On the Coast

As we speak we're enjoying a lovely vacation in Oregon.

Been staying at the very nice Inn at Manzanita.


Nice brochures, but what's that in the upper right-hand corner?

At least there's a map . . .


Anyway, here are some photos:

Mimi on the coast, Friday morning



I had to get sunglasses it's so sunny . . . and I didn't want to spend more than $10 . . .



been some cute clouds, too, though


Went for a run Saturday morning:






If you're ever in Manzanita, we urge you to try the Bread and Ocean Bakery. Bring cash and an appetite!

Photo from the Bread and Ocean website.


We also had good luck at the Cloud and Leaf Bookstore. What did I buy? That first Obama book, since we don't have our own copy. How about that debate, by the way? Obama! Yay! Obama!


Okay, anyway, we also found some great yarn at T-Spot Yarn, Teas, and Chocolates.



For lunch, we drove up to Cannon Beach:

w/Haystack rock






taste of my own medicine w/respect to reflective glasses . . .



close-up






Went to Tillamook to take a look at the place our cheese comes from:






On Highway 101:


What's that in my glasses?

Oh! It's Emily!


Well, goodnight, reader.

I Can Run!

Emily and I arrived early and lined up on Sunday to run in the Fremont Oktoberfest Brew Ha-Ha 5k. And I finished it, too!



They gave us these cute chips, so my better-than-expected-even-if-less-than-stellar time was very accurately recorded:
I finished in 26:17. 241st place! Woo!


Emily was right behind me, at 26:23.
Before you start worrying about how I got in front of her, please note that she was 22nd out of the 150 women ages 30-39, whereas I was 55th out of the 124 30-39 year-old dudes. Healthy bit of perspective, that.

Complete results here.


Here's an action shot:

Cloudy, yes, but luckily (?) it didn't start raining until after the race.


But that didn't stop us from sampling some of the beer at the Oktoberfest.

I hope you like that cute mug as much as I do.



I did feel a little bad for the people who had to fill them . . .



Cheers, reader.

Mostly a Test, Though it is Funny

Coming up next: report on racing and beer tasting at the Fremont Oktoberfest.

Hooray!

Hooray for local food!

Boy was I hungry.

Luckily we had recently been to the nearby farmers market. We found some freshly picked spinach; we also found some great tomatoes, onions, and chile peppers--we used those last in making a fabulous long-cooked lamb shoulder. My oh my.

Where can such wonderful recipes be found? My current favorite cookbook, The Art of Simple Food, by Alice Waters.

And where can you find local, grass-fed lamb? Olsen Farms sells lamb at the farmers market. And not just lamb--they also sell those delicious and oh-so-cute tiny potatoes. Hooray!

Hooray for dessert, too!

Emily made a wonderful apple pandowdy with some local apples (this is Washington, after all). Mmm.

Sunny and Funny

Had a chance (in between grading papers--summer teaching: it's a pain, but it pays; and the small classes are a nice change of pace)--had a chance, that is, to do some riding out on the Burke-Gilman Trail. Beautiful weather lately. Just beautiful.


Anyway, here's Mimi at Matthews Beach Park--it's like 8 or maybe 9 miles from Capitol Hill, so there's proof that (every now and then) I do leave the neighborhood. I guess Lake Washington (being smaller than Puget Sound) is even warm enough for swimming this time of year . . .



And now for some "huh?" news:
Got a letter yesterday that started with the phrase "dear friend"--that's right, it's from John McCain. Somehow someone thought I should be on the RNC's mailing list, and that they ought to ask me to contribute to the McCain campaign. Wow.

Anyhow, here's the email I wrote them:

"I don't know how you got my address, why you think I would ever support your candidates, or why you hate America so much, but in any case please remove me from your mailing list. Please!"

And their charming reply:
"Thank you for contacting the Republican National Committee. We certainly appreciated your email, and will include your thoughts in our report to the Chairman. Please do not hesitate to contact us in the future with any of your thoughts, opinions or observations."

Huh.

Some Rage, Some Facts, and Something For Our Nerves

(photo by Robert Stolarik for The New York Times)

Hey, remember Rage Against the Machine? I know Marisa does (Hi Ryan!). Saw them in the news the other day. I guess they had protest shows at both conventions. Ran into some entertaining trouble outside the RNC, according to the Times:

On Tuesday [2 September] a five-band protest concert was scheduled on the lawn of the State Capitol above St. Paul. Near the end of the day the four members of Rage pulled up and were immediately surrounded by the police. The band members were told that they were not going to take the stage because they were not on the bill — but there were no bands listed on the permit. And so the four members of the band walked out into the crowd, which was chanting, “Let them play!,” and someone handed them a megaphone. With the guitarist Tom Morello vocalizing instrumental interludes, Mr. de la Rocha did two songs: “Bulls on Parade” and “Killing in the Name.” The crowd surged around the band and filled in the musical gaps.

Too cool and/or funny to be true? There's video evidence . . .

Oh what the hell, here's the album cut:




Speaking of politics, it's amusing to note that when the McCain folks accused Obama of mis-stating the facts, and credited factcheck.org, that group issued a statement saying that McCain was mis-stating their claims . . . sigh.
(Thanks, Deron. And while I'm at it, thanks for the comment, Deron and Haley. We miss you too! Come visit Seattle!)


Finally, for those of us worried by recent election news, The Stranger ran a recent column outlining some treatment options.



Here are my personal favorites:

PALINIUM
Effects: Induces a Valium-like calm with respect to all things Sarah Palin and predisposes the mind to recall that she has only been on the national stage a few minutes and yet already has a pattern of political falsehoods, a knocked-up daughter pressed into a shotgun relationship, a cadre of small-town enemies crawling out of her closet, and an abuse-of-power investigation in her home state that's being run, helpfully, by a Democrat. While on Palinium, you will be soothed by repeated waves of placidity and feel certain that all of these Palin vulnerabilities will somehow lead to a Republican-ticket implosion within the next few weeks.

CELLEXA
Recommended dosage: Four pills once a week or as needed depending on friends' moods and tracking-poll consumption.

Effects: Encourages the following response to any apocalyptic discussion of negative poll numbers: "Yeah, but pollsters can't reach people who have only cell phones. And most young voters have only cell phones, not land lines, and young people as a group are overwhelmingly in favor of Barack Obama, and therefore these new poll numbers probably aren't as bad as they seem... Okaybye... Text you later."

Possible side effects: Cancerous brain tumors.

BRADLEY EFFEXOR
Recommended dosage: Twice daily in last two weeks of October and three times daily in first week of November. As needed until then.

Effects: Much like ecstasy, this drug floods the brain with serotonin, producing a sensation that the world is full of love, that this love resides within all of us, that it is present now, that the patient can feel it (and is perhaps aroused by it), and that therefore no one would ever tell a pollster that he or she is voting for a black man and then go into a voting booth and, out of coldhearted racism and weasely cowardice, vote for the old white guy.

ELECTRO-COLLEGE SHOCK THERAPY
Recommended dosage: For use only in extremely persistent cases of acute election-related anxiety, and to be administered only by trained professionals.

Effects: Via electric current through brain and shouted commands audible to patient during treatment, recipient of Electro-College Shock Therapy learns, once and for all, that nothing matters except for the Electoral College vote totals—not the popular vote, not the national polls, nothing, nothing, nothing but the Electoral College vote totals. Patient also is implanted with the indelible memory that Barack Obama has led John McCain in projected Electoral College vote totals for the entire race so far.

Possible side effects: Incapacitating obsession with polling data from states such as Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Michigan, Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and others.

WEST VIAGRA
Recommended dosage: 16 mg at first sign of despair over chances of Democrat winning White House.

Effects: Strong confidence in the idea that demographic changes in the Mountain West, and a startling increase in elected Democrats in the region over the last 10 years, mean that Barack Obama will win Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada—and maybe even Montana and Arizona, too—thus triggering a landslide Obama victory that will make even Ronald Regan's corpse jealous.

Possible side effects: Impulse to wear Carhartt jackets and large belt buckles, attraction to people who look like Jon Tester.

INTERNETSAPRO
Recommended dosage: One pill whenever an effective John McCain advertisement comes out.

Effects: Patient will recall, for a minimum of six hours straight, that Barack Obama is doing something with the internet that no other politician in American history has ever done before, and will further recall that Obama has raked in, and will continue to rake in, a ton of money off the internet—money that can be used to bury John McCain in pro-Obama advertisements in the closing weeks of the campaign. Patient will also remember that Obama has more friends on Facebook than anyone, ever, or something like that, and that these types of opportunities for direct communication with voters give Obama a huge advantage and help him continue to build a campaign that is more like a mass grassroots movement than anything else.

Possible side effects: internet addiction, mounting credit-card debt from repeated online donations.

(You know, I just did a unit in my ethics class on the morality of finding and reproducing things online, and I still have no idea whether or not it's okay to put that much of that column on my blog . . .)

Hope you feel better soon!

Beach, Fish, Kuhl

As fun as all this going from inspiration, hope, and excitement to sheer terror is, I'm going to stay away from politics for a day or two . . .

For example, here's a photo of Emily at Alki Beach, where we went for a run:

I don't know about you, but all these warm sunny days are getting a bit old, don't you think?

Now, it's true that we were there on one of Mayor Nickels' experimental car free Sundays; and I hear that Emily signed a petition against the war in Iraq; and Yancy did pick up a Mass Transit Now sign . . . but at least I made no mention of presidential politics, so that's a nice change of pace . . .

In any case, lovely day for a run; or, in my case, a bit of running combined with some leisurely walking.


Lest you should think it's all leftist propaganda and healthy living, I offer this photo from Pike Street Fish Fry, a new fish & chips place on Capitol Hill.

Fried fish in a cup! How can that not be good? And the marlin? Maybe the best fried fish I have ever tasted . . .


Finally, we saw Kuhl the other day. First time in like 7 years.

Definitely worth the wait.
(Although, alas, we were not present when this shot was taken. Thanks for the photo, Eamon.)


Why, yes, it is an iPhone. Like, wow.



Hopefully it won't be another seven years . . .

I don't know

what I'd do if it weren't for Jon Stewart.
This clip is a real must-see:

Nice to See You Again

As I'm sure you're aware, the big annual meeting of the Society of American Archivists was last week. Emily spent like six days in San Francisco learning about archives, meeting other archivists, and doing a little sight-seeing.

Here she is near the Bay, by Ghirardelli Square


It was quite hilly, but the trip back to the hotel was okay, thanks to this cable car:

Or so I'm told

But how do they work? I'm not exactly sure, but at the cable car museum she was able to see the cables themselves . . .




the Bay


And what did she do as soon as she was back home in Seattle? She ran the
Nike+ Human Race 10k, of course. Her screen name is eMily, if you wanted to check out her stats . . .

Emily's time: 1:05'16"
her rank overall (as of Monday afternoon): 17766
and among women: 4643

(Yancy? Well, I ran about five miles--not a 10k, but not bad, right?)


But I guess my point is Huzzah for Emily; and welcome home!