You're Doing It Wrong

I’ve never been excited about planting tulips. It’s not because I don’t like them. It’s because they look pretty for about 15 minutes and then the wind blows and there are petals surrounding a green stem.

This year I thought I planted two batches. These little pink ones in back and the red ones (with one lone cream colored one ?) below that are in the front. But there’s another bunch coming up in back and I’m not certain where they came from but I’m going to guess that they’re purple and from an Easter gift last year.

I had another productive writing day and I would write more about that but I’m too tired so perhaps tomorrow. Other than that I got a couple chores done but the taxes are still waiting and a few other things I wanted to take care of have been ignored.

Busy Saturday

One of my favorite lunches is paella at Southpark. I’ve been talking about learning to make paella forever and coworker was going to buy me a pan and then decided to give me a gift certificate instead. I went back and forth about getting an actual paella pan v. getting a multi-purpose pan that I could also use for paella. I went for the paella pan and I’m going to give it a test run tomorrow.

I’ve been admiring all the gorgeous trees in the neighborhood. Dogwood and other flowering trees I don’t know the names of. Finally our tree is blooming. I don’t know what it is but I call it a Weeping Cherry.

This photo makes it look like our backyard is a sunny field of daffodils. This particular bunch was a gift from Bob’s Grandma’s house in central California. We got a bag of bulbs and I planted them together in one corner so we’d always know which ones were Grandma’s.

Two amazing days of productivity. Going for Day 3 tomorrow.

Seattle Trip: March 28-30, 2008
I end up in Seattle about every other year and usually for something specific.

I married a man who was all things Bumbershoot when I met him. I think he went for something like 18 consecutive years. We even went there on our honeymoon. (We also went to the San Juan Islands and Victoria, BC. It’s not like Bumbershoot was our only destination.) We’ve gone up for that. We’ve visited family and friends and gone to soccer games. I’m too lazy to look it all up.

I always love Seattle when I’m there. But when I’m home I think: I don’t want to go to Seattle. The biggest reason is that I hate being in the car. At 2am it’s probably a 2.5 hour drive. Any other time it’s more like 3.25+. It was raining giant snowflakey drops on this trip.

We arrived Friday afternoon and checked into our hotel and sat around reading (me) and blogging (him) and then we went to Ballard to meet some friends who took us to a fabulous meal at Cocina Esperanza.

The next morning we slept in and on our way to the Frye Art Museum we discovered the Yesterday Cafe.

Really it was called The Corner Cafe and it looked like your typical espresso/scone breakfast, quick roast beef sandwich and chips for lunch kind of place.

It turned out to be much better than that. We sat down as Paul McCartney crooned “Yesterday” for us and we ordered and then we split the paper. The Seattle P.I. is an awesome paper.

We’d been sitting there awhile when I commented, “Wow, this is a long song.”

Then again 5 minutes later. “This must be the extended disco remix.”

Finally, “Is this song still playing?”

“Seven times in a row,” my husband said. The song ended and we listened. Silence. “Whew,” we sat back in our chairs.

“Yesterday,” sang Paul.

Finally a lady got up and stomped over to the counter and complained and Bob and I burst out laughing. We weren’t laughing at her, we just thought the repetition of Yesterday was part of the ambiance.

Bob doesn’t like potatoes. I’m just learning this after 100 years of marriage. I like potatoes but it wouldn’t hurt my feelings if he said he didn’t like them. I’m not sure why he was so vague about it before now. He asked to substitute for a pancake. He said he didn’t mind paying extra.

“One dollar?” the woman said. “Perfect,” Bob said.

Later she brought out the world’s biggest pancake and said, “The cook surprised me with a big pancake. I told him it was for a big man.”

Of course we had to take photos and then the cook came out to see what we were doing. Bob was thrilled with his breakfast.

After breakfast we went to the Frye Museum to see the Robert Crumb exhibit.

My Bob captures the mood of the thing pretty well so I’ll give you the short version. Stuffy museum, counter-culture hero: weird but good. I loved seeing the drawings up close and seeing how much white-out the artists used. This should be a D’oh! moment but I always think creating things is easier for everyone else.

After the museum we hiked downtown. In case anyone reading this has never been to Seattle, downtown is built on the side of a steeply sloping cliff. If you fall down you’ll probably bounce a few times and then fall into Puget Sound.

We went to Pioneer Square and Bob said good bye to Bud’s Jazz Records which is closing and I’d love to find a good link but wikipedia is letting me down. I feel bad for the kids of the future that they’ll never know what it’s like to hang out at a cool record store and flip through the inventory and chat with people in the store and see in-store shows. I understand the evolution of music, but I have some fabulous memories of hanging out in record stores.

While Bob was at the record store I went to Elliott Bay Books to buy books by all my instructors at Clarion West this summer.

Then I met him at J&M Cafe for lunch. This picture cracks me up because in my head I always think I look so stylish. Then I see a photo like this and think I look like an unmade bed.

J&M Cafe is way yummier than you might guess from the front door. And it was late afternoon so very slow and we got super A+ service. Bob had some plank salmon that was fabulous and I had a roast turkey sandwich and a big salad. And we both had beers.

Then we hiked straight uphill back to our hotel and had a killer nap.

That night it was rain/snowing sideways for our big old people night out. It was completely miserable. We chose our hotel because it was convenient to downtown and to Neumos where we had Bob Mould tickets.

We braved the insanity and found some Vietnamese food that was pretty good. I was still sorta full from lunch. And when we were done, it was way too early for the show because rock and roll doesn’t schedule itself for old people. So we took our leftovers back to the hotel (and forgot about them, oh well) and read for another half hour and then went back out into the sideways ice monsoon AGAIN to get to the club.

Upstairs there was a bar and a coat check (yay!) and some tables and an place where you could see the stage below and a sort-of seat-step thing against the wall where you could sit. This is where we parked.

There was an opening band that I forgot the name of. Sorry guys! I liked them. They started at like, 9:30p and finished at 10:20p. Have I ever mentioned that my bedtime is 9pm? So we sat there and I was thinking: This is exactly why I hate going to shows and I was shooting my beloved the stink-eye because this was all his idea.

But I should say that I’ve been a Bob Mould fan for a long time — I have 3 or 4 artists that I’ve loved consistently since the 80’s and Bob is one of them. My Bob was there because of me.

Mould came on at about 10:45p. And as soon as he started, all was forgiven. We’d chosen a strange place to sit but I could stand on the step and see Bob perfectly and he played tons of fabulous songs including tons of Sugar stuff and I Apologize from Husker Du.

Very fun. Glad I went.

The next morning we were back in Ballard for breakfast with more friends and then back on the road home dodging the snow.

Posting will be light for the rest of the weekend (I imagine you’d be relieved) so I can do tons of writing.

Yesterday afternoon I saw a bald eagle from my office window.

I ran to one of the attorney’s offices. He has some binoculars that are more often used to look at accidents on the Morrison Bridge. He was talking to someone so I had to elbow my way in and as I dashed to the window he said, “What is it?”

Me: “Bald eagle! Bald eagle!”

I was not even a teeny bit embarrassed about my excitement. And it was contagious because he went down the hall and pretty soon half the people on our side of the office had their faces pressed against the glass. I think that’s the 2nd or 3rd time I’ve seen one downtown.

And I don’t know how the fishing works around here but this morning the Columbia River was filled with boats on either side of the bridge. And what a great morning for it. Cold but clear. Mt. Hood is out.

The forecast says it’s going to be doodoo all weekend. 50 degrees and rain. I’m going to load up on firelogs and keep the garden tools in deep storage. My sweetheart is going out of town and I’m going to have the most amazing weekend of productivity ever seen.

Look at my adorable scrawny little girl arms. This is 1972-ish in Hawaii.

Well, I’m still not focused or productive. I’m going to have to figure out a different approach.

Also, super busy day. I had a new project before I even put my purse down and poured my first cup of tea.

I still haven’t organized the Seattle stuff. Big surprise. If you can’t stand the suspense you can read my sweetheart’s take on the Bob Mould show and his thoughts on the Robert Crumb exhibit at the Frye Museum.

The new season of Battlestar Galactica starts this weekend and Sci Fi Channel ran some pre-show cylon-nerd-porn last weekend that I’ve been catching up on. One is a show history. If you’ve never seen the show, you’re really lucky because you still have that to look forward to. Don’t start in the middle. Go back and start with the mini-series from 03 and then work your way through the seasons. Even if you think space shows are stupid I think there’s a 99% possibility you will love this show.

The second pre-show was this complete waste of time nerd group hug of all these unlikely people like Brad Paisley, Scott Ian and Oz talking about how much they love the show. When Joss-is-my-master-now-Whedon appeared on screen my toes curled in geekish delight. I sat there thinking how there was no reason to continue watching, yet I couldn’t turn it off.

I just had a meatloaf sandwich that should have its own national holiday.

In honor of its amazingness I’ve written a poem.

The Lunch of A Lifetime

O! Meatloaf sandwich.
How I savored
Our short time together.

On day #2 of maximum productivity I’ve spilled my tea on my desk twice. I now have papers and my mousepad spread out all over the floor to dry. Maybe I should go back to maximum slacker.

Because I’m getting a crown.

I think I’ve written about this before but whenever there’s something wrong with my car and I have to take it in, I always expect it to cost $600. That way if it’s $600 then I can think: I knew it! And if it’s more, say $800, well, that’s not too much more than I expected.

And if it’s less then I can think: whew! at least it isn’t $600.

This is exactly what I was thinking as the dentist ground down my old broken tooth and fitted me with a temporary. When I found out that after insurance I would probably owe $450 (due now), I thought whew!

On the bummer side, when I was planning my day of amazing productivity, spending 3 hours at the dentist wasn’t in the equation.