Sucking the life out of a city

We’re just about at the two months to moving mark, as we’ll be heading back to Walla Walla in January, a bit before classes start up again. This has propelled me into renewing my original intention to check out various eateries, classes, and people in Seattle while I still have time here. I suppose I could be beginning an affair with a sense of doom, but I’m appealing to what’s positive about this whole process—I’ve gotten to know a new city pretty well, I’m learning some new things, and I can look forward to spending time with friends I miss when we relocate early next year. Hey, I made saag paneer on my own last night and it was pretty good! I will note that I need to let the aromatics cook a bit longer when I put that dish together next time.

On Saturday Susanne, another friend and I will be taking a beer-making class in town. Students get to choose between making an I.P.A. and a stout. As I loathe and detest IPAs, I’ll be learning the darker beer process. I’m sure I won’t make anything approximating Guinness or my favorite dark ale, Kasteel Bruin, but hopefully I won’t make anything disturbing, either. The worst stout I ever drank was from a brewery in Maryland that tasted like a disgusting mix of nuts and bacon, which honestly, I don’t want to explore in liquid form. I will, however, venture into this with the full knowledge that I could create something very, very wrong. And I presume Sam Adams made a few stinker vats of brew when he was starting out, too. Gee, I’m not trying to claim the next Sam Adams spot.

Despite Seattle’s tendency toward gloomy falls, the sun has been out recently, and I’ve enjoyed walking outside, trying to soak up as much light as I can. I didn’t appreciate sunny days in Walla Walla, as there are so many of them. Now I realize, with 9 years of living in also-cloudy Syracuse, New York, how long it takes for a scarcity of sunlight to wear off on a person’s soul so that they can take brightness for granted again: 16 years.

I’ll grant that most of these walks have been en route to or from one coffee shop or other, and I expect that I’ll do a roundup of the espresso shops we’ve been to later this week. Seattle’s lifestyle magazine just published an enjoyable, thoughtful article on the history of the city’s flirtation with the coffee bean. No way will my little blog post be more comprehensive, but it will almost certainly be more funny.

And now it’s time for me to get back to my NaNoWriMo project. Strategy post coming up a little later today.