Wrapping up the weekend

Our Saturday was pretty low key. Lots of Bananagrams, some errand running followed by dinner with M & J and an epic set of Rock Band. Very, very fun.

On Sunday, we wandered over the the Ballard Farmer’s Market and browsed through the local shops nearby. There was an innovative potato display at one of the stands:

We also indulged in a Banana-Nutella crepe. Yummy!

We wandered over to the Locks to help work off some of the crepe calories (Ha!) It was totally different from T’s and my visit back in the fall:

There weren’t all of the fish that we saw previously, but it was still fun to walk around. On the way back home we came across this lovely piece of “social commentary.”

Oh hippies, what is wrong with you? And do you not realize the irony of placing a cardboard sign in protest of trees being cut down? Really? Suddenly, I’m feeling nostalgic for Berkeley…

At any rate, we had a great visit with Erik & Nerissa. I wish they lived closer so that we could hang out more often, but I guess it just makes the visits more special when they do happen.

Not so Black Friday

We awoke to a bright blue sky on Friday morning, so we decided to take advantage of it. After a nice breakfast at a local diner, we parked along the Elliot Bay path for a nice walk to the Sculpture Garden and Pikes Place Market. We stopped to take some photos:

and even got a passer-by to take one of the whole group:

I think this might be some sort of record, four people and not one of us is blinking or making a face. (Of course, 3/4 of the group are wearing sunglasses… ) Not surprisingly, the market was crazy busy:

We saw tons of great artistic stuff. First we saw this “crocheted food” at Kasala:

Then we happened across this great mural:

We wandered through Post Alley and got a snack from the Humbow place across the street. We also grabbed coffee at a Tullys on the way back and saw these cute fiberglass doggies:

And then on the corner across the street was this pretty piece of moving scuplture:

After all of that walking, we pretty much just kicked back at the house for a few hours. We also played a fair amount of Bananagrams:

We went to dinner at the Oaxacan place in our neighborhood, followed by cupcakes. I must say, this was a much more enjoyable way to spend the day than at the mall. Cheaper too!

Giving thanks

I’m not a big believer in “holiday-mandated” behavior (i.e. telling some one you love them on Valentines Day.) I feel that we shouldn’t be bossed around by random days on the calendar, but deep down inside I do like what Thanksgiving draws attention to — those areas of our lives that we may not appreciate as much as we should. Maybe it’s because I really enjoy the company of the friends and family at my Thanksgiving table, but this year I felt much more in the spirit of the holiday than usual.

We were hosting this year’s dinner, which was thankfully much smaller than J & M’s epic gathering last year. T & I have cooked quite a few Thanksgiving dinners over the years, so we have a pretty good routine down. After the Turkey Trot, T made bagels for breakfast and we hung out for most of the morning. In between games of Bananagrams, I popped into the kitchen for various dinner-making tasks. It was very low-key and fun. The only thing that was even remotely stressful was figuring out how to configure all of the food in the fridge.

Later in the afternoon, M & J came over with more delicious food to wrangle into the fridge and keep Wally out of. As usual, the last hour was a blur of food prep:

But the table got set and actually looked quite nice, given our low-key approach compared to years past:

Here’s the gang at dinner:

Since M is making a silly face above (and I’m about to post another not so glamorous shot of her) here’s M working the Thanksgiving table:

FIERCE! I made a beet salad to start us off and I made M try a golden beet, which she clearly didn’t enjoy:

After a ton of food and a little too much wine, we lounged around in the living room. Wally eventually wrangled himself a couch spot, while Nerissa & Erik were doing dishes and got snuggled by M for his trouble:

It was a great evening – filled with good food and enjoyable conversation. J & M made a pumpkin creme brule with candied nuts and bacon sprinkled on top – an unusual but delicious combination. A delicious ending to a delightful evening.

Turkey Trot 2.0

So, last year M & I ran this little neighborhood race, which I chronicled here. This year, we were joined by my brother, his wife and T, pictured here standing in a long registration line:

I think everyone else must have brought a bunch more people with them, because this was the pre-race scene this year:

It was crazy crowded compared to last year. They tried to do wave starts at the last minute, hence the illegible sign being held up in the above photo. T, M & Nerissa were all planning to run together and debated going in the “joggers” wave, but in the end lined up with Erik & I in the “runners” wave. They sent our wave off and after a cheeky “on your left” to M, Erik and I were off. Despite having run three times in his whole file, Erik’s basketball fitness enabled him to run with me for the whole race, which was nice.

He had a killer sprint to the finish line (watching a 6′8″ guy running all out through packs of “fun-runners” is one of the most comical spectacles I’ve ever witnessed.  I was profoundly sorry I didn’t have a video camera handy… ) and I made it across the line in 29:09 – a one minute and 12 second improvement over last year’s time. (Hells yeah!)

While waiting for the others, I saw these awesome “pilgrims”:

M held T in check and only let him sprint it out at the end, so he finished the race slower than he would have liked but un-injured, a definite plus!

And just behind T were Nerissa and M looking strong:

Everyone had a good time and I indoctrinated Erik into my post-race ritual:

(I don’t think he’s a fan… ) I definitely think the Turkey Trot organizers need to step up in terms of pre-race organization, especially given this event’s growth. But once the race got started, we had a good time and a lot of money was raised for the Ballard Food Bank – a definite bright side.

 

Hail to the ch-ch-chief!

While shopping at the Fred Meyer with T, I came across this fabulous product:

Oh yeah, special edition baby! Does this strike anyone else as absurd? Should the Commander in Chief really be represented in Chia-form? For those who aren’t struggling with these philosophical dilemmas, you can display your Chia-patriotism with these other fabulous options as well:

(I must confess I’m a fan of Chia Washington… ) God bless America!

At least a thousand…

On my drive home from work, I pulled up behind this car/tow-truck:

An unremarkable sight, save for the bumper sticker that the car had:

I have a feeling there’s a story here…

Grown-up furniture

T & M have been working on a redesign for her office. It’s been an ongoing process, eventually T convinced M to spring for some nice Herman Miller furniture. (This is one of the down-sides of working with T – he has good taste, but definitely not cheap.) But since M has been on a major campaign to get rid of the excess stuff in her life (also known as The Purge) and with all of her diligent Craigslist/Ebaying had raised enough money to make a nice dent in the cost of the furniture, which just makes the beautiful furniture that much better. There’s something so rad about converting a bunch of useless crap into a beautiful desk. (Especially having seen how much work went into it… )

T & I were invited over for delivery day, mostly T so that he could help assemble, but I tagged along to hang out and see the big unveiling. Getting “real” furniture is exciting and somewhat daunting. When you bring home that IKEA shelf, it just doesn’t have the same gravity if you make a mistake assembling it. I couldn’t resist taking some photos of the big day:

And at last, the removing of the plastic:

Here’s M, modeling one of the shelf-panels:

And finally, a sneak peak of the impressive new office set-up. M will definitely have prettier pictures of this in the future, but for now you get my blurry version of the mogul in action:

Congratulations, on the awesome new office. I hope it wows your clients into spending lots and lots of money.

What are they thinking?

It’s been a while since I’ve done a “crimes in graphic design” post, even though I notice examples on nearly a daily basis. But seeing this during a Target shopping trip with M was too much to resist:

There are a number of things that are objectionable about this (that awful font for “designed for wet or dry hair” for example) but the worst is the disgusting wet hair that looks like it came out of a drain:

I don’t know about you, but that does not make me want to buy their flat iron. EWWWW!

Art on the town

Tonight was First Thursday at the Seattle Art Museum (a.k.a. SAM) and since M & I had been planning to go see their Alexander Calder exhibit, it seemed like the perfect excuse to go. (The only thing better than art is free art… ) I caught the bus from work to meet M & T who drove over together. While I was waiting, I snapped a picture of these cool car sculptures they had hanging over the lobby:

On the same floor as our Calder exhibit, there was a Michelangelo exhibit. The ticket taker helpfully informed us of what rooms contained which artist. I found this amusing because it’s hard to imagine two artists that would be easier to tell apart, but whatever. I also loved the sign above the entrance, which I tried to photograph (and promptly learned there was no photography of any kind) so you’ll have to settle for this “artsy” one:

(A quick rant here: I understand why photography isn’t allowed for some artists/exhibits – i.e. watercolors, older works, etc. where even the 10% of flashes that go off would definitely damage the work, but metal sculpture? Really? I love photographing works to inspire me later, so it was most annoying not to be able to take NON-FLASH pictures. GRRRRRR!!!)

Anyhoo, the Calder exhibit was wonderful. I wished it was twice as big, but wonderful nonetheless. It was fun to watch people watch his sculptures. Everyone just sort of slows down in the presence of a giant floating mobile. It’s awesome. Particularly enjoyable was a little baby who was mesmerized and stared at the sculptures, completely enraptured. They had a nice range of his work and displayed them really well – a number of pieces had strong front lighting that would cast shadows onto the floor and wall behind the piece, which really added to their impact. Two thumbs up, even with the large crowds.

Less wonderful and far more head-scratch inducing was the Michelangelo exhibit. According to the bus ads and billboards around town, it was supposed to be an exhibit highlighting 12 extant sketches that the artist had intended to destroy. Unfortunately, these particularly sketches really should have been destroyed or at the very least not had an exhibit built around them. They were basically drawings of a hand/a foot/a femur of a minor figure in the far upper left hand corner of a panel on the Sistene chapel. But the best part was to pad the exhibit, they had these completely random/vaguely Michelangelo-related objects. For example, an entire room of pictures and pieces of the house his great-grandnephew remodeled 100 years after the artists death. (???!!!)

My favorite was a model of the cart they used to move David into the Academia, complete with scale model of David in the cart (and next to a large poster of David, lest you not realize that’s just a model… ) The little plaque accompanying the cart was written in the craziest style I’ve ever seen. Allow me to paraphrase: “Here we see a scale model of the cart that was used to move the statue of David from the Pitti Palace to the Academia. How did they get the statue into the cart? (Using ropes and pulleys) Was it heavy? (Yes, it took a long time) What is the statue made of? (Marble quarried from NameOfPlace) Wasn’t that dangerous? (Yes, many people were killed or maimed.)” and so on… The whole thing reminded me of one of those weird museums they have in small towns where something of interest happened or someone famous lived once upon a time.

We also wandered around the contemporary pieces and saw an exhibit of Imogen Cunningham’s photography, which was cool — especially since she’s one of M’s favorite photographers. I was really sad I couldn’t take pictures of the contemporary work, since there were a few awesome pieces (awesome in their hilarious absurdity for the most part… ) So, I scoured the internet and found my two favorites. First up is an unfortunately tiny picture of Jeff Koons’ St. John the Baptist:

For those who aren’t up on their art history, this is a gaudy gold-plated ceramic statue based on Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting:

(Photo courtesy of Wikipedia)

(No, I have no idea why the Koons’ statue is holding a pig and a penguin. I’m sure there’s a reason… ) My other favorite was surreptitiously photographed by someone on Flickr and is Maus and Mann by Katharina Fritsch:

(Yes, that’s a giant mouse/rat on top of a pillow and a mannequin… ) Behind this piece was this amazing robe made out of thousands of military dog tags, but I remember neither the artist nor the name, so you’ll have to visit the museum to check that out for yourself. Or maybe google “Giant robe made of dog tags.” That might be fun regardless…

Afterward, we headed for the exit. While we were waiting for the elevator, I snapped this cute picture of T:

And this little detail of the mural above the elevator (words to live by, no?):

Filled with cultury goodness, we headed over to J’s office to pick him up and then over to Brouwers for some beer and moule-frites. MMMMMMM! Good food, lots of laughing with friends. Not bad for a Thursday!

An uneasy truce

As the weather gets colder, the pets get more snuggly. In particular, our cat George becomes a huge couch whore. Wally is also fond of sleeping on the couch, leading to this scene – witnessed and photographed by T:

So there’s your gratuitous “cute animal” post of the week…