I'm a movin'

Yup, it's time, my two years in one place timer has gone off and I'm packin' up this joint and movin'...5 miles north of here. This is odd, I don't often move homes an stay in the same state, usually if I'm going to go through the upheaval of moving I do it up right and get the hell out of Dodge. I love it here, Seattle really suits me, and so I'm not planning to leave the area any time soon. In fact, this move is happening because I'm flirting with the idea of spending a bit more quality time in Seattle, where the housing market defies gravity, 'look it floats, even without a bubble." I like peeps I work for and the peeps I hang with and so I'm thinking it might be nice to be able to keep those things and also afford to buy a place of my own someday, or at least have the option of purchasing in the near-ish future.
I'm going to house sit for 6 months and then well, then, I'm not really sure yet, but those 6 months of no rent should give me a good footing for the next 'thing'.
SO, in honor of my current yet soon to be former apartment, I'm going to share some of the wonderful things in my neighbor hood, in my neighboorhood, in my neighhhboooorhoood. (Sesame Street song)

I live in Pioneer Square, the location of the second Euro-American settlement in Seattle. The first was Alki beach, but the settlers decided that this side of the bay was way cooler, well warmer that is, more sheltered from storms and deeper moorage for boats. Pioneer Square is home of the 'First Everything' in Seattle: first meeting hall, first house, steam mill etc. Seattle was built up pretty swiftly because of the trees ie. timber in the area, and then it burned. It burned to the ground, in 1889 when a glue pot boiled over. After the fire, they rebuilt the city right on top of the rubble. I live on the 3rd floor of my building but there is another story complete with another set of sidewalks, a good ten feet below today's sidewalks.

Now a days, Pioneer Square has become this fascinating melange of tourists, here to see the history, homeless, here for the fabulous services, and people like me who love living in the high ceiling ed lofty studio apartments. Here's a taste of my home village, check it out.

A Tale of Two Sleeping Bags

My mantle is shifting. I bought a bike last week, many thanks to Tom for doing most (all) of the leg work on that one. I've started riding the bike to work each day and am learning a lot in a little space of time. I've kinda thrown myself into the fire of downtown rush-hour traffic. It's thrilling.

I'm rolling the right leg of my pants up and trying to not rear-end a taxi. You can get going at pretty swift little clip barreling south on 2nd street, and well, even though there is a bike lane, taxis and parked cars don't always remember to look for cyclists. Actually no one ever really remembers to look for cyclists and if they do see me they always assume that they have time to pull out in front of me 'cause, you know, bikes are slow. Wrong. Bikes are fast and light and terribly nimble, remember that the next time you see me approaching. Nimble.

Gear comes with bikes, well, the need for gear. I've been haunting the bargain basement of REI for the last few weeks, I work two blocks away, and so I can stalk some of the things I need, waiting patiently until some person returns a fender or bike lock or head lamp. With gear and a general acceptance of the scrappiness of my true self I've been slowly but surely remembering how very much I love little daily adventures and so I finally purchased something I should have bought years ago - A sleeping bag.

The only sleeping bag I've owned is the one that I've owned for at least 25 years, if not 27. It is my Hulk. Covered with Captain America, the Incredible Hulk, and Spiderman my blue flannel lined sleeping bag just doesn't cut it on camping trips. For the life of me I can't remember what sleeping bag I used when I was camping in high school or for the summer I worked for the Forest Service, must have been one I borrowed. Now with my super tight new, birthday present from the parents, sleeping bag I can plan to sleep away more. I can pack up and move out, move on.

Other exciting news - I wrote a grant for the non-profit I volunteer for and we got it! Our first grant, it will provide funding to teach book-making classes in Seattle Public Libraries. Little pat on the back for me and many thanks to the peeps who helped out on that project.

My computer has kicked the proverbial bucket and is going to the doctor this weekend. If it can't recover I'll be coughing up the dough for a new one but I have high hopes for my current beast. It's been with me for years and is built for strength so I'm sure things will be fine. In the meantime I'm using my crap-top and while it doesn't have all of its marbles, as I type this the mouse cursor is randomly cruising around the screen, it will suffice.

Big weekend ahead, Blue Scholars and Cloud Cult in concert, tomatoes to be canned, zucchinis to be pickled and art to be made ...... contentment.

How to watch Baseball

My cousin is moving to Hong Kong, he's one of those teachin' fools, the ones who go from country to country teaching kids to speak the English. He and his wife Heather have worked in Poland and Korea (south) and now after a year(?) hiatus in the states they're headed back out there, to be foreigners again. They leave in September, assuming the visas all check out, but in the meantime we've got them for another month. I set a goal with Kevin for the month; go an M's game for each home stand till they leave. That's only like, what, two games a week, tops? Totally achievable.

I love Baseball.

If you don't already know this about me you probably should, (one more confession this week). I love live baseball. I can listen to it on the radio with relative attentiveness or I can nap to it while it plays on the TV, but watching, live, that's where it's at.

The Mariner's came to Seattle the same year I did, 1977, a good year. I don't remember when I saw my first game, (family any guesses?) but I do remember a few key firsts connected with the Mariners. -

The first time I realized I needed glasses.

"Hey Dad, what's the score?"
"What you're saying you can't see the score board?"

Sixth grade and my sister had just been to the eye doctor to get her first pair of glasses, so naturally my parents thought I was exaggerating my difficulty. I don't blame them, I was always coming up with some new story. Like the one where I told my family that I had already had kids and a husband, and was living my life in reverse (grade school). But it turned out that my eyes were worse than my sister's and I've had corrected eyes ever since. Ha! Take that parents!

Last night however, I had two firsts.

1) I finally mastered the art of sunflower seed consumption. Well kinda mastered, I managed to accidentally spit a bit of seed on the person sitting below me, but what you don't know...A great activity for the fidgety; you pack a cheek with seeds and then shell and disassemble them inside your mouth. The salty seeds create a lot of spit so you have to finesse the shell out of your mouth without drooling and without dislodging the hard won tasty seed. From the look on Greg's face I'm pretty sure I looked like an earnest squirrel. What does an earnest squirrel look like? Puffy cheeks, eyes squinting with concentration and tiny furrowed brow.

2) Then there was the 8-1DP, Ichiro caught the pop-up fly all the way out in center and lasered it right to Hernandez who tagged the runner out at home. Everyone lost it, jumping up and yelling and yelling and then I fainted. Seriously. My first faint. I'm not a fainter, not much of a blushing flower but apparently I'm no match for gravity and low blood sugar. We won by the way, in extra innings but we won.

More baseball tom morrow, the idiot Red Sox are in town, I'll try to stay fully conscious this time.

Pretty Things

After camping came 5 full days of making things, pretty things. I'm revisiting the instant gratification of cyanotypes, a contact printing method that was one of the first techniques I learned way back in my artistic infancy. To increase the immediacy of the prints I've discovered how to print digital negatives. It can be tricky to maintain gray tones with digital negatives but I think I've finally got the hang of it and so am churning out the images. I've had a bit of a hard time getting back into the swing of going to the office each day when there are so many pretty things to make at home. Evan called it a vacation hangover.

Regardless, if I'm going to have a job the one I have is pretty spectacular. I recognize how special it is to get to have a say in your job description. Plus occasionally, like today, I get to say... juggle bags of m&m's in the supply store and no one looks at me like I'm crazy, they just get up and join in the play.

On Lopez

I've known for a while now that there was one thing I wanted to do to celebrate my 30th birthday. I wanted to revisit the San Juan Islands. My first thought was to rent a cabin for a weekend in September with some friends and sit about for a few days just drinking wine, playing cards and generally enjoying each other's company. I had some difficulty motivating the troops to plan that far in advance, September is still over a month away. Then life sort of paused for a month or so, there were so many more important things to think about and feel from April to June. When the dust started to settle from the upheaval of life, I started to think again of the islands and of vacation.

This trip came together easily, Tom did most of the reservation work and he and Erin packed up all of the gear we would need. Sunday morning at 6am I met up with Becca, my old chum from high school, as well as Erin and Tom. We strapped the bikes to the roof of the car and caravaned up to catch the ferry from Anacortes. I rode up with Becca and we caught each other up on the comings and goings of life, stopping only for a momentary doughnut/coffee break.

Sky densely gray, the islands looked a deep velvety evergreen from the docks. Frances and Ian met up with us in line and we managed to cram everyone's gear into the one car. The rest of the morning was spent going and getting and upgrading sites and unpacking and setting up. We set out on our bikes at about noon and headed straight for Tom's favorite spot on Lopez, Shark reef.

The ride was challenging, but only a challenge, not a heart breaker. Lopez is 'the flat island' with gently rolling hills and what I like to think of as a Prairie Landscape. There are rolls of hay, sheep, cows, gentle farms, quiet roads and modest homes (mostly owned by the very wealthy). Oh and bunnies, lots of bunnies.

At shark reef, which has neither sharks nor reef by the way, but it does have a rocky shelf. The shelf is ten to twenty feet below the surface of the water and so on a gray day with no reflection from the water you can see straight to the bottom. The shelf drops off into a bull-kelp forest, an entire vast habitat of sea life. We watched as harbor seals swam in and out of the kelp, gracefully and intently chasing fish. One seal chased an entire school to the surface, his wide pink mouth fiercely breaking the surface as an explosion of silver fishes leaping out of the water ringing his head.

We ate and slept and read and biked and biked. Tom began to teach me the finer points of shifting gears and my legs, my legs screamed about the hills. I got to be reacquainted with all the reasons I'm good at camping - don't mind not showering for days on end, can sleep anywhere and through anything, really like fire, can plan an entire meal using only one dish, and just like working my way through life.

When we left the island the sun had finally returned and I hung out on the back deck of the ferry watching the water slide back into our wake. There were porpoises and even more striking there was a humming-bird flitting about on deck. He appeared from across the water, the nearest island was at least a mile away. It was amazing to see something so small knowing it had come so far.

Summer Classes at Seattle Center for Book Arts

You can find more info on these great classes here

"Book in a Box" Workshop with David Francis
Date: Saturday and Sunday, August 4 & 5
Time: 10 am – 4 pm (with a break for lunch)
Location: 2100 Building, 2100 24th Ave. S. (in Rainier Valley), Seattle, WA
Cost: $140 + $15 materials fee

Bringing Book Arts to the Classroom: K-12 Teachers' Workshop
Date: Saturday, August 18
Time: 9 am – 12 pm
Location: 2100 Building, 2100 24th Ave. S. (in Rainier Valley), Seattle, WA
Cost: $50 + $10 materials fee

Letterpress Postcard Workshop
Date: Saturday & Sunday, August 25 & 26
Time: 10 am – 3 pm
Location: Cornish College of the Arts, 1000 Lenora Street, Seattle, WA [map]
Cost: $150 + $25 materials fee (Special student rate of $75 + $25 materials fee)

Smote - The Bottom of a Glass

Soo... yeah... its been a while... and well... some things have changed, as well they should, from time to time. Lately, I've had the opportunity to enjoy the process of getting to know my brain. I've delved deeply into the oh so interesting world of sober self analysis. It's a blast.

My goal is to be as aware and present as possible for every moment in my life. I'm accomplishing this through a challenging cocktail of sobriety (no drugs or alcohol), daily yoga, and meditation. The most challenging part of all of this is hanging out with myself all the time. When I'm chillin' by my self my brain tends to run around poking it's nose in all my bizness. It's like spending a lot of time with a close -talker or with a person who has no sense of personal space... something is just a little over aggressive and discomforting. I'm told that the yoga and meditation will start to teach my mind some boundaries, that disciplining it will become effortless with time.

When my sister an I were growing up my mom would occasionally get fed up with our constant questions. "How do I...?" "where is the ...?" and eventually she would distract and enable us by saying "I don't know, what would you do if I wasn't here?"

So now, after years of being an absentee parent to my precocious mind... I've got to teach it about boundaries, and about hot burners and that sometimes mom needs some quiet time. Goodness.