Even yet still more Ballard

Big news! Grayson got his first letter back from one of his graduate schools, and it was a FULL-RIDE! Into a doctorate program! This made us both massively happy, as it means a looot of hard work has paid off. It's bittersweet though, because this basically seals the deal that I won't be "Seattle" Nat anymore by fall. At least for the next five years...

Following that bit of awesomeness, we finished our taxes this morning! Whoo! But then, the weather was too amazing to ignore again this weekend - although a bit cold - and we hit the pavement in search of burgers, camera repairs (Yes, the lens I broke all those months ago at Gasworks, I did not take it to the repair shop until today. L-A-Z-Y.) and cupcakes, but what we found dear readers, was so much more:

As the link above indicates, this was not our first sojourn into Ballard, we've been a couple of times, mostly for cupcakes, and it's a neighborhood that's grown on us. It's mostly known for its history of Scandinavian immigration, evidence of which pops up intermittently, but as we were walking from a newly discovered, HUGE book store in a converted library, we found these awesome relics...behold Leif Eriksson Hall:

Complete with bitchin' longship reliefs and a massive bust of Leif Eriksson, the head of which was the size of my entire body. Mostly.

But that's not all, right next door, observe Viking Bank!
How rad is that? I guess I'd like it more if it was shaped like a huge longship with trunks of gold all around.

And FLAGS:

Left to right: Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, Finland, America

After that we made it to Cupcakes Royale, whose January-February special is Salted Caramel Cupcakes. Oh yeah. (Come on, it has been a while since I posted a cupcake...) The flavor was inspired by President Obama's favorite treat, salted caramels. The cake was dark chocolate heaven, and the top was coated in gooey icing that tasted like home made caramel. SOOOO GOOOOD. Oh my goodness.

A cupcake so good, it melted the color away from everything else...

Then we wandered around in artsy shops and record stores and came home. My lens should be ready in just a few days. Yay!

Happy Year of the Ox!

On Friday night Grayson and I went to our very first Vegan restaurant, Araya's which is very close to our place. They specialize in Vegan Thai food. It was huge inside, and very pretty, and the food was really good. I got their specialty, pineapple fried rice, which comes complete with a pineapple plate!

Today we went to St. Mark's Cathedral on Capitol Hill. This is a huge Episcopalian cathedral that sits atop Capitol Hill, and can be seen from Lake Union, or just about any part of the city that looks over to Capitol Hill from West of it. Here is a view from Eastlake (or East of Lake Union):
It's a huge, stunning building, and I've always wanted to go inside it, so I was really excited to find out that they were having an event this weekend to celebrate the Chinese New Year. The new year is the Year of the Ox, which is my Chinese astrology symbol...
...Ox power!

So, despite the fact that it had started lightly snowing outside, though not sticking, we hopped on a bus to the Cathedral and listened to some great Chinese music, performed by an amazing ensemble. Many of the musicians could play several instruments individually, from drums to very ornate and complex stringed instruments.

Watching them play the drums was my favorite part. And, it was TOTALLY FREE. w00t economy prices!

The sun *does* also rise!

2 HUGE developments in the land of milk and coffee this weekend:

Number 1: HOLY CRAP, IT'S THE FRIGGIN APOCALYPSE!!! Oh, wait, it's not a wall of flames descending from the heavens, it's the SUN!


I tried counting the number of days it had been since I had seen the sun for more than two minutes, and I lost count somewhere in December. Grayson and I were at first perplexed, then intrigued, and scampered out to see if it was real. No joke, our eyes hurt, it had been so long. (Hence Grayson's unsure grimace above). We spent a little of yesterday and a good deal of today out and about walking to bask in as much as we could before it parted. We're both BIG overcast/rainy/grey day people, but long enough without the sun and it was actually kind of nice to see!

Number 2:

Seattle passed an ordinance that mandated that fast food establishments have their caloric content on their menus. It's actually county wide. It is supposed to be in effect as of the beginning of the year, but it was still a surprise to start seeing it crop up. Not all places have them readily visible, but one day, we saw it at Starbucks:


And, before you ask (as I did), bask in the market research Grayson and I walked 2 miles to obtain:



Yes, even McDonald's. Even McDonald's displays that a Quarter Pounder with Cheese containeth 1100-some-odd calories, right there, glowing for all to see.

Startling!

Seattle New Year

5 Lists of 5 Things

5 excuses for not updating:
1. Lazy
2. In the past two-three weeks, I haven't been in Seattle entirely.
3. Thinking about my new blog.
4. Too busy, what with travel and work and reading lots of books and petting lots of kitty.
5. Lazy

In honor of visiting ye Olde hometowne of Boise over the Xmas holiday, here are 5 things that I missed about the City of Trees:
1. Family.
2. Friends.
3. Flying Pie Pizza.
4. Grayson missed knowing his way around town.
5. Riding my bike.

Also, in honor of our visit, here are 5 things I have come to ... not appreciate entirely ... about Seattle:
1. Graffiti.
2. Panhandlers/homeless. Yes, it's tragic and all, but I have a wicked strong sense of smell.
3. Grayson hates the hipsters, whereas I am indifferent. I, more than Grayson, feel kind of claustrophobic sometimes in this city, where everything is squished in so much.
4. AveRats (like mall rats, but on the Ave, decidedly more dishevelled and older, they scream at each other, hang out with sad looking dogs, drink 40s and spit a lot, they take up half the sidewalk and stare at you as you pass).
5. How much stuff costs.

Looking Back List, or, we've had 5 Anniversaries, what did we do for them?
1. Visited Seattle (2003).
2. We were staying at my mom's with plans to save money to buy a house, so I made spaceship pasta with artichoke sauce, and we had a quiet night in.
3. Dinner and a movie. This year it was "Babel" and P. F. Chang's.
4. Grayson had graduated that day from college, so we spent the day celebrating with laser tag and pizza and beer and friends and family after the ceremony, all of which was a surprise to Grayson, and then I sprung on him the biggest surprise that night: I booked us this crazy suite at Hotel 43 downtown. It had a jacuzzi, and a living room. It was awesome. The next day we went to dinner at On the Border and saw the Golden Compass.
5. Our crazy, downtown Seattle adventure.

Looking Forward List, or 5 things I definitely want to do in the next 6 months, in Seattle:
1. Visit Alki Beach and West Seattle.
2. Check out Georgetown.
3. Go to Tacoma on the train, and eat a cupcake from Look cupcakes. Also go to the Museum of Glass.
4. Ikea store (still haven't actually physically been there).
5. TIE: Seward Park OR Sculpture Park OR Kobuta Gardens.

5 Year Anniversary

Natasha and I celebrated our 5 year anniversary on Sunday. Technically we were married on the 22nd of December, but we deliberately chose that date as it was the winter solstice that year. Since we are both iconoclasts, we celebrate our anniversary on the solstice, whatever date it happens to be, rather than the 22nd.

This year it was Sunday the 21st. This, magically, happened to be one of the greatest snow days that Seattle has seen in years. Since it rarely if ever snows here, the entire city shuts down when the first flake hits the ground. Entire bus routes are canceled, businesses (even lucrative chain retailers) shut down as early as 6pm, and taxi cabs become impossibly rare.

Almost since we got here, Natasha and I were planning for a dinner at the Sky City restaurant, the one in the Space Needle. Kitschy, and touristy, I know, but we thought the view was going to be worth it. Plus, they sell Kobe beef, which I wouldn't mind trying.

We managed to find a bus downtown, where we mulled around bookstores, the mall, anywhere and everywhere. We had a snowball fight outside the mall (everyone cheered when Natasha hit me, why am I the bad guy?) and slid around in the snow. The streets were almost completely empty, so you could jaywalk at will.

Because the buses were mostly out of operation, we had planned on taking the monorail, also a kitschy tourist attraction, which runs from the Westlake Mall to the Seattle Center (where the Needle is). With our 7:30 dinner reservations approaching, we went up to the monorail to find that it had shut off at 6 due to the weather. Why a monorail is dependent on the weather is beyond me.

Our reservations were in 30 minutes, we were a mile and a half from the Needle, and buses were running maybe 25% of the time. With time running out, we barely managed to squeeze into a shared cab with a family of tourists - they filled the back seat, and Natasha sat in my lap in shotgun as we cruised through the icy streets of Seattle.

We arrived at the Space Needle at 7:22, just in time. We marched through the snow up toward the Needle, feeling relieved.

Alas:

We took advantage of our situation to get some nice pictures:

Now we were in an awkward position. Nothing around was open, we called and called taxi dispatches, and got busy signals and outright refusals - no cabs downtown, they said. We found a sports bar that overcharged for drinks, warmed back up, and began the long trek back downtown to a place where buses were still operating.

After marching in the snow for 30 minutes, we arrived at a bus stop only to find that people had been waiting there for a bus for over an hour. We decided to try a few more stops, and luckily hit on a bus that was supposed to be canceled but was still running. We hopped it and made it home.

We perused the Ave looking for a restaurant at which to have an anniversary dinner, but everything was closed. Undaunted, Natasha and I went to Safeway and bought a bottle of champagne (luckily, the same brand we had at our wedding party) and a truly modern miracle, a cake batter that becomes cake in the microwave.

So take that, elements! And the King County Metro! And the Monorail people! And the people of Sky City who didn't bother to call us! And the lazy cab drivers! We had a fine time devouring chocolate cake and a whole bottle of champagne. It was a well deserved happy ending.

The frostbitten slopes of doom mountain (or Seattle in winter)

Natasha:
On Monday, I was hired officially, thereby dissolving my "temp" status. This coincided with more money and benefits!, In which I have enrolled promptly and am soon to be able to utilize them. Yay dental cleaning! It will be almost a whole year when I finally get an appointment. Also this week was my final French class. I will not be going next semester, as Grayson has elected to utilize the budget in order to take Ancient Greek, to prepare for graduate school. I enjoyed the class, and made friends, and have a good start on French for travel, and for eventually learning it better if I want to use it academically. Yay French! It was fun, but hard to balance with 40 hours of work. It's amazing how little energy I have after sitting on my butt for 8 hours.

Saturday we went to Bellevue for our final three Christmas presents. Bellevue is crazy: in one block, nay on one STREET on the length of one block there is a McCormick's, Cheesecake Factory, P. F. Chang's and the mall, which has Nordstrom's, Crate and Barrell, Thomasville and The Container Store just in view on this street. I am also told that the mall "snows" every night during the season before Christmas. We missed that lil chestnut. The movie theater there is pretty swank, too. They have like twenty screens that are all huge, and the seats are these huge, cushy, faux leathery things that rock and feel like thrones. We went to see "Milk." Tickets were TEN DOLLARS. I remember when ten dollars could buy... ah, whatever. The movie was good, though.

Grayson:
It snowed most of Saturday, and actually managed to stick to the ground. This is the first time it's ever snowed in Seattle while we've been here. A view from our apartment window:

The snow was still around Sunday as we trekked through Wallingford. We needed to get a few last xmas gifts, and to check out this place called Kidd Valley, a burger chain confined to western Washington. Mostly standard fare, except for...sweet potato fries!

Hard to tell from the picture, but they are much darker in color than regular fries. They don't taste too different, but you can certainly detect that extra sweetness in them. Highly recommended, if you ever come here.

Finally, it is imperative that you see our glorious monument to xmas tradition, the fiber optic spectral colored celebration tower (i.e. xmas tree):


Again, hard to see from the picture, but it has acquired the standard ornament-per-year. The star on the top is supposed to glow or something, but its energy source has failed over the years. This year's ornament is a Hello Kitty Lucky Cat from our good friends at SANRIO CO., LTD.