Whitman boys.

Did I tell you the story about the tickets? I didn’t? Shucks! Here’s how it goes:

First, know that I really appreciate TDW’s company. Not just her personal company, but the multidisciplinary planning firm that employs her. This fast-growing, successful company has a business model built on, among other things, the notion that employees don’t just like to party, they need to party.

I’m cool with that. So suffice it that I have enjoyed many a barbecue, formal dance, and picnic catered and bartended by TDW’s generous corporate masters. Bread! Bread and circuses!

So the time for the annual summer barbecue came around. It was midsummer. As on most weekend days, we were prostrated by the heat, the only factor organizing our dazed staggering being The Gus’s nap schedule. So we got a late-ish start toward the event, which was at Hagg Lake. TDW had been to Hagg Lake; I hadn’t. She remarked, “I don’t know why they picked a site so far away. It’s at least half an hour, maybe 45 minutes away.” Good point, TDW, that’s a trek when the baby has only a 2 1/2 hour gap between naps.

Hagg Lake turns out to be a giant manmade lake more than an hour from our house, at the very eastern edge of Washington County. Eeps! But we arrived, yes, we arrived, and lo! the theme was “luau,” and there was a Hawaiian band, and we had dressed The Gus in his little Hawaiian shirt, purely by accident! We arrived after most people had eaten, and just before they started the door prize raffle. TDW got us a piece of chicken and a beer for The Gus while I scampered over to gather a door-prize ticket. Almost instantly, the drawing started. There went the water gun (much coveted that day, of course). There went the pedicure at the swanky downtown salon — drat! And then, the grand prize: a night out, a fancy dinner, a concert.

OMIGOD OMIGOD OMIGOD WE WON!!!!

Which is how we came, earlier this evening, to be sitting down the middle toward the left at the Rose Garden, gazing upon Britain’s goodwill ambassador to the world, Sir Elton Hercules John.

So we must be getting old. At one point TDW leaned over and shouted in my ear, “Isn’t this awfully LOUD?!?” Bright, too, babe. It occurred to me that it has been a long time since I’ve been to a full-bore, glitzy, flashing-lights-and-bass-pounding-your-chest ROCK CONCERT, and here I was, giddily enjoying one by somebody who is six months shy of 60, who has been making a living writing songs since before I was born. Nota bene: his first “greatest hits” collection was released in 1974. Think on that.

Gawrsh.

So, some observations:

Sometimes I wonder if I’ve been living under a rock. Something that strikes me as amazing and wonderful comes to my attention, I mention it to someone else, and they say, “oh, sure. Didn’t you know about that?

So it was with the swifts. A giant roost of Vaux’s swifts takes up nightly residence in the chimney at Chapman Elementary School in northwest Portland for about a fortnight at the end of each summer. By “giant” I mean thousands, tens of thousands of lithe little birds, swirling and billowing around before disappearing into the chimney at sunset as though they were sucked down a drain.

Here, a Cooper’s hawk, before the onslaught. It’s just a fast-moving buffet for him:

and the game begins:

that same Cooper’s hawk, being given a hard time by about 3000 swifts:

you may need to view the larger size at Flickr to appreciate the littering of tiny birds across this big sky:

Did I mention the weather cooperated?

down the hatch:

did I almost forget The Gus? The Gus loves swifts. We’re teaching him rudimentary sign language, and he uses the same sign for “bird” as for “plane” and “kite”: one hand raised up in the air, waving slowly back and forth as though he was holding a lighter during a power ballad at a Poison concert, accompanied by a slack-jawed look of rapture. (Also applies to Poison concertgoers.) In any event, that hand didn’t come down all evening.

A plum, actually.

Sorry for being so scarce on the blogging scene. Things have been mad–not at my work, at TDW’s. I’ve had to be at home a couple of aberrant afternoons, and that just throws all our regular schedules off. Hence less blogging.

But The Gus remains cute, especially in his outfit with bear-ears.

Cute, I’m telling you:

I continue to take random “art shots”:

and take pictures of bees:

But I always come back to The Gus.

He is industrious:

And having worked up an appetite, eats well:

We went to Seaside for the Labor Day weekend. It turns out that in my 28 years in Oregon, I had never been to Seaside. When we arrived, it was 90 degrees–how often does that happen?

Let’s discuss the tourist amenities: never mind, let’s discuss the beach. Seaside’s beach is three miles long and at its center is a quarter-mile of flat, fine sand from beachfront to surf. It’s unlike anyplace I’ve been in Oregon.

Naturally, The Gus appreciated the opportunity to eat sand.

And to dig sand:

And to stand up petulantly waiting to be picked up from the sand:

And to be photographed in carelessly tossed-off but artsy poses in the sand:

Meanwhile, I took up skimboarding:

Skimboarding injury not shown.