Week 28: 07/05-07/11

Week 28

Little Grapes!

07/05 - A perfect day for wine. Well, that's really any day. Today the lovely Melissa and I ventured out into the wine lands just outside of Seattle, Woodinville, to be precise. We headed out to Chateau Ste. Michele winery via a first-ever Uber ride for a free tour and to see the grounds. It was a really really really nice place, perfect weather and everything was just great. We began as all good winery tours ought to begin, with hummus.

      After a fun tour and three free wine tastings, we determine that it was hungry time. After little searching, we decided to eat at our next stop, Redhook brewery. Filled with delicious pub food, we hopped on over to take the tour. It was a lot of fun and a great deal for only $5! You get a bunch of ice cold beer fresh from the factory and a logo glass. I would definitely recommend it.
     07/06 - Despite all the fun, I still had to go to work on Monday. After work we decided that a ferry ride to Bainbridge would be the best way to spend a Monday afternoon. By the time we got there, it was dinner time and we were hungry. However, apparently life shuts down on Bainbridge after 5, so most of the cafe's and restaurants were closed! That's ok though, because it helped narrow down our searching to the only open place: Madison's Diner. This diner was a classic, literally. It was a diner from the 50s in Pennsylvania that was transplanted across the country and rebuilt. The food was good too! Yet another excellent day in and around Puget Sound.
     07/07 - Today I had to take Melissa to the airport. It was an amazing visit and I'm so thankful that she flew all the way out here. We took the train from downtown all the way to the airport, a great way to get there and something I'll do when I move out a month from now.
     07/11 - So Ryan's parents came out for a week or so and today they all went up to visit Vancouver. I would have gone but I've never left the country so I don't own a passport! It's unfortunate really. I still managed to have a great time and went on over to Ballard (again) to check out their Seafood Fest. The festival was cool but I'm not so sure about it's namesake. There was like only a teensy bit of seafood, which was quite surprising. Mostly the place was just full of greasy carnival food stands you would find at any festival. The only seafood that that they maybe were serving was a salmon burger...but everyone had that and they didn't look very appetizing. The beer was good though, per the usual.

Week 27: 06/28-07/04

Week 27

     06/28 - Today I visited the weekly Farmer's Market in Ballard. It's supposedly one of the best in the country. I think it held up to it's reputation. There were a ton of quality stands to buy fresh produce as well as craft booths and whatnot. For lunch, I enjoyed some delicious BBQ at Kickin' Boot. I will definitely go back there (because I was unable to pay! They didn't take Discover and my debit card hasn't arrived yet!). SO I'llllll be going back to pay my bill haha. Oooops!

     07/02 - Guess what today is! Today is the day I picked up the lovely Melissa Raney up from the airport :) She has arrived to visit with me for 4th of July weekend. I woke up bright and early, skipped work, and hopped in a Zipcar. The airport was really easy to get in and out of. They have a "cell phone lot" that I chilled at for a little bit as I waited for her plane to land. It made a lot of sense because it kept the traffic down right by the pick-up zone. Anyways, everything went smoothly and she arrived in one piece and we headed home to regain some well-needed rest.

     At this point I began my new job as a Seattle tour guide, and it was quite fun! We headed on over to MOD Pizza downtown to grab some Made on Demand pies. I'm not sure if this place is up on my restaurants list yet but I intend to put it there, it cheap and fun and delicioso.

    After lunch we headed on out to explore the classic downtown Seattle touristy stuff. We started with Pike Place Market and I took the opportunity to horrify Melissa with the famous Gum Wall. I did manage to finally leave my mark on the wall, however, when I added one of my KPFF business cards.

...horror...

     We continued our journey through the market with a fresh carton of strawberries in hand, eventually wandering on over to Seattle Center and the Space Needle. It turns out the best way to enjoy a visit to the Space Needle is soaking wet. "How might one accomplish this?" you might ask. Well it's easy! Simply pre-order your ticket for the SN about an hour and a half in advance, then head on over to the International Fountain within the Seattle Center Park. Once there, laugh at the antics of confused children with pool floaties (it's a fountain, not a pool) and sit far enough away from the fountain that you build up too much confidence. It will get you somehow, be warned. We got ridiculously soaked and ended up looking super ratchet by the time we got up to the Space Needle observation deck haha. We had a blast though.

Ratchet but happy :)

     We eventually escaped the hustle of downtown and headed back to the apartment to relax and chat with Ryan. For dinner, we walked up the hill to Capitol Hill area for some yummy Mexican food at Barrio. All in all, a solid first day with Melissa in town, but I had some big plans yet to come...

     07/03 - Today was beach day! After a big mid-morning rooftop brunch, prepared by myself and expert strawberry-slicer Melissa, we hopped on a bus to Discovery Park. As I may have mentioned before, I like this place. It's technically in the city, but you would never know it because it's so isolated from everything. We trekked along the bluffs to arrive at the beach, where we enjoyed the sunshine walking up and down it. Eventually, we plopped down exhausted and both fell asleep. When we woke up the tide has moved in quite significantly, to the point that if we had slept much longer, we may have had some wet toes.

     After hiking back through the park, we headed on over to the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks to check out the fish ladders and skip on over to Ballard. When I mentioned the "fish ladders" to Melissa she was rather confused as to what I was talking about. It was more fun to just not explain and let her see for herself haha. In Ballard, we quickly came to the decision that we were starving, and that the only fix to this problem would be pasta. After some smartphone searching we decided to try out Palermo Pizza and Pasta. It was amazing and they dished out large amounts of food, something uncommon for the prices in Ballard. Even though we were starving we still had a good deal of leftovers to take back with us. Once our hunger was satiated, We wandered around in Ballard for a while and ultimately hit up D'Ambrosio Gelato. Another successful day as Seattle's newest tour guide.

'merica breakfast

     07/04 - Happy Fourth of July! I'm very blessed to have Melissa here to spend it with, she's really great like that. The plan for today is simple: 1. 'merica 2. Party 3. Fireworks. We headed on over to a BBQ/party held by some of my coworkers and it was a great time! I brought my signature chocolate chunk banana bread (still need to add to the blog). It was a rather long day, but a fun one. My friend has an apartment right by Gasworks Park, where the main fireworks viewing is held. They launch the rockets off from Lake Union so our spot was ideal. At one point we mozied on down to Gasworks to see the mass quantities of people there...there were a ton. My "picture of the week" is from this venture. Though it was the first 4th of July that I've broken from family poolside tradition, it was a really really great one, especially with Melissa by my side and my new friends to hang with.

Week 26: 06/21-0627

Week 26

     06/21 - Week 26 marks the halfway point in the year of 2015! I've posted weekly for 26 weeks, crazy. By now, I'm sure you've noticed a boring pattern of me doing stuff only on the weekends. Well this week was no different. Today, Sunday, I took my alone time back to Lake Union Park to check out a U.S. Open "festival" thing. It was cool, they were showing the Open live in a big screen and there were gift shops and things. At some point I just decided to hammock and climb very high in a tree...classic move.

     Later, I headed out to Gas Works Park to see what all the fuss was about there. Honestly, I wasn't impressed very much by the park itself. Sure, I took cool pictures, and sure I got to climb concrete arches, but overall it seemed like an average treeless hilly park where punks might hang out. However, I was impressed by the great view of Lake Union and Seattle that the park afforded. I think that's why most people go, because there were a lot of people on the park's big hill just watching the boats. PHOTOS PHOTOS PHOTOS <- a self reminder..... Anyways, cool enough that I would take someone there maybe on a visit. My friend Kathleen is like obsessed with the idea of the place (she's never been out here) because she's a landscape architect....when I told her about it I hyped it up more than I actually thought because I didn't want to crush her dreams haha.
     06/26 - Aaaaaaaand this brings us to Friday. "So what happens during the week?" One might ask. Work happens, and copious amounts of grilling and sitcoms post-work. Friday's are fun because Friday. After work, I went out with some work people to a bars to watch the tail end of the USA vs. China women's World Cup game....people like soccer here apparently. It was a lot of fun talking with coworkers and just BS-ing. Plans were discussed about 4th of July parties so that was cool.

     06/27 - A Saturday spent at home, crazy right? I know...it wasn't wasted though. I made some progress in my search for a Texas apartment, watched some New Girl (it really is a funny show, I don't watch it just for Zooey D. as many might believe.....Katie) aaaand after all the apartment companies in Texas closed (4pm central time), I laid (lied?) out on the roof for several hours reading "A Dance with Dragons".... WHICH reminds me, I want to add a few pages to this blog.

      Ok, so I'm an avid reader, I like books, not digital Kindle or Nook BS; real paper books. If you didn't kill a tree to make it, it isn't worth reading (that'll be my profound thought ....). I've probably read like 200 books, but who's counting?...actually, that's my plan, to start counting and to keep a log of the books I've read, the author, when I read it (or re-read it or re-re-read it or....); you get the idea. Now, it should be easy henceforth because I've been reading thick books, so adding an entry will be a walk in the park. However, back-logging books will be a nightmare, so those will probably just be title, author, and rough estimates of when I read...no serious book review mumbo-jumbo. So that's that. I'll probably just do it in a google spreadsheet and make that the page link....

    If I'm feeling ambitious, I'll expand this idea to include movies, TV, and music. Somewhere in my well-organized computer file structure (not sarcasm, actually organized), I have already started a spreadsheet for concerts I've been to. Ok that's all for this week...phew.

Profound Thought: "Life is fun when described in lists. Think of almost any aspect of your life, how it has changed or even pros/cons for decisions, and make it a list.....so many possibilities there's actually a book like this I've seen that may be cool to pick up."

Week 25: 06/14-06/20

Week 25

     06/14 - Today was my second "me day" and I decided it would be fun to try a new park. I chose Discovery Park and I was far from disappointed. The park offered a massive wooded area to hike and run, surrounded by beaches. I hiked through it on one side and hung out by the beach, then hiked back on the other side. While there, I found some cool beach huts people had build and a massive block of pumice:

     It seems to me that each new park/beach I've gone to becomes my new favorite. I guess I'm going to have to keep exploring and figure out just exactly which one is my favorite....hmmm...there are quite a few weekends left in the summer, this may get difficult.

     06/19 - Decide to change things up a bit. I changed my "Photos" link tab. Now, instead of linking to a defunct photo blog (which was a bad way to store pictures), it now links to VS Co....What is VS Co., you might ask? Well it stands for Visual Supply Company and is basically a photography company that got fed up with crappy phone camera apps, made their own, and turned it into a really cool site for photos and photo editing. The layout is much better than most photo blog sites I've seen, so it makes sense to use it.
     Anyways, today I did that and went to two great restaurants: Japonessa for lunch and Quinn's Pub for dinner. Japonessa was a delicious sushi place. If you go, be sure to go for lunch or before 6:30, everything is half price! With that in mind, it actually ended up being rather inexpensive and great quality. For dinner, we headed out to Quinn's Pub in Capitol Hill. They are a traditional American pub. I ordered their signature Sloppy Joe with fried egg, it was a delicious twist on a classic.
     06/20 - Went to a Seattle Sounders game and it was really cool. It marks my first professional soccer game and Seattle was a great place to go. We got free scarves too!

Week 24: 06/07-06/13

Week 24

     06/07 - Sunday the 7th represents the first of what I hope will be many "me time" days. Ryan decided to study for the GRE all day so I had the day to myself to just chillax. I took full advantage of this time by picking a park off of the Seattle map and going to it. Today I chose to go to Lake Union Park, on the south side of Lake Union. This park was a nice place to hang out and it is home to a Museum of History and Industry as well as a boat launch and some historic ships. The park also has a mini fountain for sailing small boats:

"In their Sunday Best"

"Steamboat Willy"

     I used the day to relax and hammock. I ended up finding a perfect tree to hammock under and napped and read there for several hours. I eventually got pretty hungry so ventured over to a place called Cask and Trotter (for details see Seattle page). The food was great and I will definitely stop by there the next time I go to this park. I'm looking forward to making Sunday my parks day from here on out. To the right are a couple cool pics I took while at Lake Union Park:
     06/08 - Work is going very well so far. I've finally reached a point of being very busy all the time, which is great because I'm learning a lot of things and have a lot of interesting tasks on my plate. I'm looking forward to taking a look back at the summer and documenting all my new skills.

     06/13 - Today was full of adventure. So when I woke up I noticed there was a lot of commotion across the street. I didn't mention this before, but on the corner across from us is a building that is going to be torn down. It isn't a large building or anything just the land will be re-purposed. Anyways, there have been many people spray-painting it recently, nothing bad, not gang-related but just cool art and such. Well before today, we didn't know what that was all for, but now I know. So across the street I could see people setting up tents and there was a food truck pulling it. Apparently there was a mini flea market setting up for the day. Ryan and I decided to stop over there...which turned into so much more....

The Fremont Troll

House Boats!

    So we walked through this little flea market then decided "hey, let's visit Ballard (a neighborhood that's a good 40 min. busride away). We had never been before but I'd really been wanting to get up there. Long story short, we caught a bus headed that way but jumped out early in the neighborhood of Fremont to see some things there. Fremont was really cool. There were massive bridges and house boats and a troll! (As always, for more pictures see my photo blog). Next we ventured over to the Fremont Brewing Company, a spot that I had been wanting to go to for a while that we just happened upon. The is brewery is very new and has only been open since 2009 but they have made a huge presence in the area. It is very well-run and they have many fresh brews on tap, all made in-house. Ryan and I each picked up a growler of beer (something we would regret doing so early later...)

Growlers from Fremont Brew. Co.

     With growlers in hand, we next decided to try and walk to Ballard (try). We wandered through some very nice neighborhoods in Fremont, but the hills were killer and the growlers weren't helping. At this point we realized that we got them too soon haha.

 We ended up stopping at Fremont Peak Park, which may be one of the highest neighborhoods in the city. It commanded an excellent view of the north-western city shipyards.

View from Fremont Peak Park

     Eventually we made it to Ballard (after giving in and catching a bus). Once here, we decided that we wanted to see the new Jurassic World movie at the Ballard movie theater...but there was a problem, the growlers. As much as it would've been nice to crack them open with some popcorn, that wasn't going to happen. We decided to eat dinner then head BACK to the apartment to drop them off, then RETURN to Ballard to watch the movie at night. The plan worked and we were well rested for Jurassic World.
    ASIDE: So....my childhood revolved around two things, dinosaurs and LEGOs. My original career path was to be a paleontologist, spurred only mainly by the wonderful film Jurassic Park. Somehow by the good graces of the gods, my parents allowed me to indulge in this delicacy of a film at too young of an age...like four. The movie is incredible, let's be honest, and Michael Crichton is a genius (as is Spielberg, of course)...That reminds me, I should watch E.T. again...hmmm....
     Anyways, my life dream was to have pet velociraptors, and Jurassic World showed my what that possibility might look like. I was not disappointed. I am Chris Pratt.
     Thus concludes an amazing day and week.

Profound Thought: "Find a way to turn your childhood dreams into an adult hobby."

Week 23: 05/31-06/06

Week 23

     05/31 - I'm fairly certain that on this day we actually just chilled, super chilled. I got some work done at the apartment, nothing noteworthy or interesting. Sorry for the boring post haha.
     06/01 - Today I made banana bread and I will eventually put the recipe on here. I make it all the time so I don't really understand how it isn't on here yet....hmmm...I also made a second visit to the Space Needle souvenir shop to get more postcards. I've send a lot of them lately, so I ran out. While I was there, however, I picked up a sweeeeeet keychain:

Oh yeah, very sweet

     06/05 - FUN FRIDAY! So KPFF does this awesome thing once a month where people get together and have a few appetizers/drinks at Rock Bottom Brewery on a Friday after work. Well the kids table (yes, I call the younger employees/interns the "kids table") was a fun time and I also got to meet several people within the company that I wouldn't normally work with directly. This was the start of a rather adventurous evening....

     So the tale goes as follows: At Rock Bottom Ryan and I ate a ton of food, I mean, it was free. We also drank four beers each, also free and non-inhibiting due to all the food. Afterwards, we went home and made dinner (why? I don't know). We ate dinner (with a beer) then, fully stuffed to the gills, we decided it might be fun to go to the bars. We headed up to Rhein Haus, an awesome German-style bar (for details see the Seattle page). At said Haus, we ordered 1L beers (a delicious hefeweissen)....now, we weren't overly intoxicated at all, but we were completely full. I struggled to actually drink the beer because I had so much food in my stomach...After eventually finishing the colossal brews, we wandered the streets of Capitol Hill, one of Seattle's neighborhoods that has a lot of young hipster types and many many bars. After a long walk we got home safely and slept off our massive stomachs.

     06/06 - Today, Ryan and I ventured out to Alki Beach (pronounced Al-Kai, don't say it wrong or they will give you a hard time lol). We took a water taxi over to West Seattle then a bus or two to the actual beachwalk area. It was a really cool area to visit, fully equipped with a ton of unique restaurants and a lively beach. We went to a lighthouse that was manned by three old-school Coast Guards. I like to think of these old dudes as the first line of defense against the Russians. We ate dinner at a Mexican place called Cactus that was very delicious and moderately priced, I will definitely try to stop by there again.

Alki Beach

A patriotic Seattle shot

Week 22: 05/24-05/30

Week 22

     05/24 - Today was the last day of my dad's time in Seattle. It was really great that he got to spend a few days here to help get me settled and see some cool stuff. For the last day, we headed out to Seward Park, a 300-acre park in the city equipped with walking and biking trails. It was a cool place and had some really tall trees, I think they are cedars. The park is a peninsula that sticks out into Lake Washington and has a view of Mt. Rainier. Unfortunately, my dad never got to see the mountain because he was never here on a day that was clear enough. If it's cloudy at all, the mountain becomes and invisible giant.
     05/25 - This have finally slowed down here in the Emerald City. Today is Memorial Day and instead of going out and doing crazy vacation-y stuff, we're finally taking a day to just chill out. Ryan and I got our stuff figured out at the apartment, unpacked and everything. We ran out to Target downtown and grabbed a couple more forgotten essentials. Today was also monumental because we figured out how the street names work; a first step in starting to act like a local.
     05/26 - Today was my first day at KPFF Consulting Engineers and it was great! The company is very large and very professional. I work on the 16th floor of a central downtown building, which is pretty neat. The staff are all very friendly and many of them are fresh out of their master's programs or have been working for only a few years. It should be a great job. My team leader took me and some other team members out for lunch as a sort of introduction. We went to a delicious Italian place called Il Fornaio, which I'll probably go to again sometime.
     05/27 - So, work is officially a thing so all of the crazy Seattle activity is gonna die down now a bit, which should let me catch up on this blog haha.
     05/30 - Sunny Saturday! Today I joined some people from the office (and Ryan) and we went paddleboarding at Green Lake. It was a lot of fun, I had never been paddleboarding before but it wasn't difficult at all to pick up. Green Lake park was cool too, there's a great bike/walking path around the lake as well as other park stuff.
     When we got back to our apartment we took full advantage of our rooftop grill, making some sweet food decisions in life:

Our view of Rainier from our roof!

Profound Thought: "It's much easier to remember thoughts in the moment, not two weeks after the fact"