Leandra’s elevator challenges rainy otter on Apple’s pointless (useless) cloud

This week Nazy and I flew to Seattle en route to visit Darius, Christiane and lovely Leandra in Bellingham. Not only was I looking forward to seeing them, I was excited about the opportunity to use the new, noise-cancelling earphones that Melika had gotten for my birthday. The earphones replaced my 20 year-old and (now) defunct Bose set. The new ones worked perfectly. But Apple, once again, had developed an ‘upgrade’ that actually delivered degraded service levels.

They’ve deleted more than half of my music!” I thought as I looked, in vain, for the Chess soundtrack.
earphones

It was, in fact, worse than that. The music that hadn’t vanished was thoughtlessly stored in ‘the cloud’. Note to Apple: EVEN THOUGH AIRPLANES FLY ABOVE, BELOW AND EVEN THROUGH CLOUDS, YOU CAN”T ACCESS ‘
THE CLOUD’ ON MOST AIRPLANES.

Luckily, I had a couple of hours of recently downloaded music to enjoy — and the new earphones were spectacular. The United flights were (surprisingly) smooth and on-time. The drive from Seattle to Bellingham was smooth and swift.

Darius and family are getting settled in their new apartment and new environment with new furniture, a new car, a new job and an (almost) brand new baby. Darius can walk to his office on the Western Washington campus and Christiane can stroll through nearby historic Fairhaven Village. Nazy and I, of course, spent a lot of time ‘oh-ing and ah-ing’ at five month old Leandra.


dan, nazy and leandra squared


Many years ago, The Martin Family, lived in Vancouver, Canada. Although it was a professional disaster (the shysters who bought Dan’s department from Continental Grain were pursued by the RCMP and Revenue Canada for fraud), the city was beautiful. We love the Northwest, so we were happy when Darius and Family moved there.

Mt baker Nazy

In Bellingham, we tried to help with getting settled. Darius had successfully assembled the bed, the crib, a dresser/changing table, a slider (rocking) chair and several other items. And, although he had bought lots of stuff, there were gaps — specifically in the kitchen arena. In addition, some items needed to be collected from the transport companies. It was a beautiful autumn day when Nazy and I drove to the airport to make a pick-up at the FedEx office. The trees were in full color; you could see the mountains north of Vancouver and fabulous Mount Baker (~11,000 feet) in Washington State.
Sea otter


Veracity alert: It rained the next day while Nazy and I went with Darius to the WWU campus in the morning. The rain, for which the Northwest is famous, was heavy. But it cleared by the afternoon. We enjoyed the sculpture park on the campus as we walked to the bookstore. All of our raincoats were inadequate. I was wet as a rat in my Driz-a-bone.

But … the rain stopped that afternoon and the weather was perfect thereafter. We went for a walk along the Puget Sound with Christiane and Leandra — who, by the way, is a happy, content, social and cheerful little girl. She is, in a word, the grandestdaughter. Both she and Christiane enjoyed being out and about. And, we saw a beautiful sunset:

sunset in bellingham


The city of Bellingham is surrounded by nature. We saw a family of deer walking in front of Darius’ building in the middle of the city. And, on our walk along the sound, we saw a mother and baby sea otter.

The city — indeed the entire region — features not only wonderful wildlife, but also fantastic sunsets. It is a truly beautiful part of the world.

Christiane

Although Christiane and Darius are in a brand new building, there was an unexpected challenge with the elevator. It was most unexpected. In Beirut, where they used to live, there were both regular (predictable) and irregular (expected, but without advance notice) electricity blackouts. This situation added adventure to elevator excursions: a pizza delivery man once got stuck in elevator for about 20 minutes. It was a disaster. (The pizza was cold when it finally arrived.) In America, I assured Darius and Christiane, this would not happen. However:

“It doesn’t work!” I exclaimed when Nazy asked why we weren’t going anywhere.

“Just push
1* for the ground floor, Dan.” Nazy directed. “It’s easy.”

Why didn’t I think of that?” I thought. “Yes, dear,” I replied. “But it won’t go anywhere.”

The door, on the third floor, closed and then opened and then closed and then opened and then opened — ad infinitum. The elevator made no vertical movements. A neighbor, who joined us on the elevator, said that I had caused the problem by pressing ‘
1*’ before the doors had closed.

“It’s
her fault.” I replied, pointing at Nazy.

mirror all of us again

However, the neighbor was wrong. The elevator randomly refused to move. I ‘fixed’ it on one occasion with a simple trick that I had learned from an adolescent experience with a vending machine: I kicked it. But that only worked one time. When we left, Darius was negotiating with building management. BTW: A flakey elevator may not seem to be a big problem, but if you’re trying to get downstairs with a stroller and a baby, an elevator is a necessity.

As we walked with Christiane, she asked that I correct a misstatement in
last week’s letter. It was a sentence that was not aligned with objective fact. In the letter, I noted that Darius slept the most of the 36 hours that he was in Beirut. That was accurate. However, I also said that he was awake, with Leandra, most of the time on the flight home. Leandra was awake and so was Christiane. Darius spent a significant portion of the flight in REM sleep.

It turns out that Nazy’s cousin, Farrokh is a professor at Western Washington University. He and his wife took us all to dinner while we were visiting.

We had a smooth and uneventful flight home. Now we’re getting ready for a series of Halloween parties. I’d go as the President of the United States, but I’ve lost my pumpkin costume. And — a special note to all drivers of white cars. Melika’s car was hit from behind at a stop sign by someone who’s “foot slipped”. The same thing happened to us a few weeks ago. Beware of driving a white car at a traffic light.

For last week's letter, click
here

darius, Christiane, Nazy

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