sailing again

 

Last week I went sailing again. 

Beautiful.

a flat five miles in Seattle

 

Anyone who’s been to Seattle can tell you that we have some serious hills here.  On a recent Sunday, my friend Myra and I managed to avoid them all on a nice walk through town.  Actually, level ground wasn’t the goal, but that’s how it turned out. 

We met at Gasworks park at the north end of Lake Union.

It’s a great spot which was featured in one of my favorite Seattle movies, “10 Things I Hate About You,” as well as my wonderful surprise sixteenth birthday (thanks M+D!).

It offers a great view of the city, the lake and some of the famous Seattle house boats. 

   

Leaving Gasworks, we walked along the west side of the lake.  At the south end, we passed the Center For Wooden boats, where my sister was married five years ago and one of my best friends was married three months ago. Here’s a shot of Gasworks from the south. 

Next we cut through the market, wound our way down the back stairs and walked along the waterfront to Pioneer Square.  We stopped by the unexpected and delightful UPS Waterfall Garden at 2nd and Main.

Finally, we wrapped it up at one of my new favorite restaurants, Cafe Paloma, with Jack.

downtown wildlife

I love living downtown.  There’s just so much to see. 
These are a few of the characters I’ve seen in just the last week or so:

• A Filipino event of some kind with about 12 women in matching dresses, an enormous purple multi-tired umbrella and a bunch of Filipino flags.
• A zombie bride and groom.
• A woman in a realistic astronaut suit being filmed for something.
• The fireman across the street who plays bagpipes marching back and forth on the fire station balcony.
• The guy playing ethereal chimes on the bus.
• An eagle on a telephone pole by a taco truck being harassed by crows and seagulls.

 
Last weekend there was also a marathon and a huge Pride parade.  It’s just another week in our haven in the center of it all.

Junuary in Seattle

I can't take credit for this new month on the PNW calendar, but I like it.  I like the word play, and I'm actually okay with the weather, for the most part.

Today it was 95°F in Boston and it rained.  In Seattle it was 62°F.  


Both cites had a 60% chance of rain.  In Seattle that means that it will rain about 60% of the day whereas in Boston the whole day's worth of rain comes down in an unfortunate and unpredictable half-hour period.  Like I said, I'll take Junuary, thank you very much.

On a related note, Jack and I haven't been in Seattle in June for a decade so we are reveling in the bizarre and dramatic amount of daylight we get.  

We have almost an hour more daylight than Boston at the summer solstice.  

Check back with me in December when we have half as much daylight as now and less than Boston.  I'll tell you about snow and ice and probably come to the same affectionate conclusion that Seattle is the place for me.

pomp and pickle ball

 

Last weekend Jack’s brother graduated from high school.  Hooray!

  

In honor of his graduation, as well as Jack’s grandparents’ 55th anniversary, we had a great family party on the Peninsula.  Jack and I have found a new passion for pickle ball.  We didn’t win the tournament, but we will next time.  Oh, and in our Felix Hernandez (Mariner’s) shirts, we were the only ones in uniforms so we handled that.

Also we got to eat Jack’s grandma’s famous homemade blackberry ice cream.  Jack guarded his jealously.

 

racing on Hobbes

 

Now that we live in Seattle again, we see a lot more of our family.  We both work less than two miles from our dads.  Jack has lunch with his dad a few times a week and on Thursday I got to go (sailboat) racing with mine, in Des Moines.  It’s all terribly cute!

Racing was great, with a healthy amount of wind. I was too busy to take more than two pictures, and we beat the three other boats in our class on Hobbes, my parents’ boat.