Atheism, Legos, Guitars, and Lasers

Natasha's pretty busy right now so I've been authorized to make a post in her stead this week. We will see how this goes.

Things continue to go swimmingly, with lots of fun activities on the weekends to keep it interesting. We are running out of places to explore, but there's always something new going on, so as long as we've got the cash, we're never bored.

Friday night we met up with the Seattle Atheists again. The occasion: the release of Bill Maher's movie Religulous. We met up at P.F. Chang's for dinner, had a great meal with good company (met a guy who spent the last 3 years teaching English in South Korea, with plenty of interesting stories), and walked to the theater. The movie was OK, not very intellectually rigorous, but very amusing if you're the atheist/agnostic type. Bill Maher, as you might expect from a comedian, delivers on the humor if not the philosophy.

Kitty is about to be sans manhood! He goes in tomorrow to have his operation. Our veterinarian is either a) for the paranoid upper middle class person who will spend anything to guarantee a pet's health, or b) a complete scam. Or both. Anyways, they require a blood test to determine if kitty's kidneys are up to the anesthesia. No other vet I've ever heard of is daring enough to invent these kinds of reasons to charge an extra $130. At least the actual procedure is subsidized by the state. The surgery ends up costing less than the blood test. Unfortunately there are no other vets in our range, and it already costs big money just to take a taxi to this one, so we have to make do.

I mention this because that blood test thingy was last Saturday. Also on that day we took a trip to Madison St to check out Piroshki, a Russian deli type restaurant (also the name of the type of food they serve). We found a place called Piroshki Piroshki in Pike Market, which sells (tada) piroshkis, but Natasha claims they are not genuine. I could care less, because they are amazing. Rather than explain the whole concept of piroshki, I will let you read about them here.

Anyways, Natasha claims that the Piroshki place on Madison is authentic, but what do yo know, their business hours are basically 9-5 M-F. Which means that, unless we get time off of work, we will never be able to go. Perhaps one day...

Sunday was BrickCon - a LEGO convention! Nostalgia heaven! Try that in Boise!

Right when you go in the door, they have a model of the Titanic about 6 feet long and 2 feet wide:

Further in, you get to see some amazing scenes. There were fairy tales, Vikings, medieval battles, dragons attacking castles, trains moving through cities, models of the Space Needle, and much much more:

And my favorites, the Battlestar Galactica models:

Many, many other things, including a replica of a Giger painting, and a model of the Space Needle taller than me (including a working elevator).




We also visited the Experience Music Project and the SciFi museum (both located in that very strange looking building next to the Space Needle). I got to play a bass again (been a very long time!!!). Saw some really neat stuff in both - Kurt Cobain's guitar from the Smells Like Teen Spirit video, quite a few of Jimi Hendrix's guitars, memorabilia from Seattle's entire musical past right back to the gold rushes of the 19th century, and much more. The SciFi museum was even better (especially for a nerd like me) - I got to see first editions of some very famous novels, and props/clothing from old televisions shows and movies. Very cool. Photography is banned in both places, so unfortunately no pics.

Natasha finally got her passport in the mail today, which she is very excited about! Europe is one step closer...

Book Sale and Museum Day

This weekend was the Large McHuge Big Library Book Sale:

They even had an espresso cart, take that, podunk Boise library sale!


Then Grayson and I took advantage of the Smithsonian's Free Museum Day


and went to the Seattle Asian Art Museum


in Volunteer Park


in/on Capitol Hill on a pretty day

(where was this damn weather when Mom was here?!?)


and then went downtown to the Seattle Art Museum, all for free.

We were going to go to a million other ones, but with the book sale, there wasn't enough time to fit them all in.

Next weekend we are going to the Science Fiction Museum and Experience Music Project for the Lego Brick-Convention. Also, kitty goes in for his pre-surgery check-up. He prefers lillies if you would like to send him get-well flowers. But don't really, he'll just eat them.

Whirlwind Seattle Weekend, Starring My Mom

Because there's so much to report on, I'm writing this post in the whirlwind manner in which it was experienced.

My mom came to visit from the 18th-22nd. She got the whirlwind of Seattle while she was here. We hit Capitol Hill and downtown, including Pike's Market, then on the way home we went through Queen Anne and Wallingford on Thursday, Friday it was U-Village, Saturday we took a ferry (my first!)...

The View, thanks rain.

For Real

...to Bainbridge Island, which was tame and cute, and milled around downtown, through the market, and went the Seattle Aquarium, and Sunday we went from the U-District, to Wallingford, to Gasworks Park,

to Fremont for FLAMING saganaki (mom's favorite), then Ballard for cupcakes (what else),

Royale with (Cream) Cheese at Cupcakes Royale!

and Dick's in Wallingford on the way home. The weather was grey and cruddy pretty much the whole time, which it hadn't been for months (what luck!) and it rained upon us almost the whole trip. Also, my phone was dead for much of the trip, so not so many photos. But we prevailed, and had an awesome, exhausting time anyway! Thanks for coming, mom!

Who will take the Weekend Whirlwind Seattle Challenge next???
Contact your blogger for details

Special Edition: Portland

For my awesome 23rd birthday Grayson and I went to Portland, a favorite city, because of 1. Powell's and 2. You can get there by train. Grayson and I have never been on a train, unless you count my jaunt on the Boston subway once. The whole ride was about 4 hours (technically longer than driving) but it was scenic, and unstressful, and awesome.

Tuesday, 9/9

The train, as said, was AWESOME. Spacious, comfy, pretty, scenic and RAD.


There was even a conductor in a lil conductor hat.

Here's Grayson on the lounge car, we got breakfast on the train and ate it in this great car, with tons of pretty windows. There was even a tour guide lady on the train point out sites and history. The train went through Tacoma and Steillicum and all these pretty watery areas.

Grayson got me a surprise present (since buying a bunch of books at Powell's wasn't a birthday surprise)
It's a Lucky Cat, whose head bobs and hand waves in the sun. Too cute!

Once in Portland, we stayed at the Ace Hotel on Stark, which is the Portland branch of a hotel we stayed in Seattle on a visit before our move, it was very modern and hip. They had a vintage photo booth, bikes to rent (Portland is bike-crazy!), nummy smelling soap in the rooms, and a PowerBook to surfs on for free.


Here's our daytime view:



And night time:

Wednesday, 9/10

My official birthday passed in the spacious corridors of the West's biggest bookstore, Powell's...my Mecca:

Damage done:

After some other adventures and walking around, my birthday dinner was a delicious pizza from some gourmet place near our hotel:

and then I got my birthday cake!!! Grayson and I found a cupcake shop in the Pearl District, and they had so many tasty cupcakes, that I couldn't settle on one, and was able to get four mini tiny ones:


We even got candles at Whole Foods for them, made from organic beeswax or something. They came with matches! Score!


The flavors are, from left to right, Chocolate-covered pretzel, "the Pearl" which was vanilla on vanilla, "Downtown Chocolate Brown," chocolate on chocolate, and Rice-krispy treat, which had real rice crispies on top, and was very nums.

Thursday, 9/11

The rest of the trip was spent pallin' around different sites. We went to even more bookshops, the Hawthorne District, Queen Bee studios, and the Gorey store. Navigating the bus system was wicked easy with our Seattle skills:


We had a delicious breakfast (Challah french toast and latkes with sour cream and apple sauce):

and exchanged our return tickets for earlier ones since our checkout was 6 hours before the train was supposed to leave. We came home, picked up kitty from his luxury hotel, and have spent the rest of the weekend chillaxing. In the time we were gone, four new restaurants in our neighborhood popped up. INSANE.

Tune in next week for: A visit from your humble narrator's MOMMY :D

PDX, here I come!

My forthcoming 23rd birthday shall pass in Portland, Oregon, at the City of Books! My birthday cake will probably be a Voodoo Doughnut. This weekend passed mostly in preparations for the trip:

Packing

Hobbes wants to go, but he can't. He will be put up at a ritzy kitty hotel, to keep him from eating wires and starving while we are gone.

Planning

Preparing...
...a list of all the books I want. Because when you spend a whole day being distracted by the biggest selection of books you've ever seen, you're bound to forget the ones you meant to look for.

Watched kitty stick his tongue out at me...

...and sleep...

...then went to Wallingford, where you can buy Trainspotting at a children's bookstore...

...and eat cupcakes at Trophy cupcakes...

(there is, from left to right, carrot cake, cafe au lait [with a coffee bean on top], and triple chocolate)

...and on Friday, before work was over, I made a collage of pictures, to shun beige far away. Look and see if you made the wall of shame, if not, send me pictures!

Extra Long Weekend Edition Spectacular

What did I do with my eeeextra long weekend? NOTHING! And it was grrreat!!!

On Saturday, Grayson and I loitered in the super sweet downtown library. I figured out how the spiral works (like a parking garage! You just keep walking along, to the shelf you want, and blam-o, you've "climbed" three flights of stairs but felt like you were walking down halls of books), and got to check out books! Woohoo!

Here's Grayson reading in the library:

On Sunday, Grayson and I sent all the dirt in our apartment to the land of wind and ghosts, then we went downtown for piroshkies and cupcakes:

I cannot stress enough how awesome it is to have at my fingertips the ability to sate any insane desire that pops into my head. If I start cravin' a piroshky, I can think of two places at the top of my head that will gimme what I want. It's AWESOME. If I want cupcakes, there are like EIGHTY places I can think of. I haven't even tried them all yet. Too awesome.

This weekend was Bumbershoot, the big music festival at the Space Needle. I opted out because there weren't enough bands I wanted to see to justify the ticket prices and standing around in a crowded, hipster hell. But it did draw Marcus in, and we had brunch at my place on Monday. Then we went to Ballard for cupcakes and record stores. Then I came home and spent the rest of the day reading books and drinking tea.

And then I was well rested and able to face a grueling four-day work week. Next week is my birthday, everybody. It will be a special edition post from/about Portland.
The End.