little black journal

Today marked the end of another intense cram session and test-taking adventure, so Shane and I headed out to Quinn’s on Capitol Hill this evening to celebrate with dinner and a drink.  I’ve been wanting to visit this place for awhile (see number 6 on the list), and was immediately taken with the urban vibe and the rough-yet-refined interiors.  Deciding what to order was easy – one of their notorious burgers and a glass of red wine, please.  The burger was good, the wine was fantastic, and the chance to sit and leisurely enjoy a meal with my husband was priceless.  I’ve been a bit of a stress mess lately, and so we haven’t had the chance to catch up with each other in awhile.  It was nice to chat, to talk about our upcoming trip, and to just relax.  It also felt good to pull my camera off the shelf and blow the dust off the lens – I’m trying to get back into a picture-taking routine.

Shane and I were in need of a date, and the weather today lent itself perfectly to an outdoor rendez-vous.  Yes, that’s right, the sun shone in Seattle today!  A January miracle…  We thought the west-facing view from Lincoln Park in West Seattle would be ideal for sunset-watching, and so we hopped in the car and made the quick drive over there.  Man, it felt good to be enjoying the outdoors after so many days of being cooped up inside.  Rejuvenating.

Strange weather in Seattle these days.  We awoke to the sound of hail on Thursday at 4:30 am, thunder shook our house around 5:30, and snow fell throughout almost the entire day.  I debated about whether or not to brave the elements and head into work, but as the snow continued to pile up, and as I watched buses spin their tires and then just sit by the side of the road near our house, I decided to declare Thursday a snow day.  I bundled up (in my totally insufficient snow gear, aka jeans and rubber rain boots), and we spent some time playing in the snow with the neighbor kids.  I wimped out after only a few minutes and headed inside to thaw out, but Shane spent most of the morning throwing snowballs.  Around noon we were ready for another adventure and so we gathered up the neighbors, called up some friends, and embarked on a 20-minute trek to the bakery.  The chilly walk there was totally worth it.  Not just for the creamy latte and buttery scone, but because it was so much fun to sit around a table in this cozy neighborhood bakery and share this snow day with some of our closest friends.  And the fact that it was a Thursday, and we all really should have been working, made it that much sweeter.  I felt like I was back in Junior High, cutting school to go hang out at a friend’s house and eat ice cream.  The rest of the afternoon was spent at home, drinking hot tea and enjoying the sight of the final flakes of snow falling outside.  We had weathered the storm and had a lot of fun doing it.

Friday was business as usual for the most part.  I headed into work in the morning, grateful for a chance to be productive, but a little disappointed to see our pretty white blanket of snow slowly disappearing.  Ah well, it was fun while it lasted…  But tonight, the snow came back in full force.  The tracks in and out of our driveway from our 5 pm grocery run have already been buried.  Shane, feeling antsy at the sight of so much fresh powder, headed out 30 minutes ago to attempt to build a snowman (yes, at 11:00 at night), but he found the snow too dry to be proper snowman material, so he had to content himself with helping push stuck cars up the hill near our house (this has come to be his new favorite pastime).  Seems I married a man with the heart of a big kid and the muscles of a huge stud.  Score.  I’m looking forward to getting up tomorrow and seeing how much fresh snow has accumulated.  I wonder how much longer I have until the novelty of this winter wonderland wears off?

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Winter has arrived in Seattle, snow and below-freezing temperatures and all.  Around 8:00 last night, what started as a light “drizzle” of snow turned into more of a snow “shower”  – Shane and I came home from a Christmas party around 11 to find our neighborhood covered with a puffy white blanket.  It was lovely.  We stood for a minute on the sidewalk and noted that it was so calm, serene, quiet.  I snuggled into bed last night, looking forward to a Sunday morning with a hot cup of coffee and a chair by the window where I could fully enjoy this winter wonderland.  But our morning turned out to be a little less peaceful than planned, as we woke to the screeching of spinning tires.  A car had gotten stuck on the ice on the hill in front of our house.  Shane, being the good neighbor that he is, threw on jeans and a coat and headed out to help push the car up the road.  Whew.  But then another car got stuck.  And another.  One more.  Shane was quite the stud, coming to the rescue left and right.  I, on the other hand, stayed in my pajamas all day, venturing out of the house just for a moment to snap a couple of quick photos.

Saturday night I tore myself away from my study materials (sweet relief!) and Shane and I headed over to Capitol Hill to enjoy an evening of live music.  We bought tickets a few weeks ago for the “Hotel Cafe Tour” solely because we are both big fans of Rachel Yamagata, but we were pleasantly surprised to find that the four other artists on tour with her were extremely (though not equally) talented.  Meiko opened the show and was charming and beautiful, with her incredibly sweet voice.  She makes strumming the guitar look deceivingly effortless.  Emily Wells has this very cool hip-hop/violin/live-mixing-chamber thing going on.  With the use of a recorder and some fancy equipment, she layers her vocals over her violin over a deep hip-hop beat to create this fascinating “one person symphony”.  I was entranced.  Lenka was good, though quite bubbly, and possibly a little too Feist-like.  I like Feist, but I also like originality.  Thao Nguyen was so much fun to watch, with the way she bopped around stage with her guitar.  She reminded me a little of Bjork, but still had her own thing gong on.  She’s one of those singers that can “scream” and still make it sound musical.  And then there was Rachel Yamagata.  This woman blows me away.  She can sit at a piano and woo you with her deep, bluesy voice, and then stand up and rock out on her guitar like the bad-ass that she is.  All in all, a very good show.  And it was nice to see something in a small venue like Chop Suey – we weren’t more than 15 feet from the stage.  The performer-audience interaction that comes with such a small space adds a lot to the experience.

All of that said, I have a confession: I am not perfectly cut out for this whole hip live music scene.  After two hours of standing in the middle of the crowd on the beer-splashed concrete floor, my feet began to hurt, my back began to ache, and I became increasingly irritated by all of the concert-goers around me.  I was annoyed by the guy standing next to me who keep swaying to the music and bumping into my shoulder.  This dude in front of me with the biggest hair ever kept blocking my view of the stage.  I started to wish that I’d worn shoes that were more orthopedically supportive, rather than my cute little ballet flats.  And I was hot, desperately wanting some fresh air, but not wanting to give up my spot so close to the stage.  Tiredness set in around 11:30, and I was trying to hide the fact that I couldn’t help yawning every 10 minutes.  Is it possible that at the young age of 27, I have become so un-hip that I can’t thoroughly enjoy a two and a half-hour set?  Are Shane and I resigned to a lifetime of spending Saturday nights at home, eating ice cream in our pj’s?  Hopefully not (though I do love our weekend pajama parties…).  I’ll pretend I’m cool for at least another couple of years.

I know my blog has been kind of “foliage-focused” lately, but I can’t help myself – I am absolutely obsessed with the colors of the fall this year.  This morning, I noticed the large number of leaves littering the sidewalks and lawns and realized that this weekend might be one of my last chances to capture this autumn season in all its glory.  So despite the drizzle, I grabbed my camera and headed out to the Japanese garden in the arboretum (thank you, Jon and La Verne, for the inspiration!).

Proof that these leaves won’t be around much longer…

I’m afraid I was already a little too late in certain instances…

Is it really possible that December is just around the corner?  This shot sure makes Seattle look “wintry”…

p.s.  Special thanks to Shane for the super-awesome lens that he bought me for my camera last month.  It’s serving me well!

Already chipping away at number #9 on my “27 before 28” list – today was the 5k Pumpkin Push run at Seward Park.  When Shane told me last weekend that he wanted to run in it, my reaction was, “Have fun with that.  I’ll hang out at the finish line and sip a latte while you run your butt off.”  But somehow I ended up enrolling in the race as well, with only enough time to do a couple of very last-minute training runs.  And although there was a point this morning about 2/3 into the race when I seriously considered stepping aside, laying down on the grass, and calling it a day, I did indeed finish.  And I wasn’t last.  What a relief.  I’m so glad I let Shane talk me into participating.  The weather today was fantastic, and it was fun to be a part of the excited buzz that flowed among the runners as we lined up at the starting line.  I loved the course (I believe I have mentioned before how lucky I feel to live just a couple of miles from Seward Park), with the exception of the hilly detour that occurred somewhere around kilometer 3.  The perimeter of the park is flat, but this run took us up a hill into the center of the park and back down again.  I was doing pretty well for the first couple of miles, and then I hit that hill and instantly felt like 30-pound weights had been strapped to each of my ankles.  Man, I was dragging.  It was painful.  But I pushed through it, despite the overwhelming desire to walk, or stop altogether.  And once I got down the hill, I found that I had just enough energy left to sprint to the finish line.  Mission completed.  Sweet victory!

Fall is in full swing here, with all its wonderfully saturated shades of yellow, red, orange, and copper.  And to top it all off, the sun shone nearly all weekend!  A twenty-minute stroll through the neighborhood and I was reminded of God’s brilliant creativity – so many hues, pigments, and textures.  Yum.

I have been getting a good dose of the arts lately – orchestra concert last week, Phantom of the Opera this week, and plans to enjoy Seattle’s art walk/gallery night next week.  I do love living in the city…

The orchestra concert was fantastic.  Shane has been developing a taste for classical music, being the sophisticated man that he is, so when our friend La Verne informed us that she would be playing with Orchestra Seattle downtown one evening, we jumped at the chance to attend.  The “headliner” was a Chinese violinist who totally blew me away.  In an instant, he could go from touching the strings with such perfect, light gentleness to playing them with a force that was almost violent with power and emotion.  I enjoyed the music so much that I was nearly inspired to go home and pull out the flute I’ve neglected for the last 12 years.  But I thought about it some more and chose not to attempt to relive my junior high band days – those were rather dark times for me…  I’ll leave the music-making to the people with talent.

Last night was “Phantom” night.  Emily and I headed over the Paramount for some good musical drama while our husbands headed over to Safeco for a baseball game.  And I have to say, those guys missed out.  What a show!  The staging was absolutely incredible.  Falling chandeliers; extravagant costumes; a candle-lit, smoke-filled scene to replicate the Phantom’s eerie underworld…  This was a top-notch production, no holds barred.  And I was so impressed by the caliber of the singing.  The woman who starred as Christine Daae hit notes that made my ears ring (in a good way).  The only drawback was that the sung dialogue was a bit hard to decipher at times, but the emotions behind each scene were so evident that it was easy enough to follow the plot.  I do say, I should try to make it to the theatre more often.  Rather.

And next week is gallery night, which should round out the art appreciation kick that I’m on.  Good, good stuff happening in Seattle these days.

Today could not have been more beautiful.  We knew that we had to take advantage that of the last bits warm sunshine that summer is bestowing upon us, and so we rented a canoe and spent the afternoon paddling around Lake Washington.  We weaved our way back into the arboretum and found ourselves in a wonderfully green, perfectly serene, little corner of the world.  There was a point when Shane turned back and said to me, “Don’t you feel like we’re in Lord of the Rings?”  Yes, I did!  The beauty of it all was almost surreal.  On days like this, my love for Seattle is so strongly reaffirmed.  Lovely.