We made it our home on Orcas Island about two hours ago. Spent an hour making beds, bringing in luggage, and reading to the kids. The next hour was spent napping, for I, at least, was feeling incredibly tired. We woke to find unexpected neighbors across the street: three deer, grazing in among the dandilions near a patch of woods.

We’re enjoying a snack of gelato before taking a short walk down to see the beach. We can see the water from our back deck. It’s wonderful.

By the way, I found our location on Google Maps but it unfortunately falls within a low-resolution area of the maps. If you’re still curious, you can see it here. Oh, and pictures to follow later this evening.

We made it to Seattle and Anacortes yesterday afternoon. The flight went smoothly: our kids are outstanding travelers. The only thing that drove Kelly and me crazy was Travis’s non-napping on the flights. We specifically took his carseat on the plane with the expectation that he’d be more comfortable in it and fall asleep. Wouldn’t you know it, we were on final approach to Seattle-Tacoma when Travis’s eyelids began to flutter!

It was tough gathering 10 days of bags together to get them into our rental car, but we somehow did it. After a detour to the Trader Joe’s near the University of Washington, we were soon in Anacortes and checking into our motel room.

Dinner was a disaster. What we needed was quick and easy and we got neither. We went to a place suggested by the hotel staff, Randy’s Pier 61. It was a bit overpriced for us, but that wasn’t the problem. The problem was the service, which was absolutely horrible. We waited on an outside patio for close to an hour, all for soup, salads, and two kids meals (fish and chips). The food was actually pretty good. Once we got it, that is. By the time we left, Travis had rubbed lemon juice in his eye and was bawling and Hallie was whining, too. We were all obviously tired from our very long day.

The place we stayed last night, the Islands Inn on Commercial Avenue, is something straight out of the 1950s but is charming in its own way. It is no thing of beauty, but did have beds in two rooms, complimentary breakfast, and free Internet in the lobby (yay). We were so knackered, we were all in bed by 7PM, Pacific. Despite a little noise from neighboring rooms, we slept amazingly well. I think we slept close to 12 hours!

We’re going to shop in Anacortes for groceries before trying to catch a 10 AM ferry to Orcas Island. We check into our cabin at 3PM, before which we should have plenty of time to explore the sights around Eastsound.

Now a nice, complimentary Dutch breakfast is in front of us (the inn owners are Hollanders. Hi, Guus!). I need to put the laptop down and enjoy it!

In case my last post didn’t covey it, I became $250 wealthier when I offered to give up my seat on my flight home tonight. I would just now be getting into Raleigh, so I figured I might as well take the money and show up in the morning.
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We’re just a few days away from beginning our vacation to the San Juan Islands. I can’t believe its almost here. I’ve always loved the Pacific Northwest, so I’m looking forward to the opportunity to introduce our kids to it.

It will also be the first flying vacation the kids have taken since our trip to Italy two years ago. Now that Hallie’s 5 and Travis is almost 3, it will be interesting to see how they enjoy the travel.

Kelly and I don’t splurge on a lot of things, but we do love to travel. I can think of few things more educational for our kids than visiting someplace new.

Today (this morning, actually) is my last day in Annapolis. I’m spending most of the day in Baltimore working with a customer. My flight leaves BWI this evening, though if things go smoothly I may be home earlier than that.

I had a good time wandering around downtown by myself yesterday evening. The cool, dry weather had been replaced by mugginess, but I walked from the office to a local bar/restaurant in spite of it. I took my laptop along, thinking I’d do some writing there but instead enjoyed people-watching too much to haul it out. A Fordham’s Tavern Ale and a shrimp-and-steak dinner later, I was headed back to my hotel room to spend the rest of the evening finishing a book.

It’s been a nice visit. Annapolis is a charming city. Still, I can’t wait to be home again!

Hours after I posted my glee about the apparent defeat of the Local Government Fair Competition Act (HB 1587), my home’s cable modem goes kaput. Hmmmmm. Now, where did I put my tinfoil hat?

Interestingly, still not a word about this in the local high-profile press, as far as I know.

Update: At the moment I posted this, Ryan Teague Beckwith at the N&O mentioned it in the paper’s politics blog, so that’s some mention, anyway.

Update 2, 9AM: My cable modem is online again. Looks like a routine firmware update might have taken place last night, giving the modem a new IP address and making it temporarily invisible from the outside world. It had been months since that had happened, so I was due. No conspiracy here, move along. 🙂

I got to Baltimore this morning and realized I packed no less than three watches. Being that I only have two arms to wear them on, this is quite unusual indeed.

I wonder what message I’m trying to send myself.