Perils of Caffeine in the Evening

There’s an interesting comment thread going on at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.  It results from an article a few days ago about a venerable coffee shop in the Pike Place Market that was closing.  The paper asked people to list what other defunct businesses that they missed.  I think the P-I is sort of taken aback by the lengthy outpouring that builds a patchwork history, not of what Seattle was, necessarily, but what folks remember it was.

One funny thing to me (and I’ve lived here continuously since 1974) is a generational layering effect in the comments, where the artifacts of one group’s lost shining city is the scourge of dreck and commercialism that destroyed the previous group’s lost shining city, and so on.

While there are definitely things I miss, and I regret intensely the land-gobbling suburban growth in western Washington, but for the most part I’m having a great time living in the city.

What better way to end a day on the water than at a beach party?  This one was co-hosted by an old friend - well, she’s not really old, I’ve just known her a long time, and caught up with her last week.

This is the best use yet that I’ve seen for a kayak when it’s not being paddled - filled with ice and festooned with libations.

Summer’s settled in here, with its bipolar behavior between brilliant sunshine and cloudy chilliness.  I carped the diem today and did a kayak voyage on Puget Sound.  The water was preternaturally smooth, and, although it was only my second outing of the year, I decided I’d cross the sound from Salt Water State Park to Maury Island, between 2 an 3 miles.  I hit the water at the afternoon low tide, and there were many starfish and mussel clumps exposed on the pilings as I wound through them.

This last picture is a jellyfish that looked a whole lot like a poached egg, pursuing its inscrutible mission.

Here’s a harbor seal spyhopping me.

 BC Ferry Runs Aground

Thursday, July 7, 2005 · Last updated 5:26 p.m. PT

Missing pin blamed for ferry mishap in British Columbia

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

============================

It says something about how divorced I’ve become from physical reality that the first thing I thought of was a “pin” number like you’d use for an ATM machine or a porn website.

I’m sitting in Zoka’s, a cafe a couple of blocks from my house, this afternoon winding up my day after visiting clients.  A while ago, a guy came in and sat down on a sofa next to me without buying anything.  He looked a little apprehensive, and a little out of place wearing a tie.  After a few minutes, he took out his cell phone and made a call.  I heard him ask, “Are you at Zoka’s?”  The place is pretty intimate, so it was obvious he was looking for someone he’d never met in person.  A while later, a woman walked in looking equally perplexed, and each finally realized that they were seeking each other.  It appears to be about business, so no romantic tale developing here, and it’s beyond my meager narrative powers to extrapolate one for your amusement.

Yesterday, I worked most of the day in my home office after taking my mom to the airport, and wandered over here in the afternoon because I was sick of looking at all the disorganized crap piled up on and around my desk.  A guy I used to work with in a lofty office in a shining skyscraper downtown walked in, bought a beverage and pulled out his laptop, not espying me as he did so.  I finished up a task I was working on and walked over to speak with him.  As I did so, I felt a pang of self-consciousness as I sat in my shorts, Baja teeshirt and Keen sandals while he had on a suit, tie and starched white shirt.  Now, Zoka’s is a casual venue in a laid-back neighborhood, and my friend’s was the only tie in sight, but I still felt a little on the dodgy side, the “self-employed” former associate exposed in the grubby slacker existence he must have descended into.  Still, we chatted amiably and caught up on mutual acquaintances (”not there any more.  Hmmm.  He must have taken that hard.”).  As we did so, my buddy periodically adjusted his Windsor knot absent-mindedly.  Finally, he reached around, disassembled the knot, folded the tie up and put it in his suitcoat pocket, his discomfort trumping mine, a rare cipher in my sartorial victory column.  But, hey, it’s not about “winners” and “losers”, right?

The final vignette in my Zoka’s triptych:  As I was sitting here this afternoon, I was startled to see Mrs. Perils walk past on the sidewalk, returning from a run around Greenlake and a session at the gym.  She turned and opened the door, and I thought she had seen me and was coming in to harrass me.  Along with my espresso drink, I’d bought an apple turnover from the sumptuous pastry case, and was loath to be discovered with it, since when I’m not making poor eating choices, I can be heard whining about my weight.  Welcome, my younger readers, to clandestine trysting in one’s 50s.  Before I could say anything, however, she walked past me, apparently not recognizing me, and looked over the pastry case herself.  I looked around in a sort of panic to see if I could offload my half-eaten goodie plate to a chair or a table next to me, but all were occupied, and I resigned myself to apprehension and disdain.  By this time, however, she had apparently exhibited the strength of character that I had not, and had walked away from the pastry case without making a purchase.  I made a “psssst” sound, but she kept walking out the door and off towards home.  As soon as I press “Post & Publish”, I’ll have to run home and tell her about this before she reads it.  Then I’m heading for the gym.  Honest.

Meanwhile, back to vignette #1, which finds this guy’s tie off as well, and a conversation that seems to be edging away from the business at hand.  No time to stay around for the exciting conclusion, regrettably.

Rob’s plaint yesterday over at emphasisadded was right in my wheelhouse.  My mother, who has been visiting for the last two weeks, has been speculating about whether she needs/ought to have a cell phone.  While an individual contract didn’t really pencil out for her, I concluded that adding her to my family plan did.  With just two days to work with before she flew home, I got on craigslist and found a sweet phone for sale from someone living close by.  I bought it, activated it and drove home in triumph.

Then, I encountered the scenario Rob decribes: apprehending the technology from my 77-year-old mother’s eyes, and not as a bauble in the hands of her techo-geek son.  As I attempted to reduce all of the arcane features of this fairly middle-of-the-road, no-camera phone into a humble answer-call, place-call instruction set, I found myself distinctly flummoxed.  I had about an hour Tuesday night, and another hour Wednesday morning before her plane left, and we went through all the basic moves.

I’m confident she’ll eventually get the hang of it.  A lot of her friends carry them, and perhaps she can turn Thursday’s bridge club into a cell phone clinic.  She routinely cleans up at the bridge table, something I could never hope to do since I can’t remember the cards in my own hand, let alone everyone else’s, so the cell phone puzzle should eventually get resolved.  Then she’ll move on from the merely technical to the moral and philosophical implications of cell phone use  - whether to use it while driving, whether to answer it in a public restroom, how to glare in disgust at the person next to you when it rings in a quiet theater.

Still, you wish that some things in modern life would be satisfied with elegant simplicity.  I despair as I watch my mother-in-law, who has some cognitive issues, try to juggle the remotes for our TV and the cable box.  She only has about 3 channels she likes to watch, but it’s almost certain that at some point in an evening I’ll walk in and the screen will be full of snowy fuzz because she’s done something out of sequence with one of the remotes.

I thought we might have gained some awareness of the limits of this
sort of adventuring, but there we were again yesterday, bypassing the
UN and launching a unilateral, unprovoked strike. Despite the
vociferous protestations of Horton, the UN weapons inspector, the
United States employed an unmanned drone weapon against the Whoville
comet as it sped innocuously in its orbit between Mars and Jupiter. In
a press conference to announce the attack, Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld declined to provide an estimate of casualties, but described
the unexpected magnitude of the blast with undisguised glee. Later this
evening, CNN will relay a scratchy recording of what is believed to be
an extremely distressed Mayor of Whoville, appealing for aid and a
cessation of hostilities.

Horton, of African descent and suspected of ties to the fugitive
terrorist Babar, is being held at Guantanamo until his threat to U. S.
security can be evaluated.

I can’t believe our week here has gone by so fast, but here we are on our last day. We saw our last plays yesterday, and have only to check out of our lodgings and get to our plane in Medford this evening. I really didn’t buy anything here, so packing shouldn’t be any more of a chore than it was coming down: the trick is to accommodate the weighty “luxury” items I tend to bring on this trip - my complete Shakespeare, Harold Bloom’s Invention of the Human and, this time, my Krups espresso machine.
All three have seen significant use, so I don’t regret hauling any of them (especially since I slipped the green Shakespeare into my mom’s suitcase when she wasn’t looking.
Our theatre experiences were great this year. Since I purchase a membership in the Festival, I get to participate in the ticket presale that happens in the fall preceding the next year’s season. Our seats just rocked this year, most being in the first or second rows. It makes a big difference when your experience is almost that of a cast member, rather than at a remote distance struggling to hear all the lines.
My mom’s really enjoyed the plays as well, and has been sharing some family anecdotes along the way. One amusing one involved when she was in high school and she was one of the witches in a Macbeth production. Thereafter, an alley where she would meet her friends before school each day was dubbed “the heath”. Before you ask, there were no stories about me worth relating.

Crater Lake, Wizard Island in the background.