Category: Seattle

Given what they say about those who fail to learn from history, it should come as no surprise that Lisa and I decided to tackle boating on Lake Union again, almost two years after the last time we tried it. This time, things were a bit different. For one thing, we rented a kayak, not a canoe, so we were both facing the same direction when we paddled. This helped our overall direction immensely.

Also, this was a sea kayak, which apparently comes standard with a rudder. Which seems almost like cheating, really. (This time, instead of Moss Bay, we rented from Northwest Outdoor Center. I had meant to rent from Moss Bay, but couldn’t remember the name. You’d think I’d remember to check my own weblog, wouldn’t you? Not today, apparently.) Naturally, the foot controls for the rudder were confusing enough that we ended up running into a buoy shortly after leaving the slip. Fortunately we didn’t get pulled over by the police, who were keeping all boats away from the area beyond the buoys, in the center of which sat the fireworks barge for tomorrow night’s extravaganza.

So we paddled down around the south end of the cordoned off area, then came around to the north and east (past Ivar’s, which smelled like smoking alder planks), and around south—not into Lake Washington, but down along the houseboats in Portage Bay. Then back.

As before, my right arm experienced some difficulties paddling after a while. At a few points my fingers went numb and fell asleep. I’m probably looking at some potential RSI there, I’m afraid. The good news is that we got the kayak back after two hours, I went home and slept for an hour, and all appears to be OK.

When I was little and in the back of my parents’ station wagon, summertime was a happier time. Going back a long way, being allowed to run around in an overgrown field in the North Carolina mountains was almost worth having to have the tick removed afterwards. In the nearer past (say when I was 10 or so), summer was when the library opened its doors all the way and I started falling into the spaces inside. For a long time, summer days were lawn mowing in the morning, slow cooling off in the afternoon with a book and a glass of mint tea.

I thought about that this morning on the way in, reflecting on my more recent summers. This summer is all about work and the garden. Last summer I was free from my MBA program, trying to figure out which way was up, and about to start work. Two summers ago I was waxing philosophical about a lot of things and slowly learning to open my mind to my own feelings and emotions.

I think my task this summer is to recapture that earlier innocent state in which I could happily enjoy the heat and disappear into another world, while still engaging with my friends and family. One good thing that’s happened over the last 20 years is that I’ve started learning to be happier outside the confines of my own head. I like that trend. The trick will be in continuing it.

(Incidentally, this is one of the reasons I have so many librarians blogrolled. I don’t need any convincing that I should fall to my knees and worship a librarian. Librarians got me through a lot of long hot summers!)

I finished HPATOOTP last night, having started it when Lisa finished it on Saturday. It’s quite a read: no pretending it’s a children’s book any more, not with the themes of responsibility, death, rage and grief that are wound through the narrative.

Perspective on recent “crises” in my life is around me everywhere I look. Dave writes that Dave Jacobs needs a kidney to survive, suffering from the same degenerative kidney disease that killed his brother two years ago. Katherine Hepburn, the class act of class acts, is gone. So is Robert McCloskey of Make Way for Ducklings and Blueberries for Sal. And so is Esta’s friend’s father, killed in a motorcycle accident by an asinine SUV.

For all that, it’s a time of new starts for me. My company’s fiscal year ended yesterday, our group just re-orged, and I have the opportunity to use some of my organizational and strategic skills to help shape our new direction. I like a challenge the first day of a new month; it feels like opportunity.

…contrary to what my slack posting over the last couple of days might indicate. Twelve-hour recording sessions are no fun, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. I won’t know how it all went until they do the post production and I get a chance to listen to the final product, but from the in progress recordings we heard it sounded good.

The engineer used an interesting recording technique: analog mics into a D to A converter, then fed simultaneously to a DAT and a CD recorder. The DAT never has to be rewound; you just have to cue up the CD if you want to hear something after you recorded it. I say “interesting” but for all I know it’s completely standard practice. The last time I recorded (with the E52s) it was being fed directly to a PC and mixed on a Mac; the time before that (with the Cheeselords) it was going to a portable MiniDisc recorder.

Got to give thanks to Lisa, who has been very forgiving about my recording commitments this weekend. Our first session last night went until 1 and I got home after 1:30, but today is a day off. We are recording the commissioned works that both the full Chorale and the chamber group have done over the past few years, many by local composer Bern Herbolsheimer, who is also effectively co-producing the sessions. Fun, though if Sunday has as many cars and other random noises as last night did it’ll be a long day. (There’s nothing more frustrating than doing vocally perfect take after take only to hear “Redo! Car!”)

At least Lisa can relax knowing she’ll have the new Harry Potter book to fill her day tomorrow. It arrived this morning in a custom package from Amazon, labeled “Carrier: Please deliver on June 21. Do not under any circumstances deliver before June 21!”

I missed the blog meetup last night; wish I could have been there. But I’m going to be tied up Friday night and all day Sunday with a recording project with the Cascadian Singers, and I need all the time at home this week I can get.

Of course, leisure is relative. Sometimes it means discovering a new restaurant. Sometimes it involves digging rocks into a slope and planting rudbeckia. Sometimes it involves a cookout with friends, brined chicken in a lime, fish sauce, mint, and hot pepper marinade sauce. Sometimes it even involves a beer festival. This weekend was all of the above.

The gardening is almost self explanatory—it spanned Friday night through Sunday afternoon, with breaks for the other activities. Friday night we went to Restaurant Zoë, which rocked our worlds. Lisa had king salmon with a blood orange sauce over lentils and fennel. I had veal cheeks with prosciutto. We shared a lamb carpaccio that was to die for.

Saturday—after gardening, and putting teak oil on our new patio furniture—we headed over with Ed and Gina to the Northwest Brew Fest. Lots of fun, as it was two summers ago (this year I was smart enough to wear sunscreen). There was a keg toss this year again, and I got photos with the Nokia, though none of them came out super well.

Sunday’s cookout was a lot of fun. In addition to the chicken, which was brined all day and cooked bone in on the grill before tossing it in the marinade sauce, I grilled some asparagus on the top rack and tossed it in olive oil, salt, pepper, and lemon juice. It was really nice just to sit back and enjoy the evening.

Scoble writes about a fight with his wife over his weblogging. Gotta say I wondered how he was able to write that much and be married. He’s right that writing about it is good therapy, but (once you’ve got the words down) it might be better to talk about it.

And yeah, balancing family and “creative time” can be tricky. Sometimes it’s easier to be “creative” (or just busy) than be there for people and deal with real things. Where’s the line? It’s a slippery slope. All I know is that I blog a lot when I’m depressed, or when I’m alone and happy; when I’m with my wife and happy, I don’t blog as much because I’d rather be there with her.

So yeah, good luck, Scoble, and try talking about it.

Got pulled into a review with my senior director this morning (planned) and my general manager this afternoon (unplanned), which played hell with my workload (as well as my blogging). For now, know that (a) I’ve been listening to the new Radiohead album and alternately awed and unimpressed, almost track by track (it’s uncanny how good the good stuff is; I think the bad stuff will grow on me) and (b) I plan to relax tonight and not think about work or RSS tracking. Maybe AmazonHandler, though. Maybe.

…was a very cold (55°) and very wet graduation ceremony at MIT.

Sorry I didn’t blog yesterday. It’s definitely the time of year when it’s easy for outdoor projects to consume every iota of my time and attention. Even if it does hit 95° (which is, I think, a record for the Seattle area in June). More rocks to dig in today, and a garden (someone else’s) to visit.

A belated happy anniversary to my parents. Esta arranged for the anniversary to be called out on the loudspeaker at the baseball game they went to on Thursday night.

…could a weekend that consisted of a ferry ride to an exclusive exotic plant nursery that only opens one day a year, mild food poisoning, a concert featuring one of the most difficult and rewarding pieces by an American composer in the twentieth century, and a leisurely Sunday evening of grilling, with WiFi on the side, be considered normal.

Welcome to my world.

I rehearsed until I could hardly stand straight on Friday for my Saturday concert with the Cascadian Chorale. As I’ve written before, the Copland is a humdinger and continued to be so this weekend. However, on Friday I came to appreciate the quality of our guest group, a high school chorus from Inglemoor High on the North Shore. More on them in a moment.

Saturday morning I awoke with a vague sense of promise which was fulfilled in a way I didn’t expect, as Lisa mentioned there was an exclusive nursery that only opened for two days every year. Would I mind going? As I prepared to say “Sure,” she said, “And it’s near Kingston.” Kingston? I wondered. “You get there by ferry,” she said.

Gulp. I looked at my watch. 11 am. I had to be in tux and at the church for our concert by 6. Probably could make it.

We drove to Seattle and hopped the ferry to Bainbridge Island, and motored up across the pass onto the Kitsap Peninsula, where we followed the long string of cars to Heronswood Nursery. Wow. Plants from all over the world in woodland garden settings. After agonizing deliberation, Lisa picked a few flowering grasses and a Daphne seedling and we took the Kingston/Edmonds ferry home. Somewhere in all of this I was famished and had a McDonalds chicken sandwich, and began to feel awfully ill about halfway across on the ferry ride back. (Go on, McDonalds, sue me like you did Italian “slow food” critic Edoardo Raspelli who called your hamburgers “cardboard.” I’d be proud to be in that company.) I spent the time between getting home and donning my tux alternately prostrate and frantically dashing to the restroom. But don my tux I did, once I was convinced that my legs would bear my weight, and after grabbing a handful of crackers drove to the concert.

And was blown away by the choir from Inglemoor, who bettered most college choirs that I’ve seen. They were so amazingly good, singing complex modern and polyphonic pieces from memory and pitch perfect, that they inspired us to an astonishing performance of the Copland. Considering that my first performance of In the Beginning went into the muddy acoustic of the Washington National Cathedral, my perspective may be a bit tainted. But we gave the piece a better performance than I’ve ever heard, live or in recordings. The Rachmaninoff “Bogoroditse Devo” and even the Fauré Requiem suffered, but only by comparison; both were great performances. And I managed to stay on my feet the whole time. A victory.

And the grilling with WiFi? All I can say is, you can take the network away from the boy, but you can’t take the boy away from the network…at least, not when it’s wireless. Or something.

It’s been an interesting week all around—stuck in rehearsals three nights out of the week, lots of stuff going on at work. But I’ve noticed a few things. For instance, the weather here on the east side has been hotter and drier than the weather on the east coast. And the air has been full of motes that I assumed were bugs, but on closer inspection turn out to be something like cottonwood spores.

After complaining to a few people about the high price of Copper River salmon, a friend let us in on a secret: if you’re willing to buy a whole fish, and to take sockeye instead of king, Costco will sell Copper River salmon for somewhere around $4 a pound. We brought home a five pound sockeye (cleaned, in a plastic bag) last night; I filleted the thing and grilled both filets in a hurry (it was after eight). And it was delicious. And the whole meal cost us less than the king salmon entree Lisa had eaten the previous Friday. Whoo hoo.

I seem to be on track to make one blog meetup per season, and last night was spring’s. We started at Aurafice, a little internet café on Capitol Hill, which between the bloggers and the Goths (apparently Wednesday nights are Goth get-togethers at Aurafice) started to get a little crowded. After gathering a small crowd, which in addition to the folks in the previous post also included Jerry and Adam, and after extracting Michael from the Goths, we headed down the hill to Bauhaus.

Part way there, Jerry scared the crap out of all of us by severely injuring his ankle. We offered to get him ice or Advil, but after he could stand, he opted to try to get back up the hill to his car with Matt’s help. I hope he’s ok.

On the way down, I talked a bit with Adam, aka Flangy, with whom I had briefly corresponded when I was interning in Seattle two years ago, shortly before he struck out on his own. Obligatory Userland reference: Jeremy: “Adam has one of the longest URLs around.” Me: “Yeah, I’m surprised you haven’t moved off EditThisPage yet.” Adam: “Well, at this point there are only about two people left on the server…”

Anyway, lots of good conversation (and some scary questions, including the one reported by tyd on her blog, in the context of the Atkins diet). I’ll definitely have to do the meetups more often.

Update: forgot Manuel, didn’t meet Clark.

We’re here at Bauhaus at the Seattle meetup. Passing the machine around:

• Tara: I didn’t kill the people at Best Buy. They are still alive. That’s all you need to know.
• Matt: Jerry’s okay, we think. As far as any other injuries that might happen, I can only claim ignorance or at least innocence. Have you ever noticed that in most movies, Apple computers are by far the most prevalent?
• dayment: I’m just here for the espresso. Who are these people?!??
• tyd: I hear that voice again. By day, a professional Bill Gates impersonator, by night, usually asleep.
• Jeff: What’s espresso?
• Michael: I’m clearly the last person on the planet without a laptop with a wireless connection. … Actually, all I have is two sticks and a rock.
• Cat: Can’t believe I got out of work in time for this! Hmmm… anyone find me a roomie yet? Please?
• Jeremy: Meetups are like a bunch of large wooden blocks tumbling off a cliff. They come to rest in a jumbled pile, with no form or order. Yet you mustn’t touch, because they can, and will collapse even further until they can collapse no more. Woah, what’s in the coffee here?

Okay, more fun than the regular meetup summary but a lot less coherent. Which is probably preferable.