I’m In Seattle!

First of all, National Readathon Day is on Saturday!! I’m over halfway to my goal, and I would LOVE your support! Because who doesn’t love books and literacy? Please make a donation over here. I’ll love you forever.

Feller and I are on the second leg of our Portland-Seattle-Portland vacation, and so far it’s been great. We spent the past few days hanging out in Beaverton, Oregon and not doing much. We discovered a Fred Meyer down the street from our hotel, which is sort of like an even BETTER version of Target, if you can believe it. Needless to say, we engaged in some light retail therapy and grocery shopping, since our room had a teeny tiny kitchen. We also discovered the 24 hour delights of WinCo, and their crazy huge bulk section. These two stores are certainly making a good case for Oregon being a pretty decent place to live.

On our first full day in the Portland area, we went to a Fred Meyers & picked up some important travel essentials. Namely, these bangles. #NAB #needabracelet #Portland #vacation

A photo posted by @amysaysread on Jan 15, 2015 at 3:15pm PST

I also discovered that I wasn’t quite as prepared for the amount of rain we were going to be doing with as I thought as I was. I brought my umbrella from home, but then I misplaced it somewhere between home and the hotel. Turns out, I had just put it in a different bag and forgot. But not before I bought a new one! And a raincoat! (My first raincoat ever. It’s like one more step to being a Real Adult.)

Actually Important Portland Purchases: rain gear. #vacation #Portland #raining

A photo posted by @amysaysread on Jan 18, 2015 at 2:21pm PST

Turns out the raincoat came in real handy when we hiked up Multnomah Falls. It wasn’t raining most of the day, but it started to as we came back down the mountain, and it was certainly nice to have the protection when we were walking by the falls.

That was the only Big Thing we’ve done since we arrived, but I think we both needed some time to relax and recharge and recover from Life. Life’s been exhausting recently, and we were ready for a break. We have, however, reached the point where we have to start making the most of our days and Doing Things. We were gonna try to go to Ecola State Park yesterday, but after the ass kicking the Falls gave us the day before, we decided to take it easy. (Also, we got up kind of late, surprising exactly no one who knows us.) So it was to Seattle we came, and we got here just in time for me to get in a nice run in the neighborhood around our hotel.

Guess where I got to run tonight #vacation #Seattle #SpaceNeedle #running #writeandrun31

A photo posted by @amysaysread on Jan 19, 2015 at 5:42pm PST

Not a bad way to greet a new city. Also, it seems the #writeandrun31 is turning me into one of those weirdos who looks forward to working out. Except for one Fuck It Day and a few days where I was sick, I’ve been sticking with my goals, even on days when I was really not feeling it or thinking that it’d be okay if I skipped. Like today. I was not going to go for a run, but we got checked into our hotel a couple blocks from the Space Needle right before sunset, and off I went.

Anyways, we’ve got a lot of stuff we want to do and see in the next couple of days. We’re only in Seattle until sometime on the 22nd, and there’s a lot to do! I, in particular, want to see the library.

I see London

After our Cape Town adventures, Feller and I headed off to London for about two weeks for some business related stuff. Not MY business, obviously, since I was still an unrepentant bum at this point and happy to just enjoy London with no agenda or any real plan. Which was great, but also meant that I didn’t DO very much. There were quite a few days of snoozing and drinking and not doing much else, which was okay! But sometimes I do feel like I should have more to show for this portion of the trip, like there should been Stuff! To Do! Everyday! But you know what?! I had a great time and did most of what I wanted to do, though I would have liked to make it to the Victoria & Albert Museum. They have two exhibits that I wish I could have seen, but OH WELL.

I spent an afternoon wandering down Oxford ST and Regent ST, stopping in Hamleys (I only visited one of it’s SIX FLOORS; that was a time suck I did NOT need) and my first REAL LIFE Lush. This same afternoon I spent an ungodly amount of time wandering around Forbidden Planet, this monstrously large comic book and sci-fi/fantasy store and HOLY GOD, IT WAS DELICIOUS. I was really glad I didn’t have any extra money because I could have spent IT ALL in that store. There was cool comic book memorabilia and Dr Who stuff and Star Wars stuff and an entire floor of BOOKS. Signed books, new books, comic books, Dr Who and Torchwood spin off books. It was amazing. AMAZING.

One day, Feller came with me to climb the St. Paul’s Cathedral dome. We wandered around the crypt and saw various famous British people’s tombs and sarcophagi, like Admiral Nelson and … someone else … Wellington, maybe? Some of the plaques were really beautiful and there was a lot of history down there, but the main attraction for me was the dome.

St. Paul’s has three levels to which one can climb: the Whispering Gallery, the Stone Gallery and the Golden Gallery at the very top. We decided to go all the way, which involved climbing up a total of 528 steps (and then climbing back DOWN those 528 steps).

The view was GLORIOUS. It was one of the few overcast days in London while we were there, but you can see so much from the Stone and especially the Golden Gallery that it didn’t matter. (The view from the Whispering Gallery is the INSIDE of the dome and allows one to see the amazing artwork up close, but they didn’t allow any pictures, so we only briefly paused there to make sure we only needed to climb an additional 271 steps to the very top rather than 376 to the Stone Gallery and 528 MORE to the Golden Gallery.)

The Golden Gallery viewing platform was TEENY TINY, and I have a touch of the Afraid of Heights, which made climbing the second half of holey metal steps interesting, so there was a lot of cringing behind my hands and making Feller take pictures because I couldn’t bear to hold my camera out over the ledge in order to get the shot I wanted. I can always just imagine fumbling my precious electronics and helplessly watching them plummet 528 steps down to the ground, so I can’t actually stand the thought of sticking my hand over the abyss. But he got some great pictures.

After that bit of fun was over, my legs were jelly. I was standing waiting while Feller used the toilet, and I kind of thought I was going to collapse. Apparently my legs aren’t so into the idea of climbing 528 up and then back down. WHO KNEW.

And, OH GOD, THE WALKING. SO MUCH WALKING. AND STANDING. AND BEING ON MY FEET. My poor little feets were just NOT prepared. It had been a VERY LONG TIME since I’d spent more than an hour or two on my feet, and HOLY COW. OUCHIES. I felt like a jackass complaining about my feet so much, but they HURT, and I couldn’t help myself. I’ll suffer through all kinds of pain, but you better believe Imma bitch about it. But I figure all that walking balanced out all that drinking and all that eating that we did.

A weekend out and about

The date this weekend went … quite well. He took me up Coit Tower, and I knew that the walk was going to be uphill and a little strenuous. I did not realize I was going to want to die halfway there. I also did not realize that I was going to COMPLETELY ruin the effort I had put into my hair because I was going to sweat so much. That part of the date was not so awesome. BUT THE SUN WAS OUT. AND IT WAS WARM. I totally wanted to just lay on the street sunning myself. Soaking it up.

Starting Point, originally uploaded by Being a Dilettante.

The view from the top of the tower was pretty amazing though. See that TINY little clock tower way over there in that picture? That’s about where we started walking. I kind of didn’t think we would ever make it.

We also went to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, which was cool, even though I TOTALLY do.not. get modern art about 99% of the time. I think my favorite piece, or at least the one I really connected to was Two Ways to Organize, which goes back to my nerdly love of tagging and Everything is Miscellaneous.

This was a good weekend, full of me getting out of the apartment and doing new things, which may (or NOT!) have included some things I’m not going to go into detail about here. Also, it’s nice to know that some things never change, like that “watching a movie” never results in watching a movie.