Savor Seattle

For Valentine's Day (yeah, I've been a little behind schedule in my blogging), Andy took me to a nice dinner and to see Persepolis which I had been dying to watch for months.

For my gift, I treated Andy to a little local food tour of Pike Place, called Savor Seattle.


They took us to a lot of the famous Pike Place stalls and stores, like Market Spice and Chukar Cherries but they also introduced us to some places we hadn't tried yet like The Confectional for hot chocolate and Etta's for coconut cream pie. At the famous fish market where they throw the fish over the counter we got to taste salmon jerky and gawk at the handsome fishmongers. They're the like rubber-overalled version of firemen, except instead of smokey, they smell fishy.


The tour guide and owner of Savor Seattle is the most upbeat adorable little woman named Angela. She uses a pink "Savor Seattle" umbrella to guide tours through the bustle of the market, and chatters away in your ear over the headset.


My favorite stop was the Beecher's Cheese Shop where we got to sample some of their artisan cheese AND...


... their "World's Best" Mac & Cheese! I'm not qualified to say whether it's indeed the best in the world, but it was pretty damn gooey and delicious.


Next we sampled Piroshky Piroshky, which is another of our new favorite foods at Pike Place. Hot, inexpensive and tasty. Oh, and I almost forgot the mini doughnuts at The Daily Dozen, which also exemplify the street-food-triad of deliciousness. No pictures, but if you come visit us in Seattle we'll take you to get a bag.


I loved the smoked salmon piroshki. I dunno if it's spelled with an "I" or a "Y" at the end. I prefer Y for "Yummy!" Ha.


The view from Etta's near Pike Place. A beautiful clear crisp day in Seattle.


One of our last stops, Angela told us about the art exhibit drain pipe system in one of the Pike Place alleys.


Andy enjoyed the piroshkis so much that later we visited Piroshki on Broadway in Capitol Hill and had these cute salmon and turkey piroshkis. Definitely not as good as the ones at Pike Place, but much cuter.

Cupcake Royale!

Andy knows I love cupcakes (and of course he loves em too) so on his way home from the DMV a while back he brought home a box of treats from Seattle's Cupcake Royale.

They were supposedly ranked in MSN's Top 10 Cupcakes in the Country. I like them better than Sprinkles in LA, but maybe that's because I hated all the hype and long lines. I think these were also better than the ones at Lark in Silverlake, but not as good as some giant ones Jean once had or some that Ben shared from a place down the street from his house.


Andy picked on appearance only, just like a boy. He got me one with lavender frosting and himself a red velvet (of which I am not a fan) and a mini baby vanilla one to share.


I think Cupcake Royale mostly makes very tasty vanilla and chocolate cupcakes and focuses their flavoring attention on the frostings, which to me makes a lot of sense, from an information architecture point of view. Simplicity is good.


The thing that made these cupcakes so great though was the oversized muffin-tops. I think they protect the bottom part from drying out somehow. The bottom cake part is nice and moist with a lot of good vanilla flavor and just sweet enough. And the muffin top is a nice size with a little bit of carmelizing of the sugar in the batter, so that each bite can stand on its own and has just enough frosting. I always felt like they overdid the frosting at Sprinkles.


The lavender frosting was delicious and somehow really worked, flower bits and all. Plus it was adorable. Andy's red velvet was okay, but I've already established my dislike for red velvet. Seeing the pile of empty food coloring bottles after a friend made some red velvet was enough to turn me off for good.


All done!

Delicious, but not so sugary that you feel gross afterwards. Just sweet enough to make your day happier! I think I'm now a fan of the Cupcake Royale.

I Love a Man That Can Make Me Laugh

The viewing public has long been divided between Andy's resemblance to Tony Hawk or Seth Myers, but I am personally in the Seth Myers camp. During long stays away from each other I would watch SNL and make out with the television during Weekend Update. Mainly I think it's because I love a man that can make me laugh.

When Entertainment Weekly came this week, I thought I would take the opportunity to prove my point by doing a face to face comparison.


I think we can all agree that Seth Myers and Andy were separated at birth.


I'm having difficulty telling the two apart...

SoDo Claypool

Last night Mr. Les Claypool came to town to the Showbox SoDo and he brought some friends with him. He had a somewhat unique quartet featuring Les on bass, Skerik on sax, Mike Dillon on percussion and a new drummer I haven't seen him play with before, Paulo Baldi.

All in all it was a fine show and Les was in good form. They played some of his current stuff off of Whales of Woe and some old Primus stuff too. Fisticuffs was a big surprise and brought a smile to my face. Although, for some reason I never quite dig the midway drum solo (aka Les' lunch break). It always leaves me with a headache.

After seeing a Claypool concert, or any concert for that matter but especially one with Les, it's always very inspirational. The next day I pick up my bass and can play with a rejuvenated spirit and passion. Also there's always a song of his I haven't fully learned to play and I'm forced to investigate a little further. I've seen him live probably eight times now and while I've never been quite as amazed as the first time I saw Les play, he always manages to inspire me musically a little more.

Here's the set list as best I remember it:

1) Ding Dang

2) Fisticuffs

3) Some song I wasn't familiar with.

4) Long in the Tooth

5) Precipitation

6) Drum Solo followed by Whammola

7) Filipino Ray

8) Vernon the Company Man

9) John the Fisherman

10) Rumble of the Diesel

11) One Better

Encore

12) American Life (on bass banjo)

13) Iowan Gal (on bass banjo)

14) Morphine cover

Unemployed Again, Naturally

Today I woke up at 10am and for a while I just lay in bed and stared at the hair on my knee and then I got up and sent job application emails and looked at Facebook and then I went and had lunch with Andy and Andre at the Pyramid brewery, where none of us drank any beer. We talked about our positions in society as the supper-bell-ringers, signaling the world that it was "Time to consume!" and thus, of course, causing the downfall of civilization. I had chicken chili though, which is better than beef chili and so it all balances out.

Not having a freelance job to currently attend to means that I am free to do all sorts of fun/meaningless things. After lunch I went to the bookstore and bought a book about user interface design for my web design class and then came home and learned how to play the world's slowest online scrabble game.

I should be really excited about all this free time, but I think work brings me meaning. Work equals producing, and at its best, producing in my job means creating, and I somehow value creating above all else as the meaning and purpose of life.

All I am creating right now is a lot of emails in my friends' mailboxes and a lot of scribble on their walls and nonsense on their voicemails.

I really must stop whining and get off my butt and do something. Creativity doesn't need employment to be employed. I have a million ideas and now is the time to implement. But first, more whining...

~~~
When people talk about milestones growing up they never mention the fact that the first time you get really truly all out bed-ridden green-snotted low-grade-feverishly sick without access to your family or readily available healthcare, you will certainly panic and think you are going to die.

I'm sure they mostly don't mention it because afterwards it seems silly, but I'm sure if everyone thinks back to the worst and first time they were sick and out on their own, they will recall that they were a little freaked out.

Last week Andy was stuck on a presentation meeting and worked all weekend, and I had no one to call because as I've already mentioned I have no friends here, and since my COBRA health insurance is Aetna of California, I could only really count on coverage if I went to the emergency room. And my paycheck hadn't come yet, and I had a fever and blood in my snot and cramps from my period. And it was 11pm and there was no Tylenol in the house and I didn't know what to do.

I called my mom in tears and told her I had a fever and that I was scared of getting brain damage. I'm sure she must have wondered how she raised her daughter to be 27 years old and worried about brain damage, but luckily I have a wonderful mother so she was only supportive and loving and offered to send money or fly me home.

Hearing my mother's voice seemed to calm me down somewhat, and Andy came home for a break to bring me hugs and Tylenol, good sweet boy that he is. Five days later I woke up one morning and felt all better. The end!

~~~
I have been reading up on typography because I find that typography is the easy way out for some people when they are assessing your design portfolio. Like when someone is giving an ad critique in class and they say "But that ad could be for any product, it's not differentiated enough." Sometimes that's true, and sometimes they are just blowing bloody green snot out their nose, but if you don't know enough to know when they're wrong, you'll fall prey to their all-purpose nitpicking.

Same thing goes for typography. Typography is such a complex art form that involves so many practices and so much fine-tuning, that to look at a portfolio and say "your typography could be better" is like reading a book and saying "your grammar could be stronger." More importantly, it drives at a general skill level and not at a specific piece or issue.

So studying type seems like the best way to call their bluff, and I've been reading typography books until the wee hours, and having typography dreams as a result. The other morning I woke up with what I was sure was the best new idea for a video game ever based on the Gutenberg Bible where the point would be to decide a character's path by deciphering between printed pages and identifying key glyphs and character-space to determine which ones were fake. Each fake page would take you to a dangerous world full of intricate type-puzzles and each real page would transport you to a reward level.

I thought it all brilliant and was ready to start making up keyframes or something when I realized that this was basically the idea behind the computer game Myst, and then I went back to sleep.

Heroes Season One

A few weeks ago Beth and I started watching season one of Heroes and now it's like crack. We can't pull away. Our whole lives evolves around one known truth, "Save the cheerleader, save the world." As soon as an episode ends we instantly look at each other and say, "should we watch another?" Because of this we've been flying through DVD's like nobody's business. Now we're getting near the end of the season and I'm beginning to worry what's going to happen, both in the show and in my life. First there's the obvious questions of what's going to happen for this thing to wrap up in some sort of way that makes sense and then the other is, when the hell are they going to pump out season two. It better be fast because we may not be able to stand the withdrawal pains.

Hiro after taking a poop in the future or something.

As for now we have a few episodes left and things are getting pretty juicy. It been a little frustrating thinking something is going to happen in the next episode (so we watch another) then it doesn't. This may be part of their scheme to keep people on the edge of their seats, but it's a let down sometimes. Partially because we guess wrong and partially because now we have to wait another episode to find out. In the end it's nothing to complain about because it's all good stuff.

Snip Snap

Move to a new city, cut your hair in a new fashion. It's a test. If I look different and I'm located in a different place, can I still hold true to the things that I think make up the central core of who I am? Probably. Afterall, I still hate it when someone asks me if I put "product" in my hair, I still have a combined pathological curiosity/fear of changing my hair color, and I still can't wield a hairdryer for crap.

But next time I intend to get super super short bangs.

I Like the Lichen

I guess looking at lichen is really a solitary pasttime anyways, and here in the Pacific Northwest there is even more of it to look at. I dunno if these qualify as lichen or moss or both. But they're pretty!

Out & About

And I do mean out... Andy tries on my skinny jeans

Dear Journal: as I write I am sitting in my bathtub with my new aromatherapy bath caddy, spilling candle wax on my naked private parts while combining alcohol and a hot tub environment. Pure genius!

Space Needle seen from a street near our house.

Drinks from the Japanese supermarket Uwajimaya. Join the Coffee Mafia and receive free mustache and pipe!

After helping Andre unpack his newly purchased art work as seen on the wall, Beth decided to create some art of her own using biodegradable packing peanuts.

Thanks Emily!

During my first couple of weeks here I was the lucky recipient of some very thoughtful cards and packages, and in particular this one from Emily helped me get through some sad tears. She sent me a pile of yummy Japanese goodies and knitted me a fuzzy pair of leg warmers!

Fun snacks!

Mmm... Chomp?

It's not ice cream! It's chocolate!

Full of goodies and with warm leggies.

And be glad that you're there

I had only been in Seattle for around 5 days when I had my first "You're On Your Own" type grown-up day. It started out badly when the clothing rod in the hall closet which sort of functions as my wardrobe collapsed as I was getting dressed to meet Andy and his writing partner for lunch in South Downtown. The whole crash knocked me backwards and the rod fell on my thumb as I was pulling off my jacket, leaving me with a bruised thumb and a huge pile of crap. The photo makes it seem much less catastrophic than it felt when I was falling backwards into the closet door. Mostly I was pissed because I had just finished unpacking my clothes that morning.


Rushing down to SoDo I was happy to see some sunlight. I wondered what all the fuss about Seattle rain was about. Andy and Andre met me in the parking lot across the street from their work. The parking lot is attached to some weird little diner/smokehouse. I can't quite decide what's so weird about it, but apparently someone on Yelp is in agreement. Andy and Andre are pretty convinced it's a front for drug ring, kind of like that suspicious gas station on the corner of Prairie and Redondo Beach in Torrance where the gas costs like $8 per gallon.


We went to a little SoDo BBQ joint called the Pig Iron and I immediately felt better once I had ordered some jalapeño spinach casserole and creamed corn and taken a look around at the vintage Hatch Show posters on the walls. I especially enjoyed their collection of pig-themed decor.



Hanging out with Andy and Andre is always a good time, and it was nice to get to know them better over some yum BBQ. We talked about harnessing the power of advertising to Save the World, and how Tivo is actually contributing to the downfall of society, etc etc. The food was pretty tasty, and they had a good sweet tea which supposedly gets implemented in a delicious sweet tea mojito.





I dropped the A team off at work and sort of felt sad and lonely. Everything still did/does feel raw and reminds me of the people I love and have left behind. A delicious BBQ lunch served to remind of Jana and her passion for pork, and I felt that Cyndi would have appreciated the side orders. I felt bummed and full of self-pity diluted by sweet tea.

I decided to try to cheer myself up by visiting the Goodwill store near their agency. I had good luck there a few days before with a $10 dresser, perhaps today I might find a clothing storage system that wouldn't let me or my tunic dresses down. The downtown location is huge and endless with aisles and aisles of used sewing machines and discarded VCRs and an entire section dedicated to old joysticks. The furniture area is constantly in flux, but that day I was not as lucky. I glared enviously at the smug woman hugging an upholstered footstool to her chest as she flipped through used records. She obviously found what she was looking for. I couldn't take her superior air, so I slunk back to my car and calculated the distance to the U-District Buffalo Exchange. If all my clothes were going to reside on the closet floor, what difference would a few more tunic dresses make.


But it was not to be. I twisted the key forward and nothing happened. The pedals moved fine and the radio lights would blink on and then off, but nothin else. No quiet whir of the engine and no response except for the little red engine light and the little red check fluids light. And I freaked out.

I had let my AAA membership lapse in January of 07, but I had my oil changed every 3 months (mostly). It had just been changed and my tires rotated before driving up to Seattle though. Normally in such a situation I am ashamed to say that my first response would be to call my Dad. For as long as I can remember, emails and phone calls from my Dad are signed off with things like "Please take care of your insurance" or "Did you get your oil changed yet?" and to me that is how I know I am loved. It's not that I can't take care of my car on my own. It's that having my father help me with such matters brings me a sense of connection and security.

But now I'm 2 states away, and a phone call to my father would do more harm than good. There was no point in worrying him, and nothing to do but sit quietly and figure out for myself the best thing to do. First of all, call my boyfriend and whine and freak out. Check. Next, confirm that my AAA membership truly is expired and useless. Check. Next, jiggle key uselessly in ignition and read a few meaningless chapters of car owner manual, looking for magical enlightenment. Check. Next, get out with owner's manual in hand and poke around front of car looking for way to open hood, tripping through parking lot planter and groaning. Check. Next, call back boyfriend and continue previously truncated whining. Check. Next, cry.

I'm not proud of myself for all that. I was not the picture of grace. I was ashamed to ask for help, and mad at myself for not renewing my AAA card. I knew my Dad would have been disappointed in me. Andy left work early to come join me so that I could use his AAA card (unethical? yes or no?) and while sitting and waiting for him and fumed at myself for being so careless. In preparing to move there were so many things I was careful to attend to, and yet here was something completely preventable that I had neglected. I questioned whether I was truly ready to enter the adult world.

Andy came and we sat in my powerless car in the cold for about 45 minutes waiting for the tow truck. I fretted about the possibility of replacing an alternator and Andy maintained that it was probably my battery. I watched the sun set in the rear view mirror and missed my friends and family and felt sorry for myself. Andy was graciously silent and gentle. He showed me the oil change stick again and reassured me that the fluids looked fine.

Eventually the tow truck came and we found out that it was merely the battery, not something I could have done anything to prevent. We paid for a replacement battery and drove home in dusk.


In the days since then I have certainly had harder times emotionally, but that was a day for obstacles of the physical world. In retrospect, the moral of that story was that things are not as bad as they sometimes seem and they can certainly be worse. When we got home Andy drilled the closet rod back in place while I renewed my AAA card online, and a few days later we bought a clothing rack and purse hooks that hang behind the door for my million purse, and everything was fine.



But if the way that I understood love from my Dad was always looking out for me, then the way that I understand love from Andy is always being there for me. It's hard for me to accept help because I don't want to seem helpless, so it's important that I don't feel like the help is being given with a feeling indebtedness. But I do need help because clearly there are a lot of things I have yet to learn and challenges I will have have to overcome on this new adventure, and even great heroes have partners and sidekicks and soul animal demons and elven gifts to give them special powers. There's no shame in admitting that I can't do it alone. And I'll get better as time goes by.



Now you can feel all the knots in your stomach they start to untie
And suddenly it's not so hard to say you're alright

Oh, love is real it is not just in poetry and stories
It is truth and it will follow you everywhere you go from now on
So if you just cast all off your doubts then your lips would answer for you
Oh, my darling when you smile it is like a song
And I can hear it now