The bluest skies

Top 5 things I'm going to miss about Seattle:

1. The Ravenna Kibbutz: I've been going to potlucks at the Kibbutz for more than three years, and it's been a time of great personal growth. I've met more wonderful people there, and eaten more amazing food, than I could ever have expected. Plus, for the first time since college, I found a community I loved, where I felt like I belonged. That's a big deal.
2. My friends: From Reed and Judith, whom I met soon after moving to Seattle in January of 2002, to Ria, whom I just met recently, I've made lovely and lasting friendships here. Seattle is known for being hard to break into socially, but serendipity introduced me to people like Angela, still one of my best friends, and Patty, whom I met in 2005 at a coffee shop, re-met last year on Facebook, and keep close to my heart even though she lives far away.
3. Saaz: My feline housemate, pictured above, has convinced me that I'm as much a cat person as a dog person, and that at some point, maybe even in Spokane, I should adopt a cat of my own.
4. Smartness: People here are smart. Some are tech-savvy, some are socially adept (yes, even in Asperger's-prone Seattle), and some spent a lot of time on their Ph.D.s, work at Microsoft Research, and have intellects the size of newly discovered diamond planets. When a friend moved from Seattle to L.A. years ago, she called me and said: "Neal, where are all the smart people?" Say what you will about Seattle -- we have smarties in spades.
5. The weather: Not the gray skies and spitting rain, but the moderate temperatures. Not too hot in the summer, almost never muggy, not too cold in the winter. Few places in America can boast such meteorological restraint. And yes, we don't get the dramatic thunderstorms of the Midwest and East Coast, but the abiding mellowness almost makes up for that. Spokane reminds me of my native Michigan, with its freezing winters and hot summers. That's good practice for a future outside the Pacific Northwest, but there's no question that as soon as I'm outside Seattle's marine climate, I'll miss the heck out of it.

Sonic youth

A colleague let me know about this awesome Tegan and Sara mashup, engineered by the venerable Party Ben. In other sonic news: I attended a lovely, intimate, candlelit show tonight at 20/20 Cycle, where performances by Sweet Potatoes, Shana Cleveland, and others were broadcast live, as far as I know, on Hollow Earth Radio, a local endeavor I'm told should become my New Favorite Radio Station in short order.

And on a more visual note, I went to the Found Footage Festival last night with Angela, and it was one of the best things I've done all year. Seriously. Rapping Jewish grannies, rapping pregnant women in aerobics outfits, crazy shopping-network salesmen (see below), a really, really angry RV salesman, and a Chicago children's program I'll never forget as long as I live -- and I haven't even mentioned "How to Seduce Women," a video that suggests seduction via hypnosis! Truly amazing. Wherever you are, if this show comes to your town, push Jewish grannies and pregnant women out of the way to see it, if that's what it takes.

Some more Vancouver snapshots, and my new movie obsessions

Angela and I had to do a whole lot of window-shopping on Granville Island before I could buy a tiny container of maple syrup. Here she is at the beginning of our leisurely Saturday:



Here's Vancouver from the water taxi:



Here's a dog tied to a pole, in the Dogblog tradition:



Time now to move on to my new cinematic fixation: the J.J. Abrams-produced monster movie Cloverfield, which looks, to use a technical term I learned as a movie critic, totally bad-ass. Also, as Geoff and I discovered yesterday, if you watch the newest Cloverfield trailer while listening to this YouTube video of Christmas lights coordinated with music from the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, they line up almost exactly, and hilarity ensues. (Open two windows simultaneously, with one in each; TSO will start sooner, so pause them both and make them start at the same time for maximum wonderfulness.) Memo to J.J. Abrams: Consider incorporating TSO into the next wave of Cloverfield marketing madness.

Going to the Thanksgiving parade downtown tomorrow; we get fancy grandstand seats because of the scholarship fund my mom set up in honor of my dad. I look forward to watching the giant balloon animals make their way down Woodward. (Come to think of it, I'm not certain whether Chilly Willy even still exists. Sigh.)

P.S. Watched Orange County on the plane. Not all that good, but Schuyler Fisk is definitely my new movie-star girlfriend.

Vancouver, B.C.

Spent the weekend there with Angela.



This fruit tart actually tasted even better than it looks. I got it at a lovely bakery on Granville Island, Vancouver's answer to Pike Place Market. The bakery is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year and, like certain other Vancouver things, makes Seattle seem a bit lacking.

Apologies for the quick post. I'll post more Vancouver pictures, and link to NWsource's big appearance on "Evening Magazine," just as soon as I'm able.

Yes, we have no banana (costume)

Sadly, I didn't get the chance to look like this gentleman last night at the annual Big Blue House Halloween party. My banana costume, which was supposed to come from Halloween Express at Kirkland's Totem Lake Mall, belonged to someone else by the time my loyal compatriot got there. Instead, I wore a rather sketchy-looking wig that was part of a transvestite vampire costume last year. Oh, and some small black wings that started to really irritate me halfway through the night. I took them off, leading quite a few people to wonder what I was supposed to be. One particularly inebriated young woman speculated that I might be My Little Pony, which was a very generous assessment. And another young woman, this one outfitted in a colorful monster suit she'd made herself (it was a friendly, "Monsters, Inc." sort of monster, rather than a scary one), told me I had the best costume she'd seen all night. Which was a bizarre instance of flattery. In any case, a good time was had by all, even though the residents of Blue House never did reveal what was in the green punch, which tasted suspiciously like licorice, and even though I accidentally caused a YouTube video to temporarily merge with the playlist, creating an unintentional iTunes/YouTube mashup. Best costume of the night? Maybe the young, beardless Lenin, probably the robot with a joystick for a phallus. Honorable mention: the giraffe. I guess, as they say, you had to be there.

Ran some errands this morning and early afternoon, albeit in a sleepy state -- went to bed far too late last night, despite my warnings to myself not to stay up so late. Ah, well. Looked at my future glasses today -- with magnetized snap-on sunglasses! -- and got a couple of things for the house. Also checked in on Angela's cat, Max, the cutest orange cat in the world. Will be seeing the new Steve Carell movie with Kate today, followed by dinner. It's such a nice, crisp fall day; even just doing errands on Broadway was lovely. And tomorrow morning, brunch at Coastal Kitchen with Kate and various others. And hopefully, tonight, tons of sleep.