Perils of Caffeine in the Evening

All indications were that the nice weather we experienced over the weekend was going to turn rainy on Tuesday, so we headed for Discovery Park Monday afternoon.  Discovery Park is on a peninsula that juts into Puget Sound just north of downtown, adjacent to the Magnolia community.  It was once a military facility called Fort Lawton, which they have mostly vacated and turned over to the city of Seattle. 

We followed a 3 1/2 mile loop trail that starts off in second- or third-growth forest, descends to a beach on Puget Sound, climbs back up to a dune-crested bluff that offers terrific west-facing views, then plunges back into forest.  It offers a lot of different terrain for such a short hike.

(click on any picture to enlarge)

Two Washington state ferries pass in opposite directions, with West Seattle/Alki Beach in the background.

On several visits in the 80s, Mrs. Perils’ father would reminisce about the few days he spent at Fort Lawton as a soldier in WWII before being piled into a ship and sent to Hawaii.  We would walk around and try to locate the spot where he remembered seeing Mount Rainier.

Mrs. Perils poised for flight on a vehicle fashioned from a branch of Scotch Broom.  It’s not in bloom yet, but she hates the odor and the pollen it exudes, while I welcome it as a harbinger of spring.

A close-up of the Olympic mountain range, somewhere near Bumtown.

These gourd-like things are residences for purple martens, I believe.  If so, they are the result of a one-man crusade by a friend of ours, Kevin Li, who died recently while scuba diving.  As a result of his efforts, you can find marten housing squirreled away all around the shores of Puget Sound.  All of that, and he made a wicked chocolate cheesecake.   

Oregon Grape buds.  Just showin’ off the close-up qualities of my new Canon S2 IS!

This tree looks like it could start talking to you (or lap-dancing - Mrs. Perils thinks the bulges look like boobs).  I’m intrigued by the strips of bark filigree incongruously woven around the surface.

One of our favorite seafood restaurants, Chinook’s, is unavoidably on the way between our house and Discovery Park.  It’s situated by the docks at the Fisherman’s Terminal marina.  Dinner there was the perfect coda to our afternoon’s idyl: halibut cakes for me, pan-fried oysters for Mrs. Perils, accompanied by a smooth Sauvignon Blanc.

The other day, I was in a meeting with a client’s outside auditors, controller and the company president/owner, and he was explaining the mechanics of the process whereby we import some raw materials from China.  Part of this process requires us to wire payment in full before the supplier will ship the product.

A couple of raised eyebrows from the auditors prompted the president to grin and reply, “No tickee, no washee!”   The response in the room was dead silence, when I’m sure he expected chuckles and eye-rolling. 

We could have a lengthy discussion of the inappropriateness of racially-tinged jokes in the workplace (or anyplace else), whether it signals an intent to do harm or merely garner a moment’s frivolity or, in the context that all racism is harmful, whether we can countenance a range from the benign to the virulent.  This guy runs the most humane business I’ve ever been around, and in my fantasy justice league I’ll just sentence him to sensitivity training this time.  Ironically, the only Chinese employee here is a woman with a Phd in chemical engineering, with whom the president has a terrific professional relationship, one that he would be mortified to compromise by making a dumbass remark.  But he is what he is and he said what he said.

My point is not to put him on trial so much as to reflect on the moments that followed.  At first I thought the silence meant that people were taken aback at the remark’s crudeness and political incorrectness.  The auditors and our controller were all in their 20s and 30s.  But the reality was that, of the six of us, the president and I, both over 55, were the only people who had ever heard the pejorative.  The others’ silence was entirely due to their bafflement at words that made no sense to them and they had no context for.

So, is this progress of a sort - the possibility that a negative racial stereotype has faded from the consciousness of younger generations?  Most likely it’s mixed.  On the one hand, racism regarding Chinese/Asians has certainly not disappeared.  On the other, the subject matter of that racism has probably morphed from the condescension and ridicule of the epithet above to a more complicated, envy-based view of people who have a high acceptance rate at elite schools and who are becoming a formidable economic competitor and our country’s leading mortgage banker.  Oh, wait - those are the reasons everybody’s hated the Jews all this time.

I left a Seattle trying, like someone assembling Ikea furniture from instructions not written in English, to fabricate Spring:

“Daffodils…check!  Chilling Drizzle…pretty on the blossoms, but, I think the part’s mislabeled…”

Taken with old camera - close-up not nearly as effective.  Dang!

Landed in Milwaukee as snow was starting to accumulate.  Eventually got about 4 inches.

We did have a nice evening out on Saturday night before I left.  We met some of Mrs. Perils’ climbing pals at a newish wine bar/cocktail lounge in Ballard called the BalMar (on the corner of Ballard Avenue and Market Street. Natch).  The evening started out nicely - they were a little busy, but there are lots of nooks and corners where you could monopolize a table and hold a conversation.  Wines weren’t cheap, but they were good.  We ordered some appetizers, and they were on the stingy side for the price.  A little later, the music turned towards a thumping dance mix, and the place became sort of a meat market.  Visually entertaining for Mr. Perils, but Mrs. Perils complained of “hoochies” on cell phones in the ladies’ room.  We moved on to Conor Byrne and a 3-piece Irish band.  On the way, we passed this guy playing in a doorway near the Tractor, and he was the best thing we heard that night.

Off to Milwaukee today for a week of dealing with auditors.  This should be a great day to fly Northwest, with the flight attendants and pilots relishing their brand-new bundle of pay cuts.  More from Cheeseland anon!

Our closest neighborhood cafe, and the place we’ve been buying our household beans, Zoka, has officially jumped the shark.  The store was mentioned in Friday’s edition of McPaper (USA Today) as one of the “10 great places to get jazzed about great java.”

Great.  It was hard enough to get a seat there before.  Now, since I live 3 blocks away, should I worry that my sidewalk will be thronged with caffeine pilgrims with disposable cameras making a flashbulb shock-and-awe, breaking off pieces of my retaining wall and pulling up my crocuses for souvenirs?  Is there money to be made if I set up a portable espresso stand and sell shots to people waiting in line to get in Zoka’s door?

Um, probably not.  I don’t know how many people in Seattle not staying in hotels read USA Today.  I only know about the article because a friend in Wisconsin emailed and asked if I knew about Zoka.  It’s more likely that their marketing person hit a home run with the article placement.  The article’s source for the feature linked to a site called coffeereview.com, a place where an addict like me might waste a lot of time.  We’ll have to see what the long-term effect of the article will be.  If the baristas start wearing sunglasses at night, setting up websites of their own and signing their cups for money, we might have to walk an extra block and patronize the other hundred or so cafes within walking distance.

Spring started sneaking in here Thursday and Friday while my back was turned.  Crocuses and daffodils are out and buds are burgeoning on just about everything in the yard.  (clicky to enlarge)

This one’s so gaudy it could be neon.

Looks like Eric is about to complete his ill-advised journey from sunny San Diego to rainy, phlegmatic Vancouver BC.  On the way, they saw fit to commit an act of  gratuitous violence on yours truly, for which I’ll find a suitable way to repay him.

Stay tuned for the exciting climax.

Here’s an entertaining little exercise if you’ve got work that absolutely must be done by noon and you’re looking for ways to blow the deadline.  (Thanks, Kathy!)  It’s a map of all the states you’ve visited.  Since it leaves no room for nuance, I chose to list only states where I’d spent a couple of days, commingled a little, gone running and otherwise engaged their indigenous charms.  I skipped states that I’ve only driven through or landed in briefly but never ventured away from the airport.  If those were included, I’d add NE, RI, NJ, WV, KY, MO, IA.  

If I excluded states where I’ve done significant time for business but never visited voluntarily,  TX would disappear, as would NC, NV, MN and ID.  Funny about MN, because I’ve spent so much time at the MSP airport that I probably ought to file an income tax return, but otherwise have only driven directly through it, except for a software class in Eden Prairie.  ND gets a checkmark because, on one of our drive-throughs, we took our bikes off the car and rode through the Theodore Roosevelt Badlands park.

create your own visited states map

The idle mind, ever striving for its own extinguishment, wonders how much the map would shrink if it included only states where it had had sex. It conjures the image of Mrs. Perils saying, “It better shrink a lot!”  Shrinkage is indeed the wise choice here.

Today is the fifth anniversary of the Nisqually Earthquake that rocked the Seattle area and caused moderate structural damage to buildings and one very expensive stretch of highway.

When it hit, I was leaning in an office doorway talking to a client in the SoDo area (south of where the old Kingdome used to be - near Starbuck’s headquarters).  I remember thinking, “Huh.  Earthquake.”, and I kept on talking.  When it continued for 10 seconds, I started to get a bit alarmed.  When things started falling off shelves, I hustled myself under a desk in the office.  The client’s general manager, whose office it was, huddled underneath another.  I’m glad there were two desks - if I’d had a choice of whom to die in the arms of, it wouldn’t have been Jerry.

The shaking continued for what seemed like forever, although it was really only 45 seconds.  I’m the only person I know who was actually injured.  I was kneeling on something with an edge, and the shaking caused a cut or abrasion on my knee that I felt for a week or so.  And it turns out that the area I was in, on a layer of “glacial till”, was one of the most vulnerable, and I was in one of those tilt-up concrete buildings that will tilt right down again if conditions are right.

Mrs. Perils, I think, had the better experience.  She was at a salon having her hair repaired.  As it turned out, there was also a fireman being serviced there, and he marched the whole group of them, in various states of foil, curl and dampness, out into the middle of the street.  I’m not convinced this was the wisest thing to do, but I love the image.

Not sure what I’ll do to commemorate the event.  Setting my cell phone to vibrate at 10:54 am seems most appropriate, given the general lack of ordinance in the house.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been seeing this poster at our health club promoting a production of Boston Marriage, a play by David Mamet, at a nearby little theatre. I would encounter this poster while working on a particularly challenging leg machine (Nautilus) that brought it to eye level. As I settled into the machine each visit and set the weights and seat, I would consider that I liked what I’d seen of Mamet’s work (Glengarry Glenross, State & Main, Wag The Dog), and that I’d like to attend the play being advertised. Then, I’d launch into my reps on the leg machine, all the blood from my brain would flow to my hams and calves, and I’d forget all about more intellectual pursuits.
When I got home from Milwaukee last weekend, I again considered the play, but the poster said its run ended 2/19, so I’d missed it. Then, this week, I saw a blurb for it and noted it had been extended through 2/26. So, yesterday, I took the developmentally important step of actually acting on a thought that I’d formed, and bought tickets to last night’s performance.
The venue was a transformed bathhouse on the shores of Greenlake, so we determined to walk down there after dinner for the 7:30 performance. Since, as everyone who knows me is aware, I’m always spot-on-time for everything, we had to hurry a bit, especially since our tickets were at will-call and seating was general admission. I set a fairly smart pace and Mrs. Perils (trimmer and in better condition than I) nonetheless lagged behind a bit. I knew from long experience, however, that if I slowed down, she’d slow down, so I plunged ahead. I mean, it wasn’t exactly Olympian. We arrived in plenty of time.
I’ve never seen a Mamet play, I’ve only seen films he’s written or directed or both, but I’ve always felt like his films were play-like, in that they were centered on language, plot and character rather than the visual. Star Wars, for instance, could never take place on a stage; the films above could (and Glengarry Glenross was a play before it was a film). So, I was looking forward to snappy language and wise-guy riffs, and I wasn’t disappointed.
The basic premise of the play is the relationship of two women at the turn of the 20th century who are cohabiting in what some call a Boston marriage (first I’d heard the term). These two women, plus a maid who pops in now and then for a dose of abuse, comprise the entire cast. The elder (more mature?) partner has just apparently achieved their financial security by becoming the mistress of a wealthy patron. The younger challenges her about this, but the elder (who possesses the sharpest tongue and control of language) assures her that it’s strictly a business transaction. The revelation that he’s married, and thus won’t be more than an occasional interference, seems to assuage the younger.
The younger, it seems, has some news of her own: she’s “in love”, it turns out, with a younger woman. And, due to her circumstances (dependent upon the elder for support), needs to convince the elder to allow her new interest to tryst at their residence. This is clearly the more hurtful breach and won’t be shrugged off nearly as quickly. Much of the rest of the play involves the importunings and negotiations attendant to accommodating this tectonic shift in their relationship.
Through a combination of Machavellian scheming and genuine feeling for one another, things are resolved, but the cross/double-cross mechanics of it don’t end until the final line of the play. And you’re not sure, in the end, which motivation has had more effect - manipulative acquisitiveness or indefatigable love. There’s a case to be made for each. That’s probably right were Mamet wants us.
The dialogue is fast-paced, packed to the brim and gut-bustingly funny. The language is a sort of high-flown Victorian vocabulary and diction, with some jarring modernisms thrown in. Reviewers have compared it to Oscar Wilde meets Harold Pinter, which my functional dramatic illiteracy can’t speak to. It’s significant, though, that I find myself frustrated because I don’t have a copy of the play to extract quotes from. I mean to get my hands on one.
The social situation and sensibilities of the women were a reversal of the more-accustomed plight of a couple of rakes toying with women. If you shut out the gender references and just concentrated on the banter, you could envision a pair of 30-ish fellows in their club’s bar or drawing room. In fact, it evoked echoes of the GB Shaw play The Philanderer that we saw last year in Ashland. But the play, for the most part, is not a gay or women’s rights manifesto, it’s an excellent and witty exploration of love and the particular way these women assay it.