Winter update

Dear Friends and Family,

Greetings from Maple Valley!

Recently, I developed some film and put it up on my photo blog, so I have these lovely pictures that are a little bit dated, but that's how film works, remember? Reminiscing is supposed to include an element of surprise at the stuff you forgot was there. I took pictures of the Fourth of July fireworks show we had in the street, all of which looks really cool with extended exposures. The hovering white blob in the third picture is Jeffrey wearing a headlamp lighting something.

 

 

 Also, back in August, Miri and I got to go on a bike ride around Washington state. It was a 200-person supported ride, and Jeffrey, Patrick, Mom and Dad were there, too. It was six days, 400 miles and lots of lovely scenery. We started in LaConner, Wash., and ended in Kettle Falls, Wash. This ride was gorgeous and challenging, involving crossing Washington Pass in the North Cascades on Day 2. This was Miri's first mountain riding experience, and she did great. Patrick, as usual, went too fast, but did stop long enough to take this picture:

 

We then camped in the Methow River Valley in a small town called Twisp, which, along with nearby Winthrop, seemed like a wonderful place to go relax in a cabin or something. And, there were no huge resort hotels or anything. Interestingly, a major skiing resort company years back had wanted to build a huge downhill resort, and the town said thanks but no thanks, and the company decided to build in Whistler instead, and now we have a laid-back tourist town rather than a crazy one in Washington. I'd love to go visit again.

As we were riding from Twisp to the Grand Coulee Dam, we rode on a high plateau with gorgeous views, and there were these hovering white insects that sounded like rotating sprinkler heads. That was kind of cool.

Shortly after the bike ride was over, we went on a hike in Mt. Rainier National Park with our friends the Powells. We started out at Mowich Lake and hiked up to Spray Park. The weather was gorgeous, and I was so glad to get all these pictures. And, thankfully, the bugs were too small to be photographed. Father Barnabas Powell, and his wife Lela, have two children, Mila and Sava, aged 3 1/2 and 1 1/2.

 Miri and I have been making a little bit of progress with our careers, although it's been kind of fragmentary progress. We are both eagerly awaiting Real Jobs that pay the rent and pay benefits. Miri still has her temp job at the Point Defiance Zoo in Tacoma, working with the animals in the Asia exhibit, and she recently got an unpaid internship at the Seattle Aquarium to work with the birds and mammals there. She's left her PetSmart job, which makes her happy.

I have a part-time temporary job at REI right now answering phones in the call center and placing orders for the customers. It is kind of a fun place to work, and we ring a bell whenever a membership is sold, and then everybody applauds. It's also nice when a customer calls in to ask about an item I actually own, and then you can hear their voice really light up. One mother was calling to order a sleeping bag for her daughter going a mission trip to Russia, and was going for major overkill with the bag and accessories, and I was able to reassure her: Yes, the buildings have walls over there. Moms can be so funny.

It's also fun working for a for-profit co-op. I've worked for lots of non-profits in my day, and they've all had meaningful missions, but they've been slow to respond to changes in the communities they serve, and they tend to like to do what the staff wants to do rather than what the communities need. REI has a more definite measure of effectiveness: Is it selling?

This job ends in a few days. I found another bit of short term work recently, doing business and administration work for a news web site, the Seattle Post-Globe, which opened last year. It's staffed by former Seattle Post-Intelligencer journalists who got laid off when the newspaper closed in the spring. Right now it's a non-profit, but thinking about becoming a for-profit co-op, which I think would be really cool.

I am also taking a class in Geographic Information Systems at the University of Washington. I am with a group of five students who are trying to map avalanche paths in the Cascades in hopes of using the maps for prediction and education. It's kind of a fun project, although the software involved with GIS is challenging.

So, that's what's up right now. We hope you are well.

In Christ,

Thomas Eric Ruthford