The Seven Swords, Warrior Life Center

Andy and I started going to the Seven Swords/Warrior Life Academy in Tacoma on Monday & Wednesday evenings.  The class is split up-the first half hour is with Nikki learning jujitsu.  Recently, we have been learning : "How to fall without hurting yourself".

 The last half hour is with Ken., we get to learn to handle plastic swords and medieval European martial arts.  The blending of the two styles makes it super fun!

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Presently, I only have plans to go here through the end of August.  Once school starts, I will being doing my Hapkido and Improv classes like last year.

Smoke form British Columbia and the Burke Museum at University of Washington

August blew in with high temperatures and smoke form all the wild fires in British Columbia.  This was taken from our morning walk.  It's a view of the Des Moines marina and Mt. Rainier.  Our region had the worst air quality for 10 days.  It was great when it finally blew out and we could see the blue of the sky again.

This way (west ) is the Sound and the Olympic mountain range......

On one of these smokey days, Mom and I drove to the University of Washington to visit the Burke Museum,   They have the best dinosaur collection in Western Washington.  As you can see, I am not even as tall as this leg bone.

This coastal native american carved seal was stolen from an Alaskan village.  Fortunately, the tribe is allowing the seal to be on display at the Burke, it will go back some day.

After our time at the Burke we meet up with Andrea, got a coffee and walked around campus.  My Dad did his undergraduate degree here in Computer Science.  Below is their gothic library built in the 1920"s.

Inside the library..

 Outside the reference room there was one of the world's largest books.  That's Andrea.

Mom and I at the fountain.  Mt. Rainier is supposed to be in the background......

I enjoyed walking around Dad's University.  I look forward to going myself someday in the future.

Visiting the Mid-West-Minnesota

 Grandma Judy and Tha Tha have moved into a retirement community.  Their apartment strangely looked like all of their other  homes.  Grandma said it was because she still had the same furniture.  I like their home, it reminds me of a magazine.  Unfortunately, Tha tha was in the hospital during our visit.

 Mayowood is one of the big old homes in Rochester Minnesota, own originally by one of the Mayo brothers.  We had a tour with Grandma Judy.  The Mayo Clinic took ownership of it in 2014 and had done a lot of needed preservation work.  The house looked great!

 It was strangely cool in Minnesota for late June.  Fortunately, I had my sweatshirt.

 This garage has a fountain on top.  Mom and I found that to be odd.  On Monday, I started another camp at Quarry Hill.  This year it was about fossils, rocks in general and a lot of digging.  Excavating is not my thing, but I had to do it to know it.

 My class met out in the garage.  We got to ride a bus to one of our excavation sites.  It poured on the way back to Quarry Hill.  It was a good camp, but next year I will chose a different area to study.

Grandma bought me this book on our trip.  Ryan Higa is one of my favorite You tubers.