Solstice countdown

Today those of us in the greater Seattle area (and others at latitude 47) are enjoying our last day of >8.5 hours of daylight for the year.

Tomorrow we slip under 8.5 until January 1st. Granted we don’t get down to 8 hours, we don’t even get down to 8.4, but it’s still ALL DARK ALL THE TIME WAH.

(Yes, come June I will once again be needing my sleep mask to get some sleep.
I would be needing it now if I was in Cape Town. :)
On the more positive side:

• http://www.daylightmap.com/ and http://www.timeanddate.com are nifty cool ways to see how the seasons are changing.
  
• Dykes To Watch Out For does Solstice, which planted the song that's stuck in my head. And inspired this post, if you didn't guess.
  
• It's not actually raining today. Compared to the icon, the sky is a slightly lighter grey with occasional hints of blue.

That is all.

mall bad

The bus that normally goes down Bellevue Way (past Bellevue Square) got re-routed due to holiday traffic. ('cause of course people going to BellSquare don't ride the bus.)

So I got off a couple blocks away. Traffic was looking bad. My fatal mistake: using the mall-to-mall skybridge (overpass) over NE 8th instead of the crosswalk. I realized after climbing up 3 flights of stairs that the angles and curves that look cool from the ground, and especially the partial walls made of glass and curving steel beams like cables, is not so great when I'm inside it.

I felt like the "cables" would snap and it would FALL with me ON IT thus PLUNGING ME TO MY DEATH.

I put my head down and kept walking. I did some deep breathing once I got across. Then I crossed the OTHER [about to fall at any moment and PLUNGE ME TO MY DEATH] bridge over Bellevue Way.*

Then - finally - I was able to walk through the mall to pick up the portraits for MiL & other relatives. And dinner. And plotting my way home when the only bus within a half-mile that takes me anywhere I want to go has been re-routed. One look at the schedule and I knew I'd missed the 8pm bus home. Figured I couldn't make the 8:30 back toward work, either. So I gave up and called jw1776, who had me back at my car by 9, so I could run other errands near home. I've even framed the portraits for MiL & GiL.

But yeah. Mall bad. Phooey.

*I had crossed this other bridge before, but not alone, and felt fine. Might be affected by how long a day I've had, too.