7 posts tagged “seattle”

We have two inexpensive torchere-style lamps that the bases of fluorescent bulbs simply would not fit into - the wide part (ballast maybe?) of the compact fluorescents are just too wide for the way the lamps are made.  I was buying compostable Bio-bags on Gaiam and spotted these socket extenders.  They arrived today and work perfectly, allowing enough clearance that I can put those CF bulbs to use and ditch the incandescents.  You can probably find these at a local hardware store too.

By the way, if you live in an area that collects compostable garbage separately (as we do - Cleanscapes has special, less expensive, bright orange bags for it), or if you have a compost pile but want to collect a few days worth of scraps, the 3-gallon sized Bio-bags are terrific.  We drink a lot of tea and so have quantities of wet leaves (in addition to all the greasy cardboard pizza boxes and paper sandwich wrappers and various food waste) - they are collected in a Bio-bag lined covered dump bucket and removed to the special orange bag in the chest freezer every few days.  Once the bag is full, it's hauled out to the alley for pickup.

I know I keep saying this: I love living downtown.  Love love love love it.  After work last night - what should we do for dinner?  Order pizza?  Oh, we also need soap.  Let's go up to the market, maybe Soapbox is still open.  We can eat there too, at the brewery maybe?

And so we go.  Catch the bus across the street (any of them will do, and it's still Free Ride time).  As we lurch up 1st Ave, a ginormous parade of bicyclists come straight at us!  Is it the Dead Babies????  Is our favorite bicycling guy Tion among them???  R. thinks he spots him, right up front, but isn't certain.  The bicyclists keep coming, the entire block is filled with people on bikes.  They are stopped at a light - oh, not Dead Babies then?  No, they are far too many, a veritable swarm.  Several in costume - a handful of bunny ears are spotted, a zombie, others.  It was delightful, from our bus-borne perspective.

The Soapbox is closed when we get there just after 6.  We walk down to the brewery, past shops closed and closing.  Dinner is served by a bald giant with a booming voice and a theatrical bent, and the place is just loud loud loud.  The food is fine: braised brat with garlic mashed and apple sauerkraut for me, spicy chicken sandwich for R.  No beers for us though, just a diet soda and a rum and cola.  When we leave at 7:30, free bus rides are over for the night, so we walk the slightly downhill mile to home.  Life's pretty good here.

So, I started a buying club for pastured meats a few months ago - this is for a farm we've been buying meat from for about 8 years, and their meats are all excellent. A few other people at my place of work were also interested, et voila!  The South Seattle S.O.L.E. Buying Club was hatched.  Now, the company I work for is relocating to Mercer Island, and the carnivores in the company were asking if they'd have to give up their monthly fix.  So now, I'm the contact person for 2 outlets for Thundering Hooves meats.

Today, in the Pacific Northwest magazine, the cover story featured Thundering Hooves amazing heritage turkeys and I've been swamped with requests for info on how to buy these birds in Seattle.  Trouble is, they've been sold out for weeks.  They are well worth the year's wait though, and I hope everyone who wants to try one this year tries the beef, pork, lamb, goat, and chicken from Thundering Hooves and gets their order in for a Thanksgiving turkey in August 2008!

I had to be gone to the LA area for 9 days for work, and was so glad to return to cool, damp Seattle.  Things I love about our new neighborhood:  all kinds of food availability a few steps from our front door and Elliott Bay Books just across the street.  We had lunch yesterday at a pho shop (next to Marcus's Martini Heaven) - so terrific having a tasty soup restaurant just down the block, especially in the fall and winter.  Good fresh rolls too.

Last night we went to hear Harry Shearer (the voice of Montgomery Burns and others on the Simpsons, and the bass player from Spinal Tap) read from his novel Not Enough Indians downstairs at Elliott Bay Books.  His talk was interesting, especially his comments about New Orleans, and the questions that followed from the crowd were lucid and not too gushy-fanboy.  I have a feeling the book may be funnier to listen to than to read, but bought a text version anyway.  Things were over by 9 pm, and we stood in the signing line for a little while.  But I was too hungry to stay, so we bailed and wandered out into the early part of a Pioneer Square Saturday night.

There are huge crowds in our blocks of 1st Avenue South most evenings, but moreso on Friday and Saturday nights.  20-somethings surge out of the J&M and Central Tavern and the dance club south of Washington, jostling, smoking, posturing, playing rough, on the sidewalks.  Indian food sounded good, and we walked up to Flavor of India, which worries me because it is almost always empty and I want it to stay in business so I can get my curry fix sated at will.  The A-board outside said they were open until 10, but it lied.  At 9:15, they decided to be closed.  The Longhorn barbecue outpost next door was also closed.  The Taco del Mar was open, but well, no.  Thanks anyway, not tonight.  So we headed to our favorite new old standby, Trattoria Michelli, which is open until 4 am on Friday and Saturdays.  Bless them.  We shared a hot loaf of bread, drizzled with pesto and filled with thick creamy goat cheese, drank several glasses of the Michelli red (it is just brilliant that we can just stumble walk home!), and some tasty pasta dishes.  I had calamari added to my penne puttanesca, and it arrived with a giant pile of battered and fried goodness on top.  Mr. Jaq had something creamy and chickeny and sprinkled with toasted hazelnuts on fettucine.  Our waitress was dealing with what sounded like a wild crowd from Snohomish county in the next room, who were really whooping it up (they kept yelling at each other "INSIDE VOICE!!!  INSIDE VOICE!!!"), at least until their food arrived.

Today, there's a 1 pm Seahawks game, so it will be mayhem outside from 9 am (when the bars open) until about noon.  It's quiet in our apartment though, since our windows are on the alley side of the building.  We are definitely happy to be here.

That's right, in addition to all the other craziness in our lives, we are moving AGAIN.  This time, to a loft space in Pioneer Square, the heart of downtown Seattle.  Part of the impetus is cost-saving - though the rent is the same as our current space, the utility costs are either included in the rent or more easily controlled.  The utilities for our current space run between $400 and $500/month. 

Another consideration is location.  While our current space is relatively handy to our work (we both are currently working in south Seattle), we find ourselves constantly driving into town, because everything we want to do happens there.  Our current neighborhood will eventually be more convenient to town, once the light rail is running, in 2009.  In the meantime, we are missing the liveliness and possibilities that living urban offers - lots of things in walking distance of the new place (bookstore, library, waterfront, restaurants, bars, clubs, music venues) and the new place is in Seattle's free bus zone, so it's a quick, free trip up to the Pike Place Market and the art museum and a just a bit of a walk to Seattle Center from the edge of the free ride boundary.  We will also be close to the bus tunnel (which is scheduled to re-open this month), so a bus commute to work for either of us will be straightforward.

The new place is directly on the "Ride the Ducks" route and that of the Seattle Underground Tour.  When you come visit, be sure to wave (or quack) near the intersection of 1st and Washington.

All the books, records, and CDs are packed.  We get the keys on Tuesday and the movers are scheduled for the next Monday.  There are many boxes never unpacked from our last move, which beg the question "Can we just throw them out unopened?"

Yesterday, I was asked to write something about why my town is special.  There are so many things I love about Seattle, but I chose to write about the absolutely most mundane:  the weather.

" I live in Seattle, a town that by virtue of geography is special. Lakes and ocean and mountains are all within striking distance; the weather is mild, made temperate by large bodies of water with winds muted by both the Olympic and Cascade ranges. It's a place where people are pleased by the sun, or the appearance of Mt. Rainier in a blue sky,or the way Lake Washington sparkles and froths from a floating bridge. I've lived in other places - the hot and humid, the hot and dry, the cold and icy. In those places, whatever their other charms, the weather was generally seen as an enemy during some part of the year. In Seattle, while it's not exactly an ally, it is never nefarious. It's more of an annoying little brother - the one you have to take with you to the movies or to the park because your mom said you had to. There are times you feel affection for him, and there are times you deny his existence and there are times you roll your eyes at his tantrums. But Seattlites don't have to fight him or fear him, not like they do in tornado alley or the Sonoran desert.  It aids equanimity, to be able to let the weather simply fade to background noise. That is special, and I for one like it."

Last year, Mr. Jaq and I just happened to be visiting Seattle during the annual EMP Pop music conference and were able to attend a few sessions.  As an outsider to the industry but both a lover and sometime performer of music, I found most of the papers great fun (some were far too academic for my attention span).  Mr. Jaq used to write about music a lot and currently reviews the Billboard top 10 singles every week over on The Illiterate (as well as a week of 1966 top 10 hits).  I participate in the various forums of ILX, particularly I Love Cooking, I Love Books, and I Love Everything and multitudes of these muso-types hang out over in I Love Music and ever so many were in town for this year's conference.  So, we went and spent the past 3 days listening to music and listening to people talk about music and thinking about music and listening to people talking about thinking about music and it was GREAT.

It was also free, sponsored by Rhapsody, an interesting on-line music subscription service I need to take a further look at.

But now, after 3 full days and several late nights (okay, late for me means after 10 pm - I have absolutely no partying endurance anymore), my brain is full.  Layers of sound, information, ideas, questions - everything is packed in there and starting to leak out my ears.  Some random bits:  Jonathan Lethem and trickster and neoteny and head-led dancing; "music as listener"; "hip-nop" (!); the drama and tragedy and hope of freestyle; the ever-subtle dance/techno variants;  was it "Olver"? (wolves in Norwegian?); why was there no VERA project involvement? (don't forget to send that email!); the look on Cosmo's face when I was talking about seeing Barbara Morgenstern open for the Mountain Goats at Neumo's; the graciousness of the owners of Roti on lower Queen Anne when 20 hungry stormed their door; "hip-hop is more pure here" (that would be eastern Iowa); talking with Angela and Jill about the advantages of not being involved in the industry but attending nevertheless and neveryoumind; fundamental structural and necessary changes in the distribution of music and payment of performers pushed and pulled and squeezed and shaped by technology; Woody Guthrie's love of dams; must hear some Magic Slim and the Teardrops.

I'm taking tomorrow off work, to process some of this.  Or maybe just to do some laundry and bake some banana/ginger muffins.