Birthday, Take 2

My mom and sister came out to visit me for my birthday week. If I do say so myself, we had an awesome time. It was a good combination of touristy/new city stuff and good ol' hanging out.

One of the new things we did was take in the Wooden Boat Festival. They had a bunch of cool wooden boats ranging from the type of speedboat Indiana Jones almost gets chopped up in in the Last Crusade, to an old navy patrol boat, to your average luxury sailboat. Depending on the owner, and with permission, you could board some of them. We were also given a wooden coin that we were supposed to vote on our favorites with. I voted for the Indiana Jones look-a-like boat.

 Lisa took up crabbing as part of the festival.

We also got an hour sail ride on one of the wooden boats. Our boat had been a fishing boat in Alaska. I think it was built in 1911. Our captain told us that it sailed in the same waters as the boats on "The Deadliest Catch". Given it's size, that was hard to imagine.

We also ate lunch outdoors before going to Pike Place Market. Mom actually found some fish she might enjoy eating.

Their visit happened to coincide with a "bachelorette" viewing, so they were sucked into it without a choice. It is my experience that regardless of a person's reluctance going into this, everyone leaves with the opinion that it was time well spent.

We had a mini-early celebration for mom, and of course were still celebrating my birthday, so party hats were in order.

The weather had warmed up enough that we could pretend it was reasonable to have brunch outside.

We also watched the fireworks from the roof of my condo. It's not often that I celebrate the 4th of July in pants and under a blanket. It was surprisingly cold, but a great view. So glad for their visit!

Early Birthday

My dear friend Joyce just left the country for a few weeks. Because she knew she would miss my birthday, she planned this amazing birthday surprise, consisting of an original birthday song for me, princess hat, and delicious chocolate cake (baked by master chef, Joy). It was a delightful early birthday surprise.

Sunshine

The past weekend in Seattle was beautiful and sunny, simply glorious. Everyone was doing their best to take advantage of it, Henry and myself included. To get ready for the warm weather, we both got our haircut. Mine was a corrective action for a very unfortunate student haircut I got last week. It was a little shocking to lose half my hair unintentionally, but I think it turned out ok.

Short hair!!!

We took our new haircuts for a walk and some outside dining. 

Last Christmas my dad made me a Kubb set, and I hadn't had a change to use it yet. On Sunday afternoon, Henry and I took it to Gas Works Park to try it out. For the uninitiated, Kubb is a lawn game that involves throwing sticks at each other.

Kite hill

As any sunny day, Gas Works was bustling. It is still on our to-do list to acquire and fly an awesome kite. Maybe next week...

View from Kite hill.

We got our game set up, and commenced the stick throwing.

I was still winning when this was taken...

The game consists of a lot of wooden blocks, which can be kind of awkward to carry around. Although I only live 2 blocks from the park, it's still long enough to be inconvenient. Enter the blue beast. The blue beast is an old suitcase that I brought back to Seattle from NE when I needed more suitcase space than planned. It was supposed to enter retirement at that point, but has been pulled out to serve as my Kubb carrying case. Henry was delighted to carry it around the park, needing to take a break halfway there. 

Blue beast in action

Of course, we weren't the only people in the park getting some looks. In our search to find a suitable field for our game in the park, we came across some "knights" in training.

Lancelot v. Galahad

My thoughts: it was way too warm to be wearing all that armor.

For Guinevere!

Funny times.

Restaurant Week

Last week was restaurant week. Henry, some other friends, and I took this opportunity to eat at the Columbia Tower Club. The Columbia Tower is the tallest building in Seattle, and the very top floor is a restaurant and club that you can only eat at if you are a member. Except during restaurant week, when the let the rest of the little people in. Pictured is the view from the restaurant, and the compelling reason for going. We quickly learned that the food and service are not the reasons to go...

Spring Break

This spring break was as expected, wild and crazy. To start it off, I spent a couple of days working, hanging out in a rainy Seattle. Everyone's dream, really.

Henry was doing a lot of work as well, but we decided we would take one day and go to the  happenin' town of Tacoma. For those of you who don't know, Tacoma's a pretty exciting destination, if by pretty exciting you mean the armpit of Washington and by destination you mean a 20 minute drive. To give you an idea of the excitement that goes on here, if only we had come a couple weeks later we could have seen Rammstein play at the Tacoma Dome.

Pictured: Tacoma Dome. Not Pictured: The aroma from Tacoma.

Tacoma does have some redeeming qualities, however. Most notably, it is home to the Museum of Glass. It includes a lot of work by Dale Chihuly, a pretty famous local glass blower who does incredible work. Henry and I were really looking forward to seeing it.

Of course, being so close to Seattle, we didn't get much break in the weather. Our day of exploration was cold and rainy.

Cold and rained on is our natural state.

We set off on our adventure only to discover that the Museum of Glass is closed on Tuesdays, the day we choose. Boo. Strike one, Tacoma.

We were able, however, to walk through an outdoor glass tunnel leading up to the museum, featuring Chihuly's work. It was gorgeous.

A tease for what we couldn't see in the museum.

Glass from the tunnel.

So pretty.

More blown glass artwork featured outside near the tunnel.

After suffering this disappointment, we decided to go for the third best thing, the Washington State Historical Museum (second choice was the zoo and aquarium, but it was raining so hard we didn't think an outdoor adventure would be much fun). This time we made sure to call the museum to make sure they were open. The voice recording for the museum assured us that they were open on Tuesdays. So we went, paid for parking, and walked up to the museum. Closed. Strike two, Tacoma.

By this time the rain had abated enough that we thought we could be outside and not be completely miserable. So we went to the zoo and aquarium, which we really enjoyed. They had a pretty cool fish tank, and some peacocks that roamed free (those kinda weirded us out though). The penguins were cute, but I think we were both impressed the most by the walruses. That is one large, ugly animal. They were fascinating.

After heading back to Seattle for some more work, the next leg of my spring break extraordinaire was to head home to Nebraska. This is always a welcome break. I hung out with family, ate well, and played some games. I even took in some bowling with my mom and dad.

On her way to 300...

The main reason for the trip was to celebrate my grandparents' 65th wedding anniversary. This is an amazing accomplishment and it was so nice to see the entire family. It was a lovely time at home.

Congrats!

My New Residence: The Current Look

Finally - here are some pics from how it looks for now...

Living room

Before (before paint, blinds, and storage)

After (with Liz Lemon)

I don't have a name for this corner of the living area, so I'm taking suggestions.

Before

After

Dining area (this isn't all that accurate  - although dining happens here, it is probably better described as the office)

Dining Room

Kitchen, with only minimal changes so far.

Before

After (and still in progress)

I think my favorite change to the kitchen is all the photos of new babies of friends and family on my fridge.

My New Residence: Project Indecision

Some of these pictures are quite old already, but I haven't gotten around to posting them yet. As documented here, my house wasn't painted exactly as I would have desired when I moved in (think blue). The first order of business after simply putting all my junk away, was to change all the walls and create a home that didn't constantly make me feel like I was living in a high school band uniform. I wasn't sure how bad this process would be, but it turned out to be pretty okay, probably because I had some great help. My parents were instrumental in transforming it and deserve much of the credit for helping me paint. As evidenced by the pictures below, I found it incredibly difficult to pick paint colors. I had no idea there were that many shades of beige, or that I could care so much about how they differed (or weren't different, if you asked my dad).

20 shades of beige to find the right one...

Of course, once I picked a color for the living room, I still had to pick one for the bathroom. These choices were all over the place. I really wanted a nice gray, but they all looked too concrete/prison-ish, so I ended up with a random and unplanned green instead. It's not my favorite, but it's way better than the old color and does the job for now.

I think I had this pattern on a shirt in the 80's

Hard as it was for me to pick colors, my parents had the really difficult job actually helping put it on the wall.

Good-bye, blue!

I also took advantage of having a master electrician for the weekend, and changed out the amazingly bad pendant that cast a weird yellow glow on everything. Although this was consistent with the blue/gold theme the previous owner had going on, it was not working for me.

Goodbye, yellow glow!

And what is any home improvement without something from Ikea?

Assembling the blürg table.

The bedroom wasn't tackled in the same weekend as the rest of the house, but was a summer project. Not surprisingly, I was no more efficient at picking colors here than for the other rooms. Once again, this room could have gone in multiple directions, from poop brown to cotton candy pink (I told my friend she could pick any color and I would give it serious consideration on my wall. Serious consideration for cotton candy pink did not last long). One of these colors was chosen, so keep that in mind when making fun of the colors in the comments...

After all this painting, I am very tickled with how it looks now. "After" pictures to come.