Scout’s Summer Vacation

The last couple weeks have been a lot of fun. Two Fridays ago I played hooky at work and headed up with some friends to Butchart Gardens, consisting of acres of floral and garden arrangements up in Victoria, Canada, across a ferry.

Being away from home the whole day, I had to find someone to look after Scout. It just so happens that my neighbors have a dog and were more than willing to stop by. In fact, they even had Scout over to their house for most of the day, and loved having him. Those neighbors are gonna come in mighty handy this summer.

Of those who went to the Gardens on Friday, one was just turning three and had a birthday party the next day, at Lake Sammamish. I brought Scout and a paddleboard, and we had a great time in the water. Lots of little kids clambering over the board, and Scout did an admirable job staying on board. He was quite tuckered out by the end though.

The next day, Sunday, I took Scout to a park in Kirkland near Lake Washington, which included trails leading down to the water’s edge.

On Monday I got some fantastic news at work. A project I’ve been working on for the past five finally bore fruit, and NIST – a branch of the government that sets rules around cryptography – changed their rules based on a presentation I gave back in March. Took longer than I would have liked, but it’s still awesome news.

That evening I went out to see the movie Sound of Freedom, a really powerful film about child sex trafficking. Hard to watch at times. Afterwards, while credits were rolling, one of the audience members got up and said, “I’m shaking right now because I never do this, but through the last half hour of this movie, I just felt so strongly that we need to say a prayer together. Would you all join me?” And we did, and it was a really cool experience.

On Tuesday I fed the missionaries dinner, and experimented with a salmon recipe. Didn’t turn out half bad.

Afterwards I walked Scout to Juanita Beach, where I spotted a bald eagle stalking some fish. Eventually he dove in gracefully and plucked one out of the lake. Very cool to see.

On Wednesday I brought Scout to work, to see what that would be like. I can’t bring him to my floor, since my coworker is very allergic. So I worked mostly from the roof, found a shady spot to hunker down in. Complications arose during lunch though. I tied Scout up in an outdoor eating area where I’ve seen other dogs, and darted in to grab food. I figured he’d be fine with other people around. But no, shortly after I left I heard him yapping. I darted out with my food to stop the ruckus, but hadn’t had time to grab a fork. After calming him down I dashed back in and before the door had stopped closing behind me he’d started back up again. Grabbed the fork and rushed back. Sigh.

After lunch I walked him around the area between buildings, then headed back for a meeting. I spotted a couple of security guys wandering around from afar, thought not much of it. A few seconds after entering the building, those security guys caught up with me and let me know that there had been a report of a disturbance, that my dog had been left unattended and caused a ruckus. They rotely let me know that leaving dogs unattended for any length of time was against the rules, and asked for my employee ID so they could have a record that we’d had this conversation. So that’s how a permanent record got added to my file that Scout is a potential menace to the workplace.

So, I won’t be bringing him back to the office any time soon.

Some weeks ago, a couple friends reached out saying they’d entered in a “48-hour film festival” and asked if I’d help them out. Participants would receive the genre, as well as a few required elements (character name, line of dialogue, prop), and then have 48 hours to shoot and edit a 4-7 minute film. That 48-hour period was a week or so prior, and on Thursday of last week was the premiere. The project had rented out a local cinema and had creators and friends/family attend to show their film on the big screen. There were far too many submissions to get it all done in one sitting, so the project had been showing a few of these films each night of the week, 15 or so at a time.

Genre: fish out of water

Required character: Dino Moore, event planner

Required dialogue: “Calm down, there’s enough for everyone.”

Required prop: a mop

Our submission:

Ours was near the end of the lineup, and some of the other films were pretty impressive. I wasn’t expecting a strong reaction to ours, but the crowd loved it.

After all 15 films had been shown, we were given a QR code that pointed to a voting page, where all attendees could select their three favorite entries. The winner would be designated Audience Choice winner for that session. The winner of each session would be shown at some future awards ceremony, where the Seattle-wide Audience Choice winner would be selected. The winner of that goes on to compete at the national level.

Anyways, our film ended up winning Audience Choice! Very cool.

On Friday I took the day off of work again, to head down and take part in a parachute packing class. I think I’m gonna get back into skydiving, and it’s been a couple years since I’ve really gone regularly. Gotta brush up. By the time I’d wrapped up there, six hours had passed, and I’d packed a parachute three times. Felt pretty confident in the process by the end, but it is certainly physically taxing.

The next day, Saturday, I attended a friend’s garden-party-themed birthday, had fun there, and then afterwards attended an outdoor concert featuring a celtic bluegrass fusion band. Had a marvelous time.