Showing posts with label Seattle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Seattle. Show all posts

February 21, 2010

A beautiful day in Seattle. A visit to a United Methodist Church where we heard a sermon on "Embracing your Sexuality." Then to Pike Place Market for chowder, where everyone and their dog was out enjoying the afternoon sun. After chowder, we explored Pioneer Square: Elliot Bay Book Company, Caffe Umbria (so-so hot chocolate), and a glass shop with glassblowers in the back (last picture). Last stop was at Red Mill for a burger.
















































February 21, 2010
















Seattle Graffiti : Near Pike Place Market

February 16, 2010











































"Touch her high,
touch her low.

If you can't touch her hard,
you better not start."

A song about hand jobs at Quest Cafe's open mic night. Sung by a man in his late fifties with a shiny, sequin black jacket, white hat with feather and black rim, silver tie, white shirt (not pictured). Must be straight from Louisiana. Seattle has all types.

February 11, 2010

Seattle graffiti : U District
































January 28, 2010




















Pretty flipping amazing beer. A 2700 year old Turkish recipe. Tastes like heaven

January 26, 2010




















Near the corner of Western and Wall, just up the street from MHGS. It's a Mitsubishi...Lancer?

January 24, 2010

I bought these books for eight bucks at Goodwill.



















Full Sail Wassail. A dark, bitter beer from The Matador.



















The sign should say "Shilshole"

January 22, 2010

Rosie Thomas : Seattle : Freemont Abbey
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January 10, 2010

I heard Conan O Brien is getting the shaft. I haven't watched his show since he switched to an earlier time.

A friend and I explored Bainbridge Island today. We took a ferry from Seattle mainland. We ate breakfast at Pegasus Coffee and I had eggs with spinach and it was good. We walked along Winslow Way, a strip of shops and cute stores. Later in the afternoon, lunch at Fay Bainbridge State Park followed by ice cream at Mora's.

I saw my first hockey game Friday night. Seattle Thunderbirds, last in the league. There was a fight so it made up for the loss.

No luck on buying a car yet.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. Pulitzer Prize winner from 2008. Good writing. Follows a recent trend in fiction in eliminating quotation marks around speech. It flows better, I think.

Would it be terribly pretentious to read all of the last decades Pulitzer Prize winners in fiction?

I've read the winner from 2001 (The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay) but the winner from 2005 is Marilynne Robinson's Gilead. I read her novel Home this year and hated it. Slow, tedious and uneventful.

I once heard a well-known Christian writer say every Christian should read a book on logic. I bought one. Being Logical: A Guide to Good Thinking. In my undergrad I took a logic course and found that advanced logic can actually be quite difficult. It gets mathematical.

In Tully's Coffee in downtown Ballard I found origami dragons and gorillas. Really intricate, tiny folds. The best I can do is a crane and I need the book for it. I've tried a T-Rex but his jaw always ends up looking like a fork.

STILL haven't seen Avatar! It's now the 2nd highest grossing movie ever. Right behind Titanic and both are directed by James Cameron.

Jack and Coke is a relaxing drink.

January 1, 2010

A friend told me that what you do on the first day of the year is what you will be doing the rest of the year. So far, I went to bed at 2 am (slightly inebriated), woke at 11 am, watched the last part of the Outback bowl, ate tomato soup and received an expensive water bill. Please let the rest of my year be more exciting than that.

In other news, my insurance company is giving me almost $12,000 for my wrecked car. I've been looking at Mazda 3's and Scion tC's. I hope to find a car for not much more than ten and be able to throw a thousand into an emergency fund.

I finished 39 books this year. I'll post a complete list later.

School starts monday.................................................................................

December 28, 2009

A movie coming out in 2010 from Christopher Nolan (director of The Dark Knight).

It's almost 2010 and I have a few more books to go to reach my goal. After Thursday I have new reading goals under a couple categories:

Historical: Rome and Jerusalem. Martin Goodman

Theological: Postcolonial Imagination and Feminist Theology. Pui-lan Kwok

Study of Evil: The Lucifer Principle. Howard Bloom

Personal Growth: Being Logical: A Guide to Good Thinking. Dennis Q. McInerny

Fiction: The Nice and the Good. Iris Murdoch

Poetry: As always I will be reading poetry from Dylan Thomas and Walt Whitman

For Christmas, one of my roommates bought me What the Dog Saw by Malcom Gladwell. I don't have a category for that but I'll be reading it too.

Besides whatever Mars Hill makes me read, I'll be working on these for the next month or two.

After I picked up Dan from the airport we (plus Jon) went to Pike Place market. One of the restaurants on Post Alley has amazing chowder. Soooo good. That plus Special Reserve coffee from Starbucks made my day.

December 17, 2009

I stopped by Caffe Fiore today, grabbing a coffee and a black donut with pinkish drizzle. Tasted girly.

With coffee in hand, I drove to Golden Gardens and sat on a bench to read. The sky is cloudy but you can still see the snow-capped Olympic Mountains across the Sound. The sun is a hazy light yellow blur in the sky.

Two old ladies walk by, one in a wheelchair, the other pushing. They grin at me as they pass. I grin back and we all say hello to each other with laughter in our voices.

When my hands get cold, I put away my book and walk along the beach.

A woman walks her dog. It is a beautiful German Shepherd with alert, intelligent eyes. She unleashes him and tosses a stick alongside the pressing waves.

A flock of ducks wander in the grass beside the path. I creep up on them from behind but every time I step the flock surges forward until I stand in the center of a semi-circle bending away from me. I get too close and a dozen or so take to the air, landing 20 or 30 feet away. I keep walking and whenever I get close they climb into the air clumsily, wings beating furiously, necks strained forward into yellow, beaked arrows. An old man watches from the path.

Planes fly low over the park on their way to Seattle-Tacoma airport.

Boats travel through. Some are cargo ships with huge metal containers. Others have sails.

On my way back, a man parks his car and walks toward the beach with a plastic zip-lock bag. He scoops sand into it, walks back to his car and leaves.

I found a 100 year old copy of The House of the Dead by Fyodor Dostoevsky a couple days ago. It is so old, the spelling of his name is different. $2.99 at Value Village.


































Tonight, me and a few friends are going to Pegasus Pizza on Alkali beach. Tom's Special is one amazing pizza. The only thing that comes close is the Chicago style I had in Detroit.

I have a rental car. Kia Spectra. Drives nice and has an aux input for my ipod. I should know in a day or so how much State Farm is going to give me for my crash.

December 16, 2009

I'm making progress through my list of books to read before the end of this year. I've read two this week and should add a third by the end of tonight or tomorrow morning.

I visited the Green Lake branch of the Seattle Public Library. I was looking for the last in Phillip Pullman's series His Dark Materials. I found that, and I Am Legend by Richard Matheson. You may remember the movie it was based on.

Opening up the book to the first page I found this engaging beginning:

"On those cloudy days, Robert Nevellie was never sure when sunset came, and sometimes they were in the streets before he could get back."

Doesn't that freak you out a little? Draw you in? Widen your eyes?

December 15, 2009

We bought a Christmas tree today. The original plan was to go cut one down but we lost motivation this morning and bought one instead. The guy cut us a good deal too. Originally 60, we got it for 40. It is now in the corner of our house overlooking the sound and the Olympic Mts beyond. We aren't completely finished with decorations, but here is what we got so far.







































On a much sadder note, my car got totaled. Saturday night, Dan was driving to a movie when a guy hit him at a stop sign then drove away. Dan is fine. All the airbags deployed to protect his face. Shook up a bit but that's all.

They haven't found the driver and I guess they probably wont. My insurance just called and told me the body shop said its a total loss. So they will be sending a guy out there to see how much of a check I get for a new car. Pray I don't get screwed.

The good thing is I get a rental car for a few days. And since this falls under the uninsured motorist category, the deductible is 200 instead of 500. All good news. Except for the actual accident...yeah.

Here is the damage:






























I have other news but I think these two pieces are big enough for now. Oh yeah, I turn 24 in two days. I keep forgetting.

You know, it is starting to feel like Christmas. The last two or three Christmas' were not all that great. But right now, I can see it being a good Christmas this year. Maybe it's the smell of the tree in our living room or the lights decorating the stairs...I don't know but it feels promising.

December 13, 2009

One of the most interesting days I've had since moving to Seattle:

A fellow MHGS student had her 30th at The Chapel in Queen Anne. It's located near one of my favorite coffee shops, Bauhaus. The building looks like an old church with steps leading up to a columned entrance and double doors. A guy at the door checked our ID's and charged a 3 dollar cover to get in.

Mirrors run the length of the wall to the right and arched windows the wall to the left. The bar is at the very back and tables are lined up beneath the mirrors. In the center of the room is a square, black box about 5 feet high. On top of it, a man in black underwear, black hat and black shoes dancing with a hula hoop to techno music.

On the tables are condoms inside a thick paper tri-fold. Open the tri-fold and there are instructions for using the condom. With pictures. Alongside that, there was a pamphlet titled, "Play Fair" or something. It told the story of a convent where all the nuns were getting STD's....had a section on rimming....

The first 5 or 10 minutes I was between shock and laughter. I couldn't believe I had stumbled into this club. Even the birthday girl didn't know what this place was like. I immediately remembered Christ being with the prostitutes, the Samaritan woman, the tax collectors, the fishermen. All the low or reviled of society. While I didn't reach out to anyone there in a "Christian" sort of way, I did wonder what God wanted for the man dancing on the box, the people servings drinks, and me, laughing awkwardly at my table. What would it have been like to have present in that room and invited Christ to be present with me?

December 12, 2009

1st semester of grad school: done.

The heater in our house broke and we are suffering.

Almost every house in our neighborhood has Christmas lights up except us. The traffic on our street has picked up considerably. People are driving through looking at the lights.

I looked for a Christmas tree yesterday. They're all too expensive but I found an alternative. At the REI superstore, you can buy a 10 dollar "pass" or something to a location where you can cut down your own Christmas tree.

I am so excited about January: loan check.

Now this semester is over I can read whatever I want until January 4th. Some of the books I plan to read: The Subtle Knife by Phillip Pullman; The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon; Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton; The Wounded Healer by Henri Nouwen and maybe the new Donald Miller book.

During the break, I'm going to do winter stuff.

I haven't been to Pike Place Market since the interview in February so I want to visit there too.

I turn 24 Thursday. A friend and I are doing something all day Sunday. It's a mystery so naturally I'm in turmoil.

Leaving to watch Zombieland at a 3 dollar movie theater... Wait. Scratch that. Me and Dan just decided to stay at the house and read. Nerds, I know.

Nov. 20, 2009

Rain. Cloudy skies. Cold weather.

Pretty cool blog.

Starting in January, this pastor will read every non-fiction book on the New York Time's Bestseller list through 2010. Check out the blog and why he's doing it. I'm impressed.

Part of our project for Interpersonal involved a Chuck Anderson print. Come to find out, he is the brother-in-law to one of our group members. Guess who got a free print from Chuck Anderson? If you don't know who I'm talking about, you should. Look him up.

Saw Over the Rhine and Kate Herzig at The Triple Door Sunday. The venue is probably the best I've ever seen and the music was incredible. First time I ever heard either of those artists.

We have a week off from reading for Thanksgiving break. 20 bucks says I don't use that time wisely. After, just one more class and this semester is OVER.

Saw this list on a friend's facebook: 20 Best Books of this Decade

I have something to say about that list. If Marilynne Robinson wrote Gilead the way she wrote Home then this list has a huge flaw.

I've lost a lot of weight since being at Mars Hill. Stress. And I keep hearing I need to get a therapist...

If you go see New Moon, I disown you as my friend.

I found a book that goes through all of Dylan Thomas' poetry and explains it based on his biography. Drool.

Poets I still don't own: Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I miss studying the Roman Empire. There is no time for it now. I was about a fourth through Rome and Jerusalem when I came to Mars Hill and I don't know when I will get to finish it.

Possibly next year I am going to take a leap into a whole new world of theology: Postcolonial Imagination and Feminist Theology by Kwok Pui-Lan. After that, gay theology and then African-American theology.

Nov 1, 2009

I'm a slacker.

Events of the last month:

The Wheel of Time book 12 released October the 28th. I bought a copy the day of and have been sacrificing valuable homework time since.

The Panther Den had a Halloween party last night, the 31st. Lots of people were there and it was fun. I wore a french maid costume. Responses to the costume were mixed: shock, disgust, laughter and silence were most common.

It rained a lot but the last few days the weather has cleared a bit. Right now its sunny and beautiful.

I ran 2.2 miles last week and my knees didn't hurt.

I've been to more parties since arriving at Mars Hill then my whole undergrad. If that's an exaggeration, its not much of one. We have another at our house Wed. and then another big one somewhere else in Nov.

One of my favorite coffee shops, Green Bean, burned down a week ago. Turns out it was arson, so that sucks.

I keep meeting fascinating people in Seattle.

I've finished 32 books this year. I should be able to make it to 37 or 38 by the end of December.

I should return to TN the last few days of December and be there until the 3rd of January.

Overall, October was full of ups and downs. I reached one of the lowest points of my life a couple fridays ago. I ended the night bawling in my bed. But there have also been some great developments too. Practicum continues to be incredible and that has been a consistently positive factor. There are other positive events from October but most of those are too personal to type.

Back to studying...

Oct 6, 2009

One of my goals living in Seattle is to visit every coffee shop in Ballard and Crown Hill...but when I looked up coffee shops near me on Google maps, there were tens of thousands of hits. Tons of red dots. I don't think my body can handle that much caffeine.

Jon, my roommate, found a coffee shop in Capitol Hill called Bauhaus. It's two stories, with bookshelves along the left side of the wall and a view of the city. The space needle is visible between the buildings. It's open till one am, which is a rarity.

I have visited only one church since moving to Seattle. Quest church. And it was good. But why am I more interested in visiting coffee shops than in visiting churches? It was something I realized recently and I haven't been able to get it out of my head.