Auf nach Austin

Today I left for Austin. Check out my travelogue if you want to see pictures.

Triangle of Niceness

This was the last day I’d be in Seattle for a while, so Rachel and I decided to continue our tour of Seattle parks with Carkeek Park and Kerry Park. Carkeek was nice, but the view at Kerry is simply amazing! It reminded me a lot of Sacre Coeur in Paris. If you are ever in Seattle, you have to see it sometime before you leave. Go to Queen Anne and enjoy the view. It may take a while to find the park, but you’ll enjoy walking around the neighborhood and gazing at expensive homes. There are two nearby parks west of here (I don’t remember the names, one of them was a garden and the other sported a European-style staircase), and we named the area the Triangle of Niceness. It fits well.

Take two

Woke up this morning to go to my parents’ church for the last time in a while (since I’m moving to Austin on Friday). It’s weird watching a traditional church try to do contemporary music — although it’s a good thing for them, a lot of the congregation still doesn’t seem to catch on to it, and the worship band doesn’t always seem in touch with the congregation. For instance on the closing song after singing through it twice they repeated the chorus a capella, which can be really good if the congregation’s into it… but they weren’t, and it really fell flat on its face since not too many people had caught on to the chorus yet. Oh well, that’s the learning process. I’ll just chalk it up as one more reason why things like a capella choruses shouldn’t be planned beforehand, but thrown in by the worship leader if s/he feels the congregation knows the music well and if the Spirit so leads.

More sequels… and more cowbell

I went and saw Spider-Man 2 with Matt today out in Lacey. Between this and The Bourne Supremacy which I saw last night with Danny, I’m really optimistic about this summer’s movies. I really hope the studios have learned their lesson after last year’s horrible crop of unnecessary sequels. Both sequels I’ve seen this year have actually outdone the originals and have well-crafted stories and characters in addition to great action. Anyway, Matt and I went to the Cold Stone Creamery afterwards, which is like a Starbucks-ized version of The Mix. Good ice cream, and if you ring the cowbell near the cash register, the employees will break out into song. I’m glad I don’t work there.

Smile and nod

I had the strangest conversation this afternoon waiting for Danny to show up at the theater in Renton to watch The Bourne Supremacy. While I was waiting out front, a short, middle-aged man approached me, and started talking. It was hard to understand him, and he wandered from point to point, but by the end I understood that (a) he was waiting for someone who was supposed to show up to see a movie that started half an hour earlier, (b) if I was to see a tall Caucasian man named Todd I was to stop him and let him know his friend was waiting, (c) he disapproves of the competitive bidding process used by the military because he thinks the Blue Angels deserve better planes, and (d) he had a dyslexic friend, who, instead of reading FORD as Found On Road Dead, reads it backwards as DROF — Driver Returns on Foot. I didn’t know what to make of it, so I smiled and nodded a lot, with a few brief one-word responses. Whenever I encounter such people, I always wonder what kind of response they’re expecting from me, or what kind of response they’re used to getting from others, or how they interact with family or others they live or work with. Society’s a funny thing.

Steve’s Blog: The Beginning

This was the second-to-last day I would see Rachel before moving to Austin. We finally made it to Cedars, a Mediterranean/Middle-Eastern/Indian restaurant in the U-District (across the street from Ghetto Safeway), after saying for months that we’d eat there. Excellent food, and their Tandoori Chicken has an outside shot at making Rachel’s list of “Best Places to Get Chicken in the U-District”. It had been almost four years since I had eaten here last, and I always said I would come back sometime before I left, so I’m happy to have slipped that one in before leaving. Afterwards we continued our tour of Seattle parks by heading to Seward Park, which had its share of harrowing moments. I’ll let Rachel describe them on her blog (it’s on the July 22 entry). Also, before I forget: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BRIAN BOYLES!!!