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

Seattle Freeze

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somehwere i have never travelled,gladly beyond

Never-before seen shots of Bendy's home in Seattle!

Our living room and doors to our kitchen

Desk/coffee table/dinner table with tripod/mini lamp in background.

Bass and sofa with stuffed animal foods and squishy panda pillow from my brother.

This is how you entertain yourself when you don't have internet access.

Toys on display on top of the Zenith Space Command. It's not HD, but it does have fake wood paneling.

Banana, our housecat. He's looking a little thin lately.

A Pantone kitchen says: designers are cookin' here

Bedside & $10 Goodwill dresser, eventually to be painted with green trim. Items to connect me to the people I love: Super bunny from Nicole, Mariners hat from Ben, BSG bag from Dorina, kitty slippers made by Cyndi

Photes of friends, bowl and Pisa statue from Jana.

Little islands of clutter here and there... Still a work in progress

Just listen to the music of the traffic in the city

I have a new job! Or rather a new freelance assignment. It will last through the first week of March and pays me enough to keep me in all the $1 Starbucks coffee my little heart desires. Best yet, it is at a design firm whose work I have long admired and I am learning a great deal from some really talented creative people. I was unemployed in Seattle for a total of 5 days, for which I feel very fortunate. Of course when the assignment ends I might have weeks and weeks of unemployment, but for right now it is helping me adjust and meet new people.

Parking downtown costs about $16/day, so I have been riding the bus to work. It's a short 15 minute ride and costs about $1.50 each way. I think the experience of taking the bus makes me feel like a real grown up in a real city, but I suspect the novelty will wear off soon. It is comfortable to come home and make a little dinner for me and my roommate, chat with a few friends, and close out the evening with the Colbert Report. I feel all domesticated. But it's only been a week.

Weekends have been spent adventuring in such places as the landmark Seattle Central Library and the giant retail city of Tukwila. Poor Tukwila seems to exist purely as a location on the outskirts of metropolitan Seattle where cityfolks can drive a short distance to the giant Ikea, Ross, Bed Bath & Beyond, Best Buy, Guitar Center and Westfield Shoppingtown, a shoppingtown within a shoppingtown. It's as though the city of Seattle has taken the garish landscaping that embodies the suburban strip mall and swept it under the carpet that is Tukwila. That way the neighborhoods of Belltown, Magnolia, Fremont, Queen Anne and Pioneer Square can stay as charming as their names might imply.

The best thing so far really has been our location within Lower Queen Anne and down the street from the Seattle Center. This is my first experience of living in the heart of a metropolitan area. I enjoy hearing the shouts of drunk people down the street. It's sort of similar to the feeling of being all cozy inside when it's raining outside, which I've also been enjoying a lot. We are like a 5 minute walk from two grocery stores, a really good thai food place, the local indie movie theater, a used book store, a pottery studio, a record store, the Key Area, Seattle International Film Festival Theater, the Seattle Repertory Theatre, the Experience Music Project, some crazy looking big top circus dinner theater place called Teatro ZinZanni and a bunch of bars and restaurants. It reminds me of visiting friends at Berkeley in that everything is walking distance and I am excited to go out and try it all.

The only drawback is that with so much to do, it's been difficult to find time to blog...

Enterprise Enterprise

Does not the logo of the Pita Pit bear a striking resemblance to the starship Enterprise? Is hummus therefore the final frontier?

Los Angeles Adventure

This post ins't really about Seattle at all, but how can I talk about where I am if I don't spend some time remembering where I've been?

Before departing LA for my new life in Seattle, I spent the month of December and early January seeing good friends and doing my favorite Los Angeles things, squirreling away fond memories of things and people I love like. During my last week there, my geek hero and punning role model Ben proposed a Los Angeles Adventure in downtown.

Ben is the nerdiest person I know other than myself. I am so glad we became friends because he makes me a better nerd. He is always up to dork-out, and he even lets me cuddle his cat.

So a plan was hatched to ride the metro and visit some classic LA spots: Olvera Street, Chinatown, Cliftons & the Observatory. Another famous nerd pal Cyndi came with us and together we set out to enjoy the multitude of quirky charms that downtown Los Angeles has to offer.

Some shark cigarette posters to start things off. I think the ride from Union Station to Chinatown, which is actually walking distance, completed the Metro portion of our adventure, sadly enough. Even when purposely using public transportation we couldn't manage it.

Lanterns in Chinatown. The Chinatown metro station also has a The feng shui compass which I failed to photograph. It had no informational plaque so we had no idea what it was, but when I stood on it the needle moved. I guess I'm magnetic.

The Chinatownland sign, which was apparently created in 2002 as an art installation.

Cyndi is attempting to act as the arms for this angel statue outside a boba place.

Moving to Olvera Street, which was eerily quiet, we grabbed a quick bite at the stall serving what's widely considered to be the best taquitos in LA.

Union Station at dusk from Olvera Street.

On to Clifton's. I had never been, so I took a lot of photos. One of my partners in ad school had written a series of headlines about Clifton's which really piqued my interest, so I was glad to finally see it in person.

Given the cafeteria-food menu, the colorful variety of desserts was the most appetizing looking area.

I ended up choosing the chicken and dumpling fricasee and strawberry dulce de leche cake.

With the silk flora, animatronic fauna and high dining perch, one can hardly help drawing a connection between Clifton's and Club 33. Similar and yet so opposite.

Gravy makes us giddy.

A transfat free zone.

The view from the street

Now only a blur

After Cliftons we had some mexican hot chocolate at Weeneez which was attached to the Red Dot gallery. Then we walked down the block and saw some amazing sculptures in a downtown hotel window.

After dropping Cyndi off at the Metro station, we headed over to Griffith Park for the final portion of the Adventure. I hadn't been to the Observatory since they remodeled it, and I was excited to see it before leaving.

The Foucault pendulum in the lobby is such a great opening exhibit. When the little peg fell down, it gave me such a sense of awe for the planet and the world. People applauded. Gravity took a bow. You might call it a latitude adjustment.

Ben and I made our way to the telescope on the roof, where we got an amazing view of the moon. But nothing could top Leonard Nimoy's narration in the introductory film for the Leonard Nimoy Event Horizon Theater.

My beloved home city. A perfect end for a great adventure.