inahandbasket | (no subject)

Catch up time!

I was sick as a dog this past weekend, and I made it worse by ignoring it for the first few days. I got a lot done by ignoring it though! It's funny, but when I'm sick I really don't want to do useful things like update LJ, process photos, do paperwork that's piling up on my desk, etc. All I want to do is use power tools and life heavy things. It's somewhat counter-productive I realize, but I can't change this fact about myself.

I'm going to separate this over a couple different posts to make life easier for myself, since there are (at last count) about 7 different topics I want to talk about. whee! I've been drafting this post for about 2 weeks now, so it's getting long.

Honkfest West - Seattle
This was a whole lot of fun, even if I had to play bass drum instead of upright for the whole weekend.
The HONK! participants are a crazy bunch of people. In Boston we usually feel like we're dressed pretty odd in our gig-wear and look rather conspicuous, but in the context of HonkWest we looked drab and boring. It was pretty impressive.

Meg and I loved checking out Seattle, it's a pretty cool town that would take a while to really wrap your head around. We got out into a couple different neighborhoods and checked out a handful of coffee hauses much to my delight. Meg has decided that maybe coffee isn't terrible when served with steamed milk, which is a shocking but welcome discovery (and leads into a later post I need to make).

We caught up with her old college roommate who's on LJ somewhere but I don't know her ID so I won't link her. Was good to see her again and meet her s/o (and cats!).

Seattle has the most amazingly super-sexy library I've ever been in. Seriously, if you ever go to that city you HAVE to check out the main library downtown. Awesome building, really well designed space, win-win!

Sunday evening we caught Circus Contraption's show, which was absolutely awesome. Some of the best aerials I've ever seen (and that's saying something): I didn't even know you could do a single-heel hang off a bar let alone do it fluidly and get back ON the bar from there. I mean wow. The framing of the show and individual acts was excellent, the theatrics were very very good, and the set and other visuals were spot on. The music was also excellent but a bit background-y for the most part, I'd have liked it to be a bit more prominent given the caliber of the musicians.
Also impressive was the fact that most of the people in the show did multiple things. The main clown also played stringed instruments in the band, including lap-steel and a musical saw (NEED ONE!). The trumpet player also played multiple instruments including accordion, was a main character in the show, and she also sang amazingly well. Only three of the musicians did NOT have a fairly sizable part in the circus part of the show.

Food:
Seattle also has some pretty amazing sushi, even the "cheap" conveyor-belt sushi place we went was on par with some of the best sushi I've had on the east coast, and the nice sushi place we went was just plain fantastic. Also I discovered that I like cloudy sake more than clear sake. I'm sure there are terms for them but I'm too lazy to look it up.
We had possibly the best brewpub meal I've ever eaten at Elysian Brewing's restaurant. 11 different beers for lunch on a Sunday, along with a giant plate of amazing fries covered in flank steak and blue-cheese sauce? Yeah, I'd almost quit my job and move out there just for that brunch every week. Also visited the Theo chocolate factory store. mmmmm chocolate.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I know you've heard me say this for like ten years now, but I <3 SEATTLE. So glad you guys liked it. It does take a while to wrap your head around-- it's a bit hard to sort of conveniently gift-wrap Seattle. Sounds like you guys hit a lot of high points. I've never had the sushi there, but from my SF experiences, East Coast sushi is about as deficient as East Coast burritos. The West Coast pretty much has those two food groups locked up (the Southwest notwithstanding). That library was built after I was there, so I didn't get to experience it firsthand, but it looks completely hot.

trips ftw! Looking forward to the other updates...
crap, that reminds me that I need to write an NZ one.

arr! updates!

I'm sad i didn't get a burrito, but we had so much good food I can't really copmplain.

I am a huge fan of nigori (cloudy sake), too, whereas I find regular sake merely okay most of the time. Want to have a nigori-tasting party sometime?

That sounds like full of awesome. ^_^

Nigori! <3 I blame

cuthalion.

You need an icon that says, "Yay, nigori!"

And because it is

cuthalion's fault, it should involve locs, too.

You now see why I must return to the West Coast. Seattle was the city that my family visited when I was growing up.

If they'd just accept that they need a decent regional mass transit system, I'd be happy.

well, someone had a lot of fun recently. :)

Yeah, so the very first question I [very excitedly] asked Meg about Seattle was, "Did you get to see the library?!" It's pretty much the entire reason I'd like to go to Seattle someday. ::sigh::
(And amusingly, this comes from the architecture nerd part of me, not the wannabe librarian part.)

Seattle is a cool town. I'd love to see that library in person. They've got robots!

welcome to the left coast where laid back was created!