Latest from the Blog

September 17, 2008 | 4 Comments

How to meet friends and influence…anybody

 

DC building on a sunny day

DC building on a sunny day

So Susanne, for better or worse, has moved into a veritable community of faculty and staff, and of course, students. As I mentioned in the last post, we’ve gone to one staffer’s house for dinner, and we’ve also been over to another faculty member’s house for a chocolate tasting event which was, shall we say, very Walla Walla. To clarify–in DC, such an event would include a chocolate waterfall, set up next to a Melting Pot-like tray of pineapple, marshmallows, strawberries, cheesecake, and the like; a table of Brazilian and Peruvian or fill in your exotic country of choice dark chocolates, some European chocolate for comparison, and 6 people from the Commerce Department who would espouse on the history of chocolate, whether they actually knew anything about it or not. Out here, well, it was a bunch of folks sitting around a dining room table which barely had enough room for us and all of our host’s houseplants, eating little taster-sized chocolates that she got from a friend. Way more down to earth and simplified. And, I suppose, much less pretentious.

 

Walla Walla petunias

Walla Walla petunias

The ready-made crowd is nice, but I feel the need to meet some people on my own, as if meeting everyone through Susanne would doom me to a life apart from any decision-making I could do. Which I know isn’t true. But it appeared to me to be healthier to find avenues of my own toward friendship and comraderie. So I ventured down to the local, lonely Democratic headquarters for the county.

Boy, were they happy to see me! So happy! Happy happy joy joy! I thought I might get a Busby Berkeley musical number upon my entrance. Now just for kicks I may have to visit the GOP HQ to see what that experience is like. It also helps that it’s next door to the only Chinese lunch buffet in town. (And the all-you-can-eat buffet, by the way, is $6.49 — eat that, Baltimore former coworkers! So if you want to meet up next Friday, let me know.)

At first, they didn’t know what to do with me. I have hours and hours of free time right now. Should he canvass for us or do some phone bank work? Or be at the phones here? Immediately clear to me was that each person does in fact make a difference. As someone said to me last weekend, one person is the difference between a phone ringing endlessly at the HQ because nobody’s there to answer it, or a person to pick it up and respond.

I didn’t think the canvassing would work too well given the state of my knee rehabilitation, so I have opted for the phone bank. Oh boy. Can’t wait until I get my massively long list of numbers to call, so people can curse at me and hang up on me. But I’m sure I’ll make some new friends there — and they’ll be Democrats. Which means, I’m not sure.

Last Saturday Susanne and I went to a fundraiser event for the local HIV non-profit education and healthcare provider, Blue Mountain Heart to Heart. The idea is that over the course of a specific week, Walla2 residents host dinners at their homes and people come over to donate and eat, and then at the end of the week, the organization hosts another party with desserts to announce how much money was raised, and thank everyone for their work and donations. It’s along the lines of what Food & Friends does in DC to raise money, although for that effort folks go out to participating restaurants who donate a portion of the proceeds of their take for that night. So here I guess Heart to Heart gets more percentage of the donation, since the dinner hosts don’t hold anything back, but the number overall is a lot smaller. At any rate, we met a lot of nice people, and now I have a date for the first debate on September 26 — at Becky and Bob’s house. (I am not making this up.) Which brings me to another question — who the hell schedules a debate on a Friday? Do they think we’re going to watch on a tavern TV with the NBA pre-season games playing on the next screen over? That’ll be the day.

Anyway, the DC Democratic HQ and the bleeding-heart liberals’ fundraising event aside, how else to meet people in Walla Walla? Well, I have a couple more route here. One was supposed to be bowling. I mean, seriously, I love bowlers. They want activity but not too much activity. They want teammates but not too much competition. They typically enjoy beer and other light refreshment. They’re definitely on the dorky side, and generally not very pretentious. My kind of people! I think I have to wait until January, though, because Mr. Knee here had to get overexcited at the Billie Jean song at his wedding, and he’s still not ready to fling the strikes down the lane. So that means…

I hope to meet people at the orthopedic’s office tomorrow! Hurt people here I come!

September 16, 2008 | 5 Comments

My life in the midst of bacteria

It appears that it is not illegal in the State of Washington to produce or purchase unhomogenized, unpasteurized milk. Of course, they also have medical marijuana up here, but that’s another story. This story is about yogurt, hence the bacteria.

I suppose if one is going to be situated in a small town — call it a city if you like, but really, if we’re talking fewer than six digits of people, we’re talking town. Anyway, if this small town is in the corner of a state bordered by people nostalic for the Wild West and people nostalgic for fascism, one needs to begin playing to one’s strengths, in this case, baking and cooking. Not that these are the only things that one does, but when one begins referring to oneself in the third person (and people don’t bring up Suede of Project Runway), baking and cooking are the easiest strengths to highlight. So bear with one. Erm, me.

Susanne and I were invited to a farm share dinner, which was nice because we used to do those occasionally in DC. We asked what we could contribute and were delighted to be told: DESSERT. So I thought about making cheesecake, as I have in years past, when I’ve made delights like these:

 

Caramel toffee cheesecake

Caramel toffee cheesecake

 

A caramel toffee cheesecake with the traditional graham cracker crust. There’s also the chocolate mousse cheesecake with an Oreo crust, and finally, the brownie and chocolate swirl cheesecake with a vanilla sponge cake crust.

None of these, however, did I make for the farm share dinner. I made this, a chocolate fudge cake with a masala chai-infused ganache.

Hopefully it went some distance toward making some friends! 

 

 

 

Chocolate cheesecake

Chocolate cheesecake

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

chocolate fudge cake

chocolate fudge cake

Meanwhile, I made my first foray into growing bacteria in milk, or rather, I made some yogurt last week. Baking the cake was a motivator, so I poured 8 cups of raw milk into a nice large pot and made it not raw anymore by bringing it slowly to 180 degrees. I wound up with three batches setting overnight — a vanilla batch, a plain batch, and a small batch with local organic honey. It turned out really well! Now I need some recipes using yogurt because 8 cups of yogurt is a LOT of yogurt to get through in its two-week life span.

Maybe that’ll be my new career — yogurt maker for the stars. I just need some flavor ideas that are novel and hip, and I’m in business.

September 15, 2008 | 0 Comments

Wedding photos

Our wedding photographer sent us the link to our photos from the wedding, so I’m sharing it here.

http://heatherzphotography.com/clients/index.php?gnum=78

You need to put in my Hotmail email address as the user name and Susanne’s last name (with the proper first capital) as the password to see the photos. Until we get the CD of the photos, I can’t copy specific pictures to post up here, so you get all or nothing right now.

Meanwhile, upcoming post on my yogurt-making project and our baking efforts so far.

September 11, 2008 | 0 Comments

In Memoriam

Seven years ago I was in the habit of getting to work at about 7:30, happy enough that I’d gotten an outside office with a window and a fairly reliable Starbucks to keep me charged through the day. We also had a brand new T3 line for all of our servers, and in the days before iTunes, still had ways of sharing music with each other in the workplace. Bethesda, Maryland, was a great spot to work, just two blocks from the Metro and in walking distance of more than 200 restaurants, most of them pretty good or better. We had a whole floor of a building on the main drag in town, with narrow hallways to fit in more offices. The owners had a thing against cubicles, which after 18 months of working in one now, I appreciate better.

The things I remember about that day are seemingly random at first, but they stitch together for me in my brain like a quilt made of scrap fabrics, and they have meaning in relation to each other. The first thing that happened is that our phones started ringing, up and down the halls. And if you tried to pick up a phone for the rest of the day, you couldn’t get a line out, because we’d hit our maximum limit of phones in use, which was something like 70 lines. And we only had 95 people in the office.

Then someone poked their head into my office, asking if I knew what had just happened. A plane had hit the World Trade Center in New York City. Didn’t they have better flight plans than that? I went to CNN to see what was going on, and was astounded that there were no pictures and very little black text on the page. Gone was their usual layout. I thought we were having a problem with our T3 and then it dawned on me that it wasn’t the connection, it was all they were posting. Before I knew what happened, another plane hit the other tower, and then all hell broke loose. 

We were being attacked? Here? It was pretty incomprehensible. How many planes were out there? Nobody knew. We learned little bits of accurate information in a sea of junk — the Sears tower was hit in Chicago, there were bombs planted in DC, nobody knew how many rogue planes could hit at any moment. I don’t remember anymore if we learned about the crash in Pennsylvania or the Pentagon first, but the moment it hit the Pentagon, everything changed for me again. I lived two miles from the Pentagon.

At this point people had taken the lone television we had and plugged it in, setting it up in the middle of the conference room. We stood and sat, watching it, seeing the Towers burning, hearing the chaos in NYC, and then the chaos in Virginia. I saw helicopters flying over the area, and recognized my neighborhood on the screen. I began to realize that many of my colleagues had spouses who were unaccounted for, or that they couldn’t reach, or who were under lockdown. One of my favorite coworkers had a parter in the Department of Justice, and she hadn’t heard from him all day — he’d been taking his workout in the gym, and got locked inside, stuck there for hours until a guard found him and let him out. But other people had partners who worked at the Pentagon.

It was clear work wasn’t happening at the office, but we didn’t really know what else to do. Did we try to go home? The Metro wasn’t running normally, certainly. The first Tower fell. I cried, looking at the dust as it howled through New York streets. How many people had been inside the building? 30,000, some were saying. The Pentagon held 50,000 workers.

The second Tower fell and we all decided to go home, thinking if our spouses or friends were looking for us, maybe they’d come home too, and uh, well, there wasn’t anything else to do and we were all operating on shock at that point. Two coworkers who had Metroed in asked if I’d drive them — they were about 5 miles from my home. Sure, I said.

It took three hours to get all of us home. And that was when it really hit me just how in the middle of this we were. This was not some abstraction, not just horrifying pictures on television. I walked outside and it was right there. I smelled the burning of the Pentagon as we sat on Washington Boulevard, creeping slowly towards the buildings we lived in that no longer felt like home — because home feels comfortable and safe, or at least it’s supposed to. We were directionless and in mourning for people we knew, people who could have been hurt, people we didn’t know who had died or were missing.

I didn’t hear a commercial jet again for months because they’d shut down National Airport. I did hear the fighter jets patrolling the sky though, every couple of hours, rattling the windows of my apartment whenever they were overhead. I saw the Guardsmen out with assault rifles pointed at the ground, and the instant proliferation of American flags on most of the cars on the road. Driving past the burning Pentagon added an extra 45 minutes to my commute for the next few weeks.

My Mom was moving to Connecticut to be closer to my sister, so I also drove past Ground Zero in NYC, and smelled that fire, too. And just when I thought I was going to adjust to the checkpoint Charlies in DC, the constant chanting of “USA, USA,” and the horrifying levels of patriotism that thinly veiled a real thirst for Middle Eastern blood, we were taken aback again by the anthrax mailings to hit DC, and the sniper attacks in the DC metro area.

The sniper shit was awful — my football league canceled games, and I started measuring my life in terms of how recently I’d been to a shooting location or how close I could have come to being shot myself. That was my Home Depot, that bus route was near where I worked, and the ineffective DC police force had no idea what it was doing in hunting down the suspects.

So to people who lived in the heartland of the country back then, I’m sure it was harrowing and scary. To people who lived where the bombs hit — some of us still feel the attack in our bones. And that makes me all the sadder that the events of that day and that fall have been used so opportunistically to move us into war, to become a justification for taking away our liberties, for creating the most dysfunctional government agency overnight that doesn’t necessarily make us any safer. I love my country, and I particularly love the people in my country who reached out a hand when everything seemed so very fragile and tentative. I hope we can all continue to count on that strength under duress. And remember that this isn’t a day for patriots — it’s a day for us average, common people, to remember and be grateful for our ordinary lives.

September 8, 2008 | 0 Comments

Drive-thru everything

I think I’ve mentioned before that there is a whole different concept of space out here west of the Ye Ole Mississippi. That is, space has space here. There’s no bragging about one’s luxury 800 sq. ft. apartment. No sucking in your gut to pass a person with a grocery cart in the aisle of your local market. No squeezing by the jackass in the H2 on 9th Street Northeast when you’re just trying to get home after an annoying day at work, and they’re trying to break the land speed record for an oversized SUV.

Out here, they don’t know what to do with all the space. Small plots of land grow wheat. Drive-in movie theaters are not an extinct species like they are back east. Abandoned buildings sit and slowly crumble for years because there’s no hurry to use their old footprints for the next gentrification effort. Actually, they wouldn’t know a gentrifying neighborhood if it bit them on their collective butts, even though we all know that gentrifying neighborhoods go out of their way to get all bitey and nasty.

I can’t remember the last time I saw a bus, come to think of it. There are a couple of those trolleys on tires that roam around the downtown, especially on the weekends, when downtown looks particularly picturesque.

Small glimpse of a beautiful car

Small glimpse of a beautiful car

 

 

Adding to the picturesqueness of this weekend was a classic car show that occupied most of Main Street by the farmer’s market. All of the angle parking was taken up with about 100 cars from the 1950s through the 1970s, yet there was still plenty of street parking for the folks who came to see the cars. That wouldn’t have happened on even a Wednesday morning in DC. That’s how much space they have.

Everything that we’re used to on the East Coast has its component over here, but the counterpart here comes with a “drive-thru” option, in case you’re too damn lazy to get out of your car. There are, in no apparent order:

Drive-through pharmacies

Drive-through espresso shops

Drive-through supermarkets

Drive-through auto parts stores

Still to discover are drive-through furniture stores, but they can’t be far behind.

In case you don’t have a problem with commitment and instead prefer to drive-in and hang around for a while, there are plenty of drive-in restaurants, and I’m not just talking about A&W. Fast Eddie’s here in Walla Walla was presented to us after I was whining that I wanted a malt. They had 20 flavors of milkshakes and malts on the menu — and by “menu,” I mean oversized white board that doubled as a sun-blocking device while you’re sitting in your car with the food on your window, like Fred Flintstone in the show opener. While I wouldn’t actually call them fast per se, for it took about 15 minutes to get a burger, hot wings, and two shakes (my craving was contagious, apparently), the food was tasty and the eating-in-the-car novel, at least for now. There weren’t serving on roller skates, but at the Sonic in Richland, they are.

 

For Jody -- a 1965 Mustang

For Jody -- a 1965 Mustang

We drove down into Pendleton, Oregon, to see what was there and to check out a restaurant we learned about last week. We picked the wrong time of day for the eatery, since it wouldn’t open for a few hours, but we got to see the town a bit. Pendleton is pretty well known for its wool blankets and other fabrics, at least say Susanne and my mother. And I am not about to disagree with either one of them! Pendleton also hosts a rodeo Round Up every year in September. We found a quilting shop, a caramel popcorn shop, used bookstore, and loads of western wear stores. I may have to pick up a cowboy hat at some point. Not sure if black or white is more my style, though.

Since Raphael’s was closed, we ate at the Hamley Steakhouse, which tells a lot of the history of Hamley & Co., which was very tasty and very cowboy. We actually sat right next to the old bank counter front of the First National Bank, which was held up by Butch Cassidy and the Kid — that was pretty cool. I don’t think of Oregon as the old west, but I suppose it was here. Silly northeasterner, am I. Susanne put back most of a plate of baby back ribs and I went for a medium-rare gaucho-style rib eye steak. Definitely recommended if you find yourself in Pendleton. Though I’d stay away on Sundays, since most everything else is closed.

Hey, they like to enjoy the space around here, okay?

 

Classic Car show in Walla Walla

Classic Car show in Walla Walla

September 5, 2008 | 0 Comments

Life in a littler town (than one is used to)

It’s actually a bigger town than you would at first notice, there being two big chunks of streets and neighborhoods here — one more up-down, and one caddy-corner and off to the side from the first chunk. But it is still quite small, at least in comparison to DC. I feel like most people in DC stick to their own neighborhood most of the time. Maybe they Metro everywhere and don’t get away from those more accessible zones. Maybe it took a while to figure out where everything was in proximity to their residence, so why spend time looking for a coffee house, a video rental place, a small restaurant, that’s not near where they live?

But there’s something interesting to me in sussing out the hole-in-a-wall and mom-and-pop places where they know your name when you walk in and sit down. There’s something fun about comparing your local experience to ones that are catering to someone else. Susanne and I clocked in many hours at Sidamo in DC, where the owner roasts the coffee on the premises every morning, and the whole street smells of carefully prepared espresso. And Mimi would see us and give us a great big hug, and I never thought twice about it until I realized I haven’t been hugged by anyone but Susanne since we moved. It’s an odd, nearly silent absence.

I have most of a pound of Sidamo coffee in the kitchen, and I may pick up some more when I head back to the east coast next month, but at some point, I’ll have to find a place out here — and it’s not like there are no good coffee joints in the Pacific Northwest! Far from it. But none of them shout my name when I enter, none of them feel like my own comfort zone, just yet anyway.

We live, unsuspectingly enough, next to the college’s recycling center. The front of the building, which apparently nobody notices, hosts a sign that says the plant is closed for remodeling. The side of the building, which apparently everyone knows and loves, has no such sign, and so keeps being visited by erstwhile recyclers with mountains of cardboard and aluminum. There is also a whole cast of characters who have some kind of — I can only come up with “addiction” — to coming over and visiting the empty building. One of them wanders around the city looking for discarded items that can be recycled, and one of them swears loudly every time he sees that more shit has been dropped off here, to the tune of how your grandfather swears in your distant memory: “Son of a BITCH!” “You goddamn mother of BITCHES!” I just feel like he picked up his sing-song cursing streams during a tour in the US Navy, since that’s where my grandfather learned them. You know, it’s like kind of an oral history of sorts.

 

Our neighbors

Our neighbors

 

 

The recycling center has a beat up pickup trunk from the 1970s that just started leaking gas yesterday. We had previously been annoyed that it was parked right up against our house, under our kitchen and dining room windows, but this now pales in comparison with the very combustible and dangerous fuel leak, which is currently being contained in a — you guessed it — 5-pound coffee tin. Utilitarian and recyclable, all at once! I gently explained, in my most West Coast, indirect manner possible (for a born and raised East Coast person) that this was maybe not the best nor safest way to deal with a toxic chemical known for its volatility. I found agreement, which is good. Now hopefully the whole matter gets resolved.

I guess I can’t say we had a local recycling center we used, but that was because we lived in a big city and had a place for recycling for our building. The most we had to contend with was the occasional angry raccoon we’d disturbed as we walked home. Here in Walla Walla, it’s more about the disturbing gas can or angry resident instead.

We plan on taking a drive tomorrow so I’ll be sure to post with pictures and comments of our trip!

September 3, 2008 | 6 Comments

Speaking of work

I’ve started harping on my friends who have little kids to send more pictures of them, since Susanne and I have been going through some withdrawal and who likes withdrawal? I was amused to get this one of little A, because he looks very much like a former coworker of mine, Mark. So now I suspect Mark is a closet sperm donor. Those of you who know him, cast a gander at this and make your own judgment…

 

Spawn of Mark?

Spawn of Mark?

So I have a job — well, we’ll loosely call it this — interview today. Actually, I have half an hour to convince some woman in HR that they should find a place for me in their firm. I’ll have to sell myself without looking like I’m a salesman, be charming but not overcharming, specialized enough that I look like a great catch without looking like I’m too compartmentalized. Whew! Should be easy to thread that needle — though it might be hard getting the derriere of yours truly through it…

September 1, 2008 | 4 Comments

A winey weekend

Walla Walla is nestled in a valley in southeast Washington State, a largely arid but fertile up-and-down landscape bordered by the Blue Mountains and miles and miles of scrubland. Its sandy soil allows for deep drainage and the mild rainfall lets vinegrowers and farmers control the level of water for their crops via irrigation. So it is that many, many vineyards have popped up here over the years, which have in turn given rise to vineyard-hopping, though I don’t suppose the more uppity wine enthusiasts call it that. 

Susanne’s very good friend and his girlfriend came to visit us this weekend, and we tooled around the area looking for some tasting adventures. Why not, when the alternative is to continue another long day of unpacking and finding new homes for all of the things we saw fit to send across the continent?

 

Road into the grapes

Road into the grapes

We were told, at one of the vineyards, that the locals never make these tours, that it’s only a visitor’s thing. But if that’s the case, it seems strange to me that so many of the restaurants and coffee shops in town are closed today, on a holiday weekend. It’s not, it’s been pointed out to me, like it’s Arbor Day (a genuinely important day in its own right, I’m sure). Perhaps there’s no overlap between people excited by wine and people excited by New York Style pizza, except for me, our friend Jody, and about 12,834 people I’ve met over the years.

 

At the vineyard

At the vineyard

Perhaps Walla Walla is in transition, figuring itself out, moving from some identity it used to have and taking on a new one that meets its needs and new environment better.

Oh, wait. That’s me. Silly boy.

 

Grapes on the vine

Grapes on the vine

August 30, 2008 | 0 Comments

The break in the clouds happens at the mountains

Last day in Seattle included a run to the tourist section of Pike Place to get some Dilettante chocolates. Oh, they are so good, even if the service there is a tad worse than spotty. Go ahead and serve them with a frown, I’ll be a truffle-eating monster later. Plus, one Seattle kid being semi-hostile is still nothing like the open disdain and service of frustration one receives in most of DC, so these folks don’t actually impress me at this point. I’m sure I’ll reset my service parameters at some point and then the trips to the big cities out here will leave me shocked and confused. But for now I shrug them off. I shrug you off, mean chocolate lady!

We stopped in at Lush right after, which was amusing for the fact that another staffer at Dilettante was in there complaining to the Lush staff that Chris Rock had come in for a mocha and decried the bad service there and stormed out.

See? It’s not just me. Even CELEBRITIES suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous service there.

Lunch was nice, consisting of a big bowl of brown rice and spiced lamb.

 

Bowl-a-Rama lunch

Bowl-a-Rama lunch

Tasty, and $7.50 to boot. DC could use more little shops like that. So could Walla Walla, for that matter.

We passed by Barneys which had the oddest little window display I’ve ever seen. Feel free to offer opinions and analysis on this:

 

The train is coming at Barneys

The train is coming at Barneys

Okay, what is up with this? Also notice the tormentor — a woman with a villain mustache. So beware the transgender person? Or, we had to mark her as the evil one in this picture because the guy tied to the train tracks with the oncoming engine wasn’t enough to clue us in?

And why is there a pump bottle of soap on her head? 

Barney, Barney, Barney, you’ve gone a bit off the rails yourself, haven’t you? Must be that constant comparison to the annoying purple dinosaur.

We went out for dinner later at Ray’s Boathouse in a completely different corner of the city, and the fish was truly amazing. I ate my weight in mussels for the first course, which were drenched in a spicy tomatoesque bisque, and had a sweet fillet of sablefish atop grilled baby bok choy and delicate rice. Oh, eating quality seafare is so nice, even if it means Susanne has to miss the fun. But I’ll keep it to a minimum, since I do enjoy my dining partner more than what I’m eating.

A quiet evening when we got back, I got up in the morning and chatted with my friend who was hosting me for this trip, and said goodbye to her adorable feline. Found Susanne at what seems quite a patchwork of an airport, and we headed back to Walla Walla. As sure enough, we left the clouds behind as we passed through the Cascades again. Note to Washington State Transportation — your road sure is pretty, but can’t you make it quieter? I’m getting hearing loss making this 290-mile trip!

 

Kiwi the Cat

Kiwi the Cat

August 28, 2008 | 9 Comments

World capitol of rain and clouds

Ah, Seattle. When first I spied you in the summer of 2005, you gave me day upon day of warm sunshine, making it seem as though your tendency toward rain was all myth and bunk. It was a wonderful romance we had, and I’ll never forget it.

Sunny Seattle

Sunny Seattle

Yet like so many flings begun without thought for the long-term, we soured, and this time, you’re grouchy, distant, mad about something you won’t communicate. And you rain, rain, rain, barely getting into the high 70s, so that I feel your chill down to my bones. Where did we go wrong, Seattle? How could I have offended you so much that you feel this is your choice, to be so unforgiving? I wanted to live in your confines; your state gave me the other corner instead. I’m doing the best I can, honoring your lakes and your downtown, reveling in your curvy streets and dynamic nightlife. I’ve attempted to support your economy as a faithful visitor, and if you’re a little nicer to me I promise I shall return many times. Unless that’s not what you want.

View from Lake Washington

View from Lake Washington

Don’t push me out, Seattle. Let’s try to start over.

It’s been great, weather notwithstanding, to be back here, visiting an old friend from graduate school, and making little forays into the city. My bad knee is definitely hampering me too much, but I’m doing what I can and I certainly look forward to the day when I can run around a city again, sniffing out the fun offerings and things to see. 

Susanne is out on the other coast at a conference and we’ll rendezvous tomorrow at the airport before heading back to Wallyworld for its annual Fair and Frontier Days. Insert picture of Susanne sneezing at all of the livestock, and heck, maybe we’ll head out of town again and do some exploring at a few of the local apple and pear vineyards. I sure would love to bake a fruit pie and try to make the kitchen feel more like home.

Getting from these separate corners of the state — and there’s a whole lot of nothing in parts of the middle, for sure — is mostly achieved via one mountain pass, which shuts down frequently in winter. It’s not exactly reassuring to see “Chain Tie-On Area” signs and “Grade 5% next 2 miles.” The road in summer seems straightforward enough, though I wouldn’t chance it without brakes you’re sure will work well. And it’s a great view, though I don’t think that’s Mount Rainier we can see off to the west, but some other less tall peak. I need to research that.

I wandered around town yesterday, amused that there’s a neighborhood here called Capitol Hill. They’re very proud of their neighborhood name, and it must have some cache, because you see it everywhere.

 

Trader Joe's

Trader Joe's

Later I drove down to the Pike Place Market, looking for some fun window shopping, but primarily looking for a parking spot under $10. It was not to be found in the walking distance I can currently handle. And I’m sad to say that Dilettante Chocolates has closed its Capitol Hill location, but only temporarily as it opens a new shop down the street next month. Still, I need to procure some on this trip, so I’ll venture out to the one downtown later today. 

In the afternoon I met up with my friend and we shared a bit of ethiopian take out at park on Lake Washington. In the east nobody would be out in the water in weather like this — we love our warm Atlantic, even if it does produce awful hurricanes and tropical storms. The Pacific just never seems to heat up over here. But hey, native Seattle-ites will run down the feet-slicing rocky shores, climb up onto a floating dock, and springboard off into the icy water, loving every minute of it. I look on in horror and amazement. And once again feel like I’ve ventured into some foreign country over here. Everyone is so used to needing their black leather jackets and faded jeans they don’t actually change into something else when the temperature is 95F. They just go about their business sweating their asses off, and man, it has got to produce some funky leather smells after a while. So perhaps a dip in the frigid lake works for them after that, who knows. But the water looked pretty, and I really like it when busy cities have their leisurely parts. And Seattle seems to have plenty.

 

Two boys with Pith helmets

Two boys with Pith helmets

← Older posts
Newer posts →