rats. He successfully lured the rodents to drown in the river by playing his flute, but the townspeople denied him payment. As revenge, he used his music to lead the children of the town to a similar fate. Look closely at the copper-colored body of the flute in the cover artwork by George Cornell of the paperback version I read. It is subtle but there is the reflection of a man holding a little girl, which I found appropriate for this story. 

 

The front image was indeed intriguing but still, had not a good friend of mine recommended this book, I may very well have passed it by. It was a mere 495 pages long and printed in itty-bitty 9 point font on yellowed newsprint weight pages. I dubiously began to read it, telling myself if I really got into it and it was too tiny to focus, I could re-buy it in kindle form.  But I was quickly hooked and, so thoroughly so, that I became oblivious to the poor visual quality. Short chapters were also a plus in encouraging me to read "just one more" before taking a break. 

As this novel opens, the modern day kidnapper steals a ninth child in Seattle, Washington. The anguish of the bereft parents is conveyed so artfully and poignantly I became invested in their fate and that of their beloved stolen four-month old little girl. Since previous kidnappings occurred in other states, the FBI become involved as well as the SPD, Seattle Police Department. There are a large number of character names to remember in the opening chapters of the book (from FBI and SPD both) which was a bit disconcerting, but I forged ahead, refusing to get discouraged. I have since learned that apparently Ridley Pearson is a very prolific writer and this is his fifth book with the main character team of Lou Boldt and Daphne Matthews. Followers of this author would already know this pair and would need to come up to speed only with the FBI contingent. The setting for large portions of this book is Seattle, Washington. Since I visited there  recently as a tourist, many of the places were familiar and lent themselves to my further enjoyment of the novel.

I liked the characters and the fact that the book also includes their back story. When I would watch crime shows on TV, the back story was as interesting to me, or even more so, than the crime being solved; e.g., the relationship between Rick Castle and Kate Beckett on Castle or the relationship between Clark Kent and Lois Lane in Superman. Lou Boldt has recently been promoted from the investigative division to the intelligence division. The intelligence division looks at the evidence and, in concert with profilers, draws crime theories while the investigative section does the footwork to support or refute these connections by gathering more data for correlation. Boldt is a very sharp detective, highly respected, but self-effacing. He himself has two young children and his wife is undergoing chemotherapy for cancer. His wife Elizabeth is understanding and supportive of his work in spite of her illness. Daphne Matthews is a smart, attractive woman, very skilled at her job as a psychologist and profiler, who is a close friend of Lou Boldt .

The intricacies of the plot and clever mechanisms by which the police gather information are the key elements that make this novel a worthy read. How do you find who the targeted families for the next kidnapping might be? How do you find where a vacant home might be for covert operations? How do you avoid being followed? How do you lose a "tail". How do you encourage rather than eschew obfuscation? How do you uncover a potential mole? How many more children will be kidnapped before the perpetrator is apprehended? If you are curious, then read The Pied Piper. 

I rate it four stars which equates to Really good; maybe only one weak aspect or limited audience. The audience might be "limited" to those interested in crime thrillers. Crime thrillers are not a large percentage of my book choices, so it is to The Pied Piper's credit that it was good enough in its genre to grab and hold my interest. Nearly two thirds of Amazon reviewers gave this book 5 stars. Ridley Pearson is well renown in his writing genre so if you are going to read a crime thriller, you might as well read one of the best. Oh, and, as a cute touch, the chapter dividers are teeny silhouettes of a baby buggy.

Ponder Post: Mystery Book from Library

This book is fluff. Pure, predictable, fluff. But, what the heck, it is an enjoyable, feel good way to while away a couple hours in stress-free reading. The mystery in this post is not about the genre of the book, since it is a romance novel and those are rarely mysterious, but rather about re-telling the tale of how I came to read this book.

Our library has a online service feature where I can request a book at their website and if it is on the shelves someone will pull it for me, label it, set it on a special pick-up shelf near the front of the library, and send an e-mail that it is ready. If the book is not available, the library tracks when it does become available and initiates that service then. Couple this perk with the convenience that the library has self serve scanners available for the patrons, the process really is pretty slick. I just need to go in, pull the book from the reserved shelf, scan the barcode on my library card, scan the barcode on the book, and poof, I am outta there in less than five minutes. Since parking at our library is at a premium this works great. Frank can drop me off, circle, and when he gets back, I am at the curb, book in hand. This also prevents me from spending too much money on Amazon for books.

The other day, I got an e-mail notice from the closest branch of my public library that the book Christmas Eve at Friday Harbor, which I'd requested from another branch, had been returned, transferred to my branch, and was ready for pickup. I stared at the title in the e-mail notice and did not have a clue as to what it was about or why I had requested it from another branch and reserved it. Not a clue! So I picked the book up yesterday morning and started to read it yesterday evening. Perhaps reading it would clue me in to why I wanted it.

The hardcover version of this book was first published in 2009.

The setting! It is set in Seattle. So that must be why I reserved it! Vacationing with friends in Seattle this July 2014 must have sparked my interest. Actually I did like the locale of the book. It focused on the islands around Seattle and not on the city proper so it painted a whole other image of that area. I would like to go back sometime and explore an island or two off the coastline of Seattle via the ferry system. The book setting gave off a kind of Martha's-Vineyard, quaint-town, beach-type vibe, very eclectically different from the City Pass attractions of Seattle. The main female character, Maggie, ran a toy store and related well to kids, a scenario that reminded me of Meg Ryan's independently owned book store The Shop Around the Corner from the movie You've Got Mail. The main male character, Mark, roasted coffee beans, not necessarily Starbuck's, but no doubt a cursory nod to that huge chain that began in Seattle. If, however, I did not remember the setting of the book as Seattle, how could that have been the reason I reserved it? 

The author! I went to Amazon and looked up other books by Lisa Kleypas. She is rather prolific as a New York Times best selling author, but I did not know that until just then when I saw her other Amazon listings. How could this have been the reason I requested the book if I'd never heard of the author before?

I read on, liking the book and its simplicity, but being nagged by the reason I requested it. I formulate pictures of the characters in my mind as they are introduced and described. They are new to me, and somewhat stereotypically familiar as romance characters tend to be, but I do not get the sense I have read the book before. Since it is a light romance, Pollyanna type plot, I could not help thinking, "...this reads like a Hallmark Channel movie...". Bingo! The light bulb in my brain goes off. I scurry back to Google and type "lisa kleypass books made into movies" and hit return.

Isn't Google wonderful?
A sleepless night can be avoided just with a few clicks on the computer keyboard.

Then I jump over to IMDb and type in the movie title Christmas with Holly and learn that it is a 2012 TV movie. Just from the first two sentences of the plot summary I confirm that this is based on the book I am reading.

This movie does indeed have the same plot as the book Christmas Eve in Friday Harbor.
It was part of the Hallmark Channel's lineup of Christmas movies this year.

A few keystrokes over to Amazon and I learned that the Hallmark Hall of Fame made the movie into a DVD in 2013 and it is for sale.

The character casting in the movie
does not match my perceptions from the book.

And then the memories flood back - uh, correction - the memories trickle back. Over the holidays Frank and I recorded movies from the Hallmark Channel's promotional "twelve movies for the twelve days of Christmas." Some were real turkeys that we deleted 15 minutes or less into watching. This particular one sparked my interest but somehow we always missed the window to record and watch it. In the promotion for it, I must have learned that it was based on the book Christmas Eve in Friday Harbor – or maybe I looked it up. So, having missed the movie, I must have put the book on my library want list. Being Christmas time, it took a while for it to become available. Notice a lot of this is conjecture and not pure memory, but then conjecture is the foundation for a good mystery. This explanation allows me to finish the book in peace.

Netflix does not have the movie so I guess I will just have to wait until next year to see it on TV.  My experience has been that the movie is rarely as good as the book anyway. Based on the DVD cover I already know the casting is weird. While reading the book I pictured the main male character, Mark, as Pierce Brosnan, a tall, dark-haired, well kempt type. In the movie they cast some dude with nearly shoulder length parted in the middle no less. And, in the book Maggie, is repeatedly described as having very curly red hair, which is a continual distraction for Mark. In the movie she is a blond! I do not intend to buy the DVD so I will just watch the Hallmark channel next Christmas... if I remember.

In the interest of clutter reduction,
 I took a picture of this plaque from a catalog instead of buying it.

Seattle – Final Day and Home to CA

Saturday, July 26th, we needed to check out of home base by 11:00 am. At 10:30 am we were all packed with cars loaded and said our goodbyes in the driveway. John & Sue left with Joe & Margaret for the airport. Joe & Margaret had a mid-day flight back to Virginia. John & Sue would not be flying back to Boston until late that night on a red-eye flight. Frank and my flight back to California did not leave until 4:30 pm. We decided to spend the few hours before we had to leave in some low key activity like visiting model homes in the area just to get a sense of decor and prices.

On the way to one set of models, we hit a detour because of local road construction. The detour re-routed us near the locks. We changed our plans and visited the locks instead. We'd get an on-foot vantage point of what we'd passed through on the cruise at the start of our visit. As an added bonus, we learned that there were a fish ladder for salmon going up stream and botanical gardens at this location as well.

At this location we crossed the bridges at the large lock and then the small lock, and saw a fish ladder in action.
Retracing our steps, we crossed back and strolled the botanical gardens.

Our timing was perfect. We arrived just at the start of a guided tour with an introductory presentation by a park ranger. We learned how the addition of locks had changed the path of waterways in the Seattle region, some of them going away entirely. Ships gained better routes but then fish lost their access paths and had to learn new routes to fulfill their life cycles.

Fish access to the south end of Lake Washington was entirely closed off with the building of the locks.

Our ranger tour took us across the large lock, then the small lock, then the long causeway to see the fish ladder on the far side.

This aerial view shows the large lock at the center, the smaller lock down a bit,
the V-shaped walkways, and at the far bottom, the fish ladder. 

The botanical gardens and Cavanaugh House are at the top left.

Frank and I crossed a walkway spanning the large lock and then paused to watch an Argosy tour boat pass through the smaller of the two locks. Coincidentally, the boat that was passing through while we watched was the Good Times III, the same one we had been on earlier in the week.

Frank is crossing one of the V-shaped walkways. This one crosses the larger of the two locks.
Each walkway parts at its center, the base of the V, and rotates open to allow the passage of ships.

Looking along the sight line of the large lock is a raised train trestle in the distance

The trestle is counterweighted so very little force is needed to rotate it up and down

for the passage of large ships.

The Argosy cruise boat is in the smaller lock being lowered to the water level of Puget Sound.

We continued on following the signs to the fish ladder. L-shaped partitions in the spillway area give the fish a place to rest between steps. We visited an underground viewing station where we observed fish as they struggled against the current. Sockeye salmon are most likely in July and that is what we were seeing. The ranger tour ended at the underground viewing station.

There is a universal symbol for just about everything according to this sign.
My best guess... fish ladder this way?

The fish can pause at each partition to rest.

This is the underground viewing station for the fish ladder.
At least three breeds of salmon pass through here. Sockeye are the most common in July.
Large king salmon are most common in August, and coho salmon, in late September.

Above the underground viewing area was a patio region with seven stainless steel sculptures. The art display, called Salmon Waves, was created by local artist Paul Sorey to celebrate the success in the fish ladder in promoting the migration of salmon. The curling shapes and shadows they make on the concrete surface are wave-like. An angle grinder was used to create the watery looking surface of the sculptures. Stainless steel keeps them shiny and almost irridescent like fish scales. The overlapping panels are like scales, too. I really liked these sculptures. They were sleek, shiny, and tactilely inviting with a real sense of movement.  You can see more details on these sculptures at the link http://paulsorey.com/SalmonWaves.

I love the silvery color of the waves and these shapes fascinate me. I am drawn to them
whether they be in the swirls of snow in Frozen, the locks of hair of the Princess Rapunzel in Tangled
or the curlicue stitch pattern of a quilt.  

You can tell by the length of Frank's shadow that it was close to mid-day.
I imagine that the sculptures' shadows form awesome wave patterns on the concrete, too,
at the early and the late part of the day.

Frank and I headed back toward the botanical gardens. We were curious about a house we noticed on the grounds. It is the official residence of the Seattle District Engineer of the U.S Army Corps of Engineers. Foxglove, poppy, and fuschia are just some of the flowers here peppered among exotic trees and shrubs from many countries. The greenery was refreshing and it was a great way to end our visit to Seattle.

This bronze plaque summarizes the history behind the house on the grounds.

Flowers, greenery, and a mixture of sun with dappled shade made this indeed a pleasant place to be.

It was time to leave and head out to the airport. We did not want to miss our flight. It had been ten fun-filled, information-packed, eclectic days of sight-seeing, but we were looking forward to enjoying the familiar comforts of home.

WE'D BE ASLEEP IN OUR OWN BEDS BY EARLY EVENING!

Seattle – Under and Above Ground and Looking Back

Friday, July 25th was our final full day left in Seattle, which we concluded with a tour underground and a re-visit to aviation for an above ground airplane tour. Unfortunately, Frank somehow tweaked his back getting out of the bath tub the previous evening and so he was not up for the day's activities due to random but painful spasming. John & Sue and Joe & Margaret went off in the morning for the Seattle Underground tour but I elected to stay home with Frank. All was not lost. Frank and I found an entire series of YouTube videos showing various portions of the tour. This link is a pretty complete tour https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUG-476A5cI.

Per the YouTube video, this scene is showing the glass blocks of the city sidewalk above
 that serve as a skylight for the walkways below.

Seattle used to exist on a lower elevation but a big fire wiped out much of the merchant district. The city government decided to rebuild but with brick and stone instead of wood and at a two story higher elevation to solve back-water pressure issues. The Underground Tour looked at the remnants of this lower city and told some Seattle history. Frank and I also bought a used copy of this book on the subject for $1.50 from Amazon.

This book was authored by Bill Speidel,
co-founder of the Seattle Underground Tour.

All six of us lunched together at home base, determined to empty the refrigerator before our departure the next day. In the afternoon, five of us used our rain checks to go back to the Museum of Flight and go inside the Concorde and Air Force One, which we had been unable to do on Wednesday. Frank was content to stay home alone. Boarding the Concorde we learned some random bits of information germaine to a plane that can fly at twice the speed of sound.

Touring beneath the Concorde.

The sign on the left bemused me that they chose Oklahoma to do their testing.
Did they think Oklahomans would not be bothered?
As for the sign on the right, I guess I do not really understand my science.
If you chase a solar eclipse do you not get the same image all the time?

We also boarded Air Force One, noting the signage giving a litany of famous people and circumstances in which the jet had been pressed into service. We'd learned at Boeing that when Air Force One airplane is manufactured, two people minimum are involved in every detail to avoid mistakes or sabotage. I would bet that this precaution pushes up the the price tag.

Touring beneath Air Force One.

John & Sue are looking at the Presidential Conference Room onboard Air Force One.

The suite mates from McCormick Hall's Fifth River East at their finest? Hardly!

This shiny fuselage made for a multi-million dollar fun house mirror for Sue, me, and Margaret.

It almost seems a bit irreverent...

How far mankind has come! This statue at the Museum of Flight reminds us of the progress from the simplicity of the flight of the bird to the complexity of the orbits of an astronaut.

"Keep the Dream Alive", the statue urges.

John & Sue wave from the bridge at the Museum of Flight while Joe looks on.

That night we ordered in pizza for dinner. We would be parting ways tomorrow to head home. The men sat in the living room and solved the world's problems, one final time. After packing, the women played Fluxx™at the kitchen table. Ironically, we would all soon be returning to the "flux" of our daily routines at home.

Fluxx™ is a card game where the rules are constantly changing.
Keeping track of them is a challenge but a lot of fun.

During our time in Seattle we'd explored transportation

• by car
• by train
• by boat
• by plane
• by monorail. 

We'd exercised our bodies and our minds by

• hiking in nature and in the city
• touring undersea, aviation, and underground museums
• viewing panoramas from observation decks and towers and near waterfalls
• appreciating art in sculptures, both metal and glass
• playing balance, word, number, and logic games
• assembling puzzles and LEGOs™ 

Our collection of tickets indicated just how busy we were in Seattle. Add this to the many conversations and meal times and we had a very happy, very social time together indeed! I have just one more Seattle post to write describing Frank and me, just the two of us, touring the Ballard locks from a land vantage point rather than from a cruise boat, before boarding our flight home to California.

Not shown are tickets for the Museum of Flight and the Seattle Aquarium.
Free activities such as Mt. Rainier National Park, Snoqualmie Falls, and Ballard Locks are not shown.

At the end of every vacation there is the conflict between a sadness that it is over and the desire to be back in the comfort of your own home. Blogging, I realize, blunts this conflict. With each post I am extending and reliving the adventure while sitting in my own familiar surroundings. I hope the same is true for John & Sue and Joe & Margaret as they read this. I thank them for sharing this Seattle journey with Frank and me.

Seattle – City Pass Day Two

Thursday, July 24th, we set off bright and early, drove south on I-5, parked at the Pike Place Market Garage, walked about 1/2 mile  U-h-h-h-p – H-i-i-i-l-l  to the monorail station (remember... Seattle ≈ San Francisco...? )  and took took the monorail to the base of the Space Needle. Seattle's monorail, along with its one mile long track, had been built for the 1962 World's Fair and has been running ever since.

We boarded the monorail at the station at 5th and Pine.

John, Sue, Joe, Margaret, Frank and I are on the monorail going to the base of the Space Needle.
I'm behind the camera, taking the picture. 

We disembarked from the monorail very near the base of the Space Needle and went up to the observation deck. The center of gravity of the Space Needle is just five feet up from its base so I guess it is in the gift store. Funny, I did not see it there (ha, ha). The Space Needle was originally supposed to be called the Space Cage but reportedly some artist derisively dubbed it the Space Needle because he thought it looked like a three pairs of knitting needles poking up into the sky. 

The view looking up from the base of the Space Needle reveals cloudy, grey skies and
not the clear blue ones we had seen earlier in the week.

I took a lot of photos from the observation deck but, looking at them later, I was disoriented and could not tell what was located where. For a much better panoramic overview with labels I went to Space Needle webcam at the link http://www.spaceneedle.com/webcam/. Here are two sample screen shots from that site. There were similar interactive displays up at the level of the observation deck that allowed you to direct a webcam and look up landmarks. It was good we went early because the lines grew rapidly at these stations as the morning passed.

Looking almost due south is a view of the monorail and
the route we walked to get there from the Seattle Waterfront.

Looking almost due north is Lake Union where we cruised and the University of Washington.
Home base was a few blocks northwest of Washington University.

We managed to trace the route of our Monday cruise and trip through the locks and locate the Helix Bridge at Amgen. I also zoomed in on a colorful building complex due south from the Space Needle because graphically it stood out and I thought it was architecturally interesting, especially located  in the middle of a downtown area. I have been unable to figure out what it is, but I suspect it is apartments or condominiums of some sort. I even tried to enlarge the tiny green signposts in the lower right but did not have sufficient resolution to succeed in my detective work. I suppose if I digitally drove up and down the streets with Google maps I could find it, but that seems a bit extreme, even for me and idle curiosity.

The architectural detailing of this building complex just called to me.

We saw the 20-foot wide 8-foot high Space Needle Skypad™ Interactive Wall where you could upload your own photos or enter your name into a database of visitors. We did manage to make our way to the guest list station where we entered our name and home city.

There have been over 54 million visitors to the Space Needle.
If you can read the fine white print beneath the visitor count it will tell you that 1 real Elvis Presley has visited.
Other rotating anecdotal facts were which presidents and what celebrities have also been there.

The name  and address you entered appeared briefly on a screen before scrolling downward and then a balloon for your location would appear on the big illuminated map display to the right. I managed to capture the scrolling screen with all six of our names at once. We have now officially participated in the digital age's version of "Kilroy was here" for Seattle's Space Needle.

 I managed to get a photo of the screen with all three couples names on it
just before John & Sue's name dropped off the bottom.

In the gift shop Frank and I bought a souvenir bank of the Space Needle for Alex and gave it to him after our arrival back in California. He liked it and put it to use right away.

Alex is intently placing coins in his new Space Needle bank.

After the Space Needle we walked a short distance over to the EMP (Experience Music Project) Museum dedicated to "music + sci-fi + pop culture". The building is very colorful and is covered in 21,000 custom cut steel and aluminum shingles that look like fabric or panels waving in the wind. The architect Frank O. Gehry wanted the building to represent the fluidity of music. An innovative computer program used to design the curvaceous forms for the EMP is now also the primary design tool used by Boeing and Chrysler for shaped metal components. 

I made a composite picture of Frank in front of the EMP Museum but up this close
I could not capture its grandeur or do justice to its wide spectrum of colors.

This picture by a professional photographer captures the flow of the entire building much better than I could.

Frank and I probably would not have chosen this option out of our City Pass selections, assuming it only addressed rock music and would be outside our comfort zone. We elected to go to the EMP to stay together with John & Sue and Joe & Margaret and were really glad we did because the exhibits were so out of the ordinary, fascinating, and truly unexpected. The exhibits covered a diverse set of topics with a common theme of pop culture. There were architectural marvels built of LEGOs, modeling world famous buildings. There was an exhibit on science fiction writers and their inspiration, a gallery of costume displays and philosophy discussion for fantasy movies and books, and a large collection of memorabilia and videos on horror films as a genre. A several story high and even wider screen projected concerts and music videos off the second floor lobby. From outside to in, the EMP was a jewel just waiting to be mined.

In addition to the electric guitars and video displays we come to expect of the artwork of modern music,
the exhibits addressed a wide range of other topics – architecture, science fiction, fantasy, horror films .

We were not allowed to take pictures inside the strategically lit galleries but I do recall some key items. There were several articles of costuming from the series Game of Thrones. There were videos and diagrams of the rules of magic using the Harry Potter series as an example. In the Can't Look Away area, it was fun to see how critical music is to a horror film and just how non-scary it can be without it.

Frank is standing at the base of a sculpture of electric guitars in the lobby
with Joe and Sue in the right background.

Upstairs were audio studios where you could play a variety of instruments and see how a rock band of your own would look and sound on video. This area was more crowded so Frank and I gave it a cursory walk through only. We wanted to see one more attraction, not on the City Pass, but so colorful, I did not want to pass it up. John & Sue and Joe & Margaret chose to stay longer at the EMP, visiting the sound studios and gift shop while Frank and I went on ahead to visit the Chihuly Garden and Glass, just a short distance away, on the other side of the Space Needle from the EMP.

The Chihuly Garden and Glass is near the base of the Space Needle to the west
while the EMP Museum is off to the northeast.
The distances are less than the 605 foot height of the Space Needle

The Glasshouse of the Chihuly Garden and Glass is the largest and most obvious part of the museum, visible to passersby with no need for an entry fee. It reflects the artist Dale Chihuly's love of conservatories mainly because of the way the light can play in and around them. His creations are hung from ceilings like this garland or along corridors like his chandeliers.

Frank is standing under the garland of glass flowers in the Glasshouse.
Nearby is a corridor of chandeliers, one more colorful than the next.

Dale Chihuly is the classic story of local boy makes good. He was born in Tacoma and studied interior design at the University of Washington. In Venice, he learned team glass blowing and uses that design technique today in his innovative gravity-driven creations. I first saw his work on this ceiling in the Bellagio in Las Vegas.

This glass sculpture is composed of 2000 hand blown glass blossoms
and dominates the lobby ceiling in the Bellagio at Las Vegas.

It was beginning to rain softly as we walked through the garden portion. Though the skies were grey, nothing could dull the vividness of the colors of the spires and other sculptures. Dale Chihuly said of his work, "I want my work to appear as though it came from nature so if someone found it... they might think it belonged there."

Spires, curlicues, spheres, and two tone ovoids all seem to nestle naturally in the plants and greenery.

This fernlike scene and cool purple color brought a bit of wistfulness to me.
I made me call to mind the song "Candle in the Wind" sung by Elton John for Princess Diana.
Art does that, I think... evokes a feeling rather than a fact or slice of logic to learn.

A lot of Dale Chihuly's work also rises up from the floor. The reflective surfaces and dramatic lighting throughout the indoor art galleries made his sculptures all the more beautiful, color-saturated, unique, and striking. I am glad Frank and I and did not miss seeing the displays at the Chihuly Garden and Glass.

Frank and I pause in our meandering to pose for a complimentary photo by one of the museum's photographers.
They really have better equipment to capture the nuances of lighting that make these sculptures so spectacular.

Frank and I left the Chihuly Garden and Glass, retracing our steps, taking the monorail, walking back to our car, driving to home base, and meeting up with John & Sue and Joe & Margaret. We six went out to dinner at Ray's Fish Shack. This restaurant had been recommended by the tour guide on Monday's cruise as a Seattle restaurant not to be missed. The waterfront location and view was great and it was less than 15 minutes form home base. After dinner I noticed a quilt shop, The Quilting Loft, less than one mile away, on the way back to home base, and, as a special bonus to me, Thursday just happened to be their late night. Frank and I stopped there and I bought a couple pieces of fabric.

Once at home base I put a couple batches of Toll House chocolate chip cookies in the oven while Joe and Frank assembled a LEGO Space Needle model I'd brought with me from California.

What could be better than warm chocolate chip cookies and a building project?

The rest of us started a 1000-piece Jet Fighter jigsaw puzzle I'd purchased at the Museum of Flight. Maybe 1000 pieces was a bit ambitious since this was our second to last night but we'd give it a try.

Frank and Joe are intent on the Space Needle LEGOs model.
A jigsaw puzzle kept us busy in the evening after dinner.