Under Construction, part III: A.B. Ernst Park Before

Dear Diary,

Please inform any reader of this part who really loves A.B. Ernst Park, and who is reading before sunset on April 2nd, that they should stop reading right now and go make some last memories in the park they love.  Because on April 3rd, trees are going to start being taken out.

So at this point, your readers, dear Diary, are either people who don't love that park, or are reading after sunset, right?

This reminds me that I don't know, and haven't known for a long time, who reads you, dear Diary.  Strictly speaking, I don't even know that anyone reads you; for all I know, the numbers I see are all artificial intelligences being trained.  But even if that's not so, I mustn't assume any baseline level of familiarity with the work I've done with your excellent help.

So.  Dear Diary, you are a blog about public amenities, and especially about public restrooms whose doors open to the outside, and public water fountains that are outside.  Most of these things are in parks, and because variety is the spice of life, sometimes, as now, I just do some park appreciation without talking about plumbing at all.  The area we've focused on is the northern part, a sort of peninsula, of the City of Seattle, in a northern border state of the United States.

At one of the peninsula's southern tips, towards the middle east-west, is a neighbourhood called Fremont that likes to call itself the centre of the universe.  Parts of Fremont and its more staid eastern neighbour Wallingford are pretty hilly, and possibly as a result, three of their parks have as their raisons d'etre that they allow people to traverse those hills.

The Wallingford Steps are the flashy sibling, made of concrete but with spectacular artistic adornment, plus, yes, some plants.  They're the most successful as stairs, too, linking N 34th St with N Northlake Way, and, across that perilous street, with Gas Works Park and the Burke-Gilman Trail.

Troll's Knoll Park is the plain, friendly sibling; challenged to praise it, Seattle Parks calls it "sustainable".  It connects N 36th St with N 38th St adjacent to Aurora Ave N.  Just east of its bottom is the Fremont Troll; at its top is the Troll's Knoll P-Patch.

But A. B. Ernst Park almost ignores its stairs, which unimpressively go from N 35th St to the next alley south.  Instead it focuses on being a quite beautiful park, one worth spending time in. 

But tomorrow, motivated mainly by access and activation, Seattle's Department of Parks and Recreation will start changing A. B. Ernst Park.  I would be pretty shocked if the result of the changes isn't loved, by some, within a year or three - Seattle Parks generally knows what it's doing.  But that doesn't mean I can't celebrate the old version.

I learnt on my second recent visit that what I see as this park's signature element is not what everyone sees.  I went across the street and discovered that what drivers see is mostly a couple of giant street trees.  But if, like me, you walk west from the Fremont branch library (soon to close itself for construction), there's no doubt at all that A. B. Ernst Park is mainly about these spectacular pillar-like trees.

These are arborvitae (Thuja occidentalis).  Another species that's prominent in the park is bald cypress (Taxodium distichum).  And how, you may ask, dear Diary, do I know these things, having never displayed any botanical knowledge before?  Alas, this is how:

There are many signs like that attached to specific trees; there are also quite a few on the ground.  Other trees bear different symbols:

Well, as I mentioned not too long ago, dear Diary, I'm having technical difficulties.  Let me describe the planned work, and then close with two more photos.

Most people, I think, understand this park as a winding path with a weird structure in the middle, sort of a crude theatre.  The occasion for the work is that Parks acquired a bit of land east of the park.  So they're moving the path eastward, and widening it, because even though the park's current page says it "provides wheelchair access", paths can never be too wide when considering Access.

And then they're giving the space thus created at the west end of the park to Activation.  A picnic table will be where the park entrance now is, and south of the table will be an "embankment slide" with "hillside loops".  That area will rejoin the main path at the head of the stairs.

If I'm reading the plans right, it's a goal to keep the theatre-like area, and the artwork that surrounds it (Water Mover by Jenny Heishman) more or less intact.  But they're planning to remove half of the arborvitae, so I expect it to be a long time before the park feels right to me.

Well, dear Diary, writing this part in you on my phone has been horribly time-consuming, so I'm going to have to find a better way soon.  Until then, happy days and nights.  The first photo below shows arborvitae, theatre and Water Mover, while the second shows the stairs at the bottom of the park.

 

 

 

All in the Dry Month of May

Dear Diary,

Hooray!  Just two pages left of today's hike.  This one covers Fremont, understood as the area between Stone Way N and 1st Ave NW, farther north than feels like Fremont to me, all the way from the Ship Canal to N 50th St.  This means five parks run by the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation.  Same as last year, only one has a water fountain, and none has a restroom.

EDIT 5/11:  Map:

Troll's Knoll Park

My errand on N 36th St put me north of the waterfront, but close to Fremont's two stairway parks.  This one, however, isn't a stairway park like the Wallingford Steps, but a ramp park.  Look:

At the top of the ramp is a P-Patch, and I suppose I should've checked to make sure no water fountain had been installed there since I last visited in June ("At the Centre of the Universe, Does Gas Work?") and took no photos.  But the park's web page mentions no amenities, except the central one:  it can get anyone, feet, wheels or both, from N 36th to 38th Streets.  In a pleasant environment, too.

A. B. Ernst Park

I'd forgotten how helpful the park web pages can be.  It had dawned on me I should pay more attention to the people the parks are named for, and this one turns out to be an early park commissioner who, quoth the web page, helped implement the Olmsted plans that resulted in, for example, Ravenna Park and Boulevard.

Anyway, this has been a stairs park, climbing from N 34th to 35th Streets, parkier than the Wallingford Steps, but, in my opinion, cursed with concrete benches instead of a mosaic as its landing focus.  A construction project was to have started by now that would have gotten rid of those benches and the steps, in favour of a ramp all the way as at Troll's Knoll.  I've written about this park a bit more than most of those that lack plumbing, because of this:  June 9 in "At the Centre of the Universe" and June 21 in "Past Work and Gas Works", with photos.  So I was very surprised and mildly displeased that I could climb the stairs:

all the way to the top, where I could read the explanation:

We'll soon see a project that doesn't have this kind of sign.  Why do access projects like this and the work planned years ago to improve the entrances to Gas Works Park take a back seat in comparison?

The Burke-Gilman Trail

The parks of Wallingford and Fremont, as of various other neighbourhoods, include this trail, and in my general enthusiasm for taking photos today, I didn't forget this one.

I had to take stairs, again, to get to it from Troll Ave N.  At the bottom of those stairs I found a mini-park.  Since the street it's on is loudly proclaimed to be a private street, I'm guessing this is a private park; no doubt to discourage people, whether general public or employees, from lingering, the only furniture it has is, um, a picture frame:

Google Maps shows a conspicuously vast splotch of green just north of the trail, somewhat further west, and I was very curious what it could be.  It turned out not to be so vast after all, and it's just the fenced-in landscaping of Adobe's building there:

At least they spent a bit to make the fence abutting the trail a little prettier.

The reason I was taking the trail is that it goes right to and through the next park, and this brings me to a sort of apology I owe, dear Diary.  On January 19, in "Water and Water", about the Lake Washington Ship Canal, I wrote in part:

"Because essentially all the [Fremont] Cut's width is reserved for navigation, which bars piers, boaters don't show it much love, and its only North Seattle street end is the uninteresting one under the Fremont Bridge, with opportunities for more passed up at Phinney Ave N and 2nd Ave NW, at least."

This is preposterous.  The whole point of the street end program was to make private land public.  But by the time that program got going in the 1990s, the Burke-Gilman Trail and this next park occupied the entire north waterfront of the Fremont Cut.  So there wouldn't have been any point to street ends at those two spots.  Harrumph.

So here's that park, which has everything except plumbing:

Fremont Canal Park

The first time I visited this park last June, I was having trouble getting to the parks department web pages, which is what I blamed for the fact that I only looked at the eastern half of the park (the half with the topiary dinosaurs), and only described that half June 9 in "At the Centre of the Universe, Does Gas Work?"  The other half (the one with furniture hidden in small topiary bushes), I presented June 25 in "History and Parks" part I.  So this park has gotten a bit more photography from me than others, and I was lazy today, taking only a generic shot down the trail:

At least I singled it out for praise January 6 in "What's in a Name?", pairing it with a park so obviously meant as its opposite that I kind of have to wonder what chemicals were involved in planning Fremont's too-few, too-small, parks that punch so much above their weight.  That is, pairing it with

Fremont Peak Park

Today I learnt that while Palatine Ave N is a through street from 50th to 44th, which is enough to get to this park, it is not a through street from 44th to the canal.  Oops.

Anyway, this park also isn't exactly on a peak, the way Fremont Canal Park is exactly on a canal.  The peak is two blocks east, on Phinney Ave N.  Fremont Peak Park is well down the western slope.  But it's still plenty high up.

It's weird in a rather appealing way, and I took some photos of that for "At the Centre", so this time I decided instead to focus on dumb obvious stuff.  Here's the entrance:

And here's a view:

I did walk both Fremont Canal and Fremont Peak Parks end to end in case there were new water fountains, but neither saw any nor any signs of them.

B. F. Day Playground

B. F. Day was a realtor, says the parks department web page, who donated the land to build a school, land on which I suspect the park also sits.

This is the biggest park in Fremont, and the only one with plumbing, in the form of a water fountain.  Last October, that fountain ran, while none of those in the bigger parks of Wallingford did.  Anyway, its plumbing means I've visited it rather more often than most of these (the Trail and therefore Fremont Canal Park are different).  I introduced it June 9 in "At the Centre" and came back to it October 8 in "South of North Once More", part I, with photos and a story that I then had to retract March 21 in "Hike 8A" (more photos).  Here are yet more:

A landscape, of course.

No water, of course.

And whereas in January the "sanican" that had been here was gone, probably lent to Northgate Park, where there was a Curative COVID testing site, it's back now, and in a place obviously built for it, that I didn't notice in January and so offered a probably incorrect memory of where it had been:

This park has playground improvements planned.  Not, mind, the installation of a new playground, but improvements to an existing one.  I showed, either October or January, a photo of a revised schedule, a sign still there today.  That schedule claimed construction would happen in 2021, but it's now May and nothing's happening.  So I don't actually know that playgrounds are more important to the parks department than access, but the contrast between the signs suggests that that's the case.

What a dreary note to end on, dear Diary.  I have a better one.  A while back, I noted that I find that ducks improve almost any situation.  Geese not so much - it's hard to ignore their indiscriminately scattered Numbers Two, and they're more aggressive.  But still, two geese in Fremont Canal Park were remarkably indifferent to me today, so I took their picture:

Next page:  a start on Woodland Park.

History and Parks, part I

Dear Diary,

Monday June 22 I went from Fremont, which treasures quirk, to Ballard, which treasures history.  Ballard used to be a separate city (for 18 years) until it agreed to annexation by Seattle, and it never lets the visitor to its parks forget it.  (To be fair, though, most of this insistence is in parks I don't get to until the next page.)

Anyway, I've been very liberal with photos this trip, and I was worried some would disappear, as they sometimes do when my camera gets crowded, so I tried to post that night.  Unfortunately, the Ballard public library turned out to treat internet access the way many public buildings treat electricity - free inside, but forbidden out.  So here I am at the Greenwood branch days later with a huge backlog, and I'll just have to see how far I can get.  I probably won't fully catch up for days to come.

After the Fremont Canal Park below, everything address-wise is "NW" for pages and days to come.  Other things I encountered less constantly, but still many times every day:  crows that disapproved of my existence, and would chase me for a block or two to tell me about it; and winds that disapproved of my taking notes on paper, and scattered those notes so many times that last night (June 24) my inseam split on my 854th retrieval dive.  Finally, until I say otherwise, you have to assume that I saw my peers, at and between many of the "NW" parks; it would be invidious to call out all the campers, so I only mention my fellow homeless when I have a point to make.

I EDITED this page Sunday June 28 on looking at my receipts and finding I'd misreported my grocery shopping.

I EDITED it again Monday June 29 on revisiting Sunset Place and probably Cascade Place.

First a leftover from Sunday night.

The Burke-Gilman Trail

It didn't occur to me until I experienced it that because the trail goes under bridges, it offers the chance to watch them split from below.  Not actually as impressive a sight as watching that mountain of bridge rise in front of you when you're on it, but maybe interesting still.

A. B. Ernst Park

This hasn't closed for its expansion construction yet, but the writing is literally on the wall:

The fence shown there doesn't block the trail yet, but it will - construction is planned for August.  The sign includes a map:

This makes it clear that the existing park's dubious main attraction, some Brutalist concrete benches, will not survive in its present form.  Now, I've never seen that thing as "neat stuff", but I have no objection to documenting something soon to go, so:

Apparently when they're done the trail will go all the way down, no stairs needed, so I'm altogether happy.

The non-Jurassic parts of Fremont Canal Park

Apparently they squeeze the Fremont Fair into here every year, so talking about this park is probably coals to Newcastle, but anyway there's something sort of neat.  There are four odd pieces of furniture along the park's length, at least one in the "NW" part.  Three of them, including the "NW" one, are surrounded by bushes, as if to disguise them as incipient topiary.

And one is a chess bench.  I have something of a soft spot for chess benches; one of my last student newspaper stories was about them.  More precisely, about what proved a successful attempt to destroy a chess community by splitting its benches up, so it's kind of perverse of me to highlight this solitary one, but anyway, a chess bench disguised as topiary:

Fremont Canal Park gives every sign of abandoning parkness for trailness well before its notional end at 3rd Ave NW, but if you stick it out that far, you can go straight up 3rd to:

Ross Park

This park is three blocks west of Fremont Peak Park, and probably about three blocks down from it.  It's the only park in this page that isn't open 4 A.M. to 11:30 P.M.; Ross keeps the less common 6 A.M. to 10 P.M. schedule.  There's some dispute about the name.  The Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation website calls it "Ross Playground".  The park's scoreboard calls it "Ross Playfield":

But I'm going with the park's main sign:

Anyway, this was my first stop with a restroom.  The water fountain wasn't working, of course, but the restroom worked fine.  (I won't be saying that about most "NW" park restrooms.)

One bit of neat stuff is in the playground, which sort of successfully carries through the spider theme suggested:

But there's something neater between the restrooms, a mosaic whose makers' names I haven't found:

From there I continued on 3rd to...

A small neighbourhood with four very small parks

The neighbourhood is one I'd glimpsed, because it's just west of Woodland Park Zoo.  The first park I reached is

Sunset Place

This is a triangle, a rather tall one with some benches at the top to take in whatever view can be had at 1st Ave and 52nd St.  My first reaction on seeing it was "What a good use of space!", and I stand by that.  But I didn't climb up to the benches, which was apparently foolish of me, because the parks department website seems to say there's a water fountain there.  Sorry!

EDIT June 29:  OK, now I have.  And there is indeed a water fountain up there, a bizarrely familiar elementary school model, but it RUNS!  This means all three working water fountains in "NW" are south of 60th St.  Sorry, I didn't taste the water.  But here's a picture of the fountain and the park:

The Mystery of Cascade Place

This time I'll actually quote the parks department website, which in a single sentence:

This turnaround island at the end of Palmer Court NW is in Ballard just west of NW Market St at NW 52nd St.

manages to get at most two things right.  This park was the subject of the first question I addressed to Rachel Schulkin, Communications Manager for the department.  (I'd tried to reach her before but never gotten an answer; this turned out to be because I hadn't asked specific questions.)  Anyway, she answered but didn't sound certain; going by her answer, it does exist, it is at an end of Palmer Court, and it is technically in Ballard.  It is not, however, a turnaround island, near 52nd St, or just west of Market St.  I took a bunch of pictures.  First, the situation.  Palmer Court is a short gravel street that heads southeast from 2nd Ave some feet south of 52nd St.  The address given by the department, not that those are always reliable, puts Cascade Place at the interior end, where there's no turnaround island, but is a bunch of greenery.  This is where Google Maps and Ms. Schulkin say it is.  Presumably it's a different part of this greenery from this one:

I also took pictures of both ends of Palmer Court:

and of 52nd St just west of Market St (specifically, Baker Ave and 52nd)

just to show the absence of traffic islands.

EDIT 6/29:  On the premise that the park, if it exists, must be at the interior end of Palmer Court, I took a video of that end today.  I think the likeliest candidate for parkhood is whatever is at the top of the low steps seen in the video, but given the "PRIVATE PROPERTY" sign and a loudly barking large dog nearby, I thought there was too much chance someone with a shotgun was what's at the top of those steps.  Anyway, the video:

Rainier Place

This triangle is where 53rd St intersects with 54th St, I am not making this up.  The department website gets only one thing wrong, calling it "grassy".  It is dominated by a conifer tree whose generic name I should but don't know, and the needles discourage grass from most of the space.

Greenwood Triangle

This triangle is at 3rd Ave and 55th St, strictly speaking across the street from the weirdly laid out small neighbourhood, and actually is grassy.

Next west on Market up to 9th Ave.

Gilman Playground

This extends from 54th past 53rd, but private houses fill half the second block; it runs one long block from 9th to 11th Avenues.  At 4 acres it's bigger than Ross (2.35) let alone the others.  So it has a restroom and water fountain, but here's what's strange:  both work!  I was so gobsmacked I took pictures to establish a chain of evidence.  Working water fountain:

That water fountain is near this restroom:

And that restroom is in Gilman Playground:

You see, I'd gone on a quest for the hypothetical western boundary of the dry park water fountain problem, and I'd found it!  Admittedly, at the westernmost park water fountain in that part of town, but you can't have everything.  (Remember, I hadn't yet found the water fountain at Sunset Place.)

The men's room has a lockable door, but no dryer.

By far the neatest thing I saw Monday at Gilman Playground was an absence.  There were a lot of tents in the park, and some visibly homeless people (including me) outside them.  There were also a lot of visibly housed people there.  And they were all minding their own business.  It was such a refreshing change from the usual park interactions within either group or between the groups.  I concluded that when Ballard Commons was swept not long ago, all the best-behaved of my peers had come to Gilman Playground, but I sure don't know why the housed were behaving so well.

I eventually decided to photograph some drums in the playground.  Plastic, they aren't loud, just audible enough to get across the acoustics lesson of differently sized instruments:

From Gilman Playground I went to the nearby Safeway and got the day's groceries, about which I'll talk more when posting about the 23rd.  But then I headed south for one more park, dear Diary, after which I have to stop writing you for a while, but I'll try to return today.  This is the 14th Ave NW Boat Ramp, and isn't close to any other parks.  Unlike the Sunnyside Ave N Boat Ramp, it had no "sanican" that day.  I took a picture of its seascape:

Then, having done Number One at both Ross and Gilman, I discovered an urgent need to do Number Two.  So I went to Fred Meyer, and paid for the use of their restroom (which also lacked drying capacity at the time) by buying a map of the Eastside there.

Next page, today, I hope, covers downtown Ballard.

At the Centre of the Universe, Does Gas Work?

Dear Diary,

Two pages back, I wrote about the parks with "N" addresses, as opposed to "NE" or "NW", between about 45th and 80th Streets.  I neglected to mention two things.

First, I spent the night of June 5 in bus shelters near Meridian Playground.  So I saw that park both at night and in the morning, and saw Woodland Park mainly in the morning and afternoon of June 6.

Second, park restroom stalls without doors are pretty much the default in that area, though there are certainly exceptions.

OK, then, it's time to move south.  Since I'd just finished (ha) with Woodland Park, I stayed that far west, so started with Fremont, which has no large parks, and only one water fountain.  Fremont has much more folklore than most Seattle neighbourhoods, most of which I suspect I'll never get, not being a baby boomer.  In particular, it's called the centre of the universe.  Well, then, the centre is seriously under-parked.

Small Fremont Parks

The only kind there is.

Fremont Peak Park

I reached this by going south on Greenwood until I could switch to Palatine.  This is a silly route even if, like me, you're coming from Woodland Park.  Much better to just take 45th St to its end, and then turn south a little.  Anyway, this park is primarily about its view, which I found boring, but it has a sort of mini-Stonehenge meant to tell the seasons:

which looks cool whether or not it works.  The park knows this, too, using circle imagery in a couple of other places.

Fremont Canal Park

Verizon pretended to be unable to retrieve the parks department website most of the afternoon of the 6th, so I didn't learn until I was much further on the trip that I'd ignored this park's western half.  It spans two long blocks between the Burke-Gilman Trail, which there runs alongside the Ship Canal, and the street (Canal Street).  The eastern block is full of dinosaurs:

OK, yeah, topiary ones, but still.  The western block is in "NW" anyway.  By this point it was clear enough that I'll have to go to Ballard after all, so I'll just look at that block then.

A. B. Ernst Park

This is next to the Fremont branch library.  It's basically a transformed stairway:  riotous vegetation all around it, and the upper half turned into a gentle ramp, along which are some weird tiers.  It's apparently slated for expansion (and presumably construction), so if this interests you more than it does me, you might want to hurry there.

Troll's Knoll Park

No, this doesn't include the famous sculpture by, um, Steve Badanes, Will Martin, Donna Walter and Ross Whitehead, which is about the only bit of Fremont folklore that works for me.  It's to the left, as you face the troll, where all those concrete bollards are that you always see people leaning against.  The park apparently wants to move those people way uphill to a small grassy strip next to a P-Patch; fortunately, instead the kids and the gardeners stay at a distance.  The park is more successful in its claimed ambition to assist people in getting uphill; it features a fully paved, gently sloped trail with lots of switchbacks that took me from 36th St almost to 38th.

B. F. Day Playground

This park is, at 2 1/3 acres, not only the biggest in Fremont, but bigger than the other four put together.  This gets it not only a water fountain, but one that gave a tablespoon of water before going dry when I tried it.  It also, at the opposite end of the park, has a "sanican", not something I saw many of in this trip.  It's easiest entered from Linden Ave, just south of 41st St.

Four or More Wallingford Parks

Wallingford Playfield

This is bigger than all the Fremont parks added together.  That is, it's 4 1/2 acres.  By this point I wasn't up for much exploring; the park is easy to find along Wallingford Ave at 42nd St, the open restrooms and non-functional water fountain easy to find within.

A Detour

This was as close as I'd gotten to a supermarket all day, so I went and bought my daily salad, and also a bottle of water.  Which latter made me feel very stupid when I found this in front of the store:

The Wallingford Steps

Exactly what it sounds like:  stairs by which Wallingford Ave continues to the canal.  Or anyway to the next park.  What makes it a park is the usual luxurious plantings, plus some gussied-up landings, of which this one, by Benson Shaw and Clark Weigman, has pride of place:

Gas Works Park

I think every time I've visited this park I've been in a hurry, tired (as this time), or both, so I've never really explored it.  Maybe I'll try to do it justice before I finish writing you, dear Diary, but it isn't actually that close to the U-District - along Meridian same as the playground by that name, but way south.  Anyway, this is the closest to the U-District of the parks whose restrooms have been opened 24 hours, not that I've tested that.  I did want to use those rooms, but a look at the way both men's toilet seats appeared to be decorated with Number Two dissuaded me.  The water fountain attached to the restroom building isn't running.  But I don't know whether there are other restrooms or water fountains elsewhere in the park.

Waterways?

Either at the eastern end of Gas Works Park, or adjacent to it, are Waterways 18 and 19.  The parks department website doesn't list them.  The City of Seattle real estate report (PDF) I'm using for areas lists 19 but not 18.  I didn't explore either at all thoroughly:  I couldn't bring my cart, and my getting anywhere near one enraged the nearby crows.  They don't look like the kinds of parks, or parts of parks, that have restrooms or water fountains.

Sunnyside Ave N Boat Ramp

This is officially closed, but still has a "sanican".  It's hard to reach from Gas Works Park, along the sidewalks-optional Northlake Way; I suggest taking 36th St instead.  Geese were in possession when I arrived, but took offense at me and left, giving me a chance for another mediocre duck photo:

From there I caught the Burke-Gilman Trail straight to University Village and Safeway.  I'd forgotten, at the Wallingford QFC, that I no longer have the handy cutlery my backpack held.  Safeway was in a panic because a rally was getting close, and closed early, so I never did get to a toilet that night, but it worked out OK (and I did get a fork to eat the salad).

For the past two weeks I've been aware that it isn't the right time to state my own grievances.  And the inspiring sight of thousands of people cooperating in marching down (NE) 45th St does nothing to make my course of action seem nobler.  Dear Diary, I had hopes at the start that powerful people might read you, and might do things as a result.  Maybe that's still possible, but probably not before I finish writing you.

As my energy allows, here's what I think is left.  There are eight parks left in "N" between 80th and 145th Streets.  That real estate report alerted me to six parks I hadn't known about in the northern parts of "NE", though four are Natural Areas, unlikely to offer restrooms or water fountains.  And since I still haven't found an area with water fountains consistently on, such that I could say the problem is local, I might as well endure the forty-odd parks of "NW" so I can sort of talk about North Seattle as a whole.

But this all assumes we aren't going back to the days of randomly closed park restrooms.  And assumes that the rain will occasionally pause for a day or two.

Sorry, dear Diary.  I just don't know how much longer until I finish you.