Things that might be decidedly odd…

Snow in Seattle

Unless you’ve been under a rock, you probably know by now that it’s been snowing a lot (by Seattle standards) here. The view from my window,

It started to snow pretty hard right around 5pm last night. There was also a home Seahawks game last night. Snow and a game on top of an already bad traffic situation probably made for one of the worst traffic nights of the year. Both I-405 north and I-5 south were completely closed at various times because of accidents and road conditions.

I ended up leaving work around 8pm to go have dinner with Jeremy and his friends in downtown Bellevue. Originally, I was supposed to have dinner with Sasa at around 6pm, but the roads were way too dangerous at that time. I actually pulled my car out of the parking garage, but when I saw people sliding around I pulled back into the garage and ended up waiting until later to leave.

It was a strange experience driving on 520 with very little traffic and still going about 35mph. At that point it had stopped snowing and a lot of the snow had even begun to melt. Unfortunately, by the time we left the restaurant around 10pm, the melted slush had already refrozen as the temperature dropped. My trip back to Seattle went fine, although everybody was driving more slowly and cautiously than usual. Jeremy’s friends were staying in a hotel near the airport and got stuck in stopped traffic around one of the points where I-5 was closed for a really long time.

All sorts of things (like schools) are shut down right now and a lot of people are staying home from work because the roads are so icy. Jeremy and I are planning to go have lunch with a friend up in the U-district this afternoon, but we’ll be leaving my car here and taking the bus instead.

Jeremy, Zoo, Dilettante

My old friend Jeremy from college is up here in Seattle visiting with some other friends for a few days. Today, we all went over to the Woodland Park Zoo which I’d never visited before for a few hours. Unfortunately, the weather was not the greatest. In fact, the first snow of the season started while we were there. Fortunately, I wore my fancy new North Face jacket that I bought the other day. Just in time it looks like too. The coat I bought in Germany 2 winters ago was a good deal, but it’s not very stylish and isn’t really designed for wet winters (i.e., it’s not water proof).

We did spend a lot of time in the tropical rainforest house (a balmy 80F) though.

A lot of the animals (like the giraffes and zebra) had been taken in from the cold…

but for others the cold actually made it easier to observe them. In the gorilla enclosure there are heat lamps right next to the glass, which allowed us to see the gorillas very close up.

We ran out of time since the zoo closed early and we got there rather late, but one of my favorite things was seeing the hippos floating around in their pond while it was snowing.

Afterwards, we drove around a bit on the somewhat slushy streets of Seattle before ending up at Dilettante on Broadway for some hot chocolate and assorted sweets.

Unfortunately, my stomach was bothering me (as it has been for about a day or so now) and I decided to head home early. If I’m not feeling better tomorrow, I’m planning to go to the doctor. I can get around fine, but I just feel more comfortable lazing about the apartment.

Cars

Lately, I’ve gotten this idea into my head that I might want to buy a new car. My current car is adequate and in good shape, but it’s not all that exciting or nice. It’s very much the practical car I bought when I was a poor grad student. Now that I’m no longer a poor grad student, I’m starting to feel like it’s time to move on.

The thought has of course crossed my mind before, but I always figured I’d delay buying another car until after I’d bought a condo. I’m not particularly satisfied with my current condo options though. Namely, I don’t want to leave the vicinity of the hill yet I can’t really afford to buy more than a small 1 bedrdoom here (and even then it’d be a huge chunk of my income).

The upshot of all of this is that I’ve started to do some research online about new cars. In particular, I’ve been fairly enamored by the Mazda 3. This car actually first hit my radar during the summer when I carpooled in one on my way to Lake 22 to go hiking.

This coming week, I’m planning to visit a deal and take a test drive. We’ll see where that goes I guess.

Movies

I’ve been watching a lot of movies lately it seems.

Just before I left, I watched Cabaret. It was one of those movies I’d seen parts of several times, but never in its entirety. The Germanophile in me liked the view of 1930s Berlin while my stereotypical inner queen liked the musical numbers.

Over the weekend at my parents’, I watched Madagascar. The animation was good. I even liked the story line and most of the characters (especially the penguins and monkeys), but the excessive trite references to pop culture and other movies really got on my nerves. After that, I sort of watched The Da Vinci Code catching the beginning, end and various parts in the middle while looking at baby pictures in between. I’d seen it before though and wasn’t really all that taken by it (too much explanation IMHO).

After getting home, I watched another movie I got through Netflix–A Very Natural Thing. The movie on its own isn’t all that amazing really, although it’s engaging and interesting. It generally fits into that category of a standard gay drama. It handles serious issues, does not contain self-loathing or sissy characters and has a story line which I thought fairly accurately portrays gay life. The kicker is that it was made in 1973. Obviously, things have changed since then both with regard to things like hair styles and HIV/AIDS, but I was still struck by how I identified at points with how it portrays the lives of gay men. Plus, it has lots of tastefully done eye candy. It’s unrated because there’s probably no way this movie would have garnered anything but an X rating back in those days despite it not being pornographic really at all. Definitely a neat older film.

Thanksgiving

I drove down to my parents’ house in Oregon for Thanksgiving this year. Both my brothers, my brother Kevin’s fiance, my grandfather and his girlfriend all drove up too, giving the whole thing pretty decent turnout. This was my first Thanksgiving with my family since 2001. Since then, I’ve always just been too far away to deal with the cost and hassle of flying home for just a few days. It was nice to see everybody and just relax with the family.

The drive down on Wednesday afternoon was fairly horrendous. It’s about a 300 mile drive, but it took me nearly 9 hours with the severe traffic I hit going from about Renton to Centralia and then again on near the I-5/I-205 interchange south of Portland. The drive back was smooth sailing though. It took about 5.5 hours including the stops I made. First, I stopped in Eugene at REI for some tax-free shopping to buy a coat (yes, I bought some “Seattle Armani”). I also ended up driving around north Portland looking for a gas station for a while. So all in all, I made pretty good time.

Random Wikipedia Fact of the Day

Washington state grows 75% of America’s hops which is particularly interesting considering the US only grows about 10% less hops than Germany (the unsurprising leader). So think of Washington the next time that bitter taste of beer hits your tongue.

Weekend Update

It’s been a few days since I’ve posted. Usually that means either I’ve been really busy or that I’ve been doing absolutely nothing at all. Blog volume seems to be the highest when I’m doing just enough to have something to write about but not enough to be tight on blogging time.

Thursday night, Evan, Ian and I went over to Neighbors for a drink and some dancing. I used to go there more often when I first moved to Seattle, but because the crowd I fell into later isn’t so much into that scene I rarely go there these days. The 80s music is fun to dance to though and the crowd is usually easy on the eyes. I ended up staying until almost 2am since I had a drink and needed some time to sober up before driving home (I’d driven directly from work to a party to the club).

Friday night I managed to go swimming for the first time in about a month. My busy travel schedule combined with that bout of strep throat really kept me out of the pool for quite a while. It was good to be back even if I felt like I had to drag myself back into it a bit. Afterwards, I grabbed Chinese food with some of the other people from the swim team before heading back to the hill for a party at an acquaintance’s place. The party was fun, but sort of a standard drink and hang out with people you already know. I ended up taking an acquaintance I’d almost hooked up with before back to my place. While we were trying to hail a cab, some crackhead was trying to talk to us and then tried to get in the cab when it came. Annoying, but harmless.
He (not the crackhead!) was fun and I suppose I can now stop wondering “what if”, but I am getting more tired of the whole no strings attached thing as time goes on.

Saturday morning, I got up fairly late (still before noon though) only to lounge around the house while I did some laundry. Early that evening, I went over to the CAMP Thanksgiving potluck. It was cool to see a lot of the guys from the summer, but at the same time it was slightly odd seeing them in a different context. The food was also pretty good, although since I had pre-eaten (you never know what’s going to happen at a potluck) I was super-stuffed by the end of the night. In fact, I probably ate too much because I felt sort of miserable for most of the rest of the evening.

After the potluck, I headed back home where Ken was supposed to meet me for a party my neighbor’s were having. Unfortunately, the party got cancelled, so we instead headed straight over to Purr for cocktails. The upstairs was open which was great because the main part of the bar is really just too loud for having a conversation with somebody. My stomach felt fairly naseous (probably from all the food earlier in the evening), so I didn’t drink anything. Eventually, we migrated over to the Cuff. I’d thought about just going home since I wasn’t feeling well, but I gave into peer pressure and went anyways. After lots of standing and a cocktail, I actually felt considerably better. I have to wonder how many times I’ve performed this bar visitation order (Purr -> the Cuff) since I’ve moved here though. It’s a bit trite, but I still usually end up having a good time so I can’t complain too much.

Sunday morning I caught up on my sleep. I was awakened by a call from one of the many Jeff’s I know asking if I wanted to see the new bond movie with some other friends later in the afternoon. I took him up on his offer and saw the movie. It was better than I expected. I’m not really a big Bond fan, but I thought this one was better than the fairly forgettable ones I’ve seen before. There seemed to be more comedy and more grit than usual along with the expected standard high production values. After getting home, I kicked back for a while before heading over to another friend’s place to watch Desperate Housewives. I just started watching the show this season, but so far it’s been entertaining even if I don’t always know all of the background story.

Today I went swimming again. I thought about not going, but decided that this was probably my last chance for at least a week since I’ll be visiting my parents over the Thanksgiving holiday. We did tons of backstroke, which was causing my arms to get fairly sore (you really do use some different muscles on that stroke). Even though I ran out of time before finishing the whole routine, it still went pretty well.

All I have to say is…

fuck tha UCPD. They seriously must have nothing better to do than use excessive force on students. This is what happens when you give cops too many toys for a jurisdiction with not enough real crime apparently.

Well, it was nice when I was in college and I’d use their public phone to be let into the radio station, but honestly they seem to have a lot of officers who power trip a bit too easily.

Christmas Accomodations

For those who don’t already know, I’ll be flying down to southern California to visit my extended family for a few days around Christmas. This will be my first trip down there since my parents moved away, which means I no longer have the same accomodation options as with previous years. I’m sure other family members could put me up, but this year I’ve decided to just stay in a hotel. Mostly, it’s that I’d like some of my own space since I’ll be seeing everybody for pretty much all waking hours already for those five days. Also, I feel that since I now have a real job, I can afford it without really any financial hardship. I’m already paying for a flight and rental car–hotel’s just part of the equation for this vacation too.

It was fairly strange looking at the different hotel options in north Orange County where most of my family lives. In fact, my parents were the only ones to live in the southern part of the county which is why I didn’t even bother looking down there. I’m assuming most everything will be going on around my grandfather’s place in Fullerton, so I looked at what there was in that general vicinity. Virtually the entire hotel stock in the area is right near Disneyland and caters to families visiting the park or business people visiting the Anaheim Convention Center. For me, I have no need to be close to the park. In fact, I’d rather be farther away from it to avoid the extra premium in hotel rates and parking costs (the Hilton wanted $11 a day for parking!). A lot of the hotels bragged about how close they were to the baseball stadium and the Crystal Cathedral, so those must be big tourist draws as well. It’s strange reading about your home town in tourist terms.

In the end, I booked a hotel that’s about 8 miles away from my grandfather’s house, but just happens to be only a couple blocks from the first house I grew up in. It was actually funny reading the reviews I found online. Most of them were middling claiming the hotel was nice but that it was too far from all the tourist attractions like Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm, etc. Bad choice for others, but hopefully a good one for me.

While I’m there, I’ll have to spin by the house I grew up in and my old elementary school to take some pictures.

We’re Number Two

There’s an interesting article in the Seattle Times today about how Seattle has the second highest percentage of people self-identifying as gay among major American cities. The underlying study estimates that number to be 12.9% (a bit more than 1 in 8 adults), slightly behind San Francisco’s 15.4%.