After a hectic month, things are kind of settling down a bit. As the cool fog of autumn descends upon Seattle, the city feels much quieter. I can finally start wearing flannels again, which is nice.

What I've Been Up To

On Tuesday, girlgoose and I went to go watch Dear You, a very emotional movie about a family split up by war and learning more about what happened while they were separate. I don't really want to spoil it here, but it was a really beautiful movie, the whole theater was really in tears. At the beginning, I thought it was sort of goofy but as the story evolved I really got swept up in it. It left me with a lot of lingering thoughts, especially about the nature of work / cost of living. Seems like jobs back then were simpler / more plentiful, and the even if you weren't making a lot of money, the costs of things were lower, so basic things like housing were much more accessible. Nowadays that seems to have broken down, and you really need to make a lot of money even to pay for fairly low rents in cities. The movie has been sort of passively haunting me since Tuesday, but girlgoose watching this video the other day made me think about it again, how it feels like skilled/knowledge work is experiencing a collapse around AI, driving a larger amount of jobs in lower-skilled / informal work. Anyways, it was a great movie, and I highly recommend watching it!

Photo of a giant poster for the movie Dear You

As a minor outing, on Wednesday, I went to Trader Joes to pick up some groceries, and I was flabbergasted at the fact that the bizarre types of alcohol they sell there. Like at some point I had heard that their wine was good, but I cannot believe they are able to sell wine for $3.99, that seems completely unreal. Also, this pumpkin spice atrocity intrigued me but I worry it would shorten my lifespan by at least a month.

wall of 3.99 wine bottles at trader joes
pumpkin spice chardonnay at trader joes

For those of you who might not know, I run a regular walk around the Arboretum every Saturday at 10 AM. I've been pretty demoralized about it though, as despite having 5,000+ members on the meetup app, we've regularly had less than 3 attendees to each walk all summer. Part of this may have been my own flakiness-- traveling and volunteering for events has meant I've cancelled the walk about 25% of the weeks it was supposed to happen-- but I'm not sure that explains the complete and sudden lack of interest in the walks. My suspicion, especially after talking with some people, is that people just had better things to do in the summer. Which I guess is fair, I also kept missing walks. Anyways, this week the walk was really fun, we actually got a reasonable number of attendees (six, if I recall), and they were all engaged and friendly. One of my favorite regular walk attendees announced to us that he was officially an octogenarian as of recently. Congratulations to Charles, he's always been one of my favorite walk attendees, full of stories and jokes, I would never peg him as a day over 75!

After the walk, I was pretty starving so I went to Rocket Taco, which always hits (biking here from the arboretum was surprisingly rough), and then visited girlgoose, who was volunteering at the Asian American Zine Fest! I tend to get sort of overwhelmed at these crowded artist alley-type events, but as I was scurrying out, I actually talked to a few cool artists, and bought a few zines. Great day!

photo of a weird red pod hanging off of a magnolia tree
Picture of some white cyclamen from the walk
Rocket taco al pastor tacos with some chips

Sunday was a pretty relaxed day, girlgoose and I headed to the farmer's market in the morning, and then I spent like two hours at REI agonizing over pants-purchasing decisions. At night, I headed to my friend's house in Western Seattle to play HIGH STAKES ($10) poker. I was up and down a bit, but ended up winning $59.05, which felt pretty good. I probably should stick to low stakes though, I don't think winning this much is good for my self-control...

My hand for scale next to the biggest beets ive ever seen at the farmers market
Photo of a poker table with about $60 worth of chips in piles of $10,$5, and $1

I Saw the Signs

Pretty sign-light week. This means I probably need to get out more.

Cardboard on the sidewalk with marker reading: Spare a nickle Spare a dime I aint shit Dont fuckin' mind I wanna get me Fucking HIGH I wanna take That fucked up ride I wanna fuck you up and get high!
Poster for a movie called The History of Concrete

What's Coming Up

The Northwest Tea festival is this weekend! This is one of my favorite events of the year, and I look forward to it every year from like January onward. I'll be volunteering there both days from 1pm-close. Saturday, I'll be running around serving tea, so you might run into me! I'll wear a little goose pendant on my pants so I am more recognizable if we haven't met. Come by! Tickets are a mere $25 and you get a free cup (while supplies last, come before like 2 if you want one) and as much tea as you can reasonably drink (or more).

I mentioned I was shopping at REI and this is largely because my parents are visiting from the east coast! I am excited to see them and slightly mortified because they are determined to take an Intermediate-Hard hike in the Cascades. It should be fun, though as long as we bring enough snacks and don't get eaten by mountain lions.

Other things of note going on this week:

Best of the Net

Okayyy thank you all for reading! Next week should be fun, I will dutifully attempt to log my adventures.