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Tag Archives: equinox

Annette Lake Hike – Celebrating Spring!

22 Sunday Mar 2015

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alpine lakes, Annette Lake, equinox, hiking, lakes, magic, March, Snoqualmie Pass, spring, trails

Lake Annette 2Ahhh, the first hike of the calendar year…what a fantastic way to welcome the first full day of SPRING!  Yahoo!  Notice I said “first” – ?!!  Yep, I’m planning to do a lot more hiking this year…really stretching out of my comfort zone and remembering that this time LAST year I did a hike nearly 30 lbs (13.6 kg) heavier than I am now.  Oh yeah!  What a difference!  Now, the hike we did yesterday is a lot less steep overall than the one I did last year with a couple of fantastic girlfriends, but I still noticed a difference in how I felt during and after the hike, meaning, my lungs weren’t feeling on fire the whole time thankfully.  After yesterday’s hike I felt elated!  Joyful!  Refreshed!  And, yeah, a little tired! But not like I’d seriously whupped my own ass.

Annette Lake is on the way to Snoqualmie Pass which is one of the highways you cross over the mountains to get into central and eastern Washington state.  Check out the link included to see more pictures and people’s reviews of it!

We’re all about March Madness right now…but yesterday’s hike was March Magic.

But March is a schizo bitch.  It might be sunny and sort of mild here in the Seattle suburbs, but she has her own plans once you get out of the city and away from sea level.  It could be sunny and in the upper 50s F at home, but an hour’s drive and a hike to 3600′ elevation is a whole other story.  Snow.  Rain.  Beautiful, clear cold streams you get to slosh through (hopefully in your waterproof hiking boots.)  Mud.  Slush. Freezing temps. We gloriously experienced all of that and more up the trail. And E was my hero loaning me one of his extra backpacks and some outdoor clothing gear to make sure I was comfortable for any sort of weather. I’m good to go mostly (on somewhat old school but Gore-Tex’d) hiking boots, but an admitted white belt in other areas for sure, like rain gear that makes the weather irrelevant.

We saw quite a few folks heading up this trail in running sneakers and windbreakers or just sweatshirts.  And, turning back before getting to the top.  The trails aren’t treacherous or icy, rather, they’re just muddy, wet and slushy, plus it gets unexpectedly cold the higher you go!

Lake Annette

Here’s another view of the lake!  I love the green/turquoise/grey color of alpine lakes  – there’s nothing else like it!  And you can see a little ice covering the lake still at the far upper right.  We stood in this moment looking at the lake listening to the gentle, persistent splooshes and taps of the rain and snow.  Smelling the pure, fresh air.  And the silence of the mountains that wraps all around it.  It’s one of those lakes so beautiful you’d just want to go jump in and skinny dip, but mmm, errr, maybe its a little too cold for that?  Or maybe it’s not in the summer?

OK that’s my crazy side dreaming out loud.  Hmmm!

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Changes, Celebrated Outdoors!

14 Sunday Sep 2014

Posted by fivenineteen in Uncategorized

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career, changes, crosby stills & nash, earth wind & fire, equinox, live music, music, picnic, seasons, Seattle, Ste. Michelle, summer, wine, winery, work

I sit here, smiling, relishing how wonderful the last few weeks have been.  Summer’s doing a hard-core sprint to the official finish line and boy does she deliver.  We’re sunny and in the 80s during the day and it’s fantastic.  I make sure to squeeze in 20 minutes or so to enjoy the sunshine during the workday with a walk around the campus Commons, and I usually get a walk/light jog on Sundays down to Juanita Beach, just a couple of miles from my house.  That plus my regular gym workouts and I’m definitely keeping my “tanks” full.

BIG changes are on the way…after a tumultuous spring getting abruptly cut from my job, networking like crazy for another one (my current one)…I’ve found The One.  Yes, I’m leaving behind eight years of contracting and have accepted a full-time permanent job offer with a company in downtown Seattle.  Yes…DOWNTOWN!  The city girl in the suburbs for the last 17 years will get her downtown fix once again!

And I feel so happy.  And CALM.  THIS is the right next move for my career.  Contracting has provided so much experience and has really sharpened my work and people skills, but it’s not for me long-term.  Some people have wondered why I’m not screaming and jumping up and down – ?  Well shit, this feels so right it’s just centered me.  I feel happy, relaxed and balanced.  Glowing and content.  I truly adore my current group of co-workers.  Awesome people, hard working…and they make the time for a few good laughs.  Sounds like a great combo doesn’t it? Yep, it sure is. But, they’re not my Tribe.

Now that I’ve given my two weeks notice (which went smoothly, just as expected), I’ve got plenty to do to get things wrapped up and transitioned.  So it’s nice keeping busy in the interim. [I’m not a good slacker – this I’ve learned over the decades of working].

I peeked at my calendar and thought “oohhhhh my goodness.”  My last day with my current job is right smack on the Autumnal Equinox.  I LOVE the changing seasons, and the Equinoxes are glorious times to make changes.  Delicious.  Coincidence?  Hmmm…not sure.  But I do know there are NO accidents.

Meanwhile, lots of great stuff has been happening outdoors!  Check out my Labor Day post recapping a wonderful weekend of hiking and road tripping.  And great music!  I haven’t had a whopping dose of live music like this in years.  Couple outdoor concerts at the Ste. Michelle Winery in Woodinville.  Earth Wind & Fire back in late August, and Crosby Stills & Nash just last night!  If you haven’t experienced an outdoor concert at Ste. Michelle, add it to your Bucket List NOW.  It’s an amazing experience.  Just bring a blanket and some munchies, picnic-style, and find your spot on the lawn near the stage.  Pick up a bottle of wine from the stands nearby and you’re all set.  The evening started with an absolutely clear blue sky overhead, dotted with a few hot air balloons floating around…then to twinkling stars and a little chill in the air that tells you summer’s winding down. [Bring a sweatshirt!] Add in musical legends on stage and you’ve got a recipe for pure Bliss right there.

Damn it feels good to be moving on.  On from a career chapter that’s writing its final words right now.  Soon to be put in the vault forever.  Not ever entirely forgotten, for there is so much to remember and savor…but finished.

I’m ready.

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Equinox Weekend

22 Sunday Sep 2013

Posted by fivenineteen in Uncategorized

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changes, equinox, farmers market, food, lean eating, outdoors, seasons, sunshine, vegetables, weekend

Funny how I started poking around online for “Equinox pictures” and all of my search results pulled up the car!  Hadn’t even heard of it before!

Ahhhh, the Equinox.  One of those turning points in our calendar where summer slips away for good.  I do love fall and the changing rhythm of our seasons but I also get a little whiney when summer goes poof.

Know those great days where you feel like you’ve had a whole weekend in one day?  When you don’t really have any specific plans and the day just spontaneously unfolds into its own deliciousness?  That was yesterday – Saturday.  And today just feels like a fabulous bonus day.  A day for laundry.  Blogging.  Seahawks football. A workout and some grocery shopping and food prep for the week.  Yep, that’s about enough for one day.

Yesterday was filled with late summer sunshine and that crispy feeling in the air where you can just feel Fall is right around the corner.  J and I spent the day over in his neck of the woods.  We were planning to go to a concert which was a fundraiser to save one of the old theaters in town, but we both were craving time outdoors – we weren’t in the mood to sit indoors, as fun as it would have been and for a good cause.

So, we grabbed a late lunch at the Buzz Inn restaurant at Harvey Field in Snohomish.  Damn, what a glorious day it was!  Nothing like relaxing outdoors (in mid September) in the warm sunshine and just watching small planes take off and land.  Not a care or a thought in the world.  And there’s a skydiving center right there at the airport so every so often the sky would suddenly fill up with skydivers landing in the field.

tandem_smallNow, skydiving is probably not going on my Bucket List anytime soon, but it sure looks fun…and watching the skydivers float by, glide in and land was relaxing.  That probably sounds a little odd but it was.

Then we drove to the Stocker Farms farmers market to poke around.  So much amazing, bountiful fruits and veggies…and local honey!  I couldn’t resist and picked up a small jar.  Oh, and a cucumber too.

Hmmmm, I’m trying to get more adventurous with veggies and incorporating them more regularly into my meals.  There was so much beautiful squash, plums, apples and on and on at the farmers market – I just didn’t know where to begin.  I knew I needed a cucumber to chop up for my salads to bring to work, but beyond that my mind was blank.  Oh well, it’s a start! Eating more veggies is one of the things we’re practicing in the Lean Eating for Women program I’m about 7 weeks into.  On the subject of eating local, one of our program coaches quipped, “buying tomatoes flown in from Peru makes about as much sense as flying there to crap them out.”  Too funny…and point taken.  When I’m at the grocery store I’m going to pay more attention to where the food comes from!  And maybe start shopping at a farmers market for fruits and veggies!

I look outside today and it’s like someone turned off a light switch.  It’s grey, cloudy and starting to rain.  It’s days like this where I can close my eyes, smile and remember the warm, sunny days and wonderful summer memories.

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The Active Equinox

23 Sunday Sep 2012

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benefits, breathe, causes, changes, equinox, exercise, fitness, food, friendship, hockey, rhythm, Seattle, universe, vibration, walking

Welcome, Autumn!  And welcome Spring to my southern hemisphere readers!  The season changes are such a sensuous time of the year. Along with obvious changes like the longer shadows during the day, a slight chill in the air and a longing to put away the sandals and rock my fall shoes and boots, I truly believe – if you breathe really deeply into the Universe – that you can FEEL the change.  The vibration shift.  The motions that are perhaps unconscious to us but are all around us.

I remember watching the Cosmos TV series (on PBS) as a young teen.  This was a special Sunday night ritual with my Dad (my Mom didn’t seem too interested in it).  While much of what Carl Sagan talked about was too complex for my young mind to understand, it stirred something within me.  As if to say that seeds were planted – you might not understand everything now, fivenineteen, but your curiosity will grow throughout your life with an ongoing hunger to learn.

One of his segments talked about motion – how even if we appear to be still, we are not.  I may be standing still on the ground, but the ground is not motionless.  The Earth is turning on its axis.  The Earth is revolving around the Sun.  Our solar system is cruising along in some random outer arm of our galaxy (or perhaps in and out of galaxy arms – some say that is the reason for our planet’s Ice Ages)…AND our whole galaxy is whooshing through the universe too!  To where I have no idea.  Or how fast.  All of this is mind-blowing to me when I try to make sense of it all.  And believe me, Carl Sagan explained those last few sentences far better and far more eloquently than I ever could.

So, I made some of my own tiny motions into the Universe this weekend – both mentally and physically.  My resume was overdue for an update, and it felt good to sit for a few hours and really focus on capturing my latest work activities.  It’s funny, for as much as I love to write, I sometimes run into writer’s block about my career.  How can it be so hard to summarize my latest accomplishments and job responsibilities into a few short sentences and bullet points?  I’m much better at speaking about it than writing about it, resume-style.  The work I’ve done over the past year and a few months is something I’m so very proud of.  And my team is dynamite – I truly, truly believe that NO ONE ever does it alone and that many helping hands make the load lighter.  This team embraces and breathes this same philosophy as well, and it shows.  It’s not lip service.  It’s something practiced constantly.  I know this work engagement is ending to free me up for my next opportunity (and also for practical reasons, such as the budget for my role runs out later this year), and it’s like stepping off with a leap of faith that the right next step WILL happen.  I’ve been through this cycle a few times over the past 6 years and I feel better taking that next unknown leap now that the job market has improved somewhat compared with the 2009-2010 era.

That was Saturday.  Man it felt so good to just breathe and savor the change of seasons.  The weather has been absolutely beautiful.  Plus I was able to get my car emissions test done on Friday afternoon (part of the requirement to get new license tabs), rather than gobble up part of a cherished Saturday driving a ways out to the site and waiting in line.  Ugh.  It’s a necessary thing to do but the car emission test site is one of those evil vortexes where time slows to a painful crawl.  Same with the oil change places too!

And Sunday I joined my dear friend T and her friend D (whom I’ve met once before) and D’s adorable chocolate Lab, Lucy, to walk in the Walk to End Alzheimer’s Pacific Northwest benefit!  This was an easy, relaxing, two-mile walk along South Lake Union, north of the downtown Seattle core.  This walk raised over $280,000 for Alzheimer’s research!  T, D and I learned in chatting that we had each lost a grandmother to Alzheimer’s, so this was an especially important cause for each of us personally.  T is also on the Seattle board – so proud of her generous donation of time and talent, especially having just started a new (unrelated) full-time job herself! 

Now, if you haven’t been around the South Lake Union area recently, you’re in for quite a wonderful surprise.  The area is transforming.  Beautifully.  Sure, there is some temporary pain, such as crazyass road closures, maze-like swirls of lanes blocked off and general confusion, especially for someone like me who tends to drive past this neighborhood rather than have it as a destination.  I’m so glad today’s Alzheimer’s Walk showed me just how beautiful a transformation this is, and it stirs up my hunger again to someday live and work in Seattle proper, rather than the suburbs where I currently call home.

I was a little bleary and tired when the three of us met up for our carpool (there’s that darn ol’ ‘not a morning person’ flaw again), but by the time we were ready to walk and walking I felt more energized.  The sun was out but not too strong given the time of year, the lake was beautiful, people dressed in purple were everywhere (the color for Alzheimer’s awareness) and it was nice to savor this part of Seattle on foot.  Honestly I tend to just drive and whiz through the South Lake Union area or more recently avoid it all together given all the construction and transformation underway.  So it was fun to see the lake, the Kenmore Air seaplanes taking off and landing and the view of Gasworks Park (my very first apartment after college graduation was just up the hill from it – dumpy apartment but great views – you have to start somewhere!)

On my way home I felt on a roll and made a beeline to my gym (where my trainer, B, is kicking my ass every Wednesday night).  I had made a commitment to get in the gym Sunday nights, but I had a party to go to, so I figured why not get some more gym time in while I’m feeling good and on a roll from a fun but not too-strenuous-walk earlier? 

I think I’m going to be addicted soon to the rowing machine.  What a nice change from the treadmill.  I love how it relaxes tension in the upper back and shoulders.  It just feels like more of a full-body workout than the treadmill, and I truly appreciate B showing me the basics on how to use it, from the resistance settings, the “10 and 2” rocking motion back and forth (as in 2:00 forward and all the way back to 10:00 and so on) to getting your feet placed properly in the grips.  I rowed 2000m (1 mile and 427 yards) in 12 minutes!  My goal is to get up to 5000m at a stretch.  I also did some weight and lunge work, lat pulldowns, plus the somewhat-evil hamstring strengthener using a fitness ball for resistance.  Yep, I think I will be feeling all of this tomorrow for sure.

And I topped off the weekend with a party with my hockey teammates at our co-founder’s soon-to-be-second new donut shop!  It was great to see everyone and share a few laughs and hugs.  I love these guys like brothers and/but know my decision to take this season off is the best one for me.  I was happy that they were open to having me come back next summer season.  It’s never guaranteed – I don’t take that for granted – but it is nice it might be an option for next spring.  It will all depend on where I am at that point and if I really, truly miss the ice and the game of hockey after my break.  I have a feeling I will.

While I appreciated the food (and donuts!) provided at the party, I kept it to just one slice of Canadian bacon pizza and one beer. 

After all, I’m proud of the progress I’m making physically.

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Is it Easter Writer’s Block?

24 Sunday Apr 2011

Posted by fivenineteen in Uncategorized

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Easter, equinox, full moon, hockey, hockey fights cancer, real housewives, silent auction, Sunday, sushi

Nope.  On the contrary I have so many things whirling around in my head from this past week to write about that nothing has gelled yet.  Not even this rather late in the weekend. Read on and you’ll see what I mean.

Work contract extension.  Jewelry “homework.” Lots of parties this week…from a work party to a great girls night in with my neighbor A to watch reruns of the Real Housewives series on Bravo.  Shamelessly.  Oh, and Easter.  Time with family today.  An INTENSE Canucks/Blackhawks playoff series right now (I’m a huge Canucks fan, by the way).  A fabulous silent auction last night to benefit a team a few friends will be playing on next week in a tournament to benefit Hockey Fights Cancer.  Once I saw the spa package up for bid…AND the TPS hockey stick (a lefty – yay!) decked out in PINK, yep, with the breast cancer awareness ribbons on it…I knew those two beauties would be mine.  And they are! 

I started the evening yesterday meeting my dear friend J for sushi before we headed to the auction.  And ended it meeting another friend J for a drink afterwards at the bar nearby…one of the guys I’ve know through the league for years but we fell out of contact recently.  Good to reconnect.  Too funny how I was tired yesterday and didn’t think I’d stay at the auction too long, but I ended up heading home close to midnight with a pretty long drive ahead of me.

Now I’m even more tired and ready to hit the coffee before spending some time with my family to celebrate Easter.  Can you believe how LATE Easter is this year?  It’s about as late as it can be. 

Ahem, excuse my geekiness, but I happen to know why.  There was a full moon just one day prior to the Vernal Equinox (the first day of spring) this year.  Easter always needs the Equinox first, then a full moon, then a Sunday.  So because a full moon was just the day prior to the Equinox this year, the moon had to go through a whole wax and wane cycle again…it wasn’t full again until April 18, a Monday.  Since Easter has to be on a Sunday we had to go another week till today, Sunday April 24.

And there’s your Easter lesson from a rather tired fivenineteen here.  Time to get ready for brunch, visit with family and then glue myself to the Canucks/Hawks game tonight.  Can the Canucks finish off the series and send the Hawks to the golf course?  Or do we have to go till game 7 to decide this once and for all?

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