Obsession #297

Say hello to my latest fetish:

Yeah, the colors aren't exactly right--it's much cuter in person, trust me.

OK, I just have to say it--isn't that the cutest little tiger you've ever seen?!  I think I might die!

My mom and I are now slightly addicted to crocheting the edges on baby blankets.  And the best part is it's totally an excuse to sit and watch movies.  ("Hey, I'm doing a project!  I need something to...listen to, yeah.  And possibly watch...")  Who are these blankets for, you ask?  I have no idea.  Possibly my *future, of course* children, possibly whoever has a baby next.  Meh.  The "who" isn't really that important.   

Look!  More!

Mwahahaha.  Now where's my copy of "Wives and Daughters"?

Labor Day, Seattle Style: Part 2

Ok, let's hope Blogger likes me again.

Saturday continued
After the Japanese garden, we headed off to the Seattle Space Needle.  We didn't really spend much time there, for a number of reasons.  (Big huge paid-admission-required art/music festival at the bottom, lots of people, $20 to go to the top of the needle, you know.)  But, we saw it and went into the gift shop.  That counts, right?   

After the hubbub down there, we headed off to find some grub.  Using Sarah's phone, we found a cafe nearby that was supposedly cheap and friendly.  Being the innocent child I am, I took the description of "atmosphere: offbeat" as "atmosphere: quirky and fun."  Yeah, turns out it actually meant "dark, smoky, and lots of neon beer signs in the windows."  So, we bypassed that lovely little gem, as well as a few really expensive-looking restaurants, and ended up at Zeeks pizza.  Mmm...Zeeks.  

Waiting for our waiter to return...

Chop salad

Frog Belly Green pizza

One nearly-exploding (with goodness) stomach later, we walked all the way back to our car (which we had to pay $15 to park, by the way.  Thank you Seattle...), we found out that the glass-blowing studio we wanted to go to (which was FREE) was back by Zeeks.  I was really not feeling up to either searching for a parking spot on the street or walking back over there, so we just went back to the hotel.  Thankfully, we were moved to a different smoking room that was almost in the non-smoking section and the staff had put in non-smoking bedding.  For causing them so much grief, they really did try to take care of us.  Of course, room #3 didn't have a refrigerator or a microwave, but hey, at least it didn't make me want to puke.  I'll take what I can get.


Oh yeah, I almost forgot--once in room #3, Sarah realized that she didn't have the wall charger for her phone in our stuff and that it was most likely in room #2.  I went back to the lobby to see if they had found it: no dice.  Because of this, we were trying to save her phone battery (our link to the world wide web) and had no choice but to use the computer in the lobby.  (Really, I think the staff was sick of us.  It seemed like we complained a lot.  They definitely knew what room number we were in without us having to tell them.)  After some research, we found a $3 movie theater not too far away.  Hello Saturday night activity!

Thanks for the picture Disney!

The only problem: we weren't hungry enough for dinner before the movie but knew we would be by the middle.  Solution: popcorn, of course.  But, sadly, a small popcorn at this cheap theater cost....$6.  So, in essence, we paid $6 a piece for the movie, instead of $3.  Lame.  But at least the movie was decent.  (I'm a fan of Jay Baruchel--I think he's funny.)


Sunday
Sarah wanted to go to 9:00 church.  Ugh.  But, being the good sister I am, I got up super early and was ready to go on time.  We just happened to go to the same ward that my cousin is serving his mission in...

Don't mind the fact that 2 of the 3 people in this picture are blinking.

The look on his face when we walked in was priceless.  The ward was really friendly and people really tried to help us feel welcome.  Yay for The Church!  I even got to fulfill my calling a few states away and played in Relief Society.  (One of the sisters in the presidency asked if I could stay forever.  Haha.  She was cute.)  After church, we hopped back aboard George and went to: 

If you look really closely, you can see us at the bottom.  The temple was quite large.

It was really pretty.  They had flowers and stuff, but the sheer amount of green there (and the cloudy skies) was beautiful for a desert rat like me.  Like this:

This is what I called the backyard of the temple.  Just a nice little forest, sitting there minding its own business.  Seriously?  A forest?  And it was on all sides, not just in the back.  How cool is that?!

After dinner (it felt so weird to be going to an Applebee's on a Sunday...), we headed back to the hotel because we were feeling tired.  I think the plan was to take a nap.  Did we take a nap, though?  No.  We looked up a few scriptures our mom suggested to us (gotta love that momma), did some word searches together (aww, sisterly love), and...sat there.  For FIVE hours!  We did turn the TV on, but our best choice was "Facing the Giants."  Now, don't get offended.  There's nothing wrong with that movie.  Heck, it was even Sunday appropriate, in my book.  But, it's pretty heavy on the cheese.  And when you've already been stuck in a very small hotel room for 3 hours, it doesn't quite cut it.


Why didn't we go explore a little, you ask?  Well, as I mentioned before, I think we planned on the nap thing.  But, when that didn't happen, we couldn't really think of anyplace free and Sunday-like that we wanted to go.  And, to be honest, we were a little sick of getting lost and missing turns.  Seriously, the state of Washington needs to rethink it's highway and road system.  I have never seen so many retarded forked roads in my life!  And the street signs were tiny!  Look at this:

This is what we had to deal with.  When you don't really know where you're going in the first place, this does not help.


We tried a visit to the ice machine to relieve the boredom, but sadly, we were foiled.

Don't I look sad?  The sign says the machine is broken and you have to go to the front desk to get some ice.  Yeah right!  Those people were sick enough of us as it was.  No use pushing it.

So, we resorted to taking pictures of each other.  As you can probably guess, none of them are very flattering.  I'll spare you the horror.


Monday
We decided to dedicate all of our available time on Monday to Pike's Place Market.  That place was crazy!  There were shops and stalls everywhere.  Oh yeah, and tons of people.  There were 3 levels to the marketplace, too.  We started out mostly wandering, but when I tried a sample of this I was such a sucker I had to buy it:

It probably helped that the guy giving me the sample was fun to talk to.  I should have gotten a picture with him.  Another guy that we should have gotten a picture of is our good friend David.  He was the shopkeeper in a little bookshop on the second-ish level of the market (it gets a little confusing down there).  When a new customer came in, he would say hi, ask where they were from, and then sing out "Oh, you came all the way from [location] to see me!  You're a bookstore groupie!"  Yeah, he was pretty much my favorite part of the market.  The shop was fun, too--new books next to old, tatty ones and everything kind-of stuck on the shelves haphazardly (I mean there were sections and all, but they weren't in neat little stacks).  Normally that would drive me nuts, but it worked there.  We bought something from him, too, but after we had wandered through the rest of the market trying to find cheaper playing cards to no avail.  (After Sunday's boredom, we wanted to be prepared for a long wait at the airport.)  That's ok--I'd like to think the $6 we played for a deck of (European) playing cards was like a little tip to David for being cool.


Some other highlights of Pike's: 
1) We saw our cousin and his companion again.  When we caught his attention, he said "You guys are everywhere!  What are you doing?"  Haha.  After assuring him that we were not stalking him ("No, really, we're not."), we went off to see other things. 

2) Me and Rachel, the pig of Pike's Place.

3) Our lunch.  

Rachel's All-American Sandwich.  Pretty much awesome.  Do you see the bacon on that thing?  Mmm...bacon.

We saw a ton of people eating this stuff and decided that we might as well jump on the bandwagon.  Holy cow, it was good, but I could almost hear my arteries screaming in protest.  So...much...cheese...

4) The bathrooms.  This may sound weird, but they were funny.  Here's how you know you're in the women's bathroom.

For obvious reasons, I didn't get a picture of the big XY marking the men's bathroom.


After Pike's, we headed off to return our car (goodbye George!  You served us well!) and get down to the airport.  It was probably a good thing we got there nearly 2 1/2 hours early because Sarah's ticket somehow got cancelled, a fact we learned when she couldn't check in to the flight.  Thank goodness they got it fixed pretty quickly and we were on the same flight home.  (At first, the lady said, "Now, I couldn't get you two together because the flight is pretty full..." and we interrupted with "Wait, so we're not on the same flight?!"  Turns out she just meant we weren't sitting together, but we would be on the same plane.  Phew.)


And so, we made it home alive!  (If any of you are still reading this absurdly long post, you deserve a candy bar.  Don't worry, I can wait while you go find one.)  Despite the problems we had and the fact that I'm not very good with spontaneous changes of plans, I'm glad I got to go.  Amazingly, except for a few minutes near the very end, we really got along well.  Who'd'a thunk: my sister and I can survive in close quarters for 4 days without killing each other!  Haha, j/k.  It was an amazing experience, though.  Thanks for the ticket parents!  And thanks for taking me Sarah!  Mom was right: this one is definitely going down in the family lore.

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1.02.28

Labor Day, Seattle Style

This post is either going to be one really long one or a few shorter ones.  I'm not sure yet.  We'll just have to see how long my concentration (and interest) lasts. :)

Last Thursday Night
Around 7:00: I am planning to go to Thatcher for the weekend with my family.  You know, see the cousins and Grandma, pick some apples, normal Labor Day weekend stuff.  My sister is planning to go to Seattle to visit a friend.  Everyone is excited for their respective vacations.

Around 9:30: my sister's plan quickly changes and visiting her friend is no longer an option.  But, she has already checked in to her flight online and has a hotel room booked for the next 3 nights.  When another friend in Portland is also unavailable, it looks like she can either be out $500+ or go to Seattle (where she's never been) all by herself...or I can go with her.  Really, there's only one feasible option.  So, my parents buy me a last-minute plane ticket (they are amazing--thanks Mom and Dad!) and I frantically start packing.  And trying not to freak out...

Friday
For the first time in probably ever, I cannot finish my cereal for breakfast--my stomach will not allow it.  Stinkin' nerves.  (This probably seems like a minor detail, but I LOVE cereal.  Just thought it needed to be known.)  We get to the airport on time and our flight leaves at 10:40-ish.  About halfway through the flight I can finally eat again.  Huzzah!  Sarah and I find each other in the corridor off the plane, find our baggage, and head off to the car rental desks.  The lines are long and we have no idea of which one to go to.  After a few phone calls for advice, we decided on Dollar Car rental.  When that takes too long (and the guy at the desk is crabby), we slide over to Enterprise.  Make the reservation, get on the shuttle, look blankly at most of the questions the rental guy asks us ("Do you have full coverage on your car insurance?  Does it cover rental cars?" How would we know?!), and finally get our rental car.

Meet George.

Even with navigation on Sarah's phone, we can't find our hotel.  After driving around the neighborhood for 20 minutes, we finally figure it out and are very excited to rest in our hotel room.  Get checked in, walk in, take a deep breath...gag.  We have been assigned a particularly nasty smoking room.  We talk to the manager and head off to Walmart while they air out the room.  At Walmart, we discover that we've forgotten a few things:

Thank you, Walmart.  Now I won't repulse random Seattleans on the street with my horrible breath.

When the airing-out does squat, we talk with the manager again, call the company Sarah bought her travel package with, call our parents, and eventually get a non-smoking room...for the night.  We order a pizza (realizing that we are starving) and decide that we've had enough adventure for one day.  Ignoring the fact that we don't know where we'll be sleeping tomorrow night, we look for a movie to watch.  Luckily this is premiering on TV tonight:

Good thing we watched the first one a few weeks ago...

Thanks for the picture Amazon!

Saturday
After checking out of our lovely hotel room and pleading with the manager to save us a non-smoking room if it becomes available, we head here:

a.k.a. the coolest place EVER!

See, don't I look happy?

 Here are a few more pictures, just to make you jealous.

Love.

Some of the biggest koi I've ever seen

View from the back of the park/garden.

Blogger is now being retarded, so I guess this is going to be a multi-post thing.  It was getting pretty long, anyways.

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1.02.28

Teaser

So, this weekend was a bit more of an adventure than originally planned.  Don't worry, I'm going to do a big post about it soon.  Hopefully.  Once I can work myself up to uploading pictures and doing all that stuff.  In the meantime, here's a picture to whet your palate:

Oh yeah.

Ok, maybe Cox and I CAN be friends

I discovered something wonderful last night.  Along with having some awesome Disney channel original movies (don't judge me) and current TV shows (like Psych and Covert Affairs--a new favorite) on the Freezone, Cox On Demand also has...exercise videos!  Ok, that may sound really lame, but I am so excited.  You can only do the same nasty workout with Jillian Michaels so many times before you just want to shoot the TV.  (Trust me on that one.)  My mom and I tried a new video/routine out this morning and it was actually kind-of fun.  Never thought I'd be saying that about exercise, but it's true.  Holly Perkins (I think) is a good trainer-person.  Even though it is slightly maddening that she can talk through the entire workout and not sound short of breath while I pant and wheeze for minutes after, she's nice.  And there's a timer going the whole time.  Ah--it's lovely to know that you only have 10 minutes left before you can collapse into a hea--I mean end your workout.  :)

Next up: yoga.  Oh yeah, I am going to take full advantage of the Freezone and get in touch with my flexible side.  

Bwahahahaha, yeah right.  But you know what I mean.