Field Trip - Storyville Coffee

Yesterday we walked down to the market and had a little breakfast date at Storyville Coffee in downtown Seattle.  It officially opens tomorrow and while I did take a few pics, you should really go straight to their website to look at theirs. Much better.

I don't know anything about the company or the owners, but I really like the vibe at Storyville and the invitation we got to come check it out was printed on the nicest prettiest paper I've seen come through the mail in a long time. If you are in the neighborhood, hanging around the market and you need a cozy little nook to get coffee, this place is awesome! Excellent lighting and warm industrial design, delicious coffee, pastries and little foods - perfect morning, afternoon or evening cute spot.

Storyville is located on the same floor as Matt's in the Market, just across and above the pig and the market sign - really nice place to hide from the bad weather. It's a teeny bit expensive, but worth it for a treat or a date, and brings you right back to how nice it is to have a coffee date with real cups! And the bonus: we met really nice new strangers there - it's the kind of place where it's really easy to make new friends! Yipee! Shout- out to the gal from Bainbridge who knows my friend Lisa, and the Microsoft guy who's developing an app called Infinite Good. Check that out too! People are doing interesting things out there!

High Brow?

Got my hair colored the other night. New gal, new salon - so far I like her - and the color is good, etc. If I really really like her then I'll tell you to go there. I'm not committing yet. I'm getting my hair cut by same gal in 3 weeks - that will be the real test. I've been limping along without a really good salon for a while so I hope this is it! Oh please, be it!

But, that's not what I'm here to talk about - care to discuss my eyebrows? Along with getting older, losing my eyesight, getting jowly and all the other crap - my eyebrows are getting kind of lighter and disappearing. So, my new color gal fixed it. So much better. Can you tell? You probably can't tell, but I can - and I think it's good. Not Groucho - which was my main concern, but pretty good!

PS- yes, I know I'm late getting on this train - but better late than never, right?

What are you lookin at?

The Thing about Trip Pics

Since getting back from a nice long awesome vacation to Croatia - I've discovered a couple things about trip pics. 1. If you take too many it's really hard to sort through them 2. Even when people say they want to see them, they don't really. I can actually watch friends at about the 15 second mark start to fade and note the boredom that envelopes them like a fog and they sort of go into standing coma - it's just like that chick on the Toyota Versa commercial who said she read "most" of an article on the internet - because in 2013 nobody has any sort of attention span AT ALL.

So, I'm going to post a few pics - just a few - because you're going to fall asleep. Also, have you looked at the various methods of sharing photo's online in a slideshow format with music. It's really really hard to find one that is intuitive, can hold a significant amount of pics, let's you put music to it, and isn't super expensive. I've tried almost all of them and I'm left somewhere between irritated and blehhhhh about my options. 

I found what I thought was a really good site, which I've used before and liked - and I was really enjoying it right up until it stopped allowing me to caption the photos. Just stopped captioning the entire right side of edit photos - nothing. So.... tech support said, "oh wow, software problem, I'll have to take this higher up the chain - we'll email you when we can diagnose and fix the problem". Ugh, when do you think that will be?" I have pictures to share with uninterested friends, people! And no, I didn't even want zoomy effects or emoticons to bounce around in my slideshow - just a pretty arrangement of photos - and I want to email the link and not have my own husband go "I can't open it, our browser at work says we don't have the widget - wtf?????" Do you know how long I took me just to get it out the door to one person???

Note the totally relaxed vibe in my writing - ahhh, vacations  - I'm so relaxed. Haha.

Old Town Dubrovnik

Little boats and blue blue water

My $30 Kir Royale - woops. Note to self: Don't order champagne in Croatia.

Me

View from the wall. They film Game of Thrones here - yes, we saw them.

Our Cat - 7 friends, 1 skipper, and we're all still talking

She's quite pretty

Every village = cute and charming

Some guy had a great sense of humor on Lostovo

Sunset in Vis

This is a good way to spend the day

Me vs. Birds - I win!

We have a huge old black walnut tree at the farm. It's awesome, in fact so awesome that we got married under it one time. 

Here's what it does that is also awesome - it makes WALNUTS!!! But, after a number of years I've come to learn a couple of things about what goes on at the farm and around the walnut tree when I'm not looking. 

When the walnuts get ripe (or ready, or whatever) in September, I have a really really little window of opportunity to get outside and get the walnuts before the blue jays (Stellar's Jays) get ALL OF THEM. I don't like these birds very much, and it's mostly because they are super greedy little fuckers and every year take all the walnuts off the tree and off the ground and away to some undisclosed location AND THEY DON'T EVEN EAT THEM! From what I can tell, they only care about the little worms that in the outside husk of the walnut and they don't even eat the walnut. ( I also don't like them because the bully all the other birds at the bird feeder! They suck in so many ways!)

In past years, they have cleaned me out completely! So, now, I watch the tree - looking for action. As soon as the blue jays start getting all peck peck pecky at the walnuts as they start to brown up on the outside - I have to get out there in a hurry and get my share. On Saturday I saw them - three of them - out there starting to get excited. So, on Sunday, while the skies opened up and rained all over me, I spent the morning with the fruit picker reaching for walnuts. I got a bunch - I thought it was nice of me to take all the ground, low hanging and medium high walnuts - and I left the high up ones for the freaking birds. That seems nice - not that the birds would do that for me. I'm just nicer than they are. Assholes!

Oh, and I'm not clear that the fruit picker is the best answer for picking walnuts, but it's all I had. Yay! Walnuts for us!

Last thought: I keep wondering if some day I'll be walking around on the property and stumble upon seven million walnuts - whole - with a sign written in blue jay that says "Suzy - EAT ME!"

Croatia - You complete me!

We are back from lovely Croatia! Sorting through pics now - but here are a couple to get excited about!

Things I do in Europe that I don’t do here

      Eat pastries at breakfast. I don’t do that in Seattle, in fact don’t even eat bread in Seattle.

    

     Totally cock up my coffee with a ton of sugar. Here I drink coffee black during the week, then have soy latte’s on the weekend, but in Europe I want cappuccino, espresso and I want all sorts of sugar in it! And I want lots of them in one day….. LOTS OF THEM!

Go without my phone. This is sort of by force because we Americans are so lame when it comes to global phones and phone services. Our carriers suck and our phones (except really new ones) aren’t compatible with the global systems. This is one area where America is completely out of the loop. Get it together USA! But, it’s sort of a good thing, I get to UNPLUG and be unencumbered by technology – light as a feather – not a care in the world. Some guys I know in Italy used to say “travel with no problems, no worries, like young boys”. That’s me, like a young boy. What?

 Walk walk walk walk walk walk. I walk a bit more now that we live downtown but frankly most of my time coming and going to work is in the car. And to get anywhere from the farm is by car. So the greatest thing about being on vacation and in Europe is the amount of walking we get to do. Walk to shop, walk to eat, walk to get ice cream, walk to coffee…walk to run errands, walk to see the sites.  Also, we have a few days in Frankfurt where we will have lovely walks along the Rhine to get to the old city. Check out our hotel - Gerbermuhle Frankfurt.

Have before and after dinner drinks. I usually don’t do this in America, but in Europe I think it’s completely reasonable to have a glass of Port or Vin Santo or something after dinner and even have something before and during dinner. And you know what else I’ve noticed – you can drink loads of wine in Europe and not wake up with a hangover. Hmmm, why? But it’s true. Yes, I’ve tested it many many times. Occasions when I should be face down in my pillow in the morning after a boozy wine dinner, and I feel like a million bucks. I’m a complete mess after 2 drinks here – why not in Europe?  

     

     Only possible explanation: Europe is awesome and nothing bad happens to you there.

 I’m sure there are more things that I’m not thinking of – but I’ll leave it at that for now. Just about non-stop thinking of vacation at this point – and when that happens – friends - we call it WORKATION. That means  I am actually at work, but I’m really not working, I’m in full-on vacation mode counting down the days. Heading to the drugstore next for supplies and travel size goodies. Love getting ready for trips. 

Plan(e) of Attack

We’re getting all the last minute things done for our Croatia trip – which means finding the fishing pole, getting out the snorkel gear, the water shoes, the motion sick meds, the “whatever elses”  we could possibly need. But first things first – this time – way in advance – I tried really hard to book the best possible seats for the long haul of our trip – which is the leg from Vancouver BC to Frankfurt. This is the plane:

So we are sitting in 35K and 35H. The row with just 2 seats, should be pretty undisturbed, not too close to the snack area or the bathrooms, no touching of other people, just us and only us – well except for the entire planeload of others. I booked similar seats for the trip back too. My only worry, someone will screw it up and we will get to the check in area and our seats won’t be our seats. Then I will have to get all ugly and rude. I really really don’t want seats other than in the side row where there are only 2 seats. And no super fat strangers taking up my personal space. Thank you!

Why I have PTSD about this:  Once on a flight from Rome to Detroit I got seat 2 in a 5 seat row, leaving only the aisle seat available for someone else. The someone else showed up and to my joy was a normal sized person. But, sadly, before I could blink, the normal sized person jumped up and changed seats with someone else so he could sit with his wife and the person who ended up next to me was no less than 400 pounds. NO LESS THAN 400 POUNDS!! And she had a pretty tough time getting into her seat and then proceeded to hang WAY OVER into my seat space, making me have to lean at a 45 degree angle in the other direction for the rest of eternity. In fact, I’m still leaning to the right. Then, this happened: Our flight sat on the runway for 4 whole hours before we even took off – due to a strike of some kind….. thank you Fate, you’re so nice. Before we even left the ground I was already dying of back break-ache. I worked up the nerve to tell the woman that she was making me uncomfortable and asked if she could please move over and that she needed to stay in her space. She said to me, “Well, I ain’t very comfortable neither!” – and that was our entire conversation for the rest of the 10 hour flight. Not awesome! I even went to find a flight attendant to see if I could maybe move seats – thinking there must be something – and what if… dare I dream…. Something in business or first class – ha – “oh, sorry”…. ZERO available. So I then asked, “could you maybe handle this situation, I’m not getting anywhere”, maybe the flight attendant could make sure she isn’t in half my seat, and she said “oh, I’m not allowed to discuss a customer’s weight problem with them, but you are welcome to talk to her about it!” Great, thanks lady! )

So, the moral of the story is to plan way way way ahead, get good seats, don’t share even one armrest – and then hope for the best. Oh, and do all the things that they say you shouldn’t do on the plane, avoid water, drink a thousand cocktails, eat all their food – and wake up in Frankfurt fully hung over, dehydrated and completely jet-lagged. So excited for vacation! (I really am! Not even joking - despite the hassles, I still super excited to go!)