Category: Seattle

Some things on the Ave have stayed the same, I guess; Orange King is still there and the rain comes down through the gray the way it always does as I trudge from the Burke Museum, where parking is still free on Sundays, where I used to clean the glass cases and sort mail for…

Selling the books,, it turned out, wasn’t that bad. My cousin came over and took me to Half Price Books, which took them and gave me some money and that was that. We went to Trader Joe’s while they were pricing everything and then went out to Ethiopian food for dinner. I really was struggling…

I woke up early this morning and actually got out of bed and got into the shower and ate breakfast before nine a.m. I sat around texting D., reading books, drinking tea and attempting to make a packing list for Italy for a couple of hours (“Uh, I don’t know, pants? Should I bring pants?”)…

“You got here at the right time,” everyone keeps saying, because apparently it’s been really cold in Seattle until, like, two days ago, and now all the northwesterners are wilting sweatily in the sun. Marcy came up from Olympia today and we went to Artopia (aka “Burning Man In Georgetown,” judging from the Utilikilts on…

Saturday was my Seattle going-away party. For a while it was like a Harvey Mudd Classes of 1996-2001 reunion, man. As our host Ian (who knitted the lovely sheep above and who also made the pavlova because he is some kind of genius) said, “We’ve had some nerdy parties here before, Chiara, but this was…

Go salsa dancing again. Wear more comfortable shoes this time and bring an ice pack. Haven’t done that yet, although I did buy some more comfortable dancing shoes. It will have to be next Thursday, if at all. Who’s in? Bake an Italian cheesecake and garnish with fresh strawberries. Take to potluck. Graciously decline marriage…

This may come as something of a surprise to you, but I did not go to my senior prom in 1993. I didn’t go to my junior prom in 1992, either. In fact I am compelled to admit that I went to exactly no proms while I was in high school, and that for a…

Last night my housemates and I made dinner together, something we rarely do. We made cauliflower-leek soup with dill (our own dill from the garden, as a matter of fact), sautéed asparagus (because we love nothing more than we love asparagus), chicken with honey-mustard sauce, and strawberry-rhubarb crisp (frozen strawberries because they’re not in season…

I always discount the whole Seasonal Affective Disorder thing until about this time of year. It’s been a long winter and I’ve just mushed along for several months, listening to sad music, watching the sky turn its various shades of gray before the sun goes down at five, and just assume that the reason I…

Slow day, long day, soft day. The rain has stopped but the clouds wash the sky and close it in, bring it down closer to me, walking along the street in my borrowed scarf and hat because I lost mine on the bus last week. It’s chilly and I stride along, turning up the volume…

I just got back from the spa and am feeling suitably gooshy and noodly and generally in a good mood, in stark contrast to the last couple of times I’ve written. Nothing, it turns out, is so efficacious a remedy for generalized angst and anomie than spending a couple of hours surrounded by…

It’s been a busy week. I had something every single night this week…this morning when I came downstairs fully dressed and carrying a bag Treasa was all “You’re going out again?” I seem to be in the middle of a pretty social cycle: I went to bellydance class and to therapy and to a Big…

Oh, yesterday it rained and rained and rained. It was impossible to tell what time of day it was while the sun was “up;” I could hardly get up out of bed and haul myself dowstairs in the direction of my breakfast. I had several fun dates with several fun girls planned, which all fell…

The moon was full and the waves slipped softly against the stones of the seawall. The air was full of anticipation and longing as people thronged to the center of the hangar, eyes bright at the thought of the spectacle to come, the ancient drama of the thrill of triumph and the agony of defeat.…

People are so silent on the bus. I look up from my book (my iPod is broken) and see all the earbuds, all the bent heads, all the faces looking out the window. No one sees me. No one yells or gesticulates with no regard for personal space, no one posits useless, smelly theories, no…

My feet are dirty after two hours of bellydance and my hair is sticking out every which way from the scarf in my hair like a dark spiky dandelion. It’s ten thirty and just barely getting dark outside; the solstice was this past weekend and the days have been full with heat and light. Outside…

I went to Trader Joe’s after work today, having missed my usual weekend trip due to circumstances beyond my control. As with life, so with Trader Joe’s: you have to take what you can get when you can get it. Similarly, there were pro and con aspects to my shopping trip, and I am going…

The thing I have to keep remembering is that Seattle has given me very very good housing karma, in terms of renting, at least. Seattle doesn’t seem to want me to buy a house, of course, but Seattle seems to be okay with my finding good places to live with cheap rent. When I moved…

Yesterday I took a walk to the library to return some books and pick some some new holds on my hold list. I was making the daring move of returning some books I hadn’t read. My book list is pretty big (for me, at any rate) and I’m not getting as much time to read…

Last Wednesday my friends Peter and Tracy let me know that they were going to be up from Eugene for the long weekend and that they’d very much like to spend a night on my purple futon. We (and a bunch of other friends) had been talking about it for a couple weeks but no…

I finish my book at the bus shelter and spend some time flipping back and forth between the chapters, as though I’m picking up the crumbs from a muffin with a wet index finger, making sure I haven’t missed anything. The bus is late. I have an appointment in an hour and I have to…

Today when I woke up I looked out the window and there was snow. I sprang into action and ran down to the basement and got out my warm hiking clothes from 1996, including my hated teal long underwear, and wrapped up and headed to the store for some oatmeal and a lightbulb for the…

Hey, I’m home from working the polls today. I got in there at 6:20 (after driving around in the COLD and the DARK and the RAIN) and just got home twenty minutes ago. I am stupidly tired and dehydrated. I am just so tired. The precinct in which I worked usually gets around a hundred…

Sundry’s entry today made me think of the year I worked at the Burke Museum, my first year of social work school. Knowing what I know now, I ought to have tried to get a job that would pay for some of my tuition, but even though I already had quite a bit of debt…

I had such a fun time on Saturday. It was really sunny and beautiful and I had a date to meet the lovely and talented Molly at the Pacific Place Pottery Barn for some old fashioned Pike Place Market action. I don’t care how touristy it is or how hard it is to park; the…

It’s only raining now. I didn’t have to wear my horrible hiking clothes to work today, and I only wore one hat (that I made on Tuesday, woo!). I still slept under four blankets last night but not in my polarfleece bathrobe…what I did sleep in, of course, is none of your business. I left…

I wanted to sleep in this morning. A really lot. My alarm was somehow set for 5:40 (why?) but I merrily turned it off and snored for another hour, until Ziggy The Cat Who Could Stand To Lose A Few Pounds, Not That I Should Talk, came and did that “Mrr? Mrr?” thing right by…

I kind of forgot about the Daylight Savings thing yesterday. I always do, and it always involves being too late or too early and then a frantic re-setting of the clocks and a little voice in my head going “But what time is it REALLY?” This is germane only because yesterday Carl and I were…

So I had this very good and fun weekend last weekend, and took all these pictures of stuff (mostly flowers, I have to admit), and didn’t get a chance to download them. And then Monday came and I was busy and then Tuesday I was busy some more and then, well, Wednesday is bellydance night…

Seems like a girl just can’t get any privacy in the middle of REI when she’s waiting for her boyfriend to get back from going across the street to the other outdoor store to look at the shoes they have over there. Apparently REI doesn’t have enough shoes—on sale shoes, at that—and so this girl,…

If you had said to me a couple of weeks ago, “Chiara, how about we go on a two day hike over MLK weekend?” I probably would have said okay. If you had told me it would involve the lovely Olympic National Forest, I would have nodded enthusiastically. If you’d reminded me that this hike…

I am pretty much a toddler, when it comes to sleeping. At least seven hours a night. I’m twenty-seven now, you see, and not the spry young staying-up-late lass I once was. Except that I never was that lass, because I have always loved my bed with a near-unholy passion. I’m telling you I have…

Now, you all know how I feel about the outdoors. I’m okay with it. In general. For the most part. But, as you also know, I am nothing but devoted to my boyfriend (right?), and dang but if he doesn’t love him some mountains, and so off we went to the lovely and amazing Mt.…

That’s what you say when you’re meeting someone at the Pike Place Market…you know, in all the movies about Seattle, the farmer’s market where they’re throwing the fish around? Sometimes people who live here go there too. Here’s how: Get on the bus. Bring a your boyfriend’s copy of The Stranger with you, and have…

The Time: Last night The Place: On The 73 bus heading north [Chiara is sitting on the bus reading her book, hoping the guy behind her will not hock a loogey into her hair, as he is making horrible choking and spitting sounds] Guy Behind Chiara: (in an exaggeratedly shaky, drunken voice reminiscent of Barney…

The bus is a good thing, I think. I am down with less car use in general, and I’m glad to live in a city with decent public transpo. I would really like to see the proposed Seattle monorail happen, though there doesn’t seem much chance of that. But until then, I get on the…

I really have to stop reading the Title Nine catalog because it makes me think I’m all buff and that I need to be wearing clothes that wick moisture away from my sweaty body. (In passing, I would like to register my loathing for the word “moisture.” Thank you). Makes me think that I can…

I didn’t ever have a “strip” or anything before I came to Seattle. You know what I mean: somewhere where you could go to a coffeshop and a thrift store and a kind of scary record shop where the dude inside would laugh at you if you bought Toad The Wet Sprocket, or worse yet,…

I’m writing this from the nice fast computer in the basement of Carl’s house, which happens to be next door to mine. We got back from Miami yesterday and have been promptly rained on as well as seasonally affectively depressed, causing us to go out immediately for sushi at the famous Toyoda Sushi. It’s nice…