Still, it’s been nice to be without a signal. We still do some tiny screen, iPhone browsing when it’s neccesary, but by and large we’re kind of tuned out while at home. I’m spending much less of my free time faffing around online, which is a good thing. I thought I’d read more books, but actually I’m spending more time spacing out and napping – not something about which I’ll complain. Why am I typing Edwardian-style? I’m going back in time because I am so unused to this contraption with keys.

My break is almost over and I’m about to start a chat shift. I wonder if I’ll be a little slow – haven’t done this in a week or so! The dear old Library has been closed for a week due to budget cuts – our second unpaid Furlough in as many years. I didn’t mind it too much – took a quick trip down to visit Jaime in San Francisco and then Sky and I went on a little camping jaunt. The first few days were hard, though – walking to a dentist appointment I saw people waiting outside the library or walking up to the doors and reading the signs. As a patron I was dissappointed several times during the week when I went to go place a hold on something I’d heard about. I hope the budget gets some magical treatment so the Library doesn’t have to do this again next year.

Salty black licorice is delicious!

Oof! Time to go be a virtual librarian once again. I will leave you with a photo of what I’ll be popping into my mouth as I type: salty black licorice. I visited Miette while in San Francisco, and bought a nice large bag of these.

We slept in and made breakfast and drank coffee at leisure with cats strewn about us.

We walked up and down and sideways and oceanways and greenways — all over Capitol Hill and a nice long trek around Discovery Park. We hit the market, we hit a movie. We had a cozy dinner with L & R. We watched a lot of Mad Men. It was superb.

I didn't think I wanted to wear a ring (I'm not a big jewelry person) until I remembered that I had my great grandmother's stored away - it's sweet and small and makes me smile

More recently it was just a secret thing to be happy about. Now it’s more of a Time to Get This Show on the Road sort of situation. I just need to stay away from the wedding blogs because I tried reading a few and they made my brain crack in half.

On to other topics: I’ve been experiencing a music resurge lately. I’ve been listening to new or new-again bands lately like Hot Chip, LCD Soundsystem, and Santogold. It’s nice when you hit a wave of music thirsting.

Also?
Ro
co
co!
The new Arcade Fire is knocking my fancy pants right the hell off.

Reading in the hammock

We’ve got another trip planned in a few weeks — Sky’s brother’s wedding down in L.A. We’ve been doing our own little stealth wedding talking and planning – not sure when, where, or even how, but at some point. You know, assuming we don’t say FUCK IT and go to the court house on a Wednesday afternoon. We’ll see.

Kathy in the sunshine

You made him what he is, and I’m so thankful for that, because I love him so much. I can’t imagine who we will bring all of our ideas and problems to, who will sit with us over dinner and hash it all out. Who’s going to shout out “That’s GREAT!” when we nail some idea on the head? I respected you fiercely and loved you warmly. Thank you for existing.

I had a lovely few days in Washington, D.C. attending a library conference. I stayed in a sweet B&B: there was no breakfast, just a bed. In a bedroom. A really nice bedroom that would’ve completely sufficed as the best studio ever if it were 1998 and I was in San Francisco. The place was huge and had a big bay window and ginormous bed. The rest of the house was very nice, too. I didn’t see much of it as I was gallivanting much of the time.

Here’s my condensed idea of Washington, D.C., in bullet point format + 1 photo:

D.C. has its share of the weird

• people were very nice, smiled when you passed them on the street, and were altogether charming
• some of the monuments (okay, 1, it rhymes with “stinkin’”) make me cry
• it isn’t a great place to be a vegetarian, but if you are and you love Thai and Indian food you will be O.K.
• D.C. Metro is the fastest, most on-time, cleanest, most thorough and CHEAPEST subway system ever and I loved every minute riding it – I’d jump on and off trains just to see what was above ground, it was so easy to get back on and not get stranded
• it’s super fun to ride a bus across state lines – I was in three different states/districts throughout any given day – fun!
• Georgetown was expensive and everyone was rude – it was like a little mean island in an otherwise sparkly ocean; I visited a lot of neighborhoods and that one was just the worst. I had a total Pretty Woman moment when some snotty lady in an not-even-that-nice boutique asked me if I “really wanted” to be looking through the $18 Italian soaps. Bitchyface. And yes, I did.
• you pretty much never forget you’re in the nation’s capital because of the constant presence of a) tourists and school groups, b) people in assorted uniforms, and c) ads in subways with big military guns and planes on them

The conference was OK – I learned a lot of interesting new data and formed some new ideas, but overall I found it kind of a lackluster experience. It was super clique-y and it wasn’t even really a clique I wanted to be a member of: librarians who kept talking about the technology but rarely naming a use for the technology. 3892009393 conference retweets made my head spin: repeating something someone else said that someone else said that someone else said? Not interesting to me. Theorizing about what you could maybe do if you had X, Y, & Z? Not interesting to me. Real life examples of what you’ve done and how you did it? Awesome, but those were few and far between. I walked away feeling lucky to be surrounded by fresh, outward-thinking, service-obsessed, and impassioned librarians on all sides at my job – I don’t necessarily need to go to a conference to be inspired or feel a sense of community.

I got from my B&B to Sky’s office by way of subway->bus->plane->plane->lightrail. About 15 minutes after I arrived in Seattle proper, we were picked up by our awesome real estate agent Ms. K. She whisked us away to a handful of selected houses. We fell in like with one of them and discussed it at length. Then we went home, ate, and I crashed headfirst on the couch. I woke up the next morning and drove 7 hours to a ladies’ getaway in Oregon. It was a lovely little weekend with my momma, my sister, my two aunts and my gram. It was fantastic and funny and comforting and all of the things that hanging with your family ladies should be.

I drove home on Sunday afternoon, just in time to meet Sky, our other awesome realtor Ms. R, Sky’s mom, and our friend Lotus, the former contractor. We were looking at the “like” house again and kind of fell in love. The neighbors were great, the view was better than we remembered, and we saw some wood underneath the ugly carpet. Lotus knocked on walls and kicked at some wood and declared it probably okay, so we went ahead with an offer. We offered what we could afford (minus some $ to fix this lady house up) and damned if they didn’t accept our offer! Crazypants. Now we’re waiting on the inspection and hoping for a May closing. This thing happened so quickly we’re still pinching ourselves, but in a very blissed out and satisfied way.

We’ve started a little tumbleblog to keep the email traffic down (no need now to send a photo every time I spot a cute toilet). You can join us in our house-musing at A House Named Meg. Yeah, we named the not-even-ours-yet house after Meg White (wait until you see it – you’ll understand why). And yeah, we then started a blog based off of a Johnny Cash song. What can I say?

I didn’t get the sunshiney Valhalla I’d expected since it rained 90% of the time I was there, but that was fine. I caught some sunshine my first morning there as we drank boozy coffee on the huge porch. When it did rain, it was often in big, gusty sheets; watching the rain pound the water outside the window was fun, but seeing the poor birdies trying to fly against the wind wasn’t so great. Poor seagulls.

We had some excellent meals, including a lunch at the new branch of Burma Superstar which was just blocks from Jaime’s place! We also had some heavenly burritos and some ridiculously delicious french macaroons.

We watched two scary movies: Orphan and Paranormal Activity. We watched Orphan because it featured our mutual movie boyfriend Peter Sarsgaard. The plot to this one was fun and creative and I enjoyed that they took the time to build up a good story with interesting characters. Paranormal Activity wasn’t half as scary as I’d set it up to be, but it did give me the willies in a few spots. We also watched Up in the Air. I found it kinda depressing, but there were some interesting moments.

The last night I was there we stopped by the house of a friend of Jaime’s: we had some lovely wine (okay a lot of lovely wine) and hung out with the couple and their 9-year-old son who RULED. So often kids are left at home when parents go to visit or put down to sleep in a bedroom when company is over, but this family had their son hanging out with us for most of the evening. It was so fun – we played Spongebob SORRY! and drew pictures and giggled and played hide and seek. Seeing a well adjusted kid enjoying time with his parents yet letting them be adults and have conversations was pretty awesome.

We had plans to visit San Francisco and maybe drop in on some friends, but Monday morning we both woke with awful hangovers. I guess we aren’t 23 anymore. The storm was raging outside so we ordered pizza delivery and sat around chatting. We never left the 94501 zip code and I’m not one bit sorry. It felt like old times when we both lived in the city – back then we didn’t spend our time jetting from place to place trying to mark things off of a list. We just talked. Slept in. Read books together.

I came home, feeling a bit lonely but happy to see Sky. Then I was in Jury Duty for 2 days and got the worst haircut of my life. Both those things will have to wait for another post…

That gotten out of the way, ONWARD (or backward) to Chicago!

Sometime in my life I heard the phrase “You put the chicken in the car and the car won’t go – that’s how you say ‘Chicago’!” I repeated this to anyone who would listen in the weeks leading up to our trip. I also said it a lot in Chicago. It never got old (to me).

1/2 of MONDAY & ALL OF TUESDAY
We left Seattle after work on Monday evening — had a nice dinner and then hopped on the new lightrail that took us most of the way to the airport. We got to the airport around 10:30 and waltzed through the shortest security line, ever. We napped a bit on the 3 hour flight to St. Paul, Minnesota, then had questionable vegan carrot muffins once we landed. A couple of minutes later we boarded a second plane and landed in Chicago around 8:30am. It was fun sitting on the el, all bleary eyed and sleepless while watching commuters drinking their coffee and reading their clever little daily paper. I loved watching the spindly little backporches speed by our windows. I haven’t been to Chicago since I was very, very small – I was suprised by how European much of it appeared.

Harold Washington Library

We got caught in a big super rainstorm! Then we saw the bean (okay, okay, “Cloud Gate“). And the fountain. We sought refuge in the John Hancock building. We had drinks on the 17th floor. It was very surreal because we were socked in by clouds most of the time. Your body knew you were really high up (the building sways), but you couldn’t see anything. For about 5 minutes, right toward the end of my boozy hot chocolate, we could see all of Lakeshore Drive spread out before us. Then it went away again.

We wandered the streets looking for good food, and finally asked a nice looking tattooed girl where to get some good pizza. She pointed us around the corner to a cozy place that was packed to the gills. We were happy to be inside and warm and reading menus. We got the butter crust (tattooed girl insisted on it). Delicious. We sloshed back to our hotel and prompty crashed.

WEDNESDAY

Crown Hall

Jen at the museum

On our way back to the hotel to grab our stuff, we happened upon Christkindlemarket: a crazy German marketplace in the middle of Daley plaza. We went to see the Picasso, we stayed to eat potato pancakes and gingerbread. And how. We also snuck past the guards of the Rookery building to see the second floor. Okay, I didn’t. Sky did. I hate breaking rules like that. Sky said it was amazing.

Once we were all full of art we met up with Jimmy and Diane (Sky’s dad and stepmom) and had some very tasty Indian food. We enjoyed a chilly walk back to our abode: an empty, very shiny modern house on Lakeshore Drive. Our hosts had just moved to a new apartment and their house was for sale, so the four of us had the place all to ourselves. Sleeping in an immense empty house is very surreal.

THURSDAY (THANKSGIVING)

I am not sure what Sky is doing here

FRIDAY
Jimmy, Sky, and Sky’s half-brother Tyler walked over the zoo to visit some animals. We saw some roaring lions (you could hear them throughout the zoo) and a depressed polar bear. It was fun to hang out with the brothers and Jimmy. Being in an uncrowded zoo on a cold day was very charming.

We had leftovers for lunch (Thai sweet potatoes!) and then headed to meet the rest of the family at the Art Institute. I was pleased to see the Thorne Miniature Rooms (68 miniature rooms and settings) – I remember visiting those rooms with my grandmother when I was little. We also took in the Victorian Ladies Collage exhibit. Also loved that day: Phillip Gustons all packed in a room, and a fascinating little painting by Georg Baselitz (never heard of him before, but I liked that painting an awful lot). I also grabbed a 2 second peek at a great de Kooning I’d never seen, as we dashed for the exit. We had drinks with Sky’s cousin Rachel who had just started her own nonprofit when I first met her 3 years ago. We caught up and had dreamy talks about San Francisco. Next was dinner at a cozy American restaurant (4 kinds of macaroni and cheese!) where I sat with a different group of the family than at Thanksgiving. Sky’s uncle Dan regaled me with stories of celebrities and general LA weirdness (he’s a dentist to the STARS, dear) and I had a good time talking to aunt Deb about art and our life here in Seattle. How much did I luck out with Sky? Not only is he all matchy-perfect for me, but his family is also incredibly interesting and neat. All of ‘em.

SATURDAY

Sleepy Absinthe stupor

After a quick bite of leftovers, it was back to the el to get to the airport to get on the plane to get on the lightrail to get oh wait, we wimped out and took a cab home. To get home to warm cats and warm bed. The End.

My parents are visiting this weekend, and in true parent style they told me on Sunday. And they need a hotel. My friend Shu who I have not seen in 2393892 years is also visiting this weekend. And I need to buy cat food. And I need to weed the Manga at this branch. And there’s a pumpkin sitting on my counter that needs to be made into pie within a day or two or it’s a goner. Loose ends writhing around in the wind like this make me antsy, but I’m making lists and figuring it out and everything is going to be just fine.*

* This reminds me of a movie in which things are not fine, A Serious Man. I was going to write a review for this fine, not fine film, but haven’t had a chance to do so just yet. Believe me, it’s good. Go see it. Bring a hanky because you might just laugh so hard you cry.

Our new little place is very cozy. Have I mentioned that yet? Cozy, cozy cozy! I get home in the evening and the radiators are popping and the cats are purring and I make some tea on our awesome-fast-gas range. I settle in with a book or maybe take a bath. The world is my oyster. Sky loves it in the mornings because he has something to watch (traffic, clouds, birds) while he drinks his morning coffee and it’s not cold and dark at all in the morning. The lights are cheery and the floor is warm.

I’ve been in touch with my sister a lot more than usual after our little sister vacation. That makes me happy. It always takes me a bit of time to get reacclimated to people I haven’t seen for awhile, including, sadly my family sometimes. So it’s been nice to keep in contact – easier to talk about small things and have a rapport. I’ve also been talking to Jaime more – or she’s been good at hassling me so that happens. I still fall too easily into being hermity, sometimes. I’m lucky to have a bestie who doesn’t let that happen too often.

We’re going to Chicago for Thanksgiving and I can’t wait! The last time I visited I was about 12 years old, so I don’t remember much of anything. This weekend my mom recalled how when she was little, they would drive up to Michigan for Thanksgiving, and on their way home they would always be sure to hit Chicago in the late evening. That way they could drive along State Street with little to no traffic and check out all of the pretty sparkly Christmas lights and store displays. I promised my mom I’d take a walk there and give her a report. I hope it snows (but only in the middle of the week so it doesn’t affect our flights).

Sky’s taking his first licensing exam today – it’s 4 hours long! Wish him good thoughts and a clear mind, okay?

I haven’t gotten photos off of my own camera yet, so here’s a lovely photo someone else took of Kalaloch. My sister and I visited this weekend for a short sisterly getaway. We often camped there as kids.

We didn’t realize it was so close to TWILIGHT OMG FORKS, WASHINGTON! This made for some fun times at the gift shop and grocery store. Weirdest Twilight themed thing: sandwiches at the deli, named the Edward, Jacob and Bella. I think Edward was roast beef but I can’t remember what the other two were.