Seattle/Potlatch
Mar. 6th, 2008 12:11 pmJust some highlights from a very full 5 days:
We flew in Thursday morning and had lunch at Anthony's at the airport because our car rental was stunningly cheaper if we picked it up at 1:00 instead of noon. (The food was great, so we made plans to eat dinner there on our way out as well.) Then we headed for the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, where the sun came out and shone on the Chihuly Bridge of Glass for us. Lino Tagliapietra is the museum's current exhibit artist and his work is just stunning. Plus, we just happened to be there while he was in residence, doing demonstrations. What luck!
Thursday evening we met my uncle & aunt for dinner, seeing their house in Columbia City for the first time, and walking to a great Caribbean restaurant in their neighborhood. 'Uncle' sounds so old, but he's only 10 years older than me (though I have 4 more uncles and aunts even younger than him, just on that side of the family).
Friday morning was sunny again, so we quickly ducked over to the new sculpture park. If you click on their 'take a tour' button, the first one that comes up is my favorite, Wake by Richard Serra. They're these massive rusted iron 'waves' that you can walk around. I can't explain it, but I just adored them. Afterwards we had lunch with Genoa Caldwell whom![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
magscanner has been working with on various Burton Holmes projects. We went to Chaco Canyon Cafe which offered some very strange food. I had their yellow curry bowl made with kelp noodles, served cold because it's from their raw foods section of the menu. I'm sure it was quite nutritious.
Back at the hotel I napped, not having slept soundly the night before, and entirely missed the apparently amazing downpour. We lucked into a cheerful dinner group with Carrie R, Andy H,akirlu, and libertango where we ate Mongolian barbecue that was sensibly priced for a single serving, all I ever usually eat at them, instead of the usual all-you-can-eat. It's been ages since I've been to one, and I was pleased to see that they now cook your selections mostly in one place instead of pushing them around the entire grill, though I did still end up with a scrap of magscanner's cilantro in my dish, probably transferred via their cooking/chopping spatulas.
Saturday we also lucked into a lunch expedition withwild_patience, calimac, and Stu S. The kebabs place we were headed towards wasn't open yet, so we ended up at a vegetarian Thai place called Veggie Veggie that was so good, magscanner and I went back there for lunch on Monday. The afternoon panels on Parable of the Sower and atheism were both thought provoking and provided much conversational material for the rest of the con, one of the main things I want from programming. Dinner was a delicious though leisurely Indonesian feast with John B, Eileen G, Jeanne G. and Scott C. The restaurant must not have expected much business on a Saturday night. Our dishes came out slowly, one at a time, but since we were sharing them, it worked out fine, almost like a tasting menu, and all of them were delicious. We finished with their iced durian dessert, which included a portion of fresh durian that had Eileen swooning in pleasure.
Sunday we had reservations at the Herbfarm Restaurant, so we skipped the banquet and went to visitgreenshadows' delightful nursery and meet the man himself. What fun! If I were local, I'd be a regular for sure. I couldn't take any of his lovely plants home with me, but I did pick up some ornamental seeds for climbing on our new fence (including a morning glory that looks like a clematis!), and some Chinese seeds from a local importer, included the rather entertainingly named "Stallion" white cucumber.
The Herbfarm deserves its own post, so I'll skip to the Dead Dog which was pleasingly populated. I had a fascinating conversation with Cliff W. wherein I learned all sorts of stuff about how mail gets sorted and the difficulties with Netflix envelopes. Monday morningwild_irises arranged for me to meet her sister-in-law who is highly involved in Seattle Tilth and wanted to hear more about the sustainable vegetable gardening class I just finished teaching. I fear I was less eloquent than I might have been at that point in the convention, but I hope we can get an e-mail correspondence started. The cold that had been threatening ![[info]](https://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
magscanner all weekend was in full bloom finally, so we regretfully declined the dim sum expedition with davidlevine, kateyule, and Lise, and had soothing soup at the veggie Thai place instead. Then we went to the Museum of Flight, where we found much more to look at than we expected, and finally to the airport, another delicious meal at Anthony's, then home.
We flew in Thursday morning and had lunch at Anthony's at the airport because our car rental was stunningly cheaper if we picked it up at 1:00 instead of noon. (The food was great, so we made plans to eat dinner there on our way out as well.) Then we headed for the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, where the sun came out and shone on the Chihuly Bridge of Glass for us. Lino Tagliapietra is the museum's current exhibit artist and his work is just stunning. Plus, we just happened to be there while he was in residence, doing demonstrations. What luck!
Thursday evening we met my uncle & aunt for dinner, seeing their house in Columbia City for the first time, and walking to a great Caribbean restaurant in their neighborhood. 'Uncle' sounds so old, but he's only 10 years older than me (though I have 4 more uncles and aunts even younger than him, just on that side of the family).
Friday morning was sunny again, so we quickly ducked over to the new sculpture park. If you click on their 'take a tour' button, the first one that comes up is my favorite, Wake by Richard Serra. They're these massive rusted iron 'waves' that you can walk around. I can't explain it, but I just adored them. Afterwards we had lunch with Genoa Caldwell whom
magscanner has been working with on various Burton Holmes projects. We went to Chaco Canyon Cafe which offered some very strange food. I had their yellow curry bowl made with kelp noodles, served cold because it's from their raw foods section of the menu. I'm sure it was quite nutritious.Back at the hotel I napped, not having slept soundly the night before, and entirely missed the apparently amazing downpour. We lucked into a cheerful dinner group with Carrie R, Andy H,
akirlu, and libertango where we ate Mongolian barbecue that was sensibly priced for a single serving, all I ever usually eat at them, instead of the usual all-you-can-eat. It's been ages since I've been to one, and I was pleased to see that they now cook your selections mostly in one place instead of pushing them around the entire grill, though I did still end up with a scrap of magscanner's cilantro in my dish, probably transferred via their cooking/chopping spatulas.Saturday we also lucked into a lunch expedition with
wild_patience, calimac, and Stu S. The kebabs place we were headed towards wasn't open yet, so we ended up at a vegetarian Thai place called Veggie Veggie that was so good, magscanner and I went back there for lunch on Monday. The afternoon panels on Parable of the Sower and atheism were both thought provoking and provided much conversational material for the rest of the con, one of the main things I want from programming. Dinner was a delicious though leisurely Indonesian feast with John B, Eileen G, Jeanne G. and Scott C. The restaurant must not have expected much business on a Saturday night. Our dishes came out slowly, one at a time, but since we were sharing them, it worked out fine, almost like a tasting menu, and all of them were delicious. We finished with their iced durian dessert, which included a portion of fresh durian that had Eileen swooning in pleasure.Sunday we had reservations at the Herbfarm Restaurant, so we skipped the banquet and went to visit
greenshadows' delightful nursery and meet the man himself. What fun! If I were local, I'd be a regular for sure. I couldn't take any of his lovely plants home with me, but I did pick up some ornamental seeds for climbing on our new fence (including a morning glory that looks like a clematis!), and some Chinese seeds from a local importer, included the rather entertainingly named "Stallion" white cucumber.The Herbfarm deserves its own post, so I'll skip to the Dead Dog which was pleasingly populated. I had a fascinating conversation with Cliff W. wherein I learned all sorts of stuff about how mail gets sorted and the difficulties with Netflix envelopes. Monday morning
wild_irises arranged for me to meet her sister-in-law who is highly involved in Seattle Tilth and wanted to hear more about the sustainable vegetable gardening class I just finished teaching. I fear I was less eloquent than I might have been at that point in the convention, but I hope we can get an e-mail correspondence started. The cold that had been threatening magscanner all weekend was in full bloom finally, so we regretfully declined the dim sum expedition with davidlevine, kateyule, and Lise, and had soothing soup at the veggie Thai place instead. Then we went to the Museum of Flight, where we found much more to look at than we expected, and finally to the airport, another delicious meal at Anthony's, then home.
