Blow, hump and tail

Right, sounds like a typical Friday night in college. But actually, those were the bywords we were given today as we kept an eye out for gray whales in Puget Sound. Michelle's mom Freda is in town, visiting from New Orleans, and we took her this morning for a four-hour whale-watching tour out of Everett, 45 minutes or so north of here.


When we got to the dock -- with only a minute to spare thanks to some unusually heavy traffic in Seattle -- we were greeted by a nice young woman in a dark green and black Gore-Tex jacket. Her intro was the Northwest equivalent of a SoCal restaurant server's:

"Hello, I'm Kate and I'll be your naturalist today!"

OK then, let's go!

Our tour boat, the Island Explorer 3, puttered around the shores of Whidbey, Hat and Camano islands for a couple of hours with Kate, on a loudspeaker, masking the absence of any whales by pointing out some seabirds -- her favorite is the double-crested cormorant -- and a few very cool California Sea Lions, including one that we saw chomping into a salmon he had just caught. Very Mutual of Omaha-y.

This sightseeing company, Island Adventures, guarantees that you'll see a whale on the tour, though, and Captain Mike seemed none to eager to give in without a hit. Finally he said he had received word that some grays were 10-15 minutes from our location, and he opened the throttle.

When we got there, sure enough, a group of three of these massive animals were surfacing frequently -- first a plume of vapor and water, followed by a good long view of its humped, barnacled back as it rolled through the water and then, once or twice, a glimpse of its tail, or fluke. We were close enough to hear them exhale and to smell their rank breath. Pretty spectacular, really.

We had to laugh at Kate, though, who was really into her job and couldn't contain her enthusiasm for the whales. At one point she was describing how remarkably aware they are of their own enormous bodies -- 45 feet long, as much as 3,000 pounds -- "and remember," she said, "they're living in a three-dimensional world while ours is only two-dimensional."

My stomach begs to differ; it's getting more 3-D every day.

Michelle took some great pictures of the whales, and I'm sure she'll post some soon. I just wanted to give a quick report with a couple of snapshots.

Chilly out there, though not as cold as either of the baseball games I attended this week. It was a very fun day, and as we said we were glad we had Freda here as a "tourist" to entertain. We'd never have taken the trip today on our own.

Obama is no Jesus

The other day I was playing cards and glanced up at the TV to see some sportscasters laughing at what looked to be a clip of Barack Obama bowling. I checked it out later and, sure enough, stumping for votes in Pennsylvania Obama had the bright idea to establish his blue-collar cred with a trip to the lanes.

He should have taken a minute to think about whether he could bowl. Or at least asked if the lanes had those bumpers like they use for 5-year-olds' birthday parties.

Gutter ball after gutter ball. Check it out. Pathetic.



Hillary Clinton, no dummy, jumped right on the opportunity, challenging Obama to a "bowl-off" for the nomination, even offering, as Maureen Dowd points out in this excellent op-ed piece, to spot him two frames.

I don't know if Hillary can bowl either, or McCain. And I'm not sure settling the presidency in the alley is the way to go anyway. If it were, I guess my candidate would be Jesus -- no, the other Jesus, from one of the great movies of all time, "The Big Lebowski."

Now here's how to bowl:

So Long, Celexa

About a year ago, it dawned on me that I wasn't handling my new status as Cancer Girlfriend very well. I was depressed and freaked out. Mark would turn his head to the side to look at the clock and I'd jump out of my skin, thinking he was having another seizure. (He does a slow head turn every time he has a seizure.) I did the "watchout! Mark's having a seizure!" routine about 15 times a day. It got on his nerves. It was making me crazy.

I kept replaying the moment when Mark slid out of his chair and went into an hours-long Grand Mal seizure. I kept imagining all the worst case scenarios. I couldn't stop worrying. I'd be walking around the Home Depot sizing up power tools, and my heart would suddenly start racing out of the blue. I'd be driving down the highway and seize up with a sudden feeling of panic. I was a basketcase.

I tried for a long time -- five months -- to bull through the side-effects of Cancer Girlfriend-itis. Then in March, I said screw it. I went to see the doctor, who practically flung the anti-anxiety drug Celexa at me and told me to get started on it right away.

Now, a year later, it felt like time to wean off the drugs that got me through the hardest time. Recently I've been constantly clenching my jaw -- through the entire day. My face hurt. For some reason, the heart palpitations had come back. And then, there was the fact that I was eerily in a good, upbeat mood all the time. That's mostly great, but when your boyfriend is dealing with the sadness of having brain cancer, it's kind of weird to always be looking at that sadness through a veil of drug-induced good mood. I found myself wanting to feel my feelings again. And so I went to the doctor again. I started weaning off the drugs two weeks ago. My last dose was Thursday.

So long, Celexa, hello crazy ass side effects.

For four days now (it takes three days for the drug to get completely out of your system) I've been walking around feeling like my brain is floating inside a water balloon. I'm disoriented, wobbly, dizzy, spacey, forgetful -- did I mention spacey? I have had the constant feeling like I need to throw up. Mark says it sounds just like chemo side effects. Too bad I didn't time it to coincide with chemo week.

At the ballgame last night, I found myself just staring out into the distance, and then sort of coming to again, however many minutes lost to a spaceout. Today, I totally missed a warning at the morning news meeting not to post a story before a certain time because of an embargo. The story went up too early, creating all kinds of havoc.

Last night I went online to try and figure out how the hell long I have to put up with this Swiss cheese memory, the weird bobbing brain, the space outs, the dizziness.

People who have been through this before report that it can take anywhere between one week and two months to fully get past the withdrawal.

According to one study on Pubmed: SSRI withdrawel symptoms "include dizziness, light-headedness, insomnia, fatigue, anxiety/agitation, nausea, headache, and sensory disturbance. The syndrome may last up to 3 weeks." Sensory disturbance. Yike.

Celexa is an SSRI -- selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor. It keeps you cheery by keeping serotonin -- a cheer-inducing substance -- circulating in your brain longer than usual. Usually, seratonin floats around in your brain juice for a while, then is removed -- a process called "reuptake." SSRI's block that "reuptake," forcing the serotonin -- and lots of it -- to stick around and keep you all cheered up.

So now, the serotonin plug has been pulled out of the drain. The seratonin is getting sucked out of my brain like nobody's business. It's a pretty disorienting experience.

Some say depression follows this little period of discombobulation. I'm hoping that won't be part of my experience. Some get it, some don't.

For now, I'm hoping every day I'll wake up and my brain won't feel like it's floating in a water balloon, and I'll stand up and won't feel like falling down. And I won't feel like barfing. And won't forget everything.

Maybe tomorrow.

Mid-season form, only colder

It was M&M Night at Safeco Field -- our first game of the season together -- and I must say we had our form down like it was the middle of summer. Michelle scored us the fancy-pants P-I tickets in the "Terrace Club," the exclusive second-level seating area with its own limited-access restrooms, concessions and lodge-like bar, and I rounded up our standard order: a jumbo "major league" dog and a microbrew for me ($14.50) and a regular "minor league" dog and giant diet Pepsi for her ($12.25), and we grabbed our front-row seats.

Here's the view:

We got to the game in the bottom of the first inning, and the Mariners' so-called clean-up hitter Richie Sexson was batting. As always, the usher asked us to wait for a break in the action before walking down to our seats, so we wouldn't block the other spectators' view.

"OK," I said, "we can wait until Sexson strikes out."

I hate to watch Sexson. He's 6-foot-8, a giant galumph of a first baseman who once upon a time hit home runs but now rarely makes any contact at all. In his seven-year career he has more strikeouts than hits. $15 million a year he makes.

"Oh, no," the usher said. "He's going to get a hit!"

I teased him about this apparently being his first game at Safeco Field. He laughed, and then when Richie whiffed with his signature giant swing-and-miss, we took our seats.

There was no snow, like on Opening Day, but it was still colder than hell in the park. Michelle was smart enough to bring the nice warm blanket that our friend Susan made for us, and she loaned it out for a couple of innings to Ken Bunting, the associate publisher from work, and his wife, whose name I never remember, sitting next to us. Eventually it got so cold they closed the roof, and that helped just a little.


Here's the inside bar where many of the Terrace Club fans, including the Buntings, retreated as the temp dropped:


Nice tight ballgame for the first seven innings. Felix Hernandez -- "King Felix," the Mariners' ace of the future, who turns all of 22 years old next week -- held the Rangers to one run and the score was tied going into the eighth inning.

Sexson predictably missed a couple of chances to help. When he came up for the third time the scoreboard flashed his stats so far: a .000 batting average for the young season and, for tonight, the notation "Struck out swinging" and "Struck out looking." I heard a lady behind us wonder aloud, "How's he gonna do it this time? Struck out sneezing?" I liked that. Mid-season cynicism from a regular fan.

I'd say Richie was in mid-season form too, but he obviously has a few kinks to work out. He only struck out three times. Once he managed to get wood on the ball for a weak popup out and another time he stroked a clean single to left field.

In the 8th Seattle's normally genius bullpen came in and gave up two runs, but the Mariners miraculously came back and scored three in the bottom of the inning to retake the lead. Then, totally unexpectedly, the usually lights-out closer J.J. Putz, one of the best in the game, blew the save in the ninth inning and Ms notched their first loss of the year.

Still, a fun night. There'll be more hot dogs and strikeouts where those came from, and in warmer weather too.

Langston on assignment

Triple treat this morning: I walked up to my current favorite West Seattle hang, Bakery Nouveau, to meet P-I reporter Jennifer Langston for an almond croissant and cappuccino.

These dudes know how to make a croissant. In fact everything I've had from this bakery is excellent; Michelle and I are baguette regulars. Even the coffee's good.

It was really nice to catch up with Langston, who gets my vote for best all-around reporter and writer in the P-I newsroom. I had some hits and misses in my time as metro editor there, but the one thing I know I got right was spotting Jennifer's talent (going ... well, not wasted exactly, but underutilized) in the paper's north-suburban bureau and moving her into a vital beat that we created together: Seattle-area growth and development.

She totally rocked in the gig until ducking out on a one-year leave with her husband, Seattle Times reporter Craig Welch, who won a Harvard Nieman Fellowship for the 2006-07 academic year. Jen had a dream opportunity as Craig's tag-along: She was able to audit any class at Harvard, as he was, but without the fellows' thesis requirements. Craig's now on leave writing a book, and Jennifer's back at the P-I working as a general assignment reporter.

Anyway, she was going to be in West Seattle this morning for a story, so we agreed to meet over coffee. She talked about what she's been up to lately, I talked about our upcoming road trip -- she was encouraging about the book idea I've kicked around -- and we chatted about the news biz and how much we enjoyed working together (true, I think, for both of us).

When I start my 5 Guys and a Mac newspaper, you can bet Jen will be in the crew.