The Seattle Rundown

I just woke up from an 11 and 1/2 hour slumber. Oh dear goodness, yes. What a great way to end my vacation... well, sort of. I did work a lunch shift yesterday, but had last night off, so it still feels like I'm on vacation. I know you're all just dying to know exactly what I did during my Seattle trip, so I'll give you the complete rundown (as best I can remember).

Sunday: see my last blog.

Monday: Slept in and then Ross and I went to this excellent Thai place called Djan. I highly recommend the Curry Chicken. Oooooh, so good. Next, we headed to the U-district to hit some thrift stores. I was pretty surprised by the Seattle thrifting scene. Apparently, used clothing is so cool there that they think they can charge real-clothes prices. Lame. I couldn't find anything under my $5 limit. I definitely saw a pearl snap shirt, which Wal-Mart sells around $10 new, selling for $17 used! No thanks. So we hit up one of Ross' favorite coffee shops, Zoka's, and he studied while I wasted time on the Internet. Then we headed to an intramural Ultimate Frisbee game, and they even let me play! Despite not much digging of the long ball, we won, finishing out an undefeated season for them. Since it was Cinco de Mayo, of course we went out to celebrate. We tried to go to a place that had a live band, but there was a huge wait. So we ended up going to Jalisco's. I had suspected, but became fully aware that I have become a Mexican food snob. Their Huevos Rancheros were not up to (Los Arcos) par. After getting blasted by Latino music for a while, we moved a couple doors down to Pies and Pints to hang out, then headed home.

Tuesday: Ross had a class breakfast thingy, so I walked down the street to the Rusty Pelican to eat breakfast all by me onesy. Next, we grabbed a bus downtown to check out Pike's Place Market. We didn't buy anything, but we did get free samples and get to see the fish guy heckle onlookers who were obviously there to see the show and not purchase any fish. We proceeded to wander around downtown in hopes of finding an ever-elusive Goodwill where normally priced used clothing abounds. No luck. Defeated, we ate some sub par Chinese and made our way back home via bus. Greta and her sister Heidi came over and we did a little jamming, playing some of our original songs, before getting pizza at Romios. We then headed over to the Tractor to catch a couple bands, J. Tillman and The Monahans. J. Tillman was pretty sweet, playing low-key acoustic folk. The Monahans, from Austin, sounded like the Wallflowers but not as good.

Wednesday: Ross decided he actually needed to go to class, so I spent the morning back at Zoka's getting some stuff done. We met up for a late lunch at the Ram, then hit a used music store before I joined him for his Emergency Medicine class. Fitting. I was surprised by how practical and not-above-my-head the class was. The prof was pretty funny, too. We even talked about wound care, which I could validate some of the info firsthand. Next was a surprise party for Teja that involved a homemade Puerto Rican dish and birthday cake. The plan was to go to swing dancing, which somehow turned into going to Babalu, where they were doing some kind of Cuban dancing I had never heard of.

Thursday: We drove down to the town of North Bend to do some hiking. We wandered around for quite a while before finally finding the Snoqualmie Falls, the ranger station and finally, the Little Si trail head. It turned out to be an easy, 5 mile round trip hike. It wasn't anything amazing, but quite enjoyable all the same. On our way out of town we hit Twede's Cafe for some burgers and shakes. The Breakfast Burger was quite tasty. After a much-needed nap we went to Ross' intramural soccer game. They also won their game, making them undefeated. We finished things off by watching In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale. Wow. I don't care who you are. That was a bad movie. But, it was bad in the cheesy-great-guy-night-movie kind of way. It featured a myriad of lesser Hollywood stars including one of my favorites, Jason Statham. It was one of those movies you just can't believe made it to theaters. Oh how. A great way to end a great trip.

I flew out around midnight and got into DFW at 5 a.m. Mark was gracious enough to pick me up me up at 6:30 so that I could make it back for the lunch shift. I ended up getting about an hour of sleep during the car trip back to Abilene, making a total of 1 hr 8 min the entire night. Ya, I can't sleep on planes, especially when a middle-eastern man is trying to cuddle with me. It was a great trip, but I'm glad to be back to being productive again.