Hard to believe it is already Monday again! My partner and I got back from Long Beach on Wednesday, and the rest of the week has been largely decompressing, unpacking, and settling back in to the little routines we call life. We had a pretty rude greeting after one of our cats pooped on the floor and it got smeared around by the robot vacuum, but I suppose that is just the price you pay for the convenience of not manually vacuuming. Lesson learned, though. I will keep the vacuum off when we are out of town.

As far of the rest of the week, it's been remarkably uneventful in hindsight, at least in terms of events in Seattle that I attended. It is kind of crazy to me that I just totally missed the Capitol Hill Block Party, living relatively close to it, had no clue it was happening other than indirect mentions from some friends. Hope whoever went had fun!

What I've Been Up To

As I mentioned, I was out of town until Wednesday, in Long Beach, California, which was pretty fun. I wandered around a new city, watched The Odyssey (not in 70mm, film enthusiasts in shambles), and went to an aquarium. On my last day there, I met up with some moots and experienced THAI CURRY PIZZA for the first time, a transformative culinary experience, for sure. It was so fun to hang out with internet friends IRL and they were so cool and fun, highly recommend!

Long Beach Waddlin

Photo of two little burritos and tacos from Sonoratown, banger restaurant in Long Beach, CA
Coffee and mystery pastry ( i think it was a very tasty scone ) on a metal table outside of Rose Park Coffee Roasters in Long Beach. They were good, but apparently they have another location that's not in Downtown that's supposed to be nicer.
green, blue, and red lorakeet in a wooden enclosure. most colorful bird i have ever seen.
content looking bulbous green and yellow frog sitting in a rocky enclosure.
translucent blobby opalescent jellyfish in a tank, blurry friends floating in the background. i have a video of them and they move really fast.
photo of my ice cream, which i paid 8 dollars for at an ice cream truck and which melted in approximately 30 seconds.
rather lackluster photo of a burrito in some tin foil. however i assure you, this breakfast burrito was extraordinarily delicious.
furniture vintage store called urban americana in long beach had an entire display of cowhide pieces in a set. the whole store was extremely cool and conveniently located next to my delicious breakfast burrito place.

Thai Curry Pizza

car-top sign for THAI CURRY PIZZA 562-987-3297
neon sign for PIZZA with tiny pieces of paper stuck in between the lights that say "CURRY TOMYAM"
golden hour shot of two beautiful thai curry pizzas on picnic blankets. one on the left is tofu thai curry, one on the right is chicken tomyam

Back In Seattle

The rest of the week was pretty relaxed, there were horrible wildfires in Spokane which meant for Thursday and Friday, the air quality in Seattle was pretty awful, and it was somehow even hotter than in Long Beach, so we mostly stayed indoors. I did get an email on Thursday that my Sony RX-10 V pre-order was ready, so I biked down to Glazers Camera to pick it up. I spent a bunch of time there asking probably extremely dumb noob-ish questions to the person behind the counter as I tried to find a case that I liked and choose an SD card that wasn't wildly overpriced. I thought it was quite funny how they had two sandisk ones that were like 48 and 50 dollars, and then one from some other brand that was like 99 dollars somehow for the same size.

After getting my camera, I headed to the Grand Central Bakery in Eastlake, where I picked up two tasty sandwiches and a loaf of bread. If you haven't gone here, I highly recommend! QFC and some other places resell their bread, but often at a dollar or two markup, so it's worth the trip. I wouldn't recommend the coffee there, though, it's quite middling. I still don't know a good cafe in Eastlake actually, Fram is a great bar but have some of the worst coffee I have ever had in Seattle. Incredible views though.

Once I got home, I basically spent the next day or two sitting on my balcony taking photos of the neighborhood birds and stuff on my balcony with the new camera. I mean I am sure I did something else, but my camera roll does not show it. Still trying to figure out the settings on this thing, the last camera like this I had was 10 years old and had like 1/10th the amount of settings.

bird sitting on a poop covered terra cotta balcony
bird (sparrow?) sitting on a sparsely leafed spruce twig
close up of an oregano plant in my herb planter, surrounded by glowing basil and sage plants

Saturday I had my weekly Arboretum walk, which I have changed the rules on to only happen if we have >5 RSVPs. Despite hitting this number, the walk had precisely 1 person (besides me) who RSVPed show up. So we had a pretty quiet walk around the park. It was nice, but I have been thinking a lot about this meetup recently. It seems like for some reason, despite having largely good reviews and around 5,000 members, no one really wants to come anymore, and the event has become a bit of a chore for me. If attendance remains low like this for a few more weeks, I probably will just terminate the group.

I did bring my camera, and the small group size made me feel less bad about stopping for a few photos.

squirrel with a big mouthful of sticks standing on its hind legs on a tree branch
orange and black butterfly alighted on a vibrant green bush-- it seems to have a small chunk bitten out of it's left wing
portrait of some pink sweet pea flowers
rocky ledge with a small translucent duck figurine sitting on it, blurred plants in the background
beautiful photo of grape vines near the arboretum but sadly the focus is on the leaves in front instead of the bountiful grapes.

Sunday was fun, my friends and and I took a long bike ride around West Seattle, through South Worth, and over to Bremerton, eventually biking back up to Capitol Hill via Uwajimaiya, where we stopped to get 10L of powdered Pocari Sweat. I still maintain that Seattle Is pretty unique and incredible in that you can easily take four or more ferries in a single day for fairly cheap (we took three). If you live around here and haven't spent time on our incredible ferries, I can't recommend it enough, especially the fast ferries, as the experience is quite a bit nicer without cars involved.

photo of seagull preening itself on a poop covered platform with the ocean in the background
big green and white ferry boat on the water in front of a foggy tree line
man in yellow vest and bucket hat directs the ferry as it docks to the ferry terminal
overexposed photo of bikers walking off the vashon island ferry
brightly lit pigeon looking off into the distance
two big green and white ferries that look as if their mouths are agape , floating side by side (in reality they were moving in opposite directions)
head-on photo of a car ferry with what appears to be a big smile on its face, you can see cars inside, trees in the background, and the faintest outline of a mountain.
photo of the ferry seemingly about to eat a small motorboat
old man and the sea, standing on a small motorboat in an orange jacket, he seems small when framed by the rows of houses on the green hills behind him
photo of buildings and docks, i think this was as we were leaving southworth
extremely old framed photo that says "state ferries 2003*2004" with a corner sticker reading" available for sale in the galley starting december 1, 2005. I asked them if i could buy one and they said they haven't sold those for 2 entire galley companies, probably 20 years.
that's no horse (it's a camel)
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After going home and absolutely scarfing down some bread and an avocado, I ran out to play poker, where after briefly losing it all, I emerged victorious, claiming the title of Top Chicken once again. Shoutout to , who came by and absolutely sharked us all with their poker prowess, truly a force to be reckoned with.

business goose🪿's avatar
2w

good news, successfully swindled mu $4 into $13.75

photo of a bunch of poker chips and a lil bit of cash on a green table

and , and i closed out the week with what referred to as a "pocari swocktail"

it was disgusting, would drink again.

blurry photo of 3 hands cheerising glasses of full of a drink that looks like lemonade and tastes like poison.

What's Coming Up

Believe it or now, I have bamboozled my way into a Job Interview today. It's at 2pm, so quite possibly will be right after I hit publish on this, wish me luck. (edit, the interview is now done, I think it went well but I guess we'll see)

As far as things happening in Seattle:

Not sure what else!! As always, I am happily accepting suggestions on things to do, send them my way.

Now time for:

I Saw The Signs

poster for the vulva gala in long beach on october 15, an "anti-met gala"
sign i saw on a ferry for a muster station. it has a bunch of arrows pointing diagonally to what appears to be a group of people with tiny people inside of them
poster for the 17th annual capitol hill garage sale at cal anderson park , aug 16 from 10am to 3pm
poster for "live at the coliseVM of art, summer of awe, showing live events every week
curious sign i saw on a lamppost that has in sort of ransom note text "The universe bears no ill will cowboy so bear no ill to it X"
poster from spice walla that says "find us at bumbershoot" and a list of all the artist performing, of which there are numerous and they all seem good.
poster for miller community center summer skate and glow last tuesday of every month
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Best of the Net

Having regularly drawn a blank on these, I finally have a decent top secret method of collecting links I think are neat, so I am ready this time.