Seattle
We went to Seattle last weekend to attend the wedding of our friends Patty and Rich, who met in Seattle but actually live in the Bay Area now. We stayed with our friends Chris and Jana, who used to live in the Bay Area but have since relocated to Seattle (Wedgwood, actually). Are you confused yet?
The wedding was an opportunity for Velma to see some old college friends she doesn’t get to see very often. Rich was one of Velma’s best friends in college, and they were part of the swing dancing scene in St. Louis, and later in the Bay Area.
Velma and I used to work in the same building as Jana, and Chris and Jana asked us to be the photographers for their wedding a few years back, in a park in the South Bay. They’ve since relocated to Seattle (Wedgwood), and were kind enough to put us up and show us around a bit too (I haven’t been to Seattle in over a decade). Not to mention picking us up and dropping us off at the airport! Friends can be awesome, can’t they?
We spent most of our time in the Fremont District and Queen Anne, and Jana and Velma spent a solid chunk of time in World Spice downtown, behind Pike Place.
Here are a few of the places/things I enjoyed in/around Seattle:
Eat LocalA cool organic café and grocery on Queen Anne Avenue N. They use local ingredients and make small batches that are perfect for couples or individuals to pick up on their way home. They also brew
Stumptown Coffee.
Nikki McClureNikki McClure makes extraordinarily beautiful papercut illustrations in a woodcut-like style. You may have seen her
calendars or notecards, or recognize her work from books or magazines. We came across a whole bunch of her work (including a few framed originals, which are fascinating to look at up close) in the above-mentioned Eat Local shop, since she illustrated all their product labels.
Update: Nikki has
a show, “Vote for Survival,” coming to Needles and Pens on October 10. Needles and Pens is a really cool zine and DIY shop on 16th Street near Delores.
Smart Monkey Recycled Yarn & KnitwearLeah Andersson recycles/reuses old thrift store sweaters into rehabbed yarn and new knitted items. I saw her booth at the
Fremont Sunday Market.
Destee Nation Shirt CompanyChris took us to his favorite T-shirt shop. I really liked several of the designs, but since my travel bags were pretty stuffed and I didn’t want to spend much money on this trip, I decided I’d wait and maybe purchase from their website later.
Revival InkI saw this artist’s tees and hoodies at a boutique in Queen Anne and at the Fremont Sunday Market too. I liked two or three of the prints a lot, and would’ve bought one of the hoodies, but while they’re a more earth-friendly 70% bamboo and 30% organic cotton, they have those terribly cheap zippers that seem to jam within a month of use.
ChocolopolisAnother of Chris’s faves, this shop features some exquisite artisan chocolates from around the world, and has free samples out all day.
Hollywood SchoolhouseThis is where the wedding was held, a lovely but slightly quirky historical building. The 1912 brick structure hosts lots of weddings and banquets, and has some interesting decorations.
Gas Works ParkThis 19-acre park is on the site of a former coal-powered gas and oil plant, acquired by the
city in the ’60s and opened to the public in 1975. Right on Lake Union, in the middle of Seattle, the park features stunning vistas of downtown and the lakeside portions of the city (Velma, Jana, and Chris pictured above, enjoying the view).
LeninSince we were only a block away, we simply had to stop and see the 16-foot bronze statue of Lenin in the Fremont. Olya had told me about this (appropriately enough) a couple years ago; I hadn’t seen it when I visited Seattle my first time. If you have a spare quarter-million bucks, you can buy Comrade Lenin for your yard. He’s for sale.
The Fremont TrollThe other thing I hadn’t seen last time was the famous Troll. Somehow Holly and I entirely missed the Fremont neighborhood, although we squeezed in practically everything else in our three-day vacation about a decade ago.
World Spice MerchantsThis popular spot behind Pike Place Market occupied Velma and Jana so long I had to walk around outside because the strong smells were becoming too much for my allergies. Most interesting to me was the
Mongolian tea brick, actual bricks of tea which in the past were broken up to use as currency.
Labels: architecture, art, environment, food and drink, friends, illustrators, recycling, Seattle, T-shirts, travel, Velma
“Here’s an interesting case...”
Jason’s IM to me about (among other things)
the Bush Administration’s move to gut the Endangered Species Act:
I can see myself now in the old folks home, surrounded by med students. “Here’s an interesting case,” says the MD. “This fella can’t remember his own name and he drools on himself all day. But he has one memory that’s as clear as bell. So clear that he answers every question with it. Go ahead there intern, ask him something, anything.”
Intern: “What’s your name sir?”
Me: “FUCK GEORGE BUSH!!!!”
Labels: friends, humor
Velma's birthday weekend
We went to the coast for Velma's birthday last weekend. Velma turned 30 on Friday, so she took a Redwood Day* and we went for a hike in
Butano State Park, down the coast near Pescadero.
We had booked our friends' families' beach house (pictured above) for the weekend to celebrate both our birthdays (mine's next week), and invited a handful of friends to join us. The weather on the coast was foggy, but a couple miles inland at Butano it was warm and clear, so we had a nice long walk on Friday and I took a lot of photos.
Velma and I had dinner at Duarte's Tavern (pronounced, for some reason, as "doo-artz") in Pescadero, where Velma had crab's legs and I had red snapper and chips/fries. The fries were rally good and the snapper was not bad, although what I really enjoyed was the half-and-half soup (not on the menu, you have to ask for it). It's half artichoke and half green chili, and it's a stupendous concoction.
We bought some supplies (locally made, natch) at the store across the street (downtown Pescadero consisting of two whole cross-streets) and headed back to the beach house.
The rest of the foggy weekend was spent catching up with friends we don't see very often, talking and joking, relaxing, reading books, taking lots of pictures outdoors, exploring tidepools, watching the surf and quail babies, and doing a somewhat difficult 500-piece puzzle (pictured on the table above) which Velma bought at Muir Woods the week before.
*
Save the Redwoods League, where Velma works, gives employees two extra vacation days each year to go out and spend time in the redwoods.
Labels: California, food and drink, friends, misc. personal, outdoors, Velma
Restaurant review: Home
Meeting some friends at the corner of Market and Church for brunch, it was going to be between Sparky's (which I love), Chow (which I like), and Home (which I'd never been to). Velma loved Home's chicken pot pie last time she ate there, so she enthusiastically voted for it. The others were amenable to any of them, so it looked like we were Home-ward bound.
On Velma's urging, we opted for the patio, which has a decidedly more laid-back and cozy feel than the main dining area inside. On the way, we passed the a-la-carte Bloody Mary table, which a gaggle of slightly bleary-eyed hipsters were making good use of.
Home serves
brunch on the weekends from 10am to 2pm. We were there at 11:15 on a May Sunday, and it was suitably busy without being crowded.
Home serves up classic American comfort food with a gourmet twist. They offer vegetarian alternatives and free-range Niman Ranch beef, although organic eggs come at a slight cost increase. You'll pay a tad more for your brunch here, but not much more.
I ordered the California omelet, which contains tomatoes, scallions, and pepper jack cheese. It arrived with two gigantic dollops of avocado on top, which was my first indication that I was going to like this place. Any place that doesn't scrimp on the avo gets at least three stars in my book. My plate was further festooned with Home's breakfast potatoes, large cuts of small roasted potatoes that are highly seasoned in a way that made my heart sing with love. Another two stars. The omelet's very fresh ingredients and zesty taste (albeit with few ingredients) sealed the deal. I had been looking forward to a filling omelet at Sparky's, but Home stole the show by leaving my taste buds awed and my stomach full.
Velma chose the buttermilk biscuit and country sausage gravy with two eggs. Having tried a couple bites, I can confirm that it was splendid, maybe even better than mine. I think Chris opted for the eggs Florentine, English muffin, poached eggs, sauteed spinach, hollandaise, and breakfast potatoes, which I didn't try but he finished as quickly as I did, so I guess it was good. Jenny had the buttermilk pancakes, which she said were great but didn't finish, because they were huge. And because I've never seen Jenny finish a meal ever. Carmen had already eaten, so I'm mentioning her only to add a blonde to the mix.
Taking a look at their
dinner and
dessert menus makes me want to go back some evening. Home has a wide variety of
wines and spirits as well. Happy Hour is daily from 5 to 7pm.
Labels: food and drink, friends, review, San Francisco
New list of friends et al
I finally updated my sidebar with a list of friends, colleagues, et al (see "con-conspirators" below-right). If you're listed please check to make sure I linked to the site you'd prefer to be your public face. If you're not listed, either I couldn't find your link in my bookmarks, or you just haven't greased my palm lately. So pony up and maybe I'll show some love.
Labels: enews.org, friends, misc. personal
Introducing Milenkaya.org
I am pleased to announce the launch of
Milenkaya.org, the professional website of Olya Milenkaya, graduate student at Virginia Tech.
I've been working on this simple, one-page site for Olya off and on over the past few months while she's been traveling around Eastern Europe. I worked out the last few kinks this week and put it up.
I registered the domain for Olya years ago, at the same time I registered
Olya.net, but we'd never done anything with Milenkaya.org until now.
Labels: clients, friends, web design
indietits
Olya's always bemoaning my tech-centric blog posts, so this one's for her. She won't get the indie band or pop culture refs, but she'll appreciate the humor.
Indietits is a webcomic starring sarcastic, foul-mouthed birds.
Labels: comics, friends, humor
Small world
I'm wearing my
Cicero's Pizza T-shirt today at work and I had three people in the space of about two hours say they knew Cicero's. Pretty funny, considering A) I've worn this shirt at work many times and that's never happened even once, and B) Cicero's is like 50 miles from here.
Turns out they all grew up down in the same are where I did and all knew this Cupertino institution.
But it gets weirder... It turns out that one of the coworkers who knew Cicero's is married to a guy I went to grade school with! Totally small world. Or at least a small Bay Area.
Labels: food, friends, people, T-shirts, work
Thank bog for friends
We packed a ton of boxes, removed all the bookshelves, painted one bathroom, and moved about 13 car- and SUV-loads this weekend. Now the old place is pretty much empty save for the big furniture, some clothes, and my computer. And us. We're here until the movers come next weekend for the heavy stuff. Because we can't move the bed yet.
Effusive thanks go to our friends Scott, Jess and Chris, Carly, Matthew and April, Laura and Bean, and Holly (who painted the bathroom!), for all their help on Saturday. We all worked hard moving tons of boxes, and then a bunch of us celebrated with dinner and beers at
Pakwan.
Labels: friends, misc. personal
The “Whatever happened to...” project
APRIL 2008 UPDATE: Several people on the list below have contacted me as a result of this post. It works!
ORIGINAL POST: One loses track of many people in the course of one’s life. People get off at this stop, miss the train at another. The train of life chugs on.
Did you ever wonder whatever happened to those people? The ones who influenced you in some minor way. Or perhaps in a very significant way.
I admit it. I’ve
Googled the names of one or two old girlfriends. C’mon who hasn’t? I’ve looked up old friends. I’ve even Google people from the seventh grade, fercryinoutloud.
At some point a few years ago, I tried finding a few people who were very influential in my life, but whom I’d lost touch with long ago.
It’s amazing that it’s so hard to locate some people with
Google. You’d think they’re names would come up
somewhere...Alas, I only had decent luck with a few, and then quickly got distracted by the 237 other things that occupy my so-called free time. In fact, I started this list and this blog post 14 months ago, and I’m only getting around to posting it now.
The planOperating under the assumption that everyone will eventually Google themselves, I’m posting the names of people whom I’ve lost touch with and wondered about. Since Google will crawl this site eventually, I hope they will see their name in Google, with a link to this page.
The listThe names are in no particular order. I’ll probably add to it over time. I’ll also update this page when I find out whatever happened to any of these people.
If you know any of these people (or maybe
are one of these people), I’d really like to hear from you.
–
Mark BultJim Filiault
FOUND!JP Walz
FOUND!Sean English
Ashley Mooser [K. Ashley Mooser]
Brian J. Boxall
Rocky Mullin
FOUND!Stephanie Jorgl
FOUND!Shelley Hurt? Hunt? (I can’t remember) (from La Voz... “You’re loved, pumpkin!”)
Mike Mogenson (City of Palo Alto Recreation)
Michelle Spivey
Danielle Malanczuk
Darren & Andrew ____ (have to look up their last name)
Ki Hong (from 777 S. Mathilda, circa 1980?)
Laurie Parker (from Saint Andrews, circa 1975)
Paul F. Page (journalism teacher, Saratoga High School, circa 1988)
Kristi Rux
FOUND!Tami Paulsen
FOUND!Carlo Carbajal
FOUND!Ed Svoboda
Corina Doody
Sharon Fernekees
FOUND!Karen Fernekees
FOUND!Julie Fernekees
FOUND!Labels: friends, misc. personal, people, whatever happened to
Invasion of the little people
There were all these little people at work today.
Am I being politically correct? What's the correct term? Age-challenged individuals. Rugrats. Kids.
It was Bring Your Daughters and Sons to Work Day (their emphasis) at
CNET, so a slew of kidlets were being ushered around my floor, where all the funtime activities were happening. Pizza lunch and a screening of
The Incredibles (I would've gone, but I possibly would've felt slightly out of place).
Interestingly, most employees who brought their kids brought very small children. It seemed to be a lot of toddlers, a few tweens, and one girl who was maybe 11.
I remember when I was a kid and I used to go to my mom's work when there was a school holiday like Parent-Teacher Conference Day or whatever. Or spring and winter breaks.
I used to look forward to it so much. I'd help around the office, filing and stapling and doing lots and lots of copying. I always loved doing the copying, maybe because I got to use this big ol' machine, and whenever it jammed or refused to work, the adults seemed amazed that I could actually unjam it.
When I was a bit older I had an ulterior motive. By the 7th grade I had started my first publication, an
Ozzy fanzine called
"The Fellowship of the Blizzard." I hadn't even read
The Fellowship of the Ring, but my friend
Rocky Mullin suggested the name, and I thought it was awesome.
I was collecting scads of Ozzy ephemera. Clipping photos and stuff out of magazines like
Circus and
Hit Parader, and writing everything for the newsletter myself, and "typesetting" it (it would be years before I'd hear that term, though) on a typewriter at the public library after school, where you had to put quarters into a timer to rent the
IBM Selectric.
I'd take the magazine pictures and the cut-into-columns articles and paste (well, sellotape*) all of them together on a sheet of letter-sized of paper. I had no clue what a halftone was, and no idea about any other production techniques (like not using tape, for example) until much later in my "career."
After a couple months, I'd have enough pages put together and I'd be anxiously awaiting my next school holiday, when I could go to work with mom. I'd spend half the day photocopying my little newsletters, collating, and stapling, and at the end of the day I'd head home with mom, my backpack bursting at the seams.
[image to come]
I did this from 7th grade through the middle of high school, and I think I made about 40 issues. I actually had a few subscribers, and I had a couple of stores that actually sold them. "Rock shops," as we used to call them. Not where you buy crystals. That craze came (and went, thankfully) later. A rock shop was where you got your
Def Leppard T-shirts and your
Whitesnake bumperstickers. Don't laugh. I was 14.
Anyway,
The Fellowship of the Blizzard was the precursor to my eventual four-year career as an indie newspaper publisher of
Western Front News. But more on that some other day.
All I can say is, I seriously doubt that my mom's places of employ ever knew how instrumental they were, being patrons to my burgeoning career as a self-styled newspaperman/boy. But they definitely foot the bill for a decent amount of paper and copier toner over four or so years. And for that, I thank them.
(* So disappointed that my
xPad spellchecker doesn't recognize the word "sellotape". Not to mention "bumperstickers"!)
Labels: CNET, family, friends, kids, misc. personal, music, Ozzy, Western Front News
Interactive fiction
Back in the mid-'80s, a then-famous computer game company named
Infocom put out a
game version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Notice that I called it a "computer game" company, not a "video game" company. This was well before video games took off. Not before they existed, just before they exploded and turned into the huge industry they are now.
Infocom made what they termed "interactive fiction" games. Perhaps you remember (or at least have heard of)
Zork. Or, if you're really cool, (or just really old and were a geek like I was when I was 12), you remember the game
Adventure, which started on mainframes. Yes. Mainframes. This was pre-personal computers, people. Yes, I'm that old.
I was in high school when the Hitchhiker's game came out. Infocom was huge at the time, and it was huge that they were putting out a Hitchhiker's game. I remember pilfering a copy and playing it with my friend
Jim Stickney on his
Apple II. Yes, this was pre-
Macintosh. Yes, I'm that old.
This was a role playing game. I know some of you have heard of that. You played the role of
Arthur Dent, the hapless human whose house gets knocked down at the beginning of the book. And the radio series. And the record album. And the play. And the movie (but more about
that later).
Unlike the RPGs of today, there were no graphics in this game. That's right, none at all. It was all ugly green text on a black screen (you
did click on the Apple II link, didn't you?), almost as enjoyable to look at as a DOS startup screen. But it didn't
need to be good-looking, because it was written by
Douglas Adams. And it was brilliant. It contained all of his wit, all of the absurdity of the now well-known novels, and step after step it kept you guessing and anguishing and making mistakes and ending up dead and pulling your hair out (explains a lot, doesn't it?).
You see, the plot of the game, while based on the characters and events in the books, didn't exactly follow the storyline of the books. That's right, as usual, Douglas threw his fans into a tizzy by changing things around again, as he tended to do in each and every iteration of the infamous Hitchhiker's series. So, while it helps a lot to be familiar with the books, it doesn't mean you'll actually win the game.
Jim and I played that game to death. I think we finally solved it, but we certainly had to use the Hint Book (sold separately).
I still have the game and its cool packaging, or most of it anyway (it came with a Don't Panic button, some pocket fluff, and Vogon-signed orders for the destruction of the Earth, among other things). I even have the 5-inch floppy disk it came on, although you'd have a hard time finding anyone who still has a computer that can play it.
But the great thing is, now I don't have to.
The
BBC has brought back the game, put it online, and even added a graphical interface so it's actually interesting to look at as well as frustrating as hell and completely and utterly enjoyable to play.
Labels: Douglas Adams, friends, games, Hitchhikers Guide
Aaron
Alexis
Anne
Anya
April
Ari
Bo
Brian
Bryan
Chris
Dave & Terri
Dave H.
Debby
Drue
Fibu
Four Waters
Fwegan (aka Ynnej)
Holly
Hilary
Internet Rockstar
Jason
Jen
Jesse
Jessica
Kansinee
Karl
Laura
Leah
Marc
Martin
Matt
Mike
MJ
Morgan
OkayDave
Olya
Paco
Peter
Rick
Rocky
Ryan
Stellah
Tatum 
Trent
Velma
Veronica
Yu-Po