Mad Dash

Something clicked in May, I think, and suddenly as the reality of having an impending a new edition hit, we found ourselves in a mad dash to try to enjoy as many activities as we could, see as many friends as we could and get the house into some sort of shape before we re-enter that duck-and-cover world known as "having a newborn." We've already talked about our trip to Mexico here, but here are a few other events and activities that have filled up the last month or two...

The Bay Area
At the start of May, even before our Mexico trip, Sarah had to make a trip to the Bay Area for work, so we leveraged that into an opportunity to visit with her brother and sister-in-law who live near San Jose (in Fremont). In edition, Sarah's dad and step-mom ended up coming in to town too, making for a quick family get together, as we hung out in the Bay Area and made a day trip to Monterey.

Stella disembarks at San Jose airport. Someone's getting to be old-hat when it comes to flying. But, notably, this marked the first time that Stella and I flew together without Sarah, since she had flown down a day earlier for work.

Walking on the beach in Monterey. (To golf fans: That's Pebble Beach on the bluffs in the background.)

Stella strikes a pose by a small pond in Monterey.

Smokefest
No, this isn't some variation on Seattle's Hempfest. But, instead, it was a backyard BBQ party (or rather smoking party) organized by several of our friends who have become masters of smoking meats.

Jason and Todd, the SmokeMasters™, do their thing.

The Ribs! (There's was brisket too, as well as a huge spread of food provided by the rest of the guests.)

Stella, and her friend Lucy, try our the John Deere. Note the bungee cord which kept them safely circling in place.

I've got my fingers crossed that this becomes an annual event.

Dry Falls Camping Trip
Shortly after returning from Mexico (literally, three days later), Sarah, Stella and I traveled to Eastern Washington to do some camping with our friends, Shahaf and Pnina, at the Dry Falls State Park. While the campgrounds themselves proved to be more of a glorified parking lot, the hikes were amazing, and reminded us -yet again- how different and varied the terrain, climate and wildlife can be within our own beautiful state.

Stella stops to smell the flowers, or at least point them out, on our first hike

Sarah... 8-months pregnant... carrying Stella... through the desert. Stella's definitely able to do more hiking herself this year, but we still spend a lot of our time with her riding on our backs.

Shahaf and Pnina trail blaze on our hike the second day along a stunning lake.

We're not sure if we are going to have the chance to do more camping this year, with the baby set to arrive. But, we can still hope and dream!

Art Projects
In addition to being busy professionally, I also had several exciting illustration opportunities that I got to take part in in early June. First off, I was part of the Gallery (206) Project which featured art by over 206 local artists. 20 artists created pieces for the glass panels on the outside of a re-purposed phonebooth, while the rest of use contributed pages for the "phonebook."

My piece. You can see more pictures of the booth itself on the website linked above.

In addition, I also took part in the Bureau of Drawers "Economy of Line" one-night exhibit, the conceit of which is that we started the night with a blank gallery, and attempted to fill the walls with our drawings which we creative live at the event.

The space at the beginning of the night. There was also a second group in another room upstairs.

Gallery goers take a look at our creations as the night went on. All the pieces were made available for sale for anywhere from $1 to $20. Though I only sold one piece in the "Things Wearing Underpants" series.

Alki Point Light House
Sarah's coworkers also hosted a baby shower for us at the Alki Point Lighthouse. Normally, this lighthouse is closed to the public, but someone that Sarah works with lives there, since her husband is an Admiral in the Coast Guard, so we got the rare opportunity to walk the grounds, tour the lighthouse itself and get quintessential Seattle photos like this...



4th Annual Housewarming
We also held our 4th Annual Housewarming BBQ, which -true to tradition- we barely took any photographs of. Since the party was being held exactly one month before Sarah's due date, I offered to do most of the organizing and food prep... which I promptly delegated to the guests by making it a potluck.

The backyard waiting for the party to start.

We always do the same thing, where we take a bunch of pictures right as things are starting, then set the camera aside and forget to pick it up again, until after everyone has left. Maybe we need to hire a photographer for them. Still, it was definitely a success, with probably our biggest turn out yet (over 50 people, easy) and perfect sunny weather (despite ominous predictions that morning).

This year was a major sausage fest... er, wait, that's not what I mean. This year, I organized a "Build Your Own Hot Dog" bar, with a variety of hot dogs and more toppings than a person could ever want.

Stella enjoys the festivities, in the "sherbet-cupcake tutu" she picked out for the occasion.

The Remodel
The remodel of our basement continues in fits and starts. We're still excited about what it will eventually look like, but at times we still feel depressingly far from ever reaching that point. Most recently, we've had the old oil furnace replaced with a new, electric one. And, then had our basement floor literally jack-hammered up so that plumbers could lay in new pipe work for the future bathroom. We've still got our fingers crossed that the plumbers will be able to wrap up their work before the baby arrives. But, if working on this remodel has taught us one thing its that things never move quite as fast as your like.

On the upside, we feel like we've finally rounded the point where we are disassembling and demolishing things in our basement and are now adding to and improving on it. Hopefully, it'll only get better from here! And, someday, we'll have exciting pictures of our new basement to share.

...and on, and on...
In edition to all that, it feels like we've done a million other things: Sarah's Birthday, Father's Day, yard work and, oh, we bought a new car! As the weeks have passed, we've started changing gears from travel and adventures to just trying to get our house and lives in order and prepared for the new edition to our family. Nesting has definitely started to take hold, and both Sarah and I find ourselves doing all sort of random and unexpected cleaning activities in preparation. Cleaning and organizing random cupboards. Endlessly dusting. Building IKEA furniture.

Tomorrow, Sarah has a final ultrasound to determine if she'll have to have a C-Section for sure, or if there's a chance she can have a natural childbirth. We're trying to stay realistic about it, but also can't help but cross our fingers that something has changed. Regardless, we'll probably be meeting our newest family member in the next week or so. Egad!

LA Story

About three years ago, shortly after Sarah and I returned from our trip, my brother, Travis, and his wife, Meghan, moved down to Los Angeles so that she could pursue a career in acting and he could pursue one in film production. Sadly, while they've been back up to Washington a least a couple times each year, we've only been able to go down to visit them once. But, because I have the Best Wife Evah™, and because she offered to watch Stella while I went down for a long weekend, I was able to spend some time with them, see their latest apartment (they've moved since our first trip) and explore LA some more.

So, last Thursday evening, I boarded my neon-pink-lit Virgin America flight, sat down 15 rows behind Arianna Huffington, and quickly found myself at LAX, being picked up by my brother. Unfortunately, because my flight arrived a little after 11pm, it didn't provide us with much time to explore; but we were still able to grab a late night beer and bite to eat at a neighborhood pub.

The next morning, feeling slightly worn out from our 3am bedtime, my brother and I fumbled through our morning routines, and then he took me out to show me a couple of neighborhood comic stores. The first, Skylight Books, was actually a book store proper, but their annex store features a large collection of trades and graphic novels up by the front door. The second, The Secret Headquarters, was a smallish comic book store with an old-time leather and polished wood feel. As someone who's always argued that comics should be treated with the same respect as other book forms, and not be surrounded by and buried under piles of action figures and Magic cards; both stores made me very happy.

After checking out both stores, we picked up Meghan back at the apartment, and went to check out a Cuban restaurant that they'd heard good things about, La Caridad. La Caridad ended up being a small, unassuming hole in the wall. The type of place where everyone else being served was speaking Spanish and the food was tasty without being flashy. As I eagerly ate my beef, rice and beans, I announced to Trav and Meg that this was exactly the type of thing I was hoping to do there.

As we finished our meal, we talked about what our options were for the day. Since I've been to LA a couple of times before, and even lived near Anaheim for a super-brief two-month period back around 2000, they didn't feel obligated to take me to all the usual tours traps. But, when one of them mentioned that they new the location of the entrance to Batman's Batcave (from the old, campy TV series), I knew that's what I had to see first.

A short drive, and an even shorter "hike," and we were there. A short tunnel punched through a narrow hillside, dead-ending on the other side of the tunnel.


Trav and Meg do their best Batman and Robin impression. I'll let you decide which is which.

Coming back from the Batcave, we noticed that we were near the trail-head up to the Hollywood sign. And, since Trav and Meg had never made the hike themselves, we figured it was worth a go. Now, apparently, the hike was only supposed to be about a mile and a half one way, but after going the wrong way at least once, and tromping up broken pavement in the afternoon sun, it somehow turned into a "Death March" not dissimilar from mine and Sarah's hike to the Virgin Mary's House in Turkey.

To add a little insult to injury, when you got to the top of the trail, you couldn't even walk up to the sign, but instead found yourself standing on a fenced trail above it. Still nice view, at least!

The Hollywood sign from above, and the sprawl of LA beyond.

After taking the view in a bit, there's was nothing left to do but head back down the hill and go to YogurtLand! Yum! I've never been so excited about frozen yogurt before. It was actually sort of embarrassing.

With our bellies full of self-serve yogurt, we headed back to Trav and Meg's place to burn it off with a rousing game of Trivial Pursuit, and then a late night app platter and beer at another neighborhood sports bar, Good.

Saturday morning, Meghan had to work, so Trav and I hoped on the bus and headed into downtown to walk around and do a little site seeing. First off, he took me into the library where we marveled at the atrium and this painted, domed ceiling:

The mural was amazing in its detail, but probably my favorite touch was the globe chandelier.

After the library, we wandered pass the toy district where I picked up a $2 pair of sunglasses. Note that, despite having bought sunglasses in several developing countries, this was probably the cheapest I've ever scored a pair. Then it was on to Little Tokyo for a sushi and Bento box lunch. Poor Sarah, she always has to listen to me grumble when she suggests we get sushi and what's one of the first things I do when I go on vacation without her? Get sushi. Though, to be fair, I was in Little Tokyo. It only made sense.

The Bento Box and some sushi from lunch.

With lunch in our bellies, we headed onward to Union Station. I'd seen several of Trav and Meg's amazing and atmospheric photos of them in Union Station before, so I thought it was important that I take some too.

Ooooh, artsy. I swear, someday, I'll learn to take decent photographs.

Me, posing in my $2 sunglasses, for what might someday become a Facebook profile photo.

Also, while we were there, we watched as staff set up for some formal event in a side room. The man working the information desk speculated that it was an Armenian wedding. Whatever it was, it was probably going to be a wild time, since each table included not just a bottle of wine, but also a bottle of whiskey.

Olvera St: Touristy, but pleasant.

Back outside, we made our way to Olvera Street. Besides being a market filled with Mexican themed tchotchkes, was also a quaint and shaded (if crowded) cobble-stone street, that also featured tourist-centric restaurants and LA's oldest house.It was cute, but by then we were both getting a little hot and tired and decided to make our way back home...

...but not before swinging back past the Grand Central Market and La Cita. The Grand Central Market was, like Pike Place Market for Seattle, LAs original market space. And, wandering through it, they still sold an array of fruit, vegetables, seafood and meat. La Cita, located right next to the market, is a funky old Mexican bar that seems to live some sort of weird double life: Inside, it was filled with middle-aged Mexicans and on the back patio it was rapidly filling up with 20-something, urban hipsters. The seemly easy truce between the two groups made for a surreal experience, to say the least.

Grand Central Market. When Sarah and I travel, one of our favorite places to visit are market places. The ones you find in the US might not feature as much bizarre food or questionable sanitation, but they are still great to stroll through.

Trav and La Cita. Unfortunately, you can't see much of it... beyond the wrought iron fence of the courtyard, and some Budweiser banners. But, trust me when I say the inside looked like Terry Gilliam's version of a Mexican-themed bar.

After throwing back a beer at La Cita, and making a mini-hike back to the bus stop, we were soon back at Trav and Meg's apartment. Meeting up with Meg, we decided to head back out for a taco dinner at El Chava. At El Chava, we were rapidly befriended by a guy named Al. Al was so quintessentially LA that I had trouble believing he was real: A hyperactive hip-hopper who managed to squeeze three or four celebrity names into each of his partying stories... while simultaneously declaring that he didn't really care for all that "celebrity stuff."

Making our eventual escape from Al, the night made the slow transition into a mini-pub crawl, which featured eventually running into our friends Russ and Ang, and brief (but unfortunately not brief enough) visit to "Jumbo's Clown Room," and eventually ending up with Trav and I shouting over the music at some vaguely Buddhist-Circus themed club near their hour.

The next morning, moving slowly again, we made our way back to Good for a long breakfast, and so that Trav could watch the Seahawks play.

Maybe not the most flattering picture of Travis, but it still pretty accurately represents that morning.

Then, with an unfortunate Seahawks game behind us, I was back on the plane and home again. All in all a fun trip. Before Trav and Meg moved to LA, I would always declare that it was possibly my least favorite place I'd been. But, I have to admit that, based on this visit and mine and Sarah's previous trip, I've begun to warm to LA. Sure, its large, dirty and congested. And, sure, vast swaths of it tend to suffer from the type of suburban sprawl that makes my skin crawl. But, at the same time, it's also now revealed itself to be a city filled with an amazing mix of cultures, food, interesting neighborhood and fun people. And, as long as Trav and Meg are down there, I'll look forward to visiting!

...though, maybe next time Stella and Sarah will be there too!

Time Away, Part 1

Since Stella was born, I've been lucky to have pretty minimal travel for work. But I currently have a project with a client in the Bay Area, and I don't mind going there since I have been able to combine my on-site meetings with an extended visit to stay with my brother, Tim, and sister-in-law, Jeanne. For this trip, Jeanne was out of town, but I luckily hit one of the weeks when Tim has Friday off. (He works a "9-80" schedule, which means every other week he has a free Friday.) So after my meeting, which conveniently is close to the town he works he, he picked me up.

First we went to the Stanford campus. He'd hoped to show me the chapel and the Art Museum. Unfortunately, the chapel was closed, but Stanford has a beautiful campus, and it was interesting to see the Ivy League look mixed with California mission. Stanford also has a large collection of Rodin sculptures, including a version of the Burghers of Calais, a set of statues which commemorated the sacrifice of six elders during the Hundred Years' War to spare the rest of the city's population. The Rodin Museum in Paris was one of the highlights of a trip there years ago and the story is moving, so I appreciated getting to see these in person.


A great photo of the sculpture, not taken by me. I didn't bring my camera on the trip, so photographic evidence is a bit few and far between.

Tim had originally proposed we go to Alcatraz on this trip, but tickets were already sold out, but the next morning we decided to go into the city anyway, starting with the BART ride to the Mission, where we ate at a great (and popular!) bakery called Tartine and checked out the view from a park.



I couldn't believe how long the line was on a Friday morning! But the wait was worth it. This bakery felt a bit like entering France, and our morning bun and brioche fruit bread pudding were fantastic. And there's always something decadent and wonderful about a big bowl of latte to sip.


View from a park in the Mission--we had lovely weather and a great view.

Next we went to the Ferry Building, a refurbished port building that's been turned into a market. A bit like Pike Place, but smaller and focused on local artisanal products: olive oil, cheese, salumi, coffee, pottery--pretty much my idea of heavenly shopping!


First I ogled the beautiful Heath ceramics--maybe someday I'll have an excuse to get another set of dishes, or at least this little water pitcher!


Time for lunch--there were many good looking and smelling options, but the "salty pig parts" caught my eye, and the daily special was fantastic. I almost got Tyler a t-shirt, but he was worried he'd seem like a Salumi traitor.


My friend has raved about Blue Bottle coffee, so I decided to bring some home as a treat for me and Tyler. Their descriptions were almost worth it alone.

After shopping and eating, Tim took me to the Wells Fargo Museum, a free historical museum with displays talking about the stage coaches, pony express, and banking from early days of the gold rush. It was pretty interesting and fun to see one of the old stagecoaches up close. They also had samples of all different kinds of gold which were found in California, which was fascinating, along with photos of the great earthquake and fire.



That night we went to a chaat house, which they seem to have lots of in the Bay Area and not in Seattle, where most the Indian food seems to be Punjab/Northern, rather than Southern. Even though we didn't go to the South on our trip, I have a soft spot for dosas (a crepe filled with spiced potato yumminess) and thalis (a platter filled with small bowls of various dishes).


We started the meal with poori, which can be different kinds of things, but this seemed like crunchy puffed rice with cilantro, lime, red onion and probably some other things, which was light and refreshing and delicious.


Along the the thali in front of me, Tim had recommended a rose lassi, which I'd never seen before and was so good!

That night we went for a movie, something that's been a bit of a luxury post-Stella. The next day, it was time to come home. Thanks to Tim's usual planning and considerations, it was a wonderful trip! But much as I loved my visit,and having a few baby-free days, I have to admit that by my third night away I was missing Tyler and Stella more acutely.

Of course, I expected that my reunion with Stella would be filled with her relief and happiness and a big hug. And she was happy to see me, but after she smiled and laughed a bit, she went about her business, by showing me that Tyler was wearing sandals. I guess I should be happy that she's not traumatized!

Before I knew it, it was time to say goodbye to Stella again, but this time just for a night as we headed to our friends' wedding that was on an Argosy boat in the Puget Sound.


Congratulations, Mike and Kristie! It was a fantastic wedding!

Falling just a bit closer

I really have no idea what that title means, except it sounds dramatic. And, well, not only is Fall upon us... but the number if days between now and Sarah's due date are getting smaller and smaller. (Then, again, it sounds omnious, which definitely doesn't match our mood these days. Which is somewhere between giddy and overwelmed.)

Speaking of which, let's skip straight to some Sarah pictures, since I haven't posted any of those in a couple of weeks.

Sarah at Week 28. This was actually the picture taken at her mom's place. She's actually facing the other direction, but I flipped it to keep the direction the same as the others.

Week 29. Who's that in the mirror?

Week 30. At Sarah's brother's apartment in Berkley.

...and Week 31. Can you beleive we are at week 31?!

And what have we been up to? A little of this, and a little of that. Probably the biggest event was our trip down to Berkley to see Sarah's brother, Tim, and sis-in-law, Jeanne. Even though Sarah is actually off to Baltimore as I type this, that was most likely our last real trip before the baby's arrival.

Since we were only in the Bay Area for a couple of days, it was quite a whirlwind trip. One of the definite highlights was visiting the Muir Woods National Monument. Despite the crowds, it was nice to get the opportunity to wander through the redwoods (I beleive the first I've ever seen). Here's a picture or two...

Tim and I at the base of a tree, giving you a sense of size. Even as someone who has grown up in Washington, I had to admit these were some big trees.

While staging this picture, a group of people started to surround us. Feeling awkward and holding my camera, I had no choice but to loudly state the obvious to everyone around: "Look everyone! A pregnant girl in a tree!"

The Muir Woods were also interesting in that they not only did they host the delegates which drafted and signed the UN charter, but also were an early gathering place for the exclusive and secretive Bohemian Club. Here are some more Muir Woods' pictures, if you are into pictures of trees.

In addition to visiting Muir Woods, we also visited San Francisco's Asian Art Museum. And went to Vik's Chaat, and amazing India restaurant housed in a large warehouse. With is buslting crowd, blaring Bollywood music, delicious India food and crazy casual atmosphere, Sarah and I agreed that it was probably the closest we'd felt to being in India since we left over a year ago. I'd ramble about it more, but you can just read my review of it here.

Speaking of our trip, it's worth mentioning that, as of September 12th, we've now been back home for over a year. Strange. So, while the title of this entry is "falling just a bit closer," I supposed it could just as easly be "falling just a bit farther away."

EDIT: As a side note, I've recently been making more of an effort to up date my other blog General Admission more often. As I've probably explained before, it's more just my random thougths and interests, and not so much about Sarah and myself, but check it out if you are interested.

EDIT 2.0: I made two corrections to the above entry. First, in the final picture of Sarah, she is only 31 weeks pregnant, not 32 like originally captioned. In addition, several people freaked when they saw reference to "babies." Sorry, that was supposed to read "baby's" ...why might not know the sex of the tummy monkey. But we know there is only one tummy monkey in Sarah's belly.

Domestic Adventures

The last time I posted was September 21st, a few weeks after we'd returned to Seattle. While I had intentions of keeping up with some blogging, I've had trouble actually sitting down and doing it. Tyler and I would agree that we should do something about a recent event. But, eventually--after much procrastination--Tyler would say to me, "Do you just want me to write about going to Austin/Meeting up with Greg from Safari/trip anniversaries?" and I would say, "Yes, please." And I'm not sure why. Given the opportunity, I still love to talk about our trip; I've even been re-reading the blog and love reliving the memories that Tyler and I put to the page along the way.

And it's not that we haven't had news. We started househunting in April, looked at about 20 houses in two days, made an offer and got the keys on my 32nd birthday.


The front of our new home on Beacon Hill



Official owners


We've also been on our first hike of the year (if wet):


Tiger Mountain in April, wet but quiet


Visited Santa Monica to see my brother- and sister-in-law:


Meghan, Travis and Tyler in LA with the Hollywood sign, no less


Hosted our friends Silke and Ricardo that we met in India during some of their last days during a yearlong RTW trip:


With Silke and Ricardo in Seattle. We met them during their first week of travel and then again during the last week before heading home


And had our housewarming party:


Tyler, BBQ master



Seeking shade in the "party-port"



The silk lanterns we bought in Vietnam finally get to shine



And we're starting a family, something that travel helped us realize we really did want to do together.



Good news at four weeks!



Week 19 and looking pregnant


Now instead of days filled with sightseeing, travelling from Point A to B and navigating new cultures and cities, we go to work, do yard work, spend too much money at Home Depot, (if you're me, sleep a lot) and generally go about usual daily life. And as much as I've already started thinking about what would be good places to travel to with a baby, I'm pretty satisfied with the domestic adventures we're having right now.