Lost, Loitering, Lost

One thing I really enjoy about Seattle, the city, is its vivaciousness. I take the 44/43 busses to work in the morning because I don't have to transfer and can people watch, read the paper, catch up on calls. I take the 11 and 18 home at night so I can stroll thru the city which is full of people, every night, until relatively late at night. There are tourists posing, smiling as their friends click photos. There are people selling newspapers and more recently Girl Scout cookies. Women walking by with white Macy bags, red stars blazing, with their new purchases. Pike Place Market's red neon sign punctures the sky line, right in one's sigh line, inviting you to glance into the Sound behind it. There are street musicians (not too many), a couple of crazies and throngs of people leaving work, going to work, milling about, loitering. Its alive and has a pulse that flows in rhythm with the traffic signals allowing the people to criss cross through the city.

This weekend I shopped for some "tokens" of Seattle for the 10 people I'm going to get to see, outside my family, the one day I'll be in Cleveland. I was looking for the usual suspects; smoked salmon, coffee, chocolates, and rain - all the things that make Seattle famous. I got some other great ideas (including local hipster art) along the way and am now trying to figure out how to carry all of this home without loosing anything to airport travel.

I also spend a great deal of the weekend lost - which is something I do quite a bit of here in Seattle. I completely missed the gallery where a friend of mine was having an art opening. I was walking down Pike and kept walking, sure it was around somewhere. I skipped into a corner shop and asked for the phone book figuring I could look it up. A woman informed me that I had been walking in the opposite direction and it was back the way I came - approximately 10 blocks. I did eventually find them and we succeed in having a great evening, discussing the roller derby (one of the stars was with us), paintings of cats (not my friend's art work - not even close), and our best waitresses ever (we had a great one at our after-the-opening-pub-dinner).

I also lost friend's phone numbers. I was going to having lunch with out in Redmond (where I got my favorite 5 year old his 10 gallon cowboy hat) with a friend but didn't have his number on me. The phone company couldn't help and no one knew where the library was. I also lost the number for another friend I was supposed to meet for drinks before the art opening (but that didn't matter because I spent that time lost). Pygmy lost the information for the International Rescue Committee talk we were going to, making us an hour early to the event.

However, I did find $20 running after my bus Friday morning and thought that was pretty lucky.