Seattle Weekend

This weekend I went up to Seattle with Alison and Cameron to go to Matilda and Ian's birthday party, and it was action packed! We stayed with Tegan, and managed to sleep 4 girls in her bedroom, good times. I'm not used to doing so many activities in one weekend so I'm pretty tired! We got into town Friday night, and Saturday we went to Arraya's (vegan Thai, my fav restaurant from uni) for their fabulous buffet. Then it was off to gasworks, and then downtown to the Olympic Sculpture Park. Later we went to Carmelita, another vegetarian restaurant, and treated ourselves to a nice dinner, and it was so fantastic! We seem to always plan our Seattle trips around food.... but Seattle has so many amazing veggie restaurants, theres not enough time in one weekend to hit them all up! After dinner it was off to the birthday party, feeling a bit tired by then but it was good fun. Sunday we dragged ourselves out of bed so we could go to Tokyo Garden for sushi and miso soup before driving back down to Portland. We were so lucky to have nice weather the whole time, it's so great to see Seattle in the sun, like I'd been picturing it when I was feeling homesick for it in Japan. It's a beautiful city, I'd like to live there again someday.

Best personalized license plate ever!

Olympic Sculpture Park

Seattle Art Museum recently opened a sculpture park on the downtown waterfront, it's great! So nice that finally Seattle is paying attention to the design of the waterfront and creating spaces people can enjoy. There are several pieces, some I've posted here, and for the most part they were great. It was such a beautiful afternoon to wander around, talking about the pieces we liked. It's been awhile since I've had a chance to do that and it was so fun! It's a beautiful setting for it, right on Elliot Bay, and there's a path that you can walk along by the water, fantastic!

Apparently, pedophilia and incestuous connotations are more acceptable than homosexuality

So this piece is ridiculous. Some rich guy in Seattle died and in his will set aside money to commission a sculpture, his requirement being that it have 2 naked men. It's not like naked men have never been sculpted before, I mean Michelangelo's David is one of the most famous sculptures in the world. But 2 naked men apparently made whoever was in charge of this uncomfortable. So instead of 2 adult men, someone had the fabulous idea of a naked father and son. They are both standing, facing each other, with their arms reaching out to one another. This is just such a disturbing image! It's also a fountain, and that part is interesting, the water level changes so sometimes you can see the son, sometimes the father, but they could have used that same technique with a better subject matter. It's not like they had to do something like The Rape of the Sabine Women, I'm sure some artist could have created a piece that would be appropriate for a public sculpture park and not include a naked parent and child. Anyway, this disappoints me.

This artist wanted the solid forms to look transparent and the open parts to look solid- she achieved this I think.

After gorging ourselves on Arrayas buffet, we decided to take advantage of the beautiful weather and went to Gasworks Park, where we lay in the grass with very full stomachs.

Cameron, Tegan, Alison, and Julia

Lovely view of downtown from Lake Union

Gasworks Park

Yes, that's an old refinery. And yes, this is the park thats in the movie 10 Things I Hate About You, and no, there's no paintball here.

Quack Quack

It's official, I'm going to the U of O! Classes start Septeber 25. Will have to remember how to be a student!

I finally went to the doctor..

..and got re-x-rayed, which confirmed I don't have any fractures and it really is a torn ligament. I'd almost hoped it was a fracture cause then it'd be easier to heal. So I just got a fancier ankle brace thing and some stretchy-exercises to do that will hopefully make my stupid foot get better finally. Let that be a lesson to you all- swinging from vines is a bad idea, even if your trek guide does it with ease.

In other boring news, start a new temp job tomorrow at OHSU (hospital) so yay continued employment. Sadly won't be able to have lunches with my pals downtown anymore, but you can't have everything I guess.

The weather has finally started to get warm- hope this doesn't jinx it- but was able to enjoy the sun today after my doctor's appointment. So fingers crossed that the rainy NW winter season is over!