I Have a House in Sequim, Washington!

On Friday, April 10th, I got the keys to my house! I am now the overwhelmed, and excited to be the happy homeowner of a cute 1.9 acre lot in Sequim Washington. Actually, as the property has an 'ADU' Alternate Dwelling Unit' or whatever, I have two houses in Sequim. ME! You, know, the fat kid from the Bronx, owns two homes. How the @%&# did that happen? Nevermind - it is a long & arduous tales and there are not enough hours in a day.

Here's the living room of the main house that I will live in. All butterscotch colored but soon to be painted a nice Earth Mother color.

Am pleased it already has a ceiling fan and a corner where I intend to put a wood stove

 2nd floor bedroom, with the rug that will not be there for long 

My room, showing cute little balcony (SQUEEE!)
that faces Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge. 

 The upstairs hall is going to be the first area painted. I'm thinking pale sage green.

Upstairs Hallway

Second Guest Room & its one 'Butterscotch' colored wall

This is the other bedroom on the second floor. For now I call it the 'play room' but it will double as a second guest room. The room is mostly a nice pale yellow, except for the door wall that is butterscotch and will be painted to match the pale yellow. And where does that door go?

The door goes onto this patio (SQUEEE!). The house is an old farm house, built in 1947. The patio is the top of the garage that was added to the original building. The patio faces south, and you can just kinda sorta see the Olympic mountains in the far distance. 

So it looks like it'll be a while before I get new floors in, and until I do, I'm will not send for my POD - which contains all my worldly goods, delivered. Currently I have zero furniture in the house. I bought a director's chair so I'd have something to sit on for now. I also ordered an air mattress so I have something to sleep on. Until the air-mattress arrives, I continue my stay at Ingrid's house in Port Angeles.  The woman should be put up for sainthood, not only for putting up with me for 8 months, but for all the community minded projects she undertakes. Ingrid makes Mother Teresa look like a shirker.

And see the white building to the right in the patio picture? That's my cottage! It's a rental and my friend Barbara is going to move up here and rent it from me. It is a cute 1 bedroom/1 bath with a wood stove (wah! I want a wood stove too!). It also has pretty floors, although the bedroom has a carpet. 

The interior of the 'Cottage', the front room

So my Washington adventures have begun big time. I'm still not quite caught up on my blogging but I am now blogging again in real time, and will 'back fill' what it pleases me to record. Life is good. OK, except for this STUPID pandemic. Damned CV-19 virus....

Feathered Visitor from Siberia

Boo-hoo, not my photo of Siberian Accentor (that's a bird species, not a condition)

Last week I got word through the birdie grapevine that on Thursday, February 6th, a Class 4 rarity showed up in Woodland, Washington. The rarity is a Siberian Accentor. The way I see it, if the bird was kind enough to fly in all the way from Siberia, the least I could do was go and pay my respects, right?

Stenerson Road, Woodland, WA; where the Siberian Birdie hangs out

I stayed put over the weekend as I knew there would be a circus of birders coming in from all over Washington and the surrounding states (yep, there were 40 - 60 birders present at all times last weekend). The Siberian Accentor has been seen in Washington only twice before, the last time was 1991.

This morning I took the 3.5 hour drive down to Woodland. On my arrival at 1:40 PM only 3 birders were present. They said the bird hadn't been seen since noon. Just then, as the bird apparently knew I had arrived, it promptly flew in, perching in a convenient apple tree. SCORE!

Lucky guy who got the photo
up top  on his high end camera

Must say the lighting was atrocious. I realized no way I would get a photo of the bird. After a sparse 3 or 5 minutes, the bird took of into the pines. The guy I was standing next to got photos - I asked if I could take a photo of his photo and he kindly agreed. His photo is the one at the top of this post.

Next I asked if I could take his photo for my 'Birder buddies' photo in my cell phone. I take photos of people I bird with. On running into them, sometimes years later, they remember me, as I tend to stick out like a sore but never remember from where they remember me. On such occasions, out come my iphone 'Birding Buddies' and I show them the photo of themselves, and we all get a nice chuckle out of it. Amazing how often I run into the same birders at different rare bird sightings.

Stupid lighting!

Only about a half hour later, the bird reappeared. This time it perched - for quite a while actually - in the tall pines opposite the big empty field. It sat happily while stared at it with my binoculars  - to make sure I was on the correct bird - then with my camera, I took like a zillion photos - all dreadful, as the bird was back-lit.

Can almost sort of see some details... almost

Couldn't make out a single detail of  the bird's plumage. It had a skinny bill though so we all knew it wasn't one of the sparrows that I was looking at. AHA! I then set my camera's ISO super high, with hopes of lightening up the bird enough to see some detail. My idea worked... just not very satisfying results. Rats!

digiscoping: spotting scope and cell phone camera

After about a zillion more horrid photos, the bird flew... right back into it's favorite tree - the apple. There it sat.

A drastic ploy was needed. I walked back up the road to my car, ditching camera and binoculars. I got out my itsy bitsy spotting scope. Then trotting back up the road I set up the scope, using my iPhone for some digiscoping! Here's one of the many 'raw', that is un-toyed with shots I digiscoped to the left.






And miraculously, here is what a digiscoped shot looks like when you 'cut out' or rather, blow up the subject.

 Not too sharp, my shots aren't perfect, but damn it, they're a sight better than a poke in the eye, right? Am so happy I managed to get shots of this incredible bird from the far east. 

Another NYC Farewell

Looking down on... um... Brooklyn with Manhattan on the left of the left hand bridge

Another Great Pop-up in The Big Apples draws to a Close. William offered to drive me to the La Guardia Airport, but I spared him the drive, opting to use Uber. This was a great trip for Uber-ing about the city. Thought would be a nice time to show off some of this past week's photos that weren't shared earlier. 

On the way from Seatac WA to NYC, I flew Frontier Airlines. Will NOT make that error, ever again in this life time, I can assure you. Cheap fare? You betcha. Cheap flight, oh, HELL yeah.

From earlier in the week, departing for NYC out of SeaTac (Seattle, WA)

The only cool thing on that flight was the jet's tail with it's giant Texas Longhorn picture.

And Here are some New York shots that got lost in the telling.

The Theater where the new West Side Story production is on

Ed Sullivan Theater where Late Night with Steven Colbert plays
[Note to self: must see live taping of Colbert show!]

Night time Manhattan shot of the SS Intrepid

Just a little Wood Duck male I spotted in Harlem...

Lastly, a shot taken by a kind passerby at Times Square, the night we saw the Harry Potter plays. 

Posing in front of The Lion King, the play's Rafiki the shaman