Monthly Archives: May 2002

It’s way too humid today in Seattle. It’s bad when the window is open…AND IT ISN’T HELPING. It’s already that one day of the year when I feel like I need air conditioning. Mmmm…air conditioning. It’s raining outside now, and it feels like Houston.

Weekend was actually pretty good, despite the parts where I just got sick of the car. Crescent City, Cali, sitting in local diner eating dinner, didn’t want to face six more hours of driving, but had to. Cut over to I-5 via 199 at that point, as always. 101 ceases to be fun by Eureka, and then you CANNOT get back to I-5 until the Cali/OR border.

We came back via 101 because that is where the trees are:
http://www.roadsideamerica.com/attract/CAPHItree.html

Yes, we visited most of these places. Especially the Confusion Spot:

MIKE: Keep an eye out for the Confusion Spot…[huge display of tackyness in form of giant yellow question marks appears]…nevermind.

That’s where gravity is in overdrive and is seriously skewed. It was dizzifying. I was already dizzy from Too Much Car Time While Reading Map Of Sonoma County, so my $3 in admission just went to making me MORE nauseous.

The redwoods are always very impressive, but it’s basically six hours of driving through forest that looks EXACTLY like the forest up here, if slightly less dark green. Therefore, it gets old. Fast. And the damn trees look like they’re leaping onto the road at you by the end of it. Plus, California never seems to end. It’s weird, because you’re driving so far from San Francisco, yet it’s STILL CALIFORNIA. It’s like trying to drive through Texas.

On the way down, we drove through the I-5 corridor, and the State of Jefferson I think that is a terrific idea, because it would give an identity to that part of the world. I think the west coast got seriously shafted in never really having a chance to redraw its own state borders (in a more sensical fashion) after the initial treaties between the Americans, British and Spanish drew them arbitrarily. Then again, I also think Cascadia is a terrific idea.

More on the city after I go get something to eat…

http://www.livejournal.com/talkread.bml?journal=sockgirl&itemid=10427

Going to San Francisco for long weekend. Jealous yet? I thought so. Time for spontaneous, twentysomething road trip with large Texan. If I can round him up and into the car.

Later, y’all.

I would like to congratulate two of my LJ friends who are both moving out into their first apartments at the end of this month. That would be jentwo and thelinden.

And a couple Victorians or psuedo Victorians: birdsbrain (my friend Robyn, who I met On Island, although ironically she now lives in Melissa’s hometown of London) and cracksmurf (one of my AUS colleagues) are “blogging”. Hopefully, this link will get Robyn to post more often, as I worry about her.

Work in 56min. Still drying regulation issue ARGOSY T-shirt. Hrm.

Mike’s building a new Dallas. He just put in a little MixMaster! He’s zoned most of the city Light Commercial! Ir’s got no parks or trees! It’s shiny & has freeways everywhere & has a horrible ghetto right outside of the nice part of downtown.

My cities come out looking like Seattle or Victoria: older tree lined downtowns, marinas, parks everywhere and newer suburbs.

SimCity should be used as more of a psychological diagnosis tool.

In Social History of Europe, we covered the concept of “leisure” and how these days, even on our leisure days, we still tend to do things to better ourselves. Like working out. Like cleaning house. But since my job is pretty well “leisure time” anyways, in classic mediaeval fashion, I should be spending today doing something productive.

I have a sneaking suspicion that I may get sucked into playing SimCity3K Unlimited for awhile, but I should be cleaning, cooking, bill paying, taerobicizing instead. Therefore, my SC3K playing joy will be contaminated by guilt. Stupid guilt.

I was just discussing yesterday’s entry with ND, who is not nearly as amused by it as I expected, and accused me of whining and being overly concerned with class conflicts. I am not overly concerned with classes per se…I’m just annoyed that no-one in a certain demographic out here seems to have any damn [manners/common sense/consideration/politeness]. Nobless oblige, people! Really! And stop buying kayaks just to display then on the roofs of your SUVs! You are not a mobile REI museum!

I have long since accepted that I am bourgeousie. I will always, always live in upper middle class land. Oak Bay. Plano. Kirkland. It doesn’t, however, mean I have to LIKE the Eastside. After having to flip off and fight off three other dot-com wives/soccer moms at Trader Joe’s last Friday, I’m afraid to go back there until after 6pm. And I find myself afflicted with major, major road rage when trying to drive around here, especially since people drive such pointless fucking cars and do the yuppie stereotype thing when driving.

I AM bitter today, mostly at being locked into my parking spot for five minutes earlier. This is the horrible thing about yuppie drivers: they can never take that two seconds to be nice. Even if they’re NOT cutting me off in traffic, or threatening to sideswipe my beloved Zippy while talking on their stupid cell phones, they can never wait and stop to let people cross the road, or stop while I pull out of my parallel parked spot on the Market Street Hill above K’land.

I got in my amazon.com shipment on Saturday. New Moby. Assemblage 23. VNV Nation. I never got into the harder edge of industrial: KMFDM, Ministry et al, but I do really, really like the techno side. Extensions of my devotion to Nine Inch Nails, likely. And I do love to listen to really loud, fast-paced stuff in the car, just so I can daily affirm my youth and hipness. Yeah, I’m a 206er** trapped in the 425** (I say that with SARCASM. SARCASM)

WAS thinking about going to S. Oregonia this weekend, to go to the Shakespeare Festival and go rafting and all that. Will likely, however, stay put because Apoptygma Bezerk are playing here (Catwalk, Seattle) on Saturday, and there is no PDX date I could have maybe caught enroute. Bonus sadness: two of my friends from AUS (y’know, that organization that took up most of my life this year at UBC? remember them?) are leaving for Europe next month, and are having a farewell party on Friday, and I would really love to say goodbye to them. I won’t be out of work in time to. That’s what sucks.

Fun day on boat today. Made fun of sport utility yuppies (bitter, bitter, bitter) in between narrating points of interest. I had to narrate the Kirkland tour for evaluation purposes. I detest the Kirkland lake tour because it is boring. The narration material is little and far between: Seattle’s rich and famous are rich, but not that fascinating. I can only see the Gates Estate SO MANY TIMES before even that gets boring. And most of the tour is just us going past six-million dollar houses and commenting on the history of the Eastside as a former summer resort. Little to no drama to work with anywhere.

So in between points, I’d make sure the mike was off, and then make fun of yuppies and swear like a saillor with the GenXer skipper. And after work, I continued the Severe Mocking with one of my other colleagues, over lunch. That was fun. But now I’m ramped up on bourgeousie self-loathing & bitterness & I’m starting to sound like a 206er**. This means it’s time to go watch the Simpsons, and then fight my way through to run some errands. Day off tomorrow. w00t.

**”206″ is the area code for Seattle, City Of proper. “206ers” are people who live in Seattle proper, on one of the hills or neighborhoods where urban hipsters live in this city. 206ers will make fun of people who live in the 425 area code, as 425 is now mostly the Eastside: Bellevue, Redmond, Kirkland, Bothell, Issaquah, all fairly well to do townships. A 206er actually called Mike a 425er last week at a trendy Seattle hangout, and made fun of him for living in Kirkland. Class wars in Seattle…*sigh*.