The Project

SIFF

Sun, 23 May 2010 16:19:17 -0700

I desperately needed to get out of the house today but had no idea where I wanted to go. It was cold and threatening to rain, and everywhere I could think of, I just couldn’t imagine going in a sweater and goose bumps. So I called Eric and asked what he was doing -- because he’s always doing something interesting. And then I invited myself along. And that’s how I ended up having lunch at the Mecca in lower Queen Anne, and then attending the movie “Soul Kitchen” at SIFF. 
I don’t go to the movies unless I go with someone else, and that someone is usually Eric. I thought I’d been to the Mecca before, but either it’s been years and they redecorated, or it is one of those places that comes up in conversation regularly, so that it sounds like a perfectly ordinary and regular part of your every day until you step in the door and realize you’ve never been there before.

A traditional burger, a comforting and much needed couple of hours with a friend, and the experience of SIFF... cheap & easy -- and it fed the soul too.

U District Street Fair

Sat, 15 May 2010 19:32:01 -0700

Eric and I had made plans to attend the U District Street Fair today, or as Eric described it, “the unofficial start of summer”. I was skeptical. Every single event around here is the same. Same vendors, same food, same 500,000 people. I complained moderately-loudly. Eric took my complaints in stride and said, “come out anyway”.

Later in the week he emailed to tell me he had a plan to deal with the 1/2 million people who would be out on what was expected to be a sunny, nearly-hot, nearly-summer day...”we’ll go from bar to bar and avoid them all”.

I picked him up in the nearly-new mini-SUV because he insisted he wanted to play with the navigation system and the rear-view camera and all. We stopped at the Magnolia library and took a circuitous route to the U-District. We parked in nearly the exact same spot we’d parked at 2 years ago when attending this same street fair. It felt like deja-vu.

We headed into the crowds.

And then, because I’d somehow managed to not have breakfast and it was approaching 1 pm, we went to Po Dog for lunch. I had a wasabi dog and fries (I’m so glad my doctor doesn’t know my URL).

We wandered the artist stalls and food vendors and I bought a filmy, airy, purple fairy dress for Miss Clara. We had a beer, we wandered on.

We had a drink at Agua Verde and watched the kayakers and sailors and sea plane pilots. I realized I needed a house boat.

Then we learned to play Go at the Go Center.

We went to the Blue Moon! I’ve lived in Seattle nearly (almost exactly) 13 years and I have never been to the Blue Moon. I wanted to take a photo but Eric thought I might be taking my life in my hands.

We were going to go to the Tin Table for dinner but I decided I was too tired. We ended up in Wallingford and it was all I could do not to fall asleep at the table. The food was excellent, though Eric made better choices than I did. He had steak and polenta and I had tagliatelle with mushrooms and egg. I’ve never been a fan of polenta, but Eric’s polenta tasted like the creamiest, richest, smoothest mashed potatoes you ever ate.

I dropped Eric at home, drove home in a nearly comatose condition, walked in the door, shed my day’s clothing, and headed straight to bed. It was a great day. Crowds and all.

Around town

Sat, 15 May 2010 19:18:56 -0700

Let’s just say that the group I hang out with has been falling apart for a while. And let’s just say that I may have had a bit of a pretty serious falling out with a few of them over some overly-dramatic high-school-level shenanigans that have occurred recently. And let’s just say that those are the reasons I have been silent and sequestered in my house for the last 6 weeks.

Okay, so now let’s just say that I’ve finally talked to and forgiven some of these folk, so that now we can get out and have some fun again.

So now you’re caught up.

And it’s Eric’s birthday! and a pot luck party with the theme of Chicago! and most of the group is in attendance! There’s no one event this week folks, but the fact that we’re over a very large hump in our relationships?? Well, that’s an event worth celebrating. Or toasting. Or blogging.

Or all of the above.

rhode island

Sun, 2 May 2010 16:59:05 -0700

I had to go to Boston for a conference this week, and then I took the opportunity to go to Rhode Island by train to go visit my brother, John, for his 50th birthday. I only had a couple of days, but it couldn’t have been a better trip. The weather was fabulous, my brother and sister-in-law welcoming and happy and full of fun and laughter, and I got to visit a bunch of favorite places and eat lobster. Oh how I miss the lobster! And my brother. Oh, I meant to say AND MY BROTHER!!

We had drinks in the sunshine at the Hot Club on Thursday afternoon, and had a delicious and remarkably inexpensive Thai meal at Apsara later that evening. On Friday we headed to the ocean... visited the family compound in Little Compton, and spent a day in Newport, where I had a fabulous lobster roll at the Brick Alley Pub, and wandered up and down Thames Street in the sunshine. After that we drove around and checked out all the Newport Mansions for sale, trying to decide what we’d buy if we won the Powerball that night. We got back to my brother’s about 7 or so, and embarked on an ambitious mission to make baked stuffed shrimp, baked potatoes, and swordfish for dinner. We were going to add a salad, but exhaustion kicked in. John’s good friend Mark and his wife Peggy stopped by about 10:30 to say hello and join us in a bite, and we were all in bed by midnight.

I got to spend Saturday morning in Bristol with my good friend Nancy, where we had breakfast and wandered the streets shopping and talking and messing around with the volunteer firemen.

In the afternoon, my brother smoked a turkey and taught me how to play darts (and I put a couple dozen new holes in the outer wall of his garage). We had a wonderful family dinner for my brother’s birthday, where I got to see my niece and nephew, and then had a farewell breakfast on Sunday at Nick’s on Broadway (I had the Black Beans + Eggs: two eggs, black beans, salsa, avocado-cilantro-sour-cream, served with grilled warm tortilla...yum).

I wouldn’t have missed my brother’s 50th for the world. Happy Birthday, John! (and now it really is your turn to come and visit me...)

Jake

Sat, 6 Mar 2010 18:47:56 -0800

I drove to Wenatchee this weekend to get Jake. This was no small thing. Wenatchee is 3 hours away -- over the river and through the woods and over the pass. I spent six hours in a car and went over the pass to Eastern Washington to find a new dog. Who does that??

And then I spent the weekend wondering if I had lost my mind. Oh my god! The energy level of this dog...

He’s cute though, isn’t he? He’s Jake. Terrier mix extraordinaire.

Terror-ist.

arizona

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 18:28:55 -0800

My sister Julie has been living in Phoenix since last July. She didn’t know a soul when she moved there (she moved for work) and she kept encouraging me to visit. I refused to visit her when it was 117 degrees, which apparently is most of the year, but I thought a trip in February might be a good idea. You know, inject some sun directly into my veins.

She’s been telling me that Phoenix ain’t all it’s cracked up to be, but I didn’t believe her. And then I got there and boy, did I ever believe her. I’m sure there must be some really nice areas in Phoenix (there must!) but we didn’t find them.

Sedona and Scottsdale were gorgeous though. Look at the photos. They look like every calendar you ever saw of Arizona, don’t they?

I wouldn’t want to live there either, but it was great to visit for a few days and to see all the geographic wonders in person. But much more than that, it was great to see my sister.

Crisis

Sun, 21 Feb 2010 19:04:17 -0800

It’s been a bad, bad, bad week. The Mad Scientist came home from India and South Africa on Monday and immediately went into a medical crisis. I spent a few days trying to assist him while feeling terrible myself, and then I ended up in the ER on Thursday night. Let’s just leave it at “it could have been really serious but wasn’t”. They gave me a common drug to counteract my symptoms, and then I had an allergic reaction and ended up back in the ER on Saturday -- where the doctor with no bedside manner at all yelled at me for coming back, even though the paperwork that came with the drug said “if you experience any of these symptoms, seek immediate medical attention...”

Today I was still having reactions and my friend Lee made a drug store run for me so I wouldn’t have to go back to the ER and get yelled at again.

Not a good week, people.

discovery park

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 16:09:45 -0800

The last four weeks have been tough on me, and it’s starting to wear me down. I’m grumpy and anti-social. I want to get out of the house, but I don’t want to have to talk to anyone -- you can be on the sidewalk with me, or in the grocery store with me, just don’t make me interact with you. This attitude needed to be remedied (fast!) and when I need healing, I need space and time and mother nature. So I decided to go to Discovery Park.  This park is beautiful. It’s big and it’s right on the water and it’s well-maintained. There’s so much space that other people barely register. But it torments me. Every time I go I try to find the lighthouse, and every time I fail. I head in what I know is the right direction, and I always find the one and only mile marker that mentions the lighthouse, but I never ever get to the lighthouse. How is it that I can get lost in exactly the same way every single time I visit this park?  In the past I had to give up and get back to the car because I had a very tired dog at the end of a leash. Today I had to turn around and head home because I was getting very tired. I’d walked the dog 4.4 miles this morning, and by the time I gave up on the lighthouse I was at mile 7 or so for the day. Another 1.3 miles back to the car put me at about mile 8.5 or 9.  On the way home I stopped by the Mad Scientist’s house to walk and feed Comet, and now I’m at 10 miles for the day.

But the park and all the walking did have a calming effect. Now I can go play scrabble with the girls tonight and I won’t bite anyone’s head off. And bonus points -- I’m way ahead on my exercise goals for the week.

northwest flower and garden show

Sun, 7 Feb 2010 15:24:54 -0800

I had breakfast with my friend Jim today -- eggs benedict at the Wild Mountain Café. Jim and I work together and when we were done dishin’ on the work issues and personalities, and commiserating on various odds and ends, I asked him if he wanted to come to the Northwest Flower and Garden Show with me. Happily, I earned his company for a few more hours.

Years ago I went to the flower & garden show two years running and after the second show decided that an annual pilgrimage was too much. I haven’t been back since. Today’s show was much more manageable than I remembered. Most of the gardens were not my style, but there were a couple that were exactly the look I aim for, and I was happy to get some inspiration from them.

I didn’t get many photos, and the few I got aren’t very good (it was dark in there!) but don’t let the lack of photographic evidence fool you. It was a lovely two hours of blossoms and beauty and critiquing the work of others. I came away with the decision to add more ferns to the shady sections of my yard, and also to try New Zealand Brass Buttons as ground cover. I was surprised that I didn’t see a lot of plants that were unfamiliar to me -- I guess all that time and money spent at the nursery all these years has resulted in an education.

SAM Sculpture park

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 14:44:53 -0800

I was headed to the Seattle Art Museum (SAM) today, when I took a last-second right-hand turn, parked by the waterfront, and decided to visit the Olympic Sculpture Park instead.

The sculpture park sits right on the waterfront at the northern edge of downtown -- ferries and sea lions and cormorants and sailboats on one side, railroad tracks and the space needle on the other. It’s a gorgeous location that on a summer day would be packed with people, but today was nearly empty -- just the way I like it.

The sculpture park is directly adjacent to Myrtle Edwards Park, so once you’ve seen the giant eraser and the beast that ate the space needle, you can continue walking along the waterfront a mile or so past the old Seattle PI building, the rose garden, and the grain elevator.

Thank god someone had the foresight to save this spot for the people, instead of selling it to developers for condos and office parks.  Next week: The Northwest Flower & Garden Show

pike place market in winter

Sun, 24 Jan 2010 16:42:31 -0800

It’s been a week of heartbreak, furious busyness, and sheer exhaustion. Snoqualmie was on the schedule for today, but my friend Chris, who was supposed to go with me, wasn’t feeling up to it. Since it seemed like a trip I’d want to take with someone, I spent some time mentally throwing darts at the Maquest maps of the Seattle area, trying to decide where to go instead. I wanted to stay close to home and I didn’t want to have to interact with people. All day I’d been seeing the ghost of Georgie and it was making me sad. I didn’t want to have to look anyone in the eye or hold a polite conversation. A trail hike in one of the local parks sounded like a good idea until it started raining. I didn’t have the energy or the mental capacity for an educational trip to a museum. Really, all I wanted to do was to go back to bed and sleep this day away.

Instead I decided to go to Pike Place Market. In summer it’s a madhouse of tourists and buskers, but on a rainy winter day it’s sort of peaceful. Walking through, you can star in your own silent movie, the activity around you barely making its way through to your senses, the familiarity of it all soothing every raw nerve. If you carry a camera with you, everyone assumes you’re a tourist, allowing you some personal space and anonymity. It’s a good place to develop some comfort with carrying a camera around and I’ve used it for that purpose in the past. (Though today I noticed a lot more signs saying ‘no photographs’. )

The Market in winter is full of apples and pears and citrus and greens. Fish is plentiful. Tulips were the flower of the day. The crowds were thin and easy to get through. The smells of baked goods wafting through the chilly rain? Enticing.

Street parking is still free on Sundays, but also still hard to find around the Market, so if you need parking, go to the Market Parking Garage -- it’s only $5 for the entire day on Sunday.

burien, wa

Sun, 17 Jan 2010 15:39:25 -0800

I was all set to go to Madison Park today. I’d made a rash decision on Wednesday that that was where I would be today. Not because I’ve never been there (I have -- many times) but because I always seem to be rushing in to meet someone or through to get somewhere else. So I had decided to take my time and explore the neighborhood today. But then this morning I remembered that my co-worker told me that “Burien has a really cute downtown”.

Burien has a downtown? Really? And it’s cute?? I always thought Burien was just the home of the SouthCenter Mall -- a huge ugly swath of big box and discount stores, wide traffic-clogged streets, and miles of industrial wasteland.

So I decided to go to Burien.

Now, if you go back and look at my last two posts you’ll notice that I travelled to Snohomish and Bothell on Saturdays. I did that because I was worried that such small-town downtowns would be closed on Sunday. And by “closed on Sunday” I generally mean that some of the town would be open but that there might be interesting boutiques or bookstores or restaurants interspersed that were not open, and that I would miss out on the full experience. You know, maybe 20-30% closed.

Well, Burien is closed on Sunday. And I do mean closed. Fully closed. 99% closed. Only one store was open -- and a couple of bars and restaurants. Nothing else. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

But a block or two of Olde Burien is indeed very cute. The other 6-8 blocks are never-renovated storefronts from the 50s and 60s, most of them empty and bearing “For Lease” signs in the windows. It was quiet and calm and empty and sort of depressing. But hey, I was there, so I wandered down the street and I took some pictures and I stopped into The Mark for a burger. And then I came back home. It was a quick excursion.

If you go, go on a Saturday. And don’t plan to spend more than an hour there -- two if you’re going to have lunch.

bothell, wa

Sat, 9 Jan 2010 20:57:23 -0800

I’ve been traveling to Bothell every weekday for 18 months now, but aside from working in an office park there and frequenting a few lunch joints, I have not done anything in Bothell. (Oh -- I also frequent the feed store.)

Truth be told, there’s not a lot to Bothell. My guidebooks don’t even mention it. Historic downtown Bothell is comprised of a bank, a furniture store, a few restaurants, and a Safeway that appears to have been built in about 1961. Maybe we missed something in the afternoon there, but then again, maybe not.

I work with a couple of people that I used to work with in Silicon Valley and it’s amazing how similar the whole experience is...same people, same strip malls, same housing developments on formerly rural land. The only thing that differs is the weather and the view -- and in those two respects, Bothell wins out every time.

My friend Chris and I headed up to Bothell after the Saturday sleep-in and chores were done. It was past lunch time and I’d been busy taking down Christmas lights, cleaning house, doing the laundry, and walking the dog. I was hungry, and low-blood-sugar-Susan is not a woman you want to meet. First stop, lunch. We had lunch at Pen Thai in “downtown” Bothell, then walked a block or two in every direction to see if we were missing some historic building or something. Deciding we had not, we headed to the Country Village.

The Country Village is a collection of quaint little shops that sell mostly crafts, home decorations, and antiques. It’s a sweet little break from the urban hip/chic of Seattle boutiques and malls, though for the most part not my taste in furnishings. I did enjoy the country/farm architecture and the roaming chickens and ducks. And I picked up a few antique spools converted to candle sticks that are making me very happy on my dining room table.

Perhaps we should have allotted Bothell more time. I understand there’s a really nice walking trail there. And the Burke-Gilman trail goes through Bothell, too. Maybe there’s more. Really, it’s not a bad place (It’s not crime-ridden or anything. And there are a number of excellent lunch joints.) -- it’s just not much of a place at all.

snohomish, wa

Sat, 2 Jan 2010 21:00:51 -0800

A few weeks ago I had to go on a departmental off-site -- one of those team-building, group-hug things that generally fill me with dread and loathing. Does anyone really enjoy the thought of those things?

Luckily the people I work with every weekday of my life are not the cheerleading, corporate-drone zombies that such events are made for, and despite my vigorous foot-dragging, I have found myself enjoying the yearly off-site events much more than I dislike them. I could certainly do without the group hug, but spending a lazy morning around the table of a cozy restaurant in Snohomish, WA, followed by an afternoon of throwing pottery with local artisans and co-workers is really not that bad a day, all in all.

It was on that excursion that I looked around and thought, “this is an extremely cute town, why have I never been here?” -- and I vowed to return. And when I did I would revive the so-very-comatose 52 Weekends Project. Because I miss the Project -- and the travel and the adventures. Life has been oh-so-boring without it.

And so it was that my good friend Eric and I put an address in the GPS yesterday and drove out to Snohomish during a brief period of vitamin-D rich sunshine on the first weekend of January, 2010. A new year, a new decade, a new adventure on a Saturday afternoon -- after the chores were done and the rented movies returned.

Snohomish is about 30 miles north and East of Seattle and despite my admonition to the GPS genie to make the “most use of freeways”, we inexplicably traveled along some rural roads through winter-empty farm lands. Perhaps there really is a genie in that GPS though, as this was just what I would have wished for if I had been given the chance. Peaceful, quiet, rolling fields, brown and green in the winter landscape of the Pacific Northwest.

Snohomish has made itself known as a place to find antiques of all kinds, but what I was drawn to weeks ago was the small-town, old-west feel of the place. The ornate analog clocks still stand (and work). They have not been replaced by digital message boards at the bank on the corner. The light posts speak of a time when people believed in beauty as well as functionality. The store fronts are old and wooden and uneven in their settling patterns. The doors are labeled “push” instead of “pull”. There are rumors of ghosts.

Lunch was first on the agenda, so we stepped into the Oxford Tavern for a beer and a burger, or, in Eric’s case, a beer, a corn dog, and fries. Despite said rumors of ghosts, the ghost test was a failure, and we remain unconvinced of their existence in that location. Perhaps they do not come out for skeptics.

Pulling ourselves from the warm and friendly attentions of the waitress, we wandered around town examining artifacts from the past. Old dishes, finery suitable for sea captains and madams, bone saws, kitchen implements, gasoline pumps so pristine they might have been reproductions, family photos, post cards from long ago seaside adventures that were arrived at by train. Wonders and curiosities all, though none so weird and wonderful that we chose to pull out the nickels and dimes and take them home with us (had there been shrunken heads and man-eating plants and home lobotomy kits, we might have cleared some space on our overburdened shelves).

With the winter nighttime hours quickly enveloping us, we wandered into The Repp for a cocktail and some time with the locals. Striking up a conversation with the remarkably urban-chic bar mistress, we learned that The Repp had originally been a theater, then a grocery, then one of the very first antique stores in town. More recently it had been a restaurant known as Sebastian’s (which my guidebook still lists as open, though it’s been The Repp for 3 years now -- don’t believe everything your guidebook says).

The Repp’s menu didn’t grab our imaginations and nothing else in town looked especially enticing either, so we headed back to Seattle. Eric’s been aching to get back to Spinasse for weeks, so as the GPS wallowed in confusion on the way out of town, Eric tried to locate the phone number for Spinasse on my iPhone. There seems to be some sort of technology shield surrounding Snohomish and it wasn’t until we were in Bothell that we learned there were no reservations available at Spinasse until 10 pm. Clearly we should have used what may be the last working pay phone in America before we left town.

Sources:
Best Places Northwest, 17th Edition
Snohomish County Tourism Bureau
Snohomish Chamber of Commerce