Category: Seattle

Yesterday was kind of fun, in an all-American “burn lots of gas for the holidays” kind of way. We wanted to take my oenophile in-laws to one of the local wineries. Unfortunately Chateau Ste Michelle was a victim of the morning’s high winds and was on emergency power.

We took a quick vote and decided that if the winds were still this high, it was time to go have lunch in downtown Seattle somewhere where we could see high water in Elliott Bay. After realizing the 520 floating bridge was clogged, we made the long pilgrimage around to I-90, which was experiencing some high water on the eastbound lanes, and made our way down to Anthony’s Pier 66. I had to drop them off, park the car, then walk down to a Starbucks (thank God for Starbucks) to get change for the meter. Anthony’s was good—decent shrimp gumbo (though more soup than stew) with an Orchard Street Jingle Ale on draft.

It’s nice not to have a ton of stuff to worry about today. I’ll be running to the store to get a chicken for roasting for dinner, then to the airport to pick up my folks. The sun is actually shining today for them in welcome. Should be fun.

I went to get Thai takeout tonight. After a series of errands and a long day at work, I was tired. There was a Dancing Santa doll on the front table at the Thai restaurant. With the music and chatter, I could only hear the bridge of “Jingle Bell Rock” and mistook it for an eastern Asian hymn. I stared at the Dancing Santa until I was enlightened: Dancing Santa is a Bodhisattva. It has foregone enlightenment so that I may have it.

The hostess brought me a glass of ice water. I drank deep.

My inlaws arrived this evening to start the holiday season. My parents arrive tomorrow. Blogging will be scant.

I like the way other people write about their weekends. Take Esta, for instance: I feel as though I were there.

There is a lot I could write about the concert yesterday, my Liquid Lounge debut Saturday, our dinner with Arvind and Kim afterward, even the experience of programming the remote. At the moment, though, I have to pull some things together for a 10 am meeting. And since I’m on vacation starting Wednesday, there is a lot I need to do in the next few days. Maybe later this afternoon I can do a proper update. In the meantime go read Justin’s adventures in Tokyo, and send him a note every time he says “lively.” Happy 28, Justin; I keep forgetting you’re younger than me.

All kinds of seasonal observations going on today. George points to online Advent devotionals hosted by his church. (I believe this is the first church website I’ve ever seen that has message boards.) The December 1st devotional has particularly sage advice: “Perhaps this Christmas, rather than following the cultural rules of yuletide—shopping, decoration, cards, parties, busyness, you might mark the birth of the Lord of the sabbath by acts of mercy and compassion upon those who have need.”

I could have used that advice last night as I struggled to finish decorating our tree (the one I abandoned from exhaustion on Sunday night). It took forever. Apparently new Christmas light strings are deliberately shipped as twisted masses of wire. Three hundred untwisted lights later, we started hanging ornaments. How is it that, despite only having done one Christmas tree prior to this, we had something like eight boxes of ornamental glass balls? That’s a lot of glass for one tree. Lisa likes the end result, but I’m still trying to get used to the result. I grew up with plain white lights and these are colored, which contributes to the cognitive dissonance I experience when I look at the tree (ceci n’est pas un Christmas tree, or, as David Byrne would say, “This is not my beautiful tree!”). But I think it’s growing on me.

Back to Advent devotionals. Mom sent a finding from her church’s devotional booklet: a reprint of Sylvia Plath’s “Black Rook in Rainy Weather.” Mom is nothing if not au courant with happenings here in the Northwest, as our ten day long sunshine spell just broke today. It seems ironic to think about Plath in any sort of Christmas context, but this poem grabs both the catch of breath on finding the sublime in nature and the waiting through fatigue for miracles to come.

The last is probably the hardest bit. But I’m coming to realize that we all have to “[trek] stubborn through the season of fatigue” and “patch together a content of sorts.” Or as Anne Sexton writes in The Awful Rowing Towards God, “The story ends with me still rowing.” Or as Dave likes to say in a different context, “Dig we must.” After all, what’s the alternative? Whatever it is, I think waiting for the miracle beats worrying about the rough beast around the corner.

We started our holiday decorating process last Wednesday with our first trip (but not our last) to Molbak’s for poinsettias (there are 39 different varieties of the plant there right now). Saturday I spent mostly cleaning up our garage, unboxing a few things that were still in boxes, and getting our second TV in the Sun Room set up.

This afternoon Lisa and I went back to Ikea (we were there yesterday as well to get some holiday decorations and a small chair for the Sun Room) to get some shelves. On the way back we stopped at Home Depot and got a six foot “Noble Fir” Christmas tree. We bought it on faith—it was still strapped tight—but we assumed (correctly) that it was in pretty good shape. And with the straps on, I was able to take down the right half of the Passat’s back seat, lay out one of our much abused painter’s cloths, and slide the tree right in.

Getting the tree into the house was a slightly different story. I ran out of upper body strength and patience half way through sawing the bottom 1/2 inch off the tree out in our garage. Fortunately a hammer and chisel helped get the last bit off. After a lot of swearing, vacuuming and sweeping, the tree was in the stand and the needles were out of the garage.

At this point we stopped for dinner, which was a mistake in retrospect. We ran out of steam. I got one string of lights partway on the tree and then stopped. Lisa went to bed and I will follow her once I finish writing.

This is the first Christmas tree we’ve had for at least three years, since the last (or next-to-last) year we were in McLean, Virginia. I think that once we finish setting it up we’ll have succeeded in claiming another piece of this house as our home. Unfortunately that’ll have to wait until Tuesday; I have practice tomorrow night.

I’m quite tired after four days of “rest and relaxation.” I suppose this is what aging does to you. (I’ll be thirty tomorrow.)

… because the weather here is fine. Cold, maybe, but clear. For the third day in a row. Is this really Seattle in the wintertime?

I feel good this morning. I feel like I could really get some things done today. Unfortunately that makes me want to work on things around the house rather than at work. But I’ll persevere. To quote myself quoting Beck:

I’m a driver, I’m a winner. Things are gonna change, I can feel it.

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Driving into work this morning, someone had airbrushed the landscape away. A diffuse glow hung over the creek bordering the park. Seattle doesn’t like to be really cold during the fall, I think. It’s happier chilly and shrouded.

I vacuumed, cursed and picked up wet leaves with my hands last night in the dark. Patches of bare mud showing through our much abused lawn. The cherry tree conspires with the maple next door to rob the grass of light. Fall has its revenge though and both huddle naked now plotting their cloaks for spring.

When I was little, the first thing I ever heard about Seattle was a Bill Cosby routine (on I Started Out as a Child) that claimed that Seattleites liked the rainy weather–that we would stay out and get rain tans, that sort of thing, and that when the sun came out we would ask, “What have we done?”

This morning I’m awfully glad to see it. The cherry tree leaves might dry out enough today to be blowable and gatherable by the time I get home. Nothing like bagging leaves in the dark (the sun is pretty much setting by 4:30 pm these days).
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…that would be a good reason to not have posted for three days. As it is, I can point to our mostly-finished front bedroom, which is finally losing its green and maroon color scheme, as justification for not having written.

I started a new job at the same company yesterday. I spent the day in training, so it’s hard to tell how it went. But I will have a meeting this morning to talk about my goals, and then things will get running. I feel in some ways like this fresh start is like coming home to a skill set that I thought I’d never get to use again. In other ways, of course, I feel like I’ve given up on the other job, and that’s something I’m going to have to continue to work through.

…until I got the new site set up. But I’ll be in training today and won’t have a chance to finish the setup, so a quick update.

I’m touched by the support I’ve gotten since posting Monday about the Black Dog. I wanted to assure all of you that this is nothing sudden or intensely scary. I’m reaching the realization that there are some things that it’s better to discuss and write down than not. And I’m discovering some things about myself that I never acknowledged before. I’m going to come out of this stronger and better and that’s the important thing.

And in the meantime it’s not raining here (yet) today, and I’m going to take that as the good sign that it is and get on with this day.
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Regarding what I wrote last night: I think I need to stop blogging before bed. Not that I regret what I wrote, but it honestly sounds bleaker than I meant it to. It’s honestly raining today, and somehow that makes me feel better (though it also made me get up later).

I think some small portion of this is just loneliness. Knowing that others are dealing with similar issues does make it easier to sort through it.

I should run to work now. I’ve been promised comp leave, but I have a class tomorrow so I need to do my best to clear my plate today. Then maybe Thursday or Friday I can just lay about.

Oh, my new site is almost up and running. There are a few things left to sort out, but when all is done I’ll post here with the new address. I’m so excited. The new site looks like it will actually stay running in the middle of the day….

The Cascadian Singers did a guest spot at a Saturday night Mass at St. James Cathedral in Seattle tonight. This was mostly interesting because it was only two weeks since our last show and we hadn’t had much time to to learn new music. So we did the show on one and a half rehearsals through about seven pieces. It was, I thought, overall a good show, though there were a few places where things were a little rough. But pulling off the Duruflé “Ubi Caritas“ made it a lot more worthwhile.
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I know it’s been quiet here at the JH North for the last week or two. I assure you it’s been in good cause.

As I alluded last night, I’ve been a bit busy with work. The bigger picture is that I’m working on this enormous project in between switching jobs. My first position at the company was a combination of online strategy and media campaign execution. I have no experience at the latter, and learned that I’m not too good at the former when the area in question has no connection to our group’s current business and I’m working on the analysis in a vacuum. So between that, the enormous psychic upheaval of our move and my graduation, and past history, I was about due for a massive attack of the black dog. This one put me in a funk so deep that it was affecting my job performance.

I’m taking steps to correct it. I found a new position in a sister team doing media analysis, which is a combination of hardcore quant, web metrics, and product planning–much more up my alley. And I’m talking about what I’m going through. Esta, Greg, and Anil were right. It doesn’t get any better otherwise.

Today I stopped at the gas station on my way in to work. The VW Microbus (there are quite a few still on the road around here in Seattle) ahead of me had his rear engine door open and jumper cables strewn about. Ah, I thought, wet weather and old Volkswagens. Sure enough, he asked me for a jump. It took me a few minutes to find the battery under the hood of my car (give me a break, I don’t have 5,000 miles on it yet!), but we hooked it up. On the second turn of the key, his van roared back to life. I drove off to work in search of coffee. It’s not such a bad day.

A hard couple of days here. Seven hours of work yesterday at the office, about 11 today. Hopefully all for a good cause. I’m a little sore and very tired.