Well, I can't believe it is almost Monday again. It's been another exciting week!
What I've Been Up To
Monday, girlgoose and I went to watch ducks at Madison Park. Or rather, we went to Madison Beach with no specified plan and ended up watching ducks. It's fascinating how ducks seems sort of acclimated to people, but still have strong limits around getting near them. She tried to pet a duck and it bit her finger, which was a funny surprise, she said it didn't hurt though.
There's an "Irish pub"1 called McGilvra's near Madison beach that we wanted to check out since it's been a while (perhaps forever?) since I've had a good shepherd's pie in Seattle. I still haven't though. Not to say the shepherds pie was horrible, it had potatoes and beef I guess, but it lacked any remarkable flavor and just looked like someone slapped some potatoes on top of some hamburger helper. Maybe it looked prettier if you ordered it yourself, they may have made it a bit funnier looking because we asked them to split it between two people.
Tuesday I got on my train to Portland for my as of yet unreleased secret Portland Project. For now, I will just say there were a lot of cameras involved. I noticed on my way to the train station, there was a big strike happening across the street. I couldn't really tell who was on strike, but hope they get what they are looking for.
The train ride to Portland was pretty nice, broadly uneventful. I seemingly got on the oldest most run down Amtrak train, the seats had weird stains on most of them and the whole thing smelled a bit funny. I guess these things don't get a lot of love from Amtrak. I noticed when I was getting on the train that the Sounder looked much nicer.
As we rode the train, the conductor informed us that we were passing THE WORLDS BIGGEST EGG. So I looked out the window, and yes, it was fairly sizeable. I'm not sure it's a real egg though. I think the public may be getting duped.
Upon arrival in Portland, Oregon, I decided to walk to the hotel I was staying at to check in, which maybe was a mistake as the area immediately adjacent to the train station was kind of depressing. I walked for maybe half an hour at the tail end of what apparently was a pretty serious heat wave, so by the time I got over the Burnside Bridge, I was pooped. The nearest place I could find to quench my mighty thirst was a place called "Project Matcha", so I rolled over there only to realize my error when the beverages where 8-10 dollars each. Exhausted, I dutifully forked over the cash in exchange for a raspberry vanilla matcha. Perhaps it was my early-stage heat stroke talking, but I thought it was pretty good, and the place was mercifully air conditioned. I got a text from saying he was eating at a nearby Gyro place, so once I finished my colorful beverage, I headed over and ate a hearty meal. We were both pretty tired at this point, so headed back to the hotel where I napped for a while, and practiced flying my drone around.
To end the night, invited a bunch of us to get dinner at Eem, which was delicious and a lot of fun. Also notable, there were Goats nearby.
Spent Wednesday doing the as of yet unreleased thing! I was pretty nervous about it for the week before, feeling sort of like an imposter and wondering if publicly embarassing myself was worth the trip to Portland, but in the end I had a great time. To celebrate wrapping up a long day of work, we headed to Jeju, which was maybe one of my favorite restaurants of all time? Every piece of food we got was really really good. Like shockingly good. So yeah, great night. It was also fun to chat with the people I was with all day, many of whom I knew very little about. Sadly, I don't think too many of them are on the Atmosphere (yet) but I think many of them are now interested!!
Thursday was my triumphant return to Seattle, home sweet home! Eli and I took the train back together, and both of us very nearly missed our train due to a combination of me inadvertently lying about when it left and our Uber driver taking a very funny detour loop right before getting us to the station. We ended up running/heelying through the station at top speed as the conductor yelled "Last call for the northbound train!". Unlike my train ride to Portland, the train was pretty clean and well kept, but also unlike that ride, the train was quite full. Being the last people on the train probably didn't help, but as I sort of glanced around the full seats with a flummoxed expression on my face, this woman who had ALSO been running for the train with us2 said we could sit with her in the four-seat area3.
The woman we sat with turned out to be named Jules, and she did something like relationship management for a big west coast bank franchise, which she described as "traveling a lot, playing golf, and making clients happy." She claimed she was not very good at golf, which I doubted, because she seemed pretty good at most things. The train ride was really fun having someone new to talk to with such exciting stories, and we exchanged info on places to eat in Portland and Seattle, and complained about the difficulties of learning Russian4. I love meeting new people on transit, truly remains an undefeated feeling, and makes the world feel like such a warm, cozy place. Hope Jules is doing well.
After getting back to Seattle, girlgoose offered to take me to Tailwind as a welcome home gift, and at this point, I am completely hooked on their Caprese Sandwich. What a perfect combination of tomatoes, cheese, and bread. I don't know what else they put on there, olives? Balsamic vinegar? Regardless, it's quite addictive and I was very happy to be home.
Friday was a pretty chill day, headed down to girlgoose's office to help her move out her things. It was so sad, the whole coworking space was empty and we were just cleaning a desk out. I always find endings sort of somber, and the lack of community there made it feel extra bleak. She doesn't seem too upset, though. I suppose the job already ended, so cleaning up doesn't change anything. If you have any good jobs for community liasons / project managers or something in Seattle, let me know! She's very smart and good with people, always seems to know everything that's going on in the neighborhood and is extremely organized in a way I can only dream of being.
Saturday, I hosted my arboretum walk for the first time in a while (a month maybe?). It was refreshing to return to the arboretum and see that there's still some modicum of interest in my humble meetup event, even if we are not getting the riotous turnouts we once did. We had a pretty fun group of people, even if it was a fairly small group, and I am once again looking forward to hosting these. I am a bit nervous about the precarious situation Fuel Coffee is in. They're my go-to coffee place before the walk, but after Ada's Technical Books announced they are closing down, they've shut down every Fuel Coffee besides the one in Montlake, and the staff there are always talking about the vague sense of impending doom for the location. My understanding is that they are looking for a buyer, but the baristas suspect if it does get bought, they'll be laid off in favor of new staff, which is pretty sad. Anyways, I wish them the best.
I Saw the Signs
What's Coming Up
Check the I saw the signs! There's
Inside open science Sep 19 at the allen institute
Some sort of club event at the center for bicycle repair on 9/13
Seattle Indies expo Sun Sep 6, 12-9pm
Ichigo alley grand opening 9/19!
Ba + me is doing a brunch popup with Bad Chancla Saturday , sept 5th from 10am to 3pm!
Best of the Net
My favorite Mr. Beast moment was when he got punched in the stomach by Mike Tyson and for the briefest of moments, Jimmy Donaldson's lazy grin was replaced with an expression of animalistic fear. For an almost imperceptible window, there were no metricd or merch opportunities, only flesh and pain
That's all for me this week! Thank you for reading again! Sorry for the slight delay, but this was mostly done by Monday night, I'm getting back on schedule :')