This photo is from Friday afternoon with the clouds on the hillside near us.

Saturday morning there was pink in the sunrise behind the Christmas tree.

But it was actually a nice day.  The plan had been for Tom, Mo, my dad and me to go to the Washington Vintage Motorcyclists club potluck.  But it was cancelled as the building was being used as an evacuation site for flooded Burlington.  So we had an impromptu potluck here, adding Russ, Jay and the grandkids.

We then went out to dinner with Thomas and Diana joining us at Max Dales in Mount Vernon.  It had been closed by the flooding too but had reopened.  It was a lovely dinner where we celebrated my father’s upcoming birthday.

Today is a lazy day.  We did the animal chores.  I noticed that the web cam at Whistlin’ Jacks is functioning again, but the river is still running high.  We did get a new flood warning yesterday for flooding to start again tomorrow.  So nervously watching the forecasts and river levels again.  We may need to get more sandbags.

Now we are watching the Seahawks play Philip Rivers and the Indianapolis Colts.  So far it is a tie game.

On a totally different note, I have been doing some research into the Green River Killer, Gary Ridgway.  His killings were an important part of my upbringing as he brought fear into our lives.  Whenever we went over the Green River on the way to the family cabin in my 1980s and 1990s I looked down into the river wondering if there were bodies there.  But fairly recently I learned that a classmate of mine in Junior High and High School was a victim of his.  Her name was Mary Bridget Meehan.  Here are her photos in my Chinook Junior High School yearbooks.  She was in the year ahead of me.  I don’t remember knowing her.

She grew up in my neighborhood in Ashwood.  She hung out at Y.E.S. and the bowling alley in Bellevue like I did.  She went missing September 15, 1982, and her body was found November 13, 1983.  She was the ninth known victim of him.  I am reading the Ann Rule book, Green River, Running Red.  I am most of the way through it, and it is horrifying.  Some of the victims were found within feet of highway 410 which we drove frequently.  It is all so spooky.  And this spookiness infiltrated by teenage and early adult years until the killer was finally identified.  I feel for these victims and their families.  My understanding is that Gary Ridgeway is dying, and I wanted to bring some attention to his evil deeds.