Soon it will be tomorrow!

I'm very excited about tomorrow, because tomorrow is the day that my sister, her husband, and their two kids arrive in Seattle! They're here for just about 24 hours, en route to Hawaii, but we get to meet them at the airport, ride the light rail to downtown, and take them to the Seattle Aquarium and Pike Place Market. Although my niece is too young to appreciate all this, I know that my nephew is going to have a blast. He loves trains, so the light rail should be really fun for him. There's also a ton of fun stuff to do at the aquarium, and they don't have an aquarium in Kansas City.

This only marks the second time that any of my family members have made it out to Seattle, and I've lived here almost 3 years now. Megan came out a little less than a year after I moved out, because she had a job interview (she didn't take the job :( ). My mom will be out later this summer. My dad offered to come out, but there were a lot of logistical challenges and it didn't happen. And my brother and his family will probably never make it out here, but that's fair, since I've refused to go to Chicago ever since I had a miserable time there one weekend. And almost got stuck in their airport overnight.

I'm hoping that the kids will hold up to a day of playing tourist, though we've made arrangements in case they need naps. I made each of them a lavender pillow for their plane rides to and from Hawaii, out of soft old T-shirts and ribbon I had on hand. I'm hoping they will help them sleep on the planes, because I don't envy my sister having those long plane rides with fussy kids. Even if they don't use them as pillows, they should be nice little things for them to snuggle. :)

I'm planning on making more of the lavender pillows for Counting Stars, but I've decided that it would be a good idea to put a removable cover on them. So they're still in the works for the rest of the world. :)

Handmade Comedy show

No, it's not a craft show. It's a comedy show. But it's a comedy show where the audience is encouraged to bring their craft projects that are quiet, don't smell, and can be worked on in dim lighting. If I could make it, heck yeah, I'd be crocheting. :)

But I can't go, and instead, I've sent a couple of items in for the silent auction to benefit Friends of the Orphans. In fact, a portion of the ticket sales go to that cause as well, but a bunch of EtsyRain members will be donating items for a silent auction to be held before the show. So if you've had your eye on either of the items in this post, find a way to be there to bid on the silent auctions! :)

Brrr...

Even though the sky is solid blue today, and the sun is shining brightly, it's still a wee bit cold in Seattle. I meant to grab a pair of my arm warmers today, since I opted for a short sleeved dress over jeans, but our morning rush meant that the arm warmers stayed in the drawer instead of coming to work with me. Luckily, it was only really bad this morning while I was at UW, and just now when I had to run out for quarters and lunch. Ah yes, my thrilling day. :)

I have been doing little other than writing recently, which further contributes to how thrilling my life has been. But Jeremy has begun brainstorming on his character for my upcoming Vampire game, so I'm getting to toss a few ideas back and forth with him when we aren't both frantically working on our novels. I didn't expect that anyone (other than Katie) would get me much on their characters until December, when we start the game, but everyone has at least given me a small taste of their upcoming characters. Amusingly, after Katie and Megan were chomping at the bit for me to get them the character quiz, I haven't seen ANY answers yet. :)

Our plans for the next few days involve writing and gaming, in addition to my show on Saturday. I may not get to participate in the gaming, but I'm hopeful that I can at least divert my attention from the novel for a little while. My brain needs a rest every now and then! :)

It's fall, for sure!

The weather has turned directly into fall, and just about right on schedule, too. Seattle has a good tendency to turn warmer around Memorial Day, turn hot around the 4th of July, and turn cooler around Labor Day. It's a good system, if you ask me, because I'm perfectly happy with about 3 months of summer-ish weather (with only a week or two of summer heat).

Of course, this seems to mean that I need to stop thinking that I can get away with more summer-y clothing options. Apparently a knee length skirt with footless tights and ballet flats just doesn't work for going out to the bus stop in the morning. I'll probably be fine on the way home, of course. :) Jeremy said we need to get me more winter-y clothes, and I responded that I just need to learn how to dress for the weather better. I've got a whole drawer full of corduroy pants and sweaters. :)

I can sort of tell that the seasons are turning by what Jeremy reports to me as available at the farmer's market near his work. On Tuesdays when he's coming straight home from work, he heads over there on his lunch break, and we frantically text back and forth so I can help him choose some fresh produce for our meals. This week, it was less fruit than previous weeks, and a bag of purple potatoes. This is mostly for my love of all things purple, but also for my love of strange potato dishes (like the blue mashed potatoes that we had for Thanksgiving in Carbondale one year). I had purple potato salad at the Can't Stop the Serenity event in Seattle, and decided that I needed to make purple potatoes at home, too. :)

I think the plan for these is just to boil them and eat them relatively unadorned, so we can see what they taste like before I start doing more odd things to them. But really, how often do you get to eat purple food that isn't grapes?!

Catching up at the end of the week...

I have more topics that I wish to cover than I have blog posts left before these topics slip my mind. Therefore:

1) Push was a pretty good movie. Of course, as soon as it ended, I turned to Jeremy to ask him his top choice for a game system to simulate the way the movie worked. He picked Mage. I picked Aberrant. He agreed that Mage needed a lot of tweaking to work, though. We are unrepentant geeks who turn all slightly geeky movies into a potential game. :)

2) The weather in Seattle has turned cool enough that I had to wear a long sleeved shirt AND a jacket this morning. This makes me very happy. However, the forecast says this won't last long, so I guess we'd better enjoy it while we can.

3) The end of moving is in sight! We're going to make a big push tonight to finish packing and moving the stuff in the living room that gets moved, and then all that is left is the kitchen. The kitchen can technically wait until after the movers do their work, if need be. YAY! :)

4) This is extra good because I'm off to the Olympic Peninsula next week for three days for work. Ah, I love getting over there. :)

Cats + heat = not good!

The heat continues. And while we get to go to our nice air-conditioned offices every day, the poor cats are stuck at home. We're doing as much as we can to keep them comfortable--fans in the bedroom and living room, plenty of fresh water every time we can refill it, and even a bit of water in the bathtub in the hopes of either keeping the bathroom cooler or giving the cats a spot to hang out--but they are NOT liking the heat one bit.

Last night, I went straight home while Jeremy headed to an appointment, so I spent about an hour trying to get the cats more comfortable. Mostly they were doing alright by hiding out in the bedroom, but one of the cats insisted on laying on the living room floor, and looked downright miserable. I ended up "petting" him with an ice cube to get his fur a little damp, and he seemed to perk up after that.

Today is forecast to be worse than yesterday. We're holding out hope that my apartment is retaining its cave-like qualities, so that we can sleep there tonight. The cats, however, can't come with us. Hopefully they're finding good ways to beat the heat!

In other cat related news, I don't think I ever showed off the catnip toys that I made. I had a custom order request for a cat toy, and since I had to buy catnip to make it, I ended up making a ton of these little fish. They're from a pattern that I whipped up when I wanted to make a crocheted Swimmy, and then modified to make stuffed fish. I like these little featureless catnip toys, and I keep promising Jeremy's cats that they can have one... they go so nuts when I work on catnip toys near them and don't share. :)

Summer in Seattle

Oof. It's been way too hot lately in Seattle, which is really difficult to deal with. Jeremy's apartment does not have cool little hiding spots like mine did, and I just think it's been hotter all around. I've been jumping in the shower quickly before bed so that I can actually get to sleep at night, and once the sun starts coming up, I'm ready to get out of bed and back into the shower to cool off again. Truly ridiculous, if you ask me!

I'm trying to think cool thoughts at the moment, though, because I'm really hoping for cooler weather by the weekend. We did Jeremy's storage unit move this past weekend (which was more fun than it had any right to be) and we're doing the one big moving push with our friends this Saturday. After that's done, all that will be left is to move smaller stuff in the car, and hire movers to put my big furniture into storage. We've been recruiting friends with the lure of food, and it looks like we might have enough people to actually move my stuff. The one fear has been that the teenaged girls and I probably can't handle carrying my entertainment center, so we're hoping at least a couple of the guys will be able to make it to help Jeremy with that. It is seriously heavy.

We're doing the studio move on Saturday as well, though most of that stuff is fairly lightweight. My vintage table-mounted sewing machine is the true beast, and really, it's mostly just unwieldly and awkward to carry. I'm so excited to be getting my stuff moved into my studio, and have already been scheduling the rest of the moving tasks around a few nights that I plan to spend at the studio, getting stuff made. Very exciting!

There might be pictures of the studio once I'm all moved in, and maybe some pictures from the apartment, once the dust there has settled. Really, though, there won't be much to see in the apartment, as it'll just be a rearranging of the living room and adding furniture to the bedroom. Trust me, you won't be missing much. :)

Crazy weather

Last night, I had a bunch of errands to run after work, and a pretty strict timeline in which to get them all done. The weather did not want to cooperate. :(

People from Seattle know that when we talk about it "raining," it's not what people in, say, the Midwest would consider rain. It's usually really light rain, sometimes more mist than rain, but rarely actual raindrops. Last night, it was more like real rain. In fact, my friend Tom said that the top news story was the "thunderstorm." I heard no thunder, for the record. :)

But I got my errands done, and without any great incident. Aside from leaving the stuff I bought at Costco in my trunk. *sigh*

So glad to be home

While I'm sure that under different circumstances, I might have absolutely loved Portland, I ended up cursing it most of the time when I was there. The work itself wasn't awful, we had good food and drinks, and I got books at Powell's. But the weather sucked, and being away from home for another week was kind of difficult. I'm really only halfway back into my normal routine of things, having been gone so much lately.

However, I do have to say that I love Seattle so much more than Portland, so I'm glad I decided to live here. My reason? The freaks in Seattle are so much more fun to watch. Portland seemed really sedate comparatively, especially when a walk from my office to the bank and back involved seeing a woman screaming about Catholics, Buddhists, and Bill Gates (clearly a global conspiracy); a cop on one of those Segway thingies; and a girl with hot pink hair, bright aqua tights, and crazy lime green printed fleece legwarmers. Priceless.

Not as planned

So when it comes down to it, my entire weekend was completely not as planned. The only thing that survived intact-ish was that I got to have coffee with my friend Jeremy. However, we had to make it "virtual" coffee--he made coffee at his apartment, I made tea at mine, and we chatted for about an hour while we drank our respective beverages. So it's like going out for coffee, without the going out. :)

But the Steampunk Cabaret and I Heart Rummage were both casualties of the snow, so I stayed home, played a bit of Rock Band 2, and pretty much caught up on my crocheting. I still need to finish the baby afghan for my not-born-yet niece or nephew, but I technically have until March to finish that if I want to. If I get it done before Saturday, then the not-born-yet child has another gift to open... which really means my sister and brother-in-law have another gift to open. :)

The good news for the day, however, is that the temperature in Seattle has FINALLY broken 32 degrees, and the snow is beginning to melt. I can see it most apparently on the tree outside my office window (oh, yeah, I made it to the office again. Only one in today.), but I hear people shoveling too, and it's the easy sound of shoveling snow, rather than the scraping sound of shoveling ice.

My trek to work did include a trek though, as my bus got stuck a little under a mile from my office. Of course, me being pretty bad at gauging distances had no idea how far it really was to the office, but I knew how to get there, so I joined the masses of people who were departing buses and walking more blocks than usual to get to their places of employment. I am apparently a trooper and heroic, according to my co-workers. :) I have also declared myself Queen of the Office in their absence. :)

Hurrah!

Well, I successfully made it to and from work today, without much trouble. I did take the quick way down about four steps, but my backpack saved me from much more than a bruised left forearm (and not really a bad bruise, either).

My weekend plans seem to be mostly surviving, though some of them in altered form. I may be having virtual coffee with a friend... as in he has coffee at his apartment and I have tea at mine while we chat online... to substitute for actually going out into the cold cold world. Thus far, my plans for the Steampunk Cabaret remain completely intact... I just need to find clothing that is warm enough and boots that are functional enough. Fashion may not win out this time.

Sunday, though, I Heart Rummage has been canceled, so I'll be recovering from the Steampunk Cabaret and watching it snow and/or sleet. The head of our office sent out an E-mail today suggesting that folks take work home with them today so that if the weather is really as nasty as they are predicting, we can all just work from home on Monday. I like this option. A lot. :)

Aw, man...

Apparently I spoke too soon yesterday. The snowpocalypse has arrived, and it ain't pretty. Luckily, I had already planned to head to UW again today, which turned out to be a MUCH easier commute than getting downtown would have been. There were easily 30 people waiting for my normal downtown bus at 8:30, and only 3 people waiting for the bus to UW.

So I'm hoping the snow stops early enough that the roads can be cleared before tomorrow, as I pretty much have to get to my office to do any more work. I've finished everything I have home with me, except for the answers that are sitting happily in my office. :)

I'm also hoping that they can get everything cleared before it gets super chilly tomorrow, cuz there will then be a lovely crust of ice on top of the snow, which will pretty much destroy all of my weekend plans. And that, my friends, would suck. A lot.

In other news, it looks like it will be warmer in Denver on Christmas Day than in Seattle or St. Louis. *boggles*

There is no snowpocalypse...

There is only Zuul. :)

So I had gotten myself good and ready for there to be HEAPING piles of snow everywhere when I woke up this morning. I peeked out the window at 6 a.m., and saw nothing. I continued peeking out the windows until I had to leave for the library, and still nothing. For about 1 minute after lunch, there was some vaguely sleet-y snow at UW, and then it was done.

Now I know that SOME parts of Seattle got snow, and apparently even a reasonable amount, but I'm still waiting for the impending snowpocalypse. Of course, I don't REALLY want it to happen, as I have plans for tomorrow night that hinge on no snow, and plans on Saturday that hinge on no snow. Oh, and Sunday too. Today was pretty much the only day I was willing to tolerate snow.

Sorry weather, you blew it. No snow for you. :p

SNOW!

Okay, so I've been hearing all these rumblings about the snow storm that's supposed to hit tomorrow. On Monday, one of my co-workers was already planning on working from home that day, rather than coming in to the office. Today I got a message from another co-worker that she's expecting her kids to have a snow day tomorrow, so we will work on our stuff over E-mail if need be. All the while, I'm going "hello, this is Seattle?!"

Then I looked at the weather forecast for tomorrow, and I guess they're not kidding around about this snow. Starting at 5 a.m., it's a 50% chance of snow, and it's supposed to continue to snow all day long. That means the likelihood of it sticking (on top of the ice that still lingers in a few places) is pretty high... and that also means that maybe that idea of working at home is a good one.

Sadly, tho, I'm scheduled to go to UW tomorrow. If I can't get over there, then I can't get over there. But I definitely did not bring enough stuff home with me to work for 8 hours tomorrow... just enough to work for an hour or so before the library at UW opens... *sigh*...

Yummy!

One of the things I love about working in downtown Seattle is how many good places to eat we have within walking distance of our office. It took me a little while to start venturing out and finding them, but I've collected quite a list of "favorites." Of course, my wallet dictates that I don't get out to them as often as I might like, but it's still a nice treat every now and then, particularly on days when my work schedule tells me that bringing my lunch would be difficult, at best.

One of my favorites is the Dahlia Bakery (of the Tom Arnold collective of restaurants, all of which are within a block or two of my office). Now there are times when the options are a bit hit or miss with me--sometimes, they've concocted a menu of sandwiches that just don't appeal to my pickiness, but today was a total hit day. I had to decide between a BLT and buffalo chicken salad sandwich. I went with the latter, and I think I made a good decision... although I bet the BLT is super good as well. :) Of course, I'm about to dismantle the sandwich and just eat the filling with a fork, but hey, that works too. :)

Yesterday was also a good lunch day, as I found a gyro place that uses lamb, and it's even better than El Greco, which is the gyro place about a block or two from where we lived in Carbondale. Sorry to the animal lovers out there (which I do count myself among), but lamb is tasty. Unfortunately, if I tried to not eat cute animals ever, I'd have to be a vegetarian, and that just doesn't work for me. I have way too many issues with getting appropriate nutrition to cut meat out of my diet. :(

And now I'll stop making everyone who will read this in the mid-afternoon hungry. :)

Things to do in Seattle this weekend

While I will sadly not be attending any of these events, there's still a lot of great shows going on this weekend in Seattle, technically starting tonight: check 'em out here.

I haven't done a craft show myself for what seems like forever. Since I've started traveling for work, it's rough to do shows. If it's the Saturday before I travel, I'm usually doing things like packing and getting the apartment ready for me being gone. If it's the Saturday after I travel, I get home late on Friday night, totally beat, and don't even want to think about doing anything. :)

I'm going to try to do a few shows as things ramp up towards Christmas, but I don't have any picked out quite yet for certain. I do know that if there's a Punk Rock Flea Market in the near future, I definitely want to be there... of course that's provided that it's not the day after Halloween, which is the one weekend I can't do any shows, because I'm going to be in Illinois. :)

In the meantime, there's something kind of amusing about making four pairs of eyes for plush Cthulhus, and then holding them all by the "tails" and shaking them around. Or maybe I'm the only one amused by things like this... or I may have been delirious from making four pairs of crocheted eyes in a row... :) But there's something logical about making up the extra pieces for plush Cthulhus in advance, especially when you're making a whole bunch of them at once. :) (And yes, this also involved making 4 pairs of wings and 4 sets of tentacles. And no, I'm not done with them yet... but when I am, there will be a photo of a basket of Cthulhus... :) )

I think I'm still full!

So somehow or another, I seem to have ended up on what might be the neatest "junk mail" mailing list ever. Every so often, we get a glossy little ad for a restaurant, much nicer than a lot of the ones you normally see. Normally, this would qualify as more junk mail, but in this case, the glossy little ads include a gift card for the restaurant in question. This has happened to me twice now, and so we've tried out a couple of restaurants that we probably wouldn't have gone to otherwise.

I know in a portion of my brain that it's all just a clever marketing scheme--give people a gift card, and that will get them in the door, as well as potentially get them to spend more than they might have without the gift card. Well, clever marketing scheme or not, I like this one. :)

The first one we received was Cutters Bay House, which is RIGHT on Elliott Bay (great views, if it's clear out). We took my sister there when she was in town, and the three of us ate for about $50. This was, of course, without drinks--the drink prices were a bit more than we were willing to pay. But we all got sushi, which was delicious, and Megan and Jerome had soup, while I had a salad (which I think was the oddest salad I've ever seen, but still pretty good). And, as a bonus to their clever marketing, we liked it enough that we're going to go back when Jerome's dad is in town. :) (Plus I'm blogging about it, so free advertising!) Their menu has a good deal of seafood on it, which they get from Pike Place Market, since it's pretty much RIGHT next door. :)

Last night, we went to Palomino, which was a bit trickier to find (it's inside the City Center shopping area), and a bit more expensive ($60 for 2, again with no drinks), but still definitely worth it. Their menu is a lot more Italian food, though it's sort of non-traditional Italian inspired dishes. Tasty, though. Very tasty. And yes, I do believe I'm still full from dinner last night, which was a salad and Kobe ravioli for me. (*)

So here's hoping that I'm on some super special mailing list for good now, and keep getting these gift cards in the mail. Memo to whoever's clever marketing idea this was: It works. :)

(*) Jerome says it's a travesty to put Kobe beef in ravioli. I said I didn't care, and I wanted to try it. Much cheaper than Kobe steak, that's for sure. :)

Hmmm...

So yeah, Lost pretty much broke my brain, though at least the majority of it made sense. Finding out who Jeremy Bentham was, however, did hurt my brain. Though it also made me happy, because it was my first guess as to who was in the coffin... :) Seeing it, though, was something entirely different. :)

Looks like I've got a nice calm weekend planned, which is cool. Work has been super hectic this morning, and I'm hoping it will be calming down this afternoon. My luck, however, is that it won't even wait till I'm done with lunch to continue with the insanity. :) I have one thing that will take me maybe half an hour to do, but I know that as soon as I buckle down to do it, I'll get about 20 E-mails pulling my attention to 20 other things... oi!

Other than that, life is good. Sometimes I find it hard to believe that we've been in Seattle for just over a year now. Other times, I feel like I've lived here for longer. People on the streets downtown ask me for directions and information about the buses. I guess I just look like I know what's going on. :)

Longest. Day. EVAR!

I know some Seattle-ites are going "80 degrees? In May? Are you crazy?!" But when the sky is this blue, and all the mountains are out, I ain't gonna complain for a second. Plus, 80 degrees is nothing. :) There's still a breeze and you don't feel like you're swimming in it. I call this a win!

It's only the longest day ever because I was cooped up in the office all day long. And it's Friday. So that made it seem like the afternoon took at least 6 days. Maybe 7.

Unfortunately, no rest for the wicked, and all that rot. We're foregoing Prince Caspian tonight so that I can work on my freelancing project tonight, since tomorrow I need to run errands and work on my Exalted game, which runs tomorrow night. Nothing like putting that off till the last minute. :) We're gonna try to catch Prince Caspian on Wednesday, which will also help in the task of avoiding opening night crowds for what is, when it comes down to it, a kids movie.

I'm at the archives all next week for work (local, though), so expect lots of these after work type posts. No wifi in the research room, from what I've been told. :(

Office picture! :)

Okay, so it's not of my office, but rather of the view. I think that most of the Seattle readers of this blog will recognize the strange building in this picture. I've heard it called the Mariners Building, cuz there's a Mariners shop in it. If I didn't know that, though, I'd call it the "Really Thin Slice of Pie" Building. It's seriously this strange wedge shaped building, taking up the last little bit of space before Olive and Stewart merge into a single street.

Of course, if you think the leaves look green in this photo (taken last Thursday), they've gotten increasingly green and thicker since I took it. :)

Yup, I love my office. :)