Starry Wisdom

Entropic Words from Neilathotep

Monday, September 15, 2008

Seattle Debrief, Part I.

I got im to SEA at about 6:30 on Friday and called my friend Steve who was already on his was to the airport. I waited about 10 minutes for him and we were off. On the way to his house in Sammamish we picked up food for him, his wife Jum and me, since it was going to be too late to start going out by time we got back.

It took about an 45 minutes to get to his place with traffic and getting food. We arrived and I was introduced to his 16 month old daughter Holly, who is the most adorable little thing ever. She obviously inherited this from Jum, and won the genes lottery in that respect. She knows about a dozen or so words and of course repeats them over and over, but in someone as cute as her, it is endearing. We had Jeopardy on while we ate, which is her favorite show. In fact, she loves the Final Jepoardy song so much that she dances to it! Evidently she fell in love with the show while very young since they always had it on during dinner, and it’s about the only thing she is actually interested in on TV – after the show, Jum put on some Clifford, but it seemed to disturb Holly more than interest her, especially since Clifford was a puppy and hidden in a cupcake that was about to be eaten at some point!. Soon, though it was time for her to go to bed.

After they put her to bed, I was given the tour of the house, which is pretty damn nice. Their spare bedroom, which I slept in, is jam packed with books and DVDs and such – which knowing Steve was not surprising at all. Anyway, after that Steve and I retired to the “media room” which is upstairs and played some Xbox. Eventually it was late enough for us to go to bed (1am or so) and I was out like a light.

I was awoken by crying baby at about 7:30. I stayed in bed for a bit, but eventually went downstairs to watch some Dr. Who with Steve and Holly. Jon Pertwee – old stuff. He’s starting her young! We had plans to go to a recycling event nearby at 9 to get rid of an old broken TV (with a Tube!) and some other electronics. Eventually we headed out to Issaquah, which is just South of where Steve lives, to do the recycling (which was at Costco). Afterwords we decided to go to the farmer’s market which is held at Pickering Farm, which has a neat barn:

We gathered up some blackberries, blueberries, peaches, apples, and bread (the latter of which Holly got to hold while Steve held her, much to the amusement of the bread vendor! and then headed back to Steve’s house. Holly ate a few blue berries and then it was time for her nap. Steve decided to take a little nap too, so I played a bit more of Braid, and solved some puzzles that were quite vexing the night before in no time flat. It’s a cool game, and one that benefits from detachment.

Anyway, once they woke up, I gave Holly the toy I brought her, a Leapfrog guitar that teaches animals and counting in English and Spanish. She greatly enjoyed the music it made and she danced around holding the guitar. Then we left (the four of us) to go to Pike’s Place market, which is the de facto Seattle sight. I’d been there before on a vacation with my Folks 15 years ago, and it was mostly the same. We walked around a little bit and then got a late lunch at Lowell’s, which is a big restaurant and Bar across three floors, overlooking the water – I am most certain I ate here back in 1993. For being a place that seems to be skewed to tourists, and in a touristy location (although the market is a real market that locals use) the food was surprisingly tasty, and reasonably priced. Holly didn’t make too big of a mess, although she tried like the devil to get her table topper off constantly. After lunch we walked around a bit more, and visited a few stores, including a cool map store, where they bought a 2 foot inflatable globe for Holly, and then we set off to search for the Fremont Troll.

The Troll is a rather amusing piece of art which lives under a bridge in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle. He’s well enough hidden, and the streets are goofy enough, that it took two passes of us crossing over the bridge bear him for us to find, even though we had GPS in the car with us. The search was worth it because he’s really amazing:

I have better pictures on my actual camera, but I sort of left that behind at Steve’s, so the iPhone pic will have to suffice for now. But we had a good time shooting it, because of the interesting lighting. Steve managed to get a good pic of me up on the Troll’s shoulder which I will link to when he posts it.

After the troll it was time to head back to Sammamish. We watched some Nightflight and then they put Holly to bed. Despite the late lunch we were a bit hungry, so we went to get Jimmy John’s – this was funny because the kids working there asked us if we had been there before. Well, I’ve not been to that particular store, but I’ve been going to Jimmy John’s since they were in short pants, and I bit my lip to not say that. After dinner, Steve and I watched Point Blank, an interesting “nouvelle noire” Lee Marvin movie. It’s a very weird movie in a lot of ways, but we enjoyed it. After the movie it was about time for bed, but before that we planned out what we were going to do the next day, which was head to Twin Peaks. More on this in my next post.

posted by neil at 7:19 pm
under adventure,travel  

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