breakfast first

"Jesus Christ Made Seattle Under Protest"

One of the comic adventures awaiting anyone who moves to Seattle is learning the street naming conventions here. Once you know something about it, it can be very helpful; but if you're unfamiliar with it, you're in for some laughs.

The city is split up into a number of different geographic regions: NorthWest, North, NorthEast, West, East, SouthWest, and South. These compass directionals are used in conjuction with the street name to help identify where in the city the address is located. But, naturally, there are some twists. For streets, the directional is a prefix (for example, "W Raye Street"); for avenues, it's a suffix (for example, "Phinney Ave N"). Amusingly, I've seen at least one street that had both a prefix and a suffix (different, of course), which pretty much fried my circuits at the time. (The wikipedia has a decent piece on the history and Byzantine rules of Seattle street naming.)

After you catch on, these directionals are useful for figuring out what part of the city things are located. If someone says "85th Ave NW", you go, "Ah, that's in Ballard!" which is pretty cool. Unfortunately, I've found that the directionals can trip up mapping services. Shortly after I moved here (and before I understood the directional system), I found a hardware store online. I looked it up on Yahoo maps, and saw it was located downtown. Before I left, I decided to call the store and discovered that they were in Magnolia -- the opposite direction from downtown! The problem was the directional -- the trailing "W" wasn't taken into account.

So the moral is: learn your directionals, be careful when using mapping services, and if you're sending me anything, be sure to include the "SW". (Oh, and about the weird title: it's a mnemonic to help remember the street pairs of the central business district: Jefferson/James, Cherry/Columbia, Marion/Madison, Spring/Seneca, University/Union, Pike/Pine.)

Seattle Wiki

I recently discovered the Seattle Wiki, which looks great. Check it out!

More getting-to-know Seattle

First off: it rained today! So it really does rain. Fortunately, today was also my first day back to work, so I had the dual value response of looking out the window at the cold, rainy day from the warmth and comfort of my apartment (albeit without any furniture).

Next up: transit. Seattle seems to have a very good bus system; it's pretty extensive and reliable (so I hear). The downsides are that it seems hard to figure out what lines to take (and when) without the aid of their trip planner. Which, I might add, doesn't work on the hiptop. I'll have to build a friendly interface to that shortly.

The other downside to the bus is the fare system -- it's screwy. In some areas, at some times, you can ride free. Other times, it's $1.25. At other times, it's $1.50. And depending on where you're going, it might be $2.00. And sometimes you pay when you board, but other times you pay when you get off. Really, I think it's all a scam to sell monthly tickets.

After work today, I met Miss J and Miss V out at the Viceroy for a drink, where the bartender (I think her name was Amy) made a very good Sidecar that warmed me right up. Then we wandered around for a bit looking for a place to eat (our stuff hasn't arrived from SF yet, so we're eating out a lot) and finally landed at Jai Thai. The food was fine (I had the "Country Style Phud Thai with chicken", which was coated with a tamarind sauce) but the service was really poor...maybe they were short a couple of servers. Probably a good place for delivery, though.

When I was walking over to the Viceroy in the rain, I got to thinking that Seattle is probably a pretty good town for ramen, given the weather and the high Japanese population. Unfortunately, a quick look at WorldRamen suggests otherwise. This will require serious investigation.

Too much food

After a satisfying day of goofing off and running a few errands, we went over to friends' home tonight for some raclette, the cheese craze that's sweeping the nation. It's like fondue, only you melt cheese under a grill rather than in a pot, and the cheese portions are individual rather than communal. And rather than dipping things in, you pour the melted cheese over all sorts of goodies: red potatoes, cured meats, broccoli, and bread. And you drink a lot of wine at the same time. Delicious! but not exactly good for you. The last time we had raclette, Jennifer said it was the most unhealthy night of her life.

So, for a city that gets a lot of grief for its weather, Seattle seems to have a lot of nice days. Today was one of those days -- clear, sunny, and crisp. We're still very much in the just-visiting stage, where it doesn't feel like we live here yet, but today was gorgeous. In the afternoon, we took a walk through Myrtle Edwards park along Eliott Bay, where Jennifer took that picture. This town has a relaxing feel to it...sitting on the water's edge, listening to the waves lap up against the rocks and taking in the view of the snow-capped Olympic mountains across Puget Sound was quite peaceful.

Not much to report today, other than cheese and weather. Right now we're just enjoying the slack following the move and resting up before our stuff arrives later this week (although we both start back to work on Monday). After months of frenzy, it feels very nice to just ramble through the day.

Day One

Good first day in Seattle, although I'm not sure where all of our time went. We got up later than normal, did some paperwork for the apartment, then went out for a much-needed breakfast at CJ's Eatery. (No, not that CJ.)

After breakfast, we came back to the apartment, took care of some minor chores, and played with the cats. Miles has adapted just fine, it seems. He's been exploring the apartment during the day and sleeping with us at night. Owen, on the other hand, is still very unsure about this whole Pacific Northwest business. During the day, he's normally been hiding out in a closet, but last night he got bolder and explored the perimeter of the apartment while we slept (I woke up and spotted him). So when he came out of the closet today and hopped on top of the fridge, I gladly let him. He seems to like it up there.

Later in the afternoon we returned the rental car to a downtown drop-off, got a cup of coffee from some small chocolate shop, and took in the nice, wintery weather. The southern light and overcast skies make a very beautiful backdrop for the buildings. As we sipped our coffees, we walked over to the new public library where we got our library cards. I still remain unconvinced about the appropriateness of the architecture, but I haven't spent much time there yet. Perhaps it will grow on me.

After the library, we did a few more errands, then headed home to drop off our purchases. After a brief rest, we headed out to meet friends for a drink at Sonya's, then hopped over to some "booze-atorium" (so said Ian) on Lenora Street, which I didn't catch the name of, but which I liked very much. (Doing shots of Surfers on Acid always improves my outlook on things.) Then we had a bite to eat at The Belltown, then back to the apartment for a nightcap.

Pretty good first day up here in the Emerald City. I think we're going to like it.

Update! The "booze-atorium" was the See Sound Lounge, and it was on Blanchard, not Lenora.

BART on top

The Bay Area Rapid Transit system has been named the "number one transit system in the US for 2004" by the American Public Transportation Association. While I pass on my congratulations to BART, I had to laugh when I read this line in their press release:

“I’m ecstatic!” said BART’s General Manager, Thomas E. Margro. “It’s the equivalent to competing at the Olympics and winning the gold medal!”

Heh. Well, No, not really. You're really just competing against the, what, two dozen or so? other major transit systems in the US. Perhaps it would be a little more on the mark to liken it to winning the World Series...I think it's fair to say that if we were in competition with the other countries' transist systems, we'd get whooped.

Nullpunkt

For the past few years, my morning commute has taken me past some industrial-type buildings near the corner of 3rd and Stillman which have odd plastic signs affixed in random locations. These plastic signs have something which looks vaguely barcode-ish on them, with the word Nullpunkt at the bottom. The signs were interesting enough to warrant investigation, but throw in a beautiful sounding word like Nullpunkt and I'm hooked.

So, I searched around a bit. Nullpunkt, it turns out, is the German term for absolute zero. (Nice!) But search as I might, I couldn't find anything about these signs on the buildings. What do they mean? Any guesses?

(Sorry for the crappy photo; I was in a bit of a rush. Three years of the same commute and I still don't have the timing down.)

Sunday walk, with snapshots

I'm feeling a little bit better today, so Jennifer and I decided to walk around town a bit. I took my camera with me to take some snapshots so I could make a photomap using Trevor's awesome app, 93 Photo Street. You can see photos from our walk here. I love seeing my photos tied to a physical location...I know I'm going to look back on these photomaps in a few years and have a much better sense of what I did today than if I just kept a directory full of photos.

The worst drink I ever had...

...was just last night at the Make-Out Room, where we dropped in on a friend's birthday party. I ordered a Greyhound, but what I got seemed to be an unshaken mix of grapefruit juice that had turned rancid four months prior and a jigger of lighter fluid.

In happier cocktail news, Miss J and house guest Miss V recently introduced me to the Scooby Snack, which I've found quite enjoyable and which I heartily recommend.