August 13, 2007 by SUM.

Last Friday while parking my car on a street in Ballard, a small suburb of Seattle, I was confronted with a parking situation, which most of us know all too well. Who hasn’t experienced that someone takes your parking spot, though you’ve been first in line. Since the person, who took my parking spot, acted in such a rude and reckless way, I confronted her as soon as she had done it.

I waited on the street for a car to leave the parking spot on my left. I left enough space on my right side so that other cars could pass without having to wait for me getting into that parking spot. The car was parked in an angle on the left side of the street. When I waited for a couple minutes for a parking spot, no other car had been behind or next to me. When the person in the parked car drove backwards to get out of the parking spot, another car came up behind me, and the driver stopped on my right and waited next to me, parallel to my car.

I thought that she had stopped her car so that the driver of the parked car could drive safely backwards onto the street. But as soon the driver of the parked car was on the street and drove forward, she sped into the parking spot. As soon she had done that, I got out of my car, knocked on her window, before she could leave her car, to get her attention. But she already knew that I was there.

The conversation in general went something like this. She opened the door and asked me not to knock vigorously on her window. I asked her to move her car because she had taken my parking spot. Her reply was that she had made an “honest mistake,” but since I had knocked vigorously on her window, she wouldn’t move her car. Additionally, she said that she would have moved her car if I had asked her without knocking vigorously on the window, and that this would teach me a lesson. I think you know by now how I felt.

She left her car with a book in her hand and went into a store or restaurant across the parking spot. Afterwards I got into my car and parked my car behind her car. I asked several people on the street whether there is a parking law that states that there is also a ‘right of way’ for parking incidents. The few people I asked told me that there is no ‘right of way’ law, and they suggested that I park my car elsewhere.

I wasn’t satisfied with their answer. Common sense told me that this woman had taken my parking spot and on top of everything had acted rudely and recklessly. Actually, she could have caused an accident. If I had begun to drive my car at the same time, when she sped her car into my parking spot, our cars would have collided. Due to her reckless and dangerous behavior I took notes of her car and the cars parked next to it. I thought that someone else must have seen her in her actions. Suddenly she appeared on the street again, and she asked me whether I wanted her to move her car. I asked her again to move her car out of the parking spot. Thereafter she parked her car elsewhere.

Later that day when I saw a parking enforcement car, I took the opportunity and inquired about the parking laws in Seattle. The officer not only told me that their is a ‘right of way’ parking law, he showed me the rule in his booklet. But he made it clear that this law applies only to parking on the streets of Seattle. I personally think that this is a common sense law. If you see a car waiting for a parking spot, you don’t recklessly seize that parking spot neither on a street nor private parking lot at a mall.

So, now you know that there is a ‘right of way’ parking law on the streets of Seattle, but if no officer is around, who will help you to enforce this law, you might be out of luck.

Posted in Pacific Northwest, General | No Comments »

July 30, 2007 by SUM.

I have, like many others, a phone answering system that I can remotely access by phone. You only have to assign a remote access code to the system so that you can access many features of your answering system remotely from a touch-tone phone.

Yesterday, before I left my apartment, at least 4 messages were stored on my answering machine. I wanted to listen to them once more. When I came back, I heard the beep signal from my answering machine signaling that a new message had been recorded.

Immediately I walked to my phone and noticed right away that the number on my answering system had been reduced to number 1. My system is set up so that it enumerates and displays the number of the recorded messages in a message window. The number in the message window should have been at the least number 5.

You probably can imagine that I was stunned seeing my previous stored messages being erased from my phone storage system. The new message that was left consisted only of a short message: a greeting, my name was said twice and afterwards the words “thank you.” The female person on the phone spoke with an accent. Due to her intonation, I believe it was an Asian woman, maybe Chinese. Since I don’t have contact to Asians or Chinese people, I didn’t recognize her voice.

Later that day I spoke with a neighbor about this incident, and he suggested that I change my remote access code to prevent anyone else to remotely access my phone system. After he reminded me that my answering system could be remotely accessed (I actually never used this feature from another phone), I wondered whether this had happened before. Did someone access my system without my authorization and erased messages left for me? I’ll probably never know that.

I’m writing about this incident because I want to remind you that whenever a code is required, someone else can retrieve this code, access the system without your authorization, and delete important data and/or messages.

Posted in Pacific Northwest, General | No Comments »

July 2, 2007 by SUM.

If you ever visit Washington State, take also the time to tour Northeast Washington, which looks totally different than the Pacific side. Northeast Washington’s terrain was created by cataclysmic Ice Age Floods and left a deeply scarred plateau with hundreds of small lakes, flat top mountains, and canyons known as “coulees” (ravines and ancient basins of waterfalls, some still holding water).

Last week I took a few days off and toured this area with Kari. Though I had visited the northeastern part of Washington once before with George on a weekend sightseeing tour in September 1997, I always wanted to tour this area again because of its unique awe-inspiring landscape. It not only exists of long stretches of uninhabited majestic table mountains as well as small and large lakes, but also the famed massive Grand Coulee Dam, which you can tour. Additionally, on weekend evenings a laser show is hosted along the dam telling the story of the land, its people, and the creation of the dam.

Like last time we were on the road again for 2 1/2 days. From I-5 we took Hwy 20 East, stayed overnight in Winthrop, where we also visited the Shafer Museum that houses several historic buildings with many authentic displays dating back to the late 1800’s. Winthrop is located in the Methow Valley, which is Washington’s equivalent of the Old West. As you drive up the valley, you’ll pass fields of baled hay, big old weathered barns, horses and cattle. The sign below is located in the town’s center and displays past and present cattle brands.

We continued our trip on Hwy 20 and 155 to Coulee Dam, where we stayed overnight and watched the laser show at the dam in the evening. The next day we drove South on Highway 155, 17, 28 and 283 to Vantage on I-90, where the Gingko Petrified Forest and an interpretive service center is. Along the way we stopped at the humongous Dry Falls with its awe-inspiring landscape and view and Soap Lake.

It was a great sightseeing trip and pictures of this tour and some additional tourist information are posted under the page Out & About, too.

Posted in Grand Coulee Dam, Dry Falls, Ginkgo Petrified Forest, Winthrop, Northeast Washington, Pacific Northwest, North Cascades, Travel | No Comments »

June 4, 2007 by SUM.

For the past few weeks I focused a little bit on writing a few eligible singles on the dating site that I’m a subscriber of, but after the initial e-mails no serious e-mail exchange developed thereafter.

I’ve read that men are more visual than women, but I’m a visual person, too. Women’s preference may be different, but we have our visual likes and dislikes, too. Since photos can be deceiving because pictures can be manipulated, or the person on the photo may be not photogenic, it’s not advisable to rely too much on a posted picture.

Since my chance to meet a compatible partner has been downsized, I’m taking steps that are necessary to off-set this fact and that includes writing about this.

I certainly don’t want to spend the rest of my life without a partner. I’ve been alone for too long already.

Posted in Dating, Wellness, Pacific Northwest, General | No Comments »

May 27, 2007 by SUM.

Quite a few of my dating encounters in the Seattle area belong also to my uncommon experiences. But I’m coming to the conclusion that these experiences are planned acts and are part of a system that is exercised here in this area.

Since the divorce from my ex-husband I’m single and I live alone. I’m actually living alone since 1994, but my divorce from my ex-husband had been in September 1997. Though I would love to meet a compatible person whereby we complete each other, I’ve not met anyone here with whom I could imagine being in a healthy and joyful relationship. However, I haven’t met any single people for many years due to focusing on other things than dating and/or the lack of opportunity to meet eligible healthy single males in this area.

There were times when I subscribed to different online dating sites. I exchanged a lot of emails with other singles, but that was about it. A few times I met someone for a cup of coffee, but nothing serious developed from these meetings. I have never gotten into a closer relationship with any person whom I had written an email with the exception of one person who I had met during the summer of 1997. And that time had actually not been a good time for me to date anyone because I went through a divorce. But I didn’t know better then.

Though my ex-husband and I had already been living separate for 3 1/2 years (he had moved out of our apartment in Jan/Feb 1994), I was still married to him on paper. And as the psychologists say, being divorced is different than living separate. It certainly pertained to my situation. I still had emotional ties to my ex-husband when I started to date in summer of 1997. And pretty fast it became obvious that I neither was ready for the dating scene nor for any other close relationship with another male partner. I had been married on paper for 18 years and for the next few years my goal was to heal myself from past wounds and getting rid of unhealthy baggage.

Coming back to the statement at the beginning of this post that I believe that many events here in this area are planned, I’ll describe a few incidents that I experienced while subscribing to online dating services. I firmly believe that some people I had met for a cup of coffee were not always the people with whom I had exchanged emails. Some may have been hired or were sent by their buddies as a substitute for someone else.

My first subscription to an online dating service here in the Seattle area was with Matchmaker. A female program manager in another business group at Microsoft had sent me the URL address for this online dating site in July 1997. While communicating with different people through this service, I had some weird encounters while being a subscriber of this service.

For example, Matchmaker organized periodically a social get-together for people who subscribed to their service. One time an event was organized in my neighborhood, while I was living in Tukwila. The social event took place in a bar at a hotel in the Seattle Southcenter vicinity. At one of those planned get-together I met in the hotel bar with George, with whom I had communicated through Matchmaker. At least I thought that he had been the person with whom I had exchanged some emails at that time.

Not many people were in the bar and only a few people from the Matchmaker’s group showed up on that evening. I found it quite unusual to see a group of women showing up there at the same time and performing some kind of a dance with each other on the dance floor. But due to the event being organized, this show had been a planned act. About nine women were dancing together, and from nine of these women one woman stood out. She had long blond hair and was quite pretty. All the others were pale in comparison to her. While dancing on the dance floor they rendered homage to her. It reminded me of priestesses paying homage to their queen. This whole episode seemed almost surreal and somehow farcical.

When I subscribed to Matchmaker, I communicated a lot through email, and I met for some time a few so-called single men for a cup of coffee. But each time that was the end of our communication with the exception of a short-lived relationship with George in August/September 1997.

The people I met were quite often so weird that I started to think that these people were not the ones that I had exchanged emails with. One time I met a man—who according to his own words had a feisty mother—at a chamber concert in Bellevue. This man actually showed up for the concert smelling like he had been doused in alcohol. His speech was quite slurry, too. After my first meeting with him I surely didn’t feel like meeting him again, though I may could use his service. He said that he works as a detective. But who wants a detective who douses himself in alcohol. I certainly wouldn’t want a report that is clouded because of the person’s limited observation and judgment due to excessive use of alcohol. After the concert I was glad to get away from this person and not having to sit next to him anymore. I actually felt embarrassed being seen with a person who smelled like a larva in a bottle of Tequila.

Another time I met a subscriber from Matchmaker in the same bar in Tukwila where the organized Matchmaker event had taken place. As soon we sat down on the bar stools, he ordered Wiskey, and pretty fast I had the impression that he cared more for Wiskey than anything else. Though he had told me that he works in the health care industry, I thought that he may confuse that with working in the intoxicating field and adopting their products.

While communicating through Matchmaker, other people knew, too, that I was on the dating scene. Therefore I encountered situations where I was lured into certain situations or to certain places.

For example, I visited quite frequently the Yarrow Bay Grill at Carillion Point in Kirkland in 1997. There I met a married man, Stan, who worked in the insurance industry. One time Stan told me that he knew a restaurant in Bellevue where a music band was playing music that evening. I told him that I was interested in going there, and he offered to show me where this place was in Bellevue. In my car I followed him and his female friend who accompanied him on that evening. At the Yarrow Beach Cafe he had told me that she is his masseuse.

The restaurant, he showed me, was a Chinese Restaurant in the Commons building in Bellevue on 12th Avenue. I had to pay $5.00 to attend a dingy show at a mediocre restaurant. At that time I didn’t know the area, and I was pretty much on my own.

When we arrived at the Chinese Restaurant, only a few people were at the restaurant’s area where the music band played. I still have the room in front of my eyes. The room was at the left of the main restaurant and had the form of a hallway. It had no nice decorations and looked pretty murky. Little by little a few more people showed up during the evening.

The couple who had brought me to this place kept to themselves, and after a while I talked with a man standing next to me who said that he worked for the Salvation Army. I pretty much conversed only with him while I was at this place.

Not many people came to this place and I remember a black skinny tall woman entering the room with an elderly white man who had a lot of gold jewelry on. Though they stood close by me, I talked mostly with the guy from the Salvation Army with the exception of dancing briefly with someone else one or two times.

After I had been in this dingy room for a while, a tall attractive man in his forties showed up. He sat on a table next to the entrance door like a rooster on a perch. Several times I saw him on the dance floor with one of his dancing accomplices. When I left this back room to leave this establishment, I was suddenly confronted with a very strange action by this prancing man.

Shortly before I reached the door, I had to walk near by the table where he sat. When I was about four feet away from his table, he forcefully stood up and took on a bolt upright position and at the same time he stretched out his right arm in the kind of salute that had been a dominant force during the Third Reich.

Instantly I was stunned by this man’s behavior. And I made automatically a defensive gesture with my right arm, like ‘drop it’, and hurriedly walked out of this room. Outside the building I noticed a white Rolls Royce parked on the sideway next to the restaurant. I didn’t pay further attention to my surroundings at that time, I just wanted to get away from this awful place.

Since this area was pretty new to me and I didn’t know what to make of all this, I kept quiet, but I felt very uncomfortable about this and other incidents that seemed insulting if not to say threatening.

I like to mention another weird encounter of my dating experiences. Lori, a woman who I had met while working at Microsoft had introduced me to a man who invited me to the Seattle Opera and Symphony. In one of our conversations he told me that apartment managers go into people’s apartments and place poison in their food. At that time I was living in an apartment. Additionally, I had found things in my apartment in a different order than I had left them. Therefore I pretty much knew that someone had accessed my apartment without my knowledge. A couple months later, after I had moved to a different city in this area, I noticed that two small things were missing from my household. Since I had not thrown these items away because I had received them as a gift from my mother, someone must have stolen them out of my apartment when I was living in the apartment in Tukwila.

Lori suddenly sold her house, wrote me that she got the money, and moved with her husband to Wisconsin. Anyway, that is what she wrote me in one of her last emails. Afterwards the whole situation surrounding Lori seems like an act. Her sudden departure and disappearance including her last emails call forth questions, which I cannot answer for her. I may should add here that Lori’s last name was the same name like my ex-husband’s name before she married Ulf.

Putting all this stuff aside I’m at a point in my life where I’m emotionally balanced and ready to start a healthy relationship with someone I would like to be with. Therefore I subscribed again to a dating service. But this time I know that Dr. Phil is watching the scene.

Posted in Dating, Wellness, Pacific Northwest, General | No Comments »

May 11, 2007 by SUM.

You may have already read my post ‘Symbols and numbers’. There I outlined some of the connecting links of my numerological profile showing up in the number Pi. I just read the Washington State history on the web site historylink.org and I noticed quite a few data and dates that play a prominent role in my life, too. I’m listing the data and dates so that you can see for yourself. You may want to investigate, too, where you can notice a correlation with your own data and dates to the residence of your place.

In some cases I’ll reduce the numbers or dates to a single-digit number.

- Washington State is one of the 48 continuous United States.

Washington State is the first and only state that I ever have been a resident of in the United States. The number 48 can be reduced to a single-digit number three (4+8=12 and 1+2=3), which is my invigoration number derived from my birthday 21 (2+1=3).

- Washington State occupies 66,582 square miles.

When adding all these number together (6+6+5+8+2=27), I arrive at the number of the day when I immigrated into the United States.

- Washington State borders on the east at the Idaho border at 117 degrees longitude.

My life lesson number is 11 and destiny number is 7. Adding these numbers together (11+7=18 and 1+8=9) I arrive at my master number nine.

- Washington State borders Canada on the north along the 49th parallel.

My destiny number squared is number 49.

- Washington State borders Oregon on the south along the Columbia River along the 46th parallel.

The numerical equivalent of my first name is number 46 (U=21, T=20, E=5 and 21+20+5=46).

- 27 settlers petitioned on August 29, 1851 Congress for a separate “Columbia Territory” (named later “Washington”) covering the area between the Columbia River and 49th parallel.

I immigrated on day 27 the United States, and my grandfather was born on August 29, 1889.

- Congress approved the new territory, renamed Washington, on February 10, 1853.

When adding all the numbers of this date (2+10+1+8+5+3=29 and 2+9=11 and 1+1=2), I arrive at my life lesson number, which fluctuates between 11 and/or 2.

- Washington was admitted to the Union in 1889.

My grandfather was born in the year 1889.

- The square dance (or quadrille) was named the official state dance on April 17, 1979.

I married in 1979. When adding all the numbers from this date (4+1+7+1+9+7+9=38 and 3+8=11 and 1+1=2), I arrive again at my life lesson number 11 and/or 2.

There are still some other dates on the historylink.org that play a role in my life, but that should do for right now.

I just want to mention here that my destiny number seven plays predominantly a role in my life, and Seattle consists of seven letters. The numerical equivalent of the name ‘Seattle’ is number one, which is also the numerical equivalent of my first and last name.

Posted in Pacific Northwest, Travel, Symbolism, Numerical patterns | 3 Comments »

May 10, 2007 by SUM.

I just read on another site about the history of the Cape Flattery trail. Now it’s a very pleasant trail, but that hasn’t always been so. Jeff Logan writes on his site that the sightseers from all over the world hiked before the renovation “through a muddy, poorly maintained trail - and risked plunging off dangerous cliffs to see one of the most breathtaking views on the Pacific Coast.”

I’m glad that I walked the trail after its renovation.

But some other work is imminent there, too. Work is actually already going on at the access road to Cape Flattery. At the moment the access road is paved quite frequently with potholes. And at times the road is covered with potholes from the furthest right to the furthest left for a length of 20-30 feet or more along the road. And you just cannot avoid these holes by driving around them.

While driving on this road I asked myself several times whether I should turn around because the road was in such bad shape, but I kept on driving because each time after having passed such a pothole stretch I thought that this must have been the last one.

Though the access road is at the moment quite challenging, I’m glad that I visited this place with its most breathtaking views on the Pacific Coast.

Posted in Olympic Peninsula, Pacific Northwest, Makah Reservation, Travel | No Comments »

May 8, 2007 by SUM.

Last week I took a few days off and toured the Olympic Peninsula with Kari who is originally from Norway. A couple years ago I met Kari at the Seattle Astronomy Club of which her husband is a member.

We both like to travel and she accepted my proposal to explore together the unique countryside of Washington State. Though I have been living here for almost 19 years, I actually haven’t seen many places in this state. Therefore I thought that it is time to get out and explore more of this great place, which offers anything from rain forest to the desert.

Our trip lasted only 2 1/2 days, but we drove around the Peninsula, stayed overnight in two motels, in Port Townsend and Forks, and visited some splendid places including Cape Flattery, which is the furthest northwest point of the contiguous United States. Pictures of this tour and some additional tourist information are posted under the page Out & About.

Posted in Olympic Peninsula, Pacific Northwest, Makah Reservation, Travel | 1 Comment »