I walked around the former Wayne golf course yesterday, my first walk there in over a year. I walked along the tree line on the south side of the course after crossing the first bridge, and went back over the smaller bridge to the other side of the river near the East end. I took a bunch of photos of the tree line paths, but I wanted to show you the houses of some golf course neighbors today.

in my Memories folder this morning -

I'm terrible when it comes to remembering birthdays and stuff. A photo of this balloon popped up in my FB Memories just now (again :) it happens every year) This balloon, which is 7" in diameter and filled with helium was given to us by my Mother when Nathan was born 29 years ago today! I just went into our BR and reached up on a bookshelf to retrieve it, where it was hiding behind some of my camera things. Joy. Happy BD Nate! You are loved...

Ooops! Just corrected the years. 28, not 29. 😍

I/we walk the same paths over and over again, and they're different every time. The weather is always a factor, but for me as a photographer, the lighting is the biggest variable. Mr/Ms Weather is always playing around, and that's why I like walking outside.

I did my first photo walk of the year through McMenamins here in Bothell. McMenamins Anderson School is a "1930s school-turned-resort, including a hotel, 3 restaurants, whiskey shed, salt water pool, movie theater". Their gardeners and grounds keepers do a good job, and I took over a hundred photos. I'll post more of them later.

Redmond Microsoft buildings Part 2: more glass, reflections, lines, color and shadows...

This was in this morning's Seattle Times. The bridge shown here, next to the Tukwila Community Center, was 4 blocks from our house when we lived in the south end. I took thousands of Green River Trail photos in the 20 years we lived in Tukwila, and I just dug up a few shots of this bridge. I found some snow photos in my quick search just now, but there's one without snow I took from the bridge looking East.

The last time I explored the Microsoft campus in Redmond was nearly 3 decades ago. Whew! When I was riding the Light Rail the other day, I was remembering trees and gardens? Nope. My second favorite photo subjects are buildings and glass, and there was a lot of glass, reflections, lines and shadows. My kind of photo walk :)

This is one of my favorite Georgetown walk photos, from 2018. "Pie" was Dad's nickname for our Mom. This is a 2018 photo I took of a storefront in Georgetown. "Pie" was the nickname our Dad always called Mom. I think it had something to do with her favorite desert: Apple Pie ala Mode.

A lot of words in today's post. I need to find more photos to share. Also, I'm going to order "The Unknown Craftsman: A Japanese Insight into Beauty", by Soetsu Yanagi. "Yanagi Sōetsu discovered beauty in everyday ordinary and utilitarian objects created by nameless and unknown craftsmen. According to Yanagi, utilitarian objects made by the common people are "beyond beauty and ugliness". Below are a few criteria of mingei art and crafts: made by anonymous crafts people produced by hand in quantity inexpensive used by the masses functional in daily life representative of the region in which it was produced. Yanagi's book The Unknown Craftsman has become an influential work since its first release in English in 1972. It examines the Japanese way of viewing and appreciating art and beauty in everyday crafts that include pottery, lacquer, textiles, and woodwork."

"Damn!that felt good!" - Part 2: I got my wife out to walk with me 3 hours later, our first walk together since our return to Bothell. The photo of my Schwinn in the earlier post was an old photo. I took these photos with my Canon shutter on the auto "Sports" setting while we were walking. We wanted to keep a steady pace, so I just held my camera out there and clicked away without my usual pausing and framing, etc. Not bad.

Damn! That felt good! I rode my old Schwinn this morning, for the first time in over a year...a cool, crisp 7am morning ride with a blue sky and puffy white clouds. I went down through town to the Landing Park and along the Sammamish River to Blyth Park, back and forth over the two bridges down that way, and retraced my route back home. Very nice...

I rode the new LRT extension today, from downtown Bellevue to Microsoft's Redmond Campus. The pedestrian overpass connecting Microsoft's buildings on both sides of Highway 520 is very cool. I love the umbrella like canopy covering the walkway...

a few non-buildings shots from my downtown buildings walk the other day...

The red brick clock tower is the King Street train station here in Seattle. I love building relections of other buldings, and I took the reflection photos from the walkway between Chinatown and the station. In the first photo, the little pointy white building in the center, the Smith Tower, was the tallest building in Seattle when I was a kid. The tall black building was the tallest building west of the Mississippi when it weas completed in 1985.

I hung out with my brother Mike this weekend. He got a hip replacement last Friday. Ouch! He's doing well. I bussed and railed (LRT) my way to the hospital, and during a layover en route, I got in a downtown buildings photo walk. When the lighting is right, I love the angles, the colors and lines, the reflections...everything!