Fun, full, fabulous Fourth of July weekend.

On Friday all four of us packed ourselves into ramonarjona's minivan and schlepped on down to Tacoma for the Tall Ships Festival. Our girls were faaaaaairly well-behaved, but their stamina cannot compare to that of Ramon's daughter, who is five, so we all left a bit earlier than they might have liked if left to themselves. But on the bright side, there were pictures of the two older girls standing inside a cedar canoe.


Awesome.

Locals with kids may find this useful, if you can find time during a weekday to take your kid to the movies at the Meridian 16 downtown...

( Read more... )

(Non-locals, to see if you have free summer movies for kids in your area, start here: http://www.raising4boys.com/2008/05/28/free-summer-movies-for-kids-2008-edition/)

Our whole family packed up mid-day today and schlepped on down to Seattle's Folklife Festival, in the company of aawhitewood. There we rendezvoused with ramonarjona and daughter, and spent a fun yet exhausting few hours rediscovering what music is all about.

Apparently it is about battling HORDES OF PEOPLE just to walk ten feet. Seriously, there were so many people there. I didn't even know Seattle has that many people.

The hypermuffin kept trying to run, but there was no room. All the vast, wide open swards of green, and the walkways and the fountains and the boulevards and the verges, were covered, every inch, with people. She and aawhitewood headed off on their own for an hour or so, and he later reported that by the end, she just looked so beaten down by her inability to vent off steam the way she needed to. (But she did home in on cotton candy and demand that he buy her some. Where did she hear about cotton candy? We've never given it to her before. Did she get this from one of her children's books? See, this is the problem with reading! :-)

So then ramonarjona brought us into the Seattle Children's Museum (thanks!), and all of a sudden, the hypermuffin could RUN. She proceeded to work herself up into an absolute froth of activity: activity the likes of which I have never really seen from her, and if you know her, you will know that is saying something. She was bright red from exertion and sticky with sweat, even in the air conditioning, as she karoomed back and forth from wall to wall like an electron excited beyond the bounds of the laws of physics. I caught her a few times and tried to hold her still and calm her down, but she was vibrating too fast to even hear me, I think -- like in old episodes of "Star Trek" where half the cast is out of phase with the others and so they can't even communicate. That's how far gone she was. It was truly amazing and not a little scary.

I saw her go down a slide face-first so quickly that she almost flipped herself forward and vaulted over her own chin. That's one of the times I grabbed her to try to slow her down.

While all this was going on, the wren, loosed at last from the prison of the stroller, was happily (and peacefully!) exploring all the fun educational toys. I can't wait until she's old enough to help me look after her older sister. :-|

There was something of a meltdown when it came time to leave, but finally we managed to get everyone home. (Except Andrew, of course, who had walked to work from the Seattle Center for his usual Saturday night shift.) Amazingly, neither girl napped for me -- they both bulled straight through to bedtime. This kind of thing is why I have gray hairs now.

After they were both finally down for the night, I headed down to the basement to take part in tatterdamelion's "Valeland" game. This session had only three players: me, aawhitewood, and limbsmith. I almost fell asleep, but large amounts of coffee -- and a climactic battle -- kept me (mostly) awake. The shots of Kahlua and Bailey's in my coffee, however, have now helped me decide that yes, it really is time to sleep. Past time.

I look forward to future years when I will be able to attend festivals to actually listen to music.

I did get introduced to a new band, however: "Bad Mitten." I even have a cute little CD of theirs in a smooth cardboard sleeve with a pretty picture on the front, so I can keep the Folklife feeling going for the next few weeks.

And if I want to really remember what Folklife was like this year, I can always rev the hypermuffin up on cotton candy, crack, speed, meth, and ecstacy all at once, then put her between the tines of a giant tuning fork and hit it repeatedly until she is quivering with such rapidity that she heats up the air around her, and then let her loose inside a frictionless room, and see if she can actually break the sound barrier all by herself. 

Some coworkers and I walked from the office down to Pike Place Market for lunch today. The weather is glorious, and it felt so good to get out of the office!

Nikki, Dafny and I had fish and chips at Jack's Fish Spot -- greasy and salty and delicious. I ate mine while we were waiting for the others to rejoin us. Jen and Megan went to La Vaca, and tatterdamelion got chicken teriyaki somewhere in the neighborhood. It looked fire-engine red, and Jen (who tried a bite) said that it was not really very spicy (although he had asked for spicy), but it was full of flavor.

After we all regrouped and started walking back, we were ensorceled by the beautiful displays of caramel apples in the window of the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory. Nikki and I split a plain caramel apple -- a sweet, crispy-yet-not-too-hard green apple, drenched in perfect, sticky-yet-not-too-sticky caramel. They slice it for you there, which makes sharing one much easier.

(A Bacon Maple Bar (really!) would also have been acceptable. But driving to Oregon for dessert seemed a bit ambitious. Also because none of us had a car anywhere nearby.)

Right now my office is treating everyone to impromptu root beer floats! They have orange soda, too, in case you don't like root beer. Orange soda + vanilla ice cream = Creamsicle-y goodness.

And, in case all that was not enough sugar -- tonight is Nikki's "Castle Falkenstein" game, and we are having a brownie-off. tatterdamelion is going to make New Mexico Chile Brownies (having toyed with, but then rejected, the idea of Banana-Rum Brownies), and I have already made Orange-Ginger Brownies -- a little orange oil and some chopped crystallized ginger. Mmmm. I almost made Bacon Brownies, but in the end sanity prevailed.

Andrew took yesterday off work, and aawhitewood and Tom came over last night to babysit so that we could go out and have dinner on our fifth anniversary.

Five years! It seems to have gone by extremely quickly -- probably because of the two Special Projects that have been taking up all our time recently.

aawhitewood came over today and babysat BOTH girls for SIX hours, which totals up to approximately 12,000 karma points, give or take a few. (Side note: Why don't you switch to username "councillour"? I bet more people would look for you under that nom de plume.)

I dressed up more than might be strictly appropriate for a Sunday brunch date with my very own husband. Sometimes it's fun to dress up in pretty swirly dresses and nice shoes!

I love Yelp.com. It has a large and constantly growing number of recent reviews of all kinds of things around my fair city. I've used it to find restaurants, cool places like Scratch Patch and Banya 5 -- or at least I think they'd be cool, although I haven't actually gone to either one yet. I have even used Yelp to look for a new doctor.

This morning I saw something I'd never seen online before, though: A "review" of Juan, the homeless guy who stands at Pine and 5th yelling "Seattle Police are Communist!"

The joking, affectionate tone of these "reviews" may trivialize the problems of this man's life. He is a mentally disturbed homeless man who spends all his time ranting on a street corner; he is not anyone's pet, or novelty. To me these reviews almost seem like e-slumming.

Then again, the reviews may affirm that Juan is a fixture in downtown Seattle. So doesn't that elevate him from beggar to performance artist?

It all has me thinking about homelessness and begging, and my changing responses to it over time.

* * * * *



Anyway, no conclusion to this post. There is a problem in the world, homelessness, and I notice it, but I can't fix it, and I'm not sure what to do, and it bothers me.

I want to do something nice with Andrew to celebrate our fifth wedding anniversary, which will be May 10.

We got married on the back garden patio of Cafe Juanita in Kirkland, so having dinner there is pretty much a "must" this year.

Andrew wants to rent out the entire Space Needle restaurant on the night of December 24, 2011 -- the night of the Awakening in the fictional "Shadowrun" RPG timeline.

Hosting a game of Shadowrun in the Space Needle on that momentous night is apparently on his list of Things To Do Before He Dies.

Anyone reading this want in? :-)

We paid off the car in February and got a piece of paper in the mail to take to the friendly licensing people. Well, what with working opposite shifts from Andrew, and caring for two kids under 3 (both still in diapers... sigh), and other important things like grocery shopping, sleeping, commuting, eating, OH, AND FINE, SOCIALIZING, that's important TOO, you know, I still had not gotten around to actually transferring it. Sigh.

It didn't help that I kind of wanted both our names on it, since we are mawwied and stuff, and that makes it really difficult to pull off, since we are never with each other and without the children, especially during regular business hours.



So in conclusion: Vehicle title to transfer? I recommend Ballard Auto Licensing Agency at 2232 NW Market Street.

I'm on the "Ballard Moms" Yahoo mailing list (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BallardMoms/). (Yes, this is "mom-ist." Don't fathers have feelings too!!! etc. No, I don't really care.)

Here's a message posted recently that I thought might hold some interest for those of you who are (1) local, and (2) looking for a house.

"The house across the street from us went up for sale by owner over the weekend.  It is located at 27th Ave NW and NW 65th in Ballard (we are on the other side of 65th), within easy walking distance of restaurants, video & ice cream store, and parks.  I have never been inside, but from the outside it looks quite large.
 
Be warned, this is a fixer-upper.  It has hideous exterior siding and a chain-link fence around the back yard.  The elderly woman who lived there forever died a couple of years ago, and her heirs have rented it out since then.  I am sure it needs work on the inside too. 
 
Anyway, this is a great neighborhood, with quite a few young children.  It would be wonderful to have a family in that house."

So my bus stopped before going into the tunnel -- some kind of delay. After a few minutes, I got bored and alighted (alit?) and walked the few blocks to work.

While standing across the street from the Paramount, I glanced at its box office. A streetlight was perfectly positioned so that I read the text above it as "BOX OF ICE"

More coffee needed.

tatterdamelion babysat for me last night, allowing me to go out and enjoy a truly amazing time at The Can-Can's second anniversary bash. The Can-Can is a dinner theater / burlesque experience tucked away down a short flight of stairs from the flower shop at the corner of 1st and Pike downtown.

The opening act was Vince Mira, formerly known as "Juanny Cash," a 15-year old prodigy. To look at, he's a young kid with a guitar. To listen to, he is Johnny Cash. He treated us to 6 or 7 Cash songs and one of his own, and my jaw remained ajar through pretty much the entire set, because he is amazing.

Then it was time for The Castaways, a six-person troupe of dancers and aerialists. I've seen precisely one show of this kind before, at Teatro Zinzanni several years ago, and at that, I was seated pretty far away from the stage. Last night, I was seated mere feet from the stage; close enough to worry that if one of the aerialists lost control while swinging around with immense, controlled kinetic energy, he or she would crush me like an overripe grape.

I feel unable to summarize the experience, except to say that it was freaking amazing and I'm so happy I got to go. :-)

Last night, ramonarjona and I went to the last-ever qualifying Seattle Spelling Bee at the Re-bar before the final contest in April. He provided moral support (and beer) as I attempted to spell my way to glory.

I choked early on "propagate," believe it or not -- I blame stage fright. By the next round I had a beer in me and was much happier to get up and spell "knickknack" (I asked if there was a punctuation mark in there, because my instinct is to hyphenate that, but they said no), and then "chirr." Easy!

Round three was my undoing. First they hit me with a Gaelic word: something like "uiquiseagh" -- I remember it started with a "u" and there was a "q" in there as well. Improbably, I got the first part right, but failed to divine the magical "eagh" ending from the pronunciation. Curse you, Gaels!

Then they followed it up with "desinence," which I got wrong by one letter, thus striking out and retreating to my table in ignominious shame. (I-G-N-O-M-I-N-I-O-U-S, ignominious. Why couldn't they have given me that one??)

Some of the words in the later tie-breaking round were crazy-hard. As I looked around the room at lots and lots of people with glasses, wearing sensible plaid shirts and polar fleeces, or even a suit in one case, many sporting graying hair, I realized that what I like to do for fun may be a bit... outré. (O-U-T-R-E, outré.)

Still, I enjoyed trying to spell my way out of a wet paper bag. :-)

Inspired by kimith's amazing ability to feed six people for $500 a month, when I am typically feeding two (and a toddler) for close to the same amount, I took the hypermuffin to the Oak Tree HT Market this morning instead of to our usual QFC.

Overall, the HT Market's prices are much much better than QFC's. I got Fuji apples at 99 cents a pound, for instance; QFC's cheapest apples right now are $1.99 a pound.

Curious about how our other staples stack up, I grabbed the QFC receipt from last week and compared the two. I only compared ingredients that were identical from store to store, because otherwise it's not fair.



Parsley and fresh tomatoes! For reasonable prices! :-)

Throw in the fun of shopping at a grocery store where I can pick up a joss pot, a bunch of gai lan, and browse through an entire aisle devoted to sweet and spicy sauces, and I may have to make the HT Market my new "normal" grocery joint. And for dairy, we'll just swing by the QFC afterwards and call it good.

Another long stint of babysitting from aawhitewood today, allowing Andrew and me to go bowling at the Sunset Bowl with ramonarjona and his family and friends... some of them, anyway. I really enjoyed myself, and it's too bad the Sunset is closing and being turned into condos. Or apartments. It hardly matters -- bowling will be gone and I hate that.

One nice thing about this activity, as a getting-to-know-you type of thing, is that everyone's name is up there on the screen. So useful when meeting 10 new people at once!

I had a beer, even though it was only 11 AM, and bowled all of my frames and also all of Andrew's, because he is nice that way. As "myself" I scored 105 and got one strike, of which I am unreasonably proud, and as "Andrew" (or should I say, polytrypos) I scored 96.* Pretty good for someone who bowled once last October (hi autumnbottom! hi scifisy! And yes, at this point I am just trying to see how many LJ usernames I can work into the post, because they are pretty and blue and bold!), but before that stopped bowling 12 or 13 years ago. :-)

* OK, honesty compels me to admit that we were using gutter guards. Sigh.

Then pizza at Zeek's, then shopping at Gary's Games, where Andrew bought many used $5 books which he had originally passed over when they were $35 or $40. Then he read me ridiculously pretentious quotations from "Immortal" as we drove to Northgate. Then we walked around Northgate talking about important things like Life and Kids getting a phone that can send text messages. Then I dropped him at work, and came home and compared experiences with aawhitewood (his babysitting experience this time apparently included a distressing amount of poop from both the wren and the hypermuffin. Ha, another LJ username!).

Life. Am. Good!

The scary-looking Zymogenetics building has a big banner on it reading:

FDA APPROVES RECOMBINANT THROMBIN!

Fill in joke here. Please note that "Hey, Recombinant Thrombin is my favorite band!" has already been taken.

aawhitewood came over and babysat tonight, allowing me to go out amuse myself. Hooray! I don't get to to this nearly often enough -- although aawhitewood is planning to rectify that.


A night out by myself every so often: Just what the doctor ordered.

I requested the morning off work because the hypermuffin's daycare is closed today for MLK Day. Sure, I could have left her home with Andrew, who has to be home anyway to take care of the baby (one of us is literally always here), but I thought it would be nice to stick around and help him with this unusually toddler-filled Monday.

This morning I tried something new -- taking her clothes shopping with me. Really!!! A new world is opening up in front of me! A world in which I can go out and do things like go shopping with less planning than a space shuttle launch!

We went to three places. The first had a child-sized table with crayons and paper. (That's what you get when you shop at Paper Zone, a store dedicated to... paper! And rubber stamps, and inkpads, and stickers, etc.) She was very good, coloring quietly for 5 or 10 minutes while I browsed. About the time she started dramatically hurling herself onto the floor for no good reason, I quickly decided on what to buy, and paid. The clerk remarked on her long eyelashes.

The second place, the Children's Hospital thrift store, was filled with gentle, slow-moving old ladies and tiny, delicate breakable things on low shelves. I kept a tight hold of her hand for as much of the time as I could, and got out of there quickly with one thing purchased.

The third place, Deseret Industries thrift store, had the Holy Grail of shopping with a toddler -- a cart for her to ride in. With a seat belt. Ah, sweet bliss. I even got to try things on while she stayed safely belted in the cart right outside the stall. Every so often I would wave at her under the door with my feet.

Total damage: $61.69
Items acquired (mostly at Deseret): Two pairs boots, one pair shoes, four items sleepwear, one pair khakis, one top, three skirts, and some cute paper-y things for gifty purposes.

Verdict: Success.

There's a Really Really Free Market coming up in Seattle, this Saturday, January 19 from 9 - 2.

From the LJ entry where I found this info: "A Really Free Market is an event put on by the community for the community to share resources. No money, no barter, no trade, only free. Bring usable items, food, skills, services and talents to give for the sake of giving."

I want to go! What a great antidote to the Church of Consumerism that is our society.

(At the same time, I can see why these experiments have to be short-term, human nature being what it is. Collectivism works well for a few hours when everyone's needs are mostly already met and we're just playing, or when you have a small, dedicated group of unusually self-sacrificing individuals who have a shared goal that's greater than themselves -- monasteries and convents are great examples of collectivism/communism in action. But anything bigger, anything institutionalized, anything imposed by force from the top down, and you are creating serious problems.)

Anyway. Anyone want to go with me? We can pretend we're at Burning Man.   :-)