Week 33: 08/09-08/15

Week 33

     08/09 - Ahh Home sweet home. It's good to be back in Illinois. Today I visited some family members and my cousin's cafe/bakery. I got to see my cousin's little son Oliver! He's adorable, as most (yes only most) babies are. It was a good day to chill, but I'm off tomorrow to visit Eureka!

     08/12 - I spent a couple days visiting with Melissa's family in small-town, USA: Eureka! Eureka is a nice little town :) That should be their slogan "A nice little town." I had an amazing time and got to go to the Ronald Reagan museum and touch a piece of the Berlin Wall. There is also an amazing pie shop/diner in the area called Busy Corner. Best pie I've ever had. 

Me and Reagan

Melissa and her new dino friends

     One day Melissa surprised me and took me to Peoria's museum to see.... dinosaurs! Actually, they weren't real dinosaurs, but they were engineering dinos, even better! Somewhere somehow somebody (this body) found a way to combine art, dinosaurs, and engineering into a unique exhibit that let people move giant mechanical dinosaur skeletons with the help of pulleys and cables and such. It was a blast and the Peoria riverfront was a nice little walk too. 

     My favorite part of the visit though was just taking walks and relaxing and napping on the porch, keep it simple :)

     08/13 - After returning from Eureka I'm on to my next adventure, Minocqua! Those of you who have been following my blog (Melissa) may remember Minocqua in my first post. Yes, this is the same place. We like to go there as much as possible, certainly in the winter and summer if we can. It takes us between 4-5 hours to get up there but once we're there, we're totally chill. In the summer my grandparents are up there so it's great to spend some time with them!

(Divergence: I'm no longer going to overly concern myself as to specific dates of events, etc. I'll try to record things in a rough order within a given week, but some/most things can be generalized and summarized in better ways than a day-to-day account. End divergence.)
    08/14 - The first full day of Minocqua, summer edition, brought with it some classic relaxation techniques and activities. One of my favorite things to do up North is to canoe. It's nice just being out on the water, chasing down loons and soaking up the not-too-hot sun. This year, we mastered the art of jumping out of the canoe to swim (previously we only ever jumped out of the flatter paddle-boat).
    Another favorite summer activity is to relax in my hammock under the pines, basking in the woodland aromas and chirps of birds.

Not the most glorious shot, but this gets the point across.
Relaxation.

This one's a little trippy due to the nature of panoramas

         One night we went to Thirsty Whale Restaurant to enjoy some on-the-lake food and catch sight of the world famous Minocquabats (A play on Minocqua and acrobats) -- They are a water-skiing troupe. I'm so happy I got to use the word troupe in context. Anyways, my brother's name is Jonah and so we always find reasons to take goofy pictures of him with whales.

Frat star

     08/15 - The last day of our trip we started off well by going to Wolf Pack Cafe. It has the best non-Swedish pancakes in the world, but for real.

Week 32: 08/02-08/08

Week 32

     08/02 - Finally, at long last, I have climbed a mountain and have seen Mt. Rainier up close. Today I went on a hike with some work people up Bearhead Mountain and it was great. The weather was perfectly clear and the mountains were amazing. I'll let the pictures do the rest of the talking.

 

     08/03 - Because it is my last week in Seattle, I have plans to make the most of it. Today I finally tried Pike Place Chowder and it was really good! I got the seafood chowder in a bread bowl. mmmmm :) 

     08/05 - Only a few days left in Seattle and there are a couple things left on my bucket list. Today, I visited one of the last parks I hadn't seen yet in the downtown area, Sculpture Park, while waiting for Shiro's Sushi to open. It was a great place to take a walk or bike and had a few cool sculptures. For dinner I had to try the famous Shiro's Sushi Restaurant. It's supposedly the best sushi in the world outside of Tokyo or something. It definitely lived up to it's reputation and I thought it was 

phenomenal. The sushi bar was very traditional Japanese and a great place to stop if you're in Seattle, albeit pricey.

     08/07 - Today was my last day working at KPFF for the summer! The summer really flew by. I met a ton of great people and learned a lot about structural engineering, it was a great place to work and an amazing experience. 

     Today also happens to be a Fun Friday! After work I joined many of my coworkers at Rock Bottom Brewery for some drinks and food provided by the company. I'm glad to have had the chance to socialize with everyone at work one last time. My coworkers all knew it was my last day so many of them gave me their extra drink tickets....I had a lot of beer.

     After Fun Friday, me and several others ūber-ed on over to Rheinhaus to keep the party going. We got large beers and played some bocce ball....not sure if we played it right or even kept score. All in all, it was a great last day in Seattle and I'm gonna miss this place.

     08/08 - Today is flight day! After three months in Seattle I am headed home! My flight is at 5pm so I took the morning to prep my things and walk around the First Hill neighborhood a little bit. When it was time to catch my train, I lugged all 130 pounds of my luggage down the oh so steep Cherry Street hill. It was a struggle, but I made it. I landed in good 'ole Chicago, IL at around midnight Central Time. Home sweet home.

Profound Thought: "When you're carrying 130 pounds of luggage, airport luggage carts are a must. Spend the $2."

Week 31: 07/26-08/01

Week 31

     07/26 - Today was my chill day as Ryan wanted to get back into study-mode. I wanted to see the Seattle REI Store so I headed to that area of town to check it out. It was a really cool facility and was nestled in a man-made forest of sorts, equipped with biking trails and a waterfall. Everything was expensive, but still a cool store -- from a structural engineer's perspective.

     While I was out and about I also headed over to South Lake Union Park again, just to watch the planes land on the water and read a book. I found yet another "Piano in the Park" there so I played that under a tent as it rained. Finally, I grabbed some chips/guac. at Cactus before heading back to the apartment.

     07/29 - Today I visited the campus of the University of Washington because Ryan was checking out an apartment over there. It was a really cool campus! The buildings were all gothic style and cool looking and there was a great view of Mt. Rainier down an alley of trees.

      07/31 - Not much happened today other than visiting Ezelle's Chicken for dinner. This fried chicken place is supposedly Oprah Winfrey's favorite fried chicken or something, so that's why it's famous. It was pretty good, but I don't know how it's her favorite...

Comrade Lenin

Dusty Strings

     08/01 - Today I did some exploring on my own as a last visit to the Ballard/Fremont area :( I wanted to see a few things in Fremont, namely the large statue of Vladimir Lenin and the house that inspired the movie "Up". While I was there I stopped into a music shop, Dusty Strings. It was a really cool acoustic shop that makes their own hammer dulcimers and harps! I wish I would've stopped in sooner. I also wanted to check out a couple breweries in the area, so I headed towards Stoup Brewery, got sidetracked at Reuben's Brews, and ended up drinking many beers.

Edith Macefield's "Up" house

Lenin in Fremont

Stoup Brewing

Profound Thought of the Week: Art is art, not politics. The statue of Lenin in Fremont made me think about that fact. Who cares why a statue was originally made, it's still art and it's OK to appreciate it as such, even if the original intent was more sinister. Take the Coliseum in Rome, for instance. Yes, it was originally made as a place to execute criminals, enemies of state, slaves, etc. but now we see it purely as an architectural wonder, not caring about the dark politics that created it.

Week 30: 07/19-07/25

Week 30

     07/22 - Today was a fun day because it was the day that I got to show off my mini-putt course building skills. KPFF had all of the interns build a mini-putting course in their cubicles and mine was pretty sweet. It had a failure option as well as a shortcut through a pipe, which I thought was neat. We could only use office supplies that were lying around the office.

     07/24 - Today my work friend Kelly hosted a BBQ at here apartment rooftop. It was a lot of fun just hanging out with people and tossing back some brewskis. We eventually got rained out, but not until after an amazing TRIPLE RAINBOW that we had the most perfect view of. It was OK we were rained out though because we all moved inside and played some games then headed out to a cool bar called Woodsky's, a skiing/snowboarding themed place. They do "shot-skis" with a snowboard that was pretty nifty.

DOUBLE RAINBOW!

Profound Thought: Sometimes you have to get rained on to see a rainbow.

Week 29: 07/12-07/18

Week 29

     07/12 - Exciting and long day today. Thanks to Ryan's parents having a rental car, we finally had the chance to do some exploring outside of the city! We decided to head out to Olympic National Park, the only rainforest in North America. We too the Bainbridge Ferry across the sound to Bainbridge Island. From there we headed out to the north side of the Olympic Peninsula. After a couple of hours we made our first stop at Hurricane Ridge in Olympic National Park. The views were breathtaking (once the clouds blew out a bit) and we met some very friendly deer....so naturally I took a deer selfie. I would suggest going to Hurricane Ridge for sure, particularly on a clear day.

Hurricane Ridge

     After Hurricane Ridge we headed back down towards sea level and drove over (another half hour) to Lake Crescent. This was a cool lake pressed right up against the rainforesty area. Which leads me to the next activity, the rainforest. Where we were, it was easiest to go into the rainforest area by Marymere Falls. The rainforest was crazy cool and the trees were ridiculously huge...ridiculous. It was a nice little hike too, with soft moss, loam, and cedar sawdust underfoot. Also recommended.

     After leaving the rainforest we had a decision to make, keep going around the peninsula or turn back...we kept going, with an ultimate destination of Ruby Beach in mind. However, we got hungry so we stopped in Forks, WA to grab a bite to eat. Luckily, we ate at the only bar in the very small town that wasn't "Twilight" themed, because that's where they filmed those movies and it's all that town really does....other than logging.
     Eventually we arrived at the Pacific Ocean. At long last! Ruby Beach was a really cool place that was covered with large smooth stones, as well as big rock scarps. Because it was a bit overcast, the beach was cool and spooky, giving an ominous power to the ocean's crashing waves.

     After Ruby Beach we began our long drive home, passing through Aberdeen and Olympia on the way south around the peninsula. It was a long day, resulting in around 7.5 hours of driving overall.

     07/15 - Today after work I went with some work people to Food Lifeline, a Northwest food bank. We volunteered packing watermelons! It was a lot of fun and for a great cause, win win win. All in all we set a record by packing 40,000 pounds of watermelon in under two hours!

Before

After

     07/18 - Today Ryan decided it would be good to join me on one of my weekly excursions. We started off by heading out to Volunteer Park in Capitol Hill, one of the few parks I hadn't visited yet. It had a cool water tower and is the location of the famous "Black Sun" sculpture. I also played a "Piano in the Park" art/music piece. From here, we walked over to the cemetery where the one and only Bruce Lee is buried! It was kind of weird to see a tourist attraction in a cemetery, so I didn't take pictures....I'd rather not have the ghost of Bruce Lee haunting me...

      After all the park stuff, Ryan and I jumped on a bus and headed out to Bite of Seattle, an annual food festival. Most of the festival was pretty typical but the actual "bite" part was cool. You get a plate of several different bite-sized versions of local restaurant specialties. My favorite was the steak topped with a blueberry-and-corn salsa. I also really liked the fresh basil/strawberry cheesecake, but everything was on par.
     Keeping the day rolling, I decided that Ryan had to check out Discovery Park (he doesn't get out much due to the GRE). We bused over and chillaxed on the beach. We ended up playing "tide chicken" -- a game we made up where two people sit in the sand, build up walls, and wait for the tide to rush in. The first person to get wet/bail is the loser. It was childish and fun haha. After Discovery we ended the day as all days should be ended: with 8 oz. of grass-fed American beef, fries, and mac n' cheese at 8oz. Burger and Co....still the best burger in the world. It was a long week.

Profound Thought of the Week: Get outside. Now. Just go outside and enjoy it.