Weekend at the Cabin

We spent the weekend at our cabin near Mt. Rainier. It was a pretty laid back weekend. I worked on my contribution to an Amateur Press Association. I read two books, Margery Allingham’s Pearls Before Swine (Coroner's Pidgin) and Rex Stout’s The Silent Speaker. It was nice to spend some time with Albert Campion, Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin again. I also started Raymond E. Feist’s Talon of the Silver Hawk. It’s been a long time since I’ve read a Feist book. So far it’s going very well. We took a couple of short walks. We listened to some episodes of Chickenman, that zany commute show out of Chicago probably twenty years or more ago. We also listened to a recently acquired CD of Stan Kenton’s Latin American band, Cuban Fire. It was recorded in 1956. This was the Kenton band that played in the University of Puget Sound Fieldhouse a few years after I graduated from that august institution. And we attended that concert with its congas and timbales and bongos and lots of brass. Anna played solitaire a lot and listened to The Bookman’s Wake by John Dunning on tape.

There wasn’t much wildlife around. No squirrels and no Stellar’s jays. But we did see slate-colored juncos, winter wrens, crows and ravens. While we were walking down by the Nisqually River one evening a couple of Canada geese, flying low and hard to see against the background of the surrounding hills, flew up the river, honking as they went. There were quite a few trilliums in bloom, a rather rare plant that will only grow in certain habitats. And if you are a fan of banana slugs, which are a feature of the Northwest, I saw several fat ones. A nice relaxing weekend, even though it cost $2.35 a gallon for the gas to get here.