Women at Work & Play

I spent last weekend (extended—Friday through Sunday) with good friend Nina Rook, and two of her female friends, on South Finger Island in the San Juans, where Nina has a cabin. South Finger is one of two very small private islands tucked inside a slightly larger island (Sucia), which is a state park—all located just north of Orcas Island, one of the major islands in the San Juan group. Nina is part of a group that bought the island about 28 years ago, and we were there to help clean up the property and enjoy ourselves.

It proved a wonderfully relaxing weekend, even though we committed ourselves to several bouts of rolling log rounds about, sawing, clipping and hauling branches large and small, burning accumulated wood and clearing trails. In between work bouts we indulged in yoga sessions led by Nina (who teaches yoga), trekking around the island, sitting quietly observing the birds, flowers and water, eating several wonderful meals and lots of good conversation.

Our prize observation for the weekend was this hummingbird nest. Nina managed to catch the bird sitting on its tiny perch, which was all of 1 ½” high and wide. In all, the weekend was great fun, including meeting a couple of new friends I thoroughly enjoyed.


On the health front, I am still waiting for word from my 2nd opinion UW physician on when I’ll be able to see him. Meantime I had another CT scan today, of the chest and liver and abdomen, to provide a baseline for future comparison. Can’t say the “barium vanilla smoothie” was the best thing I’ve ever gulped down, but it was tolerable.

Phil and I are scheduled for a weekend retreat at Harmony Hill, from Friday noon through Sunday afternoon. He’s not too thrilled, but is at least willing to come along and participate. We’ll see what interesting things I learn in this visit! We’ll be hightailing it back to Seattle on Sunday afternoon to make our book group gathering at 6 pm, where we’ll be discussing Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure.” That should be great fun.