Test Roses

While I have been to the Portland Airport and spent some time just over the river in Vancouver, Washington, I had never visited Portland before our road trip.  It's a fun city.  Since we were there such a short time, we visited all the touristy things like Powell Books, Voodoo Donuts, the Saturday Market, the Sunnyside neighborhood, and the "Keep Portland Weird" sign.  But my most favorite attraction in the city was at Washington Park - The International Rose Test Garden.  The garden's main purpose is to test new varieties of roses.  It is one of the oldest test gardens in the United States.  Here's a little bit of information and history.  The park is stunningly beautiful and smelled so good.

 Even though this is the rose garden, when you first walk in these hydrangeas are at the entrance gate.  Kind of funny, but they were amazing - the size of my head.

We only had a couple of hours to visit, but I could have spent all day there taking pictures and literally smelling the roses.

Having it Down

Exactly two weeks ago (from the date this was written), I sent a small package to a friend in Scotland.  I had to fill out a form in triplicate and pay $14 for first class postage, which is about $11 more than it would have cost to send the package in the US.  Thankfully it did come with a tracking number that would supposedly follow it all the way to its destination.  I was told it would take about 10 days to get there.  The length of time it takes to send something internationally through regular mail always makes me wonder.  It literally takes a day or less to get to most places in the world by air, even with multiple stop overs, so if ten days is the norm for a package to get to the UK, what is happening that makes it take so long.  When I went to Scotland last year,  I flew to London and then took a TRAIN to Scotland and it didn't take 10 days!  But I am familiar with sending things abroad.  I don't understand it, but I accept it.

So when two days after sending the package I checked the tracking number to find that it arrived in London the day after sending it, I was pleasantly surprised.  If it were already in London a day later, it wouldn't take the full 10 days to arrive, would it?  The answer to that question was given 10 days later when, after wondering why I hadn't heard from my friend I checked the tracking once more, and other than a note that it had departed London for the destination, there were no other updates.  I asked whether that was "normal" with international mail and told that it wasn't exactly normal, but not abnormal in the summer, "Posties are a skeleton staff in the summer, July is when they usually take holidays - it's the trades' break so it may well be sitting at the local delivery office just waiting to go out." 

That made me feel better about the wait, I guess.  Until on the 25th, two weeks after mailing, I checked the tracking again and it finally had some movement....BACK TO THE US!!!  Somehow after 13 days it has "arrived" in Jamaica (Queens), New York.  

Are you kidding me?!?!? And this isn't the first time I've experienced international mail that has taken a detour.  Last summer, while in Scotland, I sent some postcards out including one to myself (I like to have the stamp/postmark for my journal) on our second day in town.  About 6 months later, they arrived in California with a postmark not from Scotland but from the Philippines.

This is such a first world problem, but it's curious that we are SO ADVANCED in so many things, how is international shipping still this archaic.

Update:  As of  6/26 the package has been "processed" in Jamaica, New York, "arrived" in Newark, New Jersey, and "departed" Newark, "currently in transit to the destination" once again.  We shall see.

Giants

The Monday after school got out for the summer, I left on a road trip headed north.  Our plan was to drive up to Portland, Oregon, spend a couple of days, and then head south along the Oregon Coast.  We were gone about two weeks in all.
We had all been on numerous California road trips so decided to blow through most of our LONG state, not wanting to spend too much time seeing parts we'd already seen.  However, once we got past Sacramento, we headed west and spent some time along the coast of the northern part of the state making scheduled stops in Mendocino, Fort Bragg, and Crescent City before heading up to Portland.  Here are some highlights of the drive up...

We did stop along the Central Coast to visit friends in Morro Bay and do some wine tasting. 

We made a quick pitstop in Salinas.  It is called "The Salad Bowl of the World" due to its agriculture industry.  John Steinbeck (home above) called it home.  I've never seen artichokes as part of the landscape before.

 We spent a few hours in Mendocino, which is a beautiful little seaside town.  It is known for its beautiful cliffside hiking trails.

 A few miles north of Mendocino is Fort Bragg.  I REALLY wanted to stop here and visit Glass Beach.  Years and years of using the beach/ocean as a trash can created what is now known as Glass Beach due to all the sea glass that washed up on the shores after being rolled and tumbled in ocean water.

For years, I've seen pictures of how beautiful the beaches were with the sea glass glistening in the tides.  Sadly, others felt the same way and got there before we did.  The sea glass has essentially been depleted by tourism.  You can see little bits of it in the sand and rocks, but the large shiny pieces are nearly non-existant anymore.

 Near Crescent City is the entrance to the Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park.  This park preserves old-growth Redwood trees.  The park is just beautiful with lovely hiking trails, and the giant Redwoods are mind blowing.

We spent a few hours in the park before heading north to Portland.  More later!

Not Charging

This past week, I spent about an hour at the Apple Store having one of my Apple devices looked out.  Back in December, I purchased a new iPad Pro.  It's the one that has the pencil and the click-on keyboard.  It is very cool, but weirdly last month it started giving me some trouble.  When I plugged it in for a charge, rather than showing the charging "lightning bolt"on the display it said, "Not Charging".  It was in fact charging, just at an incredibly slow rate.  I looked online trying to trouble shoot, but none of their tips worked.  The USB plug and cord worked fine with my phone, so I knew it wasn't the cord either.  It would sometimes take 24+ hours to get it charged to 100%, and then when it did get there it lost its charge very fast.  It would be down to 10% within a couple of hours of it being at 100% and without any use on my part.  So something was up.
With the end of the school year and leaving right after on my road trip, I didn't have the time to deal with it until our return.  Oddly enough, upon my return the "Not Charging" disappeared, and I got the lightning bolt back.  It seemed to be back to its fast charging as well.  I thought maybe it was bumped in the travel bag or using different plugs throughout the trip or something made it charge correctly again - technology often has a way of working out its little hiccups with a restart or for no reason at all.  Unfortunately though, the iPad still wasn't keeping its charge.  During those first few months, once it was charged to 100% it could go 4-5 days with medium use before having to plug it in again.  That was no longer the case.  Even with it turned off, by the end of the day it was dead.
I hate dealing with sales/service people because I always have a feeling I'm being finagled.  While I have an assertive personality when I am knowledgeable about something, when I'm not my meek side shows up which usually means I'm opening up my wallet and saying, "Here."  Needless to say, I didn't want to take it to the Apple Store and kept putting off making the appointment.  The fact that the iPad was just a half a year old, I knew that I couldn't just let it slide or I'd hate using it.  So I made the appointment.
For the day or two before, the iPad was watched very carefully so I could tell them everything I knew - how long it took to charge, how long the charge would last when used or not used, etc.  And I knew that my "little story" about it "Not Charging" in June would be suspicious since it wasn't doing it anymore so I wanted to be armed with all I could.
The store was packed the day I went in.  Even though I had an appointment, I waited a bit, but was helped about 10 minutes later.  The "Genius" listened to my spiel.  He was very nice and didn't make me feel like an idiot.  However, because it seemed to be charging correctly, he felt that there probably wasn't much he could do that day as we'd probably have to open a case and create a history of issues before anything would be dealt with.  He did do a basic reset to see if that would help me any.  I was convinced, I would leave that day without anything changing and would have to come back again and again to have anything done.
When the setting reset was finished, he had me log back in and was ready to send me on my way.  But before he did, he plugged it back in one more time just to see.  To my surprise, the "Not Charging" came up on the display again.  He noticed it first.  When he pointed it out to me I literally clapped and said, "Oh, yay!  It did it!"  That never happens.  Usually the problems never occur at the place giving the service and you look and sound like an idiot trying to explain them.  I was so relieved that he would see it with his own eyes.
From there, he had a better plan.  He did a full reset to factory settings, and if the "Not Charging" came up again he could replace the iPad with a new one.  I waited with bated breath, fingers crossed that it would come up again so I didn't have to worry about it anymore.  That factory reset took some time, so he kept leaving.  Finally I logged back in, and he plugged it in.  And the message CAME BACK UP AGAIN.  So that was it.  He typed in his notes, went in the back of the store, and returned with a brand new iPad.
The upside is the new iPad is working like it should - charging fast and lasting several days once charged.  The downside is that the new iPad assumes the old iPad's warranty.  So rather than having a year warranty from the day I received the new iPad, the warranty on it only lasts until December when I bought the old one.  I've never used a warranty on an Apple product until now (Knock on wood), so hopefully the old iPad was an anomaly and the new one will be just fine.

A Letter

Right after summer break started, I went on a road trip for a couple of weeks.  I will share more on that at another time.  It was a great trip, but I was ready to get home to start my relaxing.  The day after we got back, I had to have a wisdom tooth out.  It wasn't something I was too worried about, but I wanted to get it over with so it wasn't something I had to think about during break.  The "surgery" was fine, done with just local anesthesia, and I was home resting on the couch just a couple of hours later.  While things were tender the first couple of days, I felt pretty good.  The doctor had prescribed me some pain meds, but aspirin was enough to keep me comfortable those first few days.  It's been a week since I had the surgery, and I feel worse than I did those first couple of days.  That's normal, I've been told, but the whole right side of my face just aches.  I had the week check up appointment and was told all is healing nicely and that this pain is expected.  Thank goodness for ibuprofen as I've been taking it by the fistful every four hours, and the prescribed Tylenol with Codeine has been a life saver at night the last few days as it's helped me sleep through the aches.
Speaking of Tylenol with Codeine, I've had that pain reliever prescribed a few times in my life.  But this was the first time I've received this letter, warning me of the addictive nature of the Codeine, from the insurance company.  It arrived about 3 days after having the prescription filled at the pharmacy.

Clearly, this is a reaction to the US being ranked #1 in the world for opioid usage.  #somuchwinning While I want to applaud this small effort, I'm not so sure a 2 page letter is going to stop our opioid problem.  If you haven't been living under a rock and keep informed on current events, the information in this letter isn't anything new or surprising.  And I'm not so sure those who have become addicted would have been deterred by a letter like this.  The problem is so much bigger than information.  In reality, the letter is probably more about the insurance companies covering their butts in the event of a lawsuit.   This seems more like a way to say, "We're doing something," than actually doing something that will work.  All I know is that sending out this letter and the postage it takes to mail it is probably being tacked onto my insurance costs and not just being sent out of the goodness of the insurance company's "heart".