Pilcrow

I've been thinking about getting a bicycle for years. Back in the spring of 2006, after I'd moved into my current home on the north side of Queen Anne, I started going out for long walks to get to know the area better—walks which quickly led me up over Queen Anne hill, around Lake Union, through Magnolia and across the Chittenden Locks into Ballard, and out to the Montlake Cut, among other places. However, in checking my "walks" tag here in my journal, I see that even earlier than that, in the spring of 2005, I was already saying "I'd still like to get a bicycle"; I'd clearly been thinking about it for a while at that point even.

Well, when my younger brother Jeremy and his friend Caroline came out to visit in May 2009, they rented bikes a couple times from Recycled Cycles on the north side of Lake Union, and had fun going out for rides. They had a good time, and Jeremy took note of how I kept talking about getting a bicycle but never doing anything about it—my ongoing financial difficulties have been a major factor in continually putting it off. And then I had my car crash last October, reducing my mobility around town. So, this past winter as a combination Christmas and birthday present, Jeremy got me a generous gift certificate to Recycled Cycles, to help me get a bicycle. And now that the weather in Seattle is finally hinting at the approach of summer, I've finally taken advantage of his gift and purchased a bicycle.



I actually purchased it two weeks ago, on May 11, but I've barely used it so far. I was really busy last week when the weather was nice for several days and didn't get a chance to go for a ride. Finally this past Monday it was still nice enough in the early evening that I took it for a short ride, just up to and across the Ballard Bridge and then back down the Burke-Gilman Trail through Fremont to home.

Today, the weather was nicer than predicted, so I rode it back to Recycled Cycles to get fenders and a carrying rack installed. They had to hold it for a while so I took the bus home. Then when it was ready, I was in such a hurry to catch the bus back that I forgot my helmet at home. So rather than go for a longer ride right away, I decided to be a good cyclist, and took my bike on the bus back home to get my helmet. And then I cycled around Lake Union following the Cheshiahud Lake Union Loop, which is basically the same route I took five years ago when I first walked around Lake Union. At the time, it took me about four hours to do the walk, although I spent some of that time just checking out interesting places along the way. Tonight, I cycled the loop in about forty minutes, spending almost another twenty minutes just checking out the new Lake Union Park. That difference in time bodes well for my ability to explore more parts of Seattle that I've never checked out before, and I'm looking forward to it.

One thing I forgot to mention in yesterday's entry is that a couple weeks ago I also tried sending a message to someone on Friendster, and again, my message was completely ignored. Hence my continued discouragement. Another thing I didn't mention, though, is that someone sent me a message on Yahoo Personals, back at the end of July. However, it wasn't a proper message, it was a free canned "icebreaker" message that simply said "I like your profile, tell me more." I looked at her profile and did not really like it in return. I could have sent a free quick reply in response, with a few different options for "sorry, not interested," but I never did. So if I'm willing to ignore messages, I should accept that others will do that to me as well, but of course it's not so easy when I'm the subject.

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Today (Saturday) I went for another long walk. I needed to get more cat food, which I usually get at Mud Bay Granary, most often the store on Pine Street, otherwise the store just off Broadway. I'm sure there must be a pet store much closer to my home that carries the Wellness brand, and I should probably find it, but I do like that going to Mud Bay gives me a reason to go to Capitol Hill. This is the first time I've done the whole trip walking, though - previously I've either simply driven there, or else taken the bus downtown, walked up the hill, and then walked back downtown to catch the bus again.

I wanted to check out the I-5 Colonnade Park, which I knew about because I drove past it a few times last fall on the way to my real estate agent's office. So I decided to head around the north side of Lake Union to the University Bridge as my route to Capitol Hill. As its name indicates, the I-5 Colonnade Park is located beneath the highway; the webpage says it's south of E Howe Street, but it actually starts at the intersection of E Newton, Boylston, and Lakeview Blvd E, which passes underneath the highway. The park's typical for Seattle: take an area where no one can build and make a park out of it, but it's a good idea. It still seems to need some work - there are some large bare dirt areas that presumably should be grass-covered - but they're also still building trails across the park for mountain biking, which is a cool idea. It's also got an off-leash area for dogs.

As I was leaving the park, I saw a set of stairs going up the hill, filling in for E Blaine Street, so I decided to go up that way to Broadway instead of walking all the way down Lakeview to Belmont Ave. This led me to discover yet another park I never would've known about, the Streissguth Gardens. The Gardens are located just off E Blaine and Broadway E in a dead-end hillside neighborhood. It's not marked with the typical Seattle Parks sign, so at first I thought it was just someone's extensive private garden. But there was an elderly woman there, who I asked about it, and she turned out to be the previous owner of that land, who chose to donate it to the city. The area closest to the Blaine stairs is a regularly-maintained flower and vegetable garden, but heading south as the hillside becomes steeper it becomes wilder woodland, merging with the St. Mark's Greenbelt - yet another example of unusable land being designated a park. (Apparently there are trails through the Greenbelt, I didn't know that; I'll have to go back...)

After that, I went down Broadway, through Cal Anderson Park, up Pine to 15th Ave, down Pike to Melrose Ave, and finally to Mud Bay to get the cat food. Then I stopped at Bauhaus Books & Coffee for some juice and a doughnut. (Mmm, Top Pot doughnuts... wow, they only just started in Februray 2002, right before I moved here!) It took me three hours altogether to get to Bauhaus, though I did spend some time just puttering about the Colonnade and the Gardens. From there I went up to Denny Way and took that all the way to Seattle Center, and then headed up and over Queen Anne to get home - another two hours walking from Bauhaus.

I don't know how many more nice weekends we're going to have, the weather's already been cool and rainy for the past couple weeks, but I suppose as long as there's a nice day and I've got no plans, I'll keep going for long walks. Well, until I buy a bicycle next year...

It's felt like a weekend of staying at home and not doing anything. Friday night I went grocery shopping and went home; yesterday I had a haircut, went clothes shopping, took a walk, and went home; today I did household chores. I didn't see any friends (except the hairstylist, who I almost never see elsewhere), I didn't go out for the evening, I didn't do anything special. And yet I had a fairly full weekend.

Certainly Friday night if I'd really wanted to I could've gone to see Telefon Tel Aviv at Neumos, or Mission of Burma and 50 Ft. Wave at the Crocodile, as I mentioned in my previous post. However, I just didn't feel like bothering with trying to rush home through traffic in order to make dinner before rushing out to one of the clubs. Instead, I waited for traffic to subside, then went to the grocery store on the way home, and once at home I was so disinterested in making dinner that I ended up just having Lipton chicken noodle soup with some frozen vegetables added. So I think that set the overall mood for the weekend.

Yesterday I took the bus downtown to get my hair cut; my last haircut was four months ago, so I really needed it, and it felt good to take care of that. Then I went to Macy's to look for some new pullover long-sleeve shirts. Last weekend I'd stopped in The Gap and Old Navy to look for shirts, and I hadn't liked a single thing I saw at either store. This wasn't the first time in the past year or two that I'd had the same reaction, either. The Gap looked like it'd taken all its clothes from Urban Outfitters, another store that just isn't my style, and that made its difference to Old Navy even less than usual. Maybe I'm just aging out of their demographics? Meanwhile, Macy's had sent me a 15% discount card for purchases made with my Macy's card this month, so I figured I might as well take a look there. They had more stuff I liked - Kenneth Cole in particular - but that's outside my price range, and also generally looked a little too stylish for my everyday wear at work. However, I did manage to find some shirts I liked at a decent price, and bought a few. The discount ended up not applying because "everyday value" items were excluded, but they were still relatively cheap, and I can afford to pay off the Macy's card over a few months, particularly since buying clothes is practically a once-a-year event. I've found that I'm inordinately pleased about the new shirts, which tells me that I've been more tired of wearing the same old ones than I'd realized.

After the haircut and clothes shopping, I decided to walk home as the weather's still fairly nice. I walked up the waterfront through the Myrtle Edwards/Elliott Bay Parks, which I've done before, but then I continued to follow the bike path around the Terminal 91 industrial area to Smith Cove, the southeastern tip of Magnolia. It turned out that it's a long walk around Terminal 91, which is not particularly attractive nor interesting. Smith Cove's a nice little waterfront park with a good view of downtown, but not worth visiting on foot; and there's nowhere to go from there, as the road dead-ends at the private Elliott Bay Marina. (You might actually be able to walk down the street past the Marina and then continue on the shoreline, but that's something to investigate another time.) So I made my way back around the west side of Terminal 91 to the north, where I was able to pick up a regular Magnolia side street and get to the Dravus Street bridge to head home. It was a good "short" walk, only three hours, though once again, I found myself wishing I had a bicycle.

Today I had to clean the catbox and my bathroom, which I always do together. I also finally got around to fixing my leaking sink, which in the end turned out to be as simple as getting a new O-ring to seal the pipe properly. I also finally bothered to change the light bulb in the overhead light/fan fixture. It felt really good to get those small things taken care of. I do have a new problem, which is that there doesn't seem to be any way to slide the ceramic pedestal back underneath the sink - the underside of the sink has a downward curve, matched by the top of the pedestal, but it's such a tight fit that I can't get the raised corners of the pedestal underneath the lowest part of the sink. I might be able to do it if I have someone to help pull up on the sink, although I'm afraid of damaging things by trying to force the pedestal back underneath. Maybe I can sand down the bottom of the pedestal... Anyhow, cleaning, fixing, and organizing things always makes me feel good, so I'm ending the weekend feeling pretty good about it.

The trip to the zoo was entertaining. The Komodo dragon was disappointing - I knew they were ten feet long, but as a result imagined something tiger-sized, and they're much smaller. Speaking of tigers, I didn't get to see enough of them, although I did get a good close-up look at a jaguar (paws the size of my head!) and we also saw some "elusive" snow leopards. The pygmy marmosets were cool too - they seemed like some kind of Ray Harryhausen stop-motion models. Overall, we spent the better part of three hours strolling around the zoo, and didn't actually see all of it.

After I got home, I still felt like going for a walk, so I walked over to Magnolia. I walked over the back of Queen Anne and crossed to Magnolia on the W. Dravus Street bridge, then made my way up around Gilman Ave to the northern tip of Magnolia. I've seen that part of Magnolia, perched on a stone cliff, from Ray's Boathouse in Ballard before, and was curious to visit it. From there I then went to Commodore Park, which is the south side of the Chittenden Locks. By the time I got there, I'd been walking up and down very hilly streets for two hours, and I was quite tired, so I sat on a bench for a good twenty minutes. I started to head home by going down Commodore Way, but I wasn't quite sure whether I could walk under the Ballard Bridge - it's possible, but it's a big industrial area and I wasn't sure whether it was private property. Even though one of my goals for the lock was to find out about that, I decided that I didn't want to go wandering down there in the dark, so I crossed into Ballard over the locks and walked back to the Ballard Bridge, crossing that bridge back to Queen Anne. I don't actually like walking along the Ballard Bridge, too much of the walkway is too exposed to the high-speed traffic for my comfort, but I was tired and sore and wanted the most direct route home, rather than walking down through Fremont. All together I spent over three hours on the walk.

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This should be a full weekend. Tomorrow my company's taking an evening cruise on Lake Union and maybe into Lake Washington. Saturday I'm planning to go to The Crocodile Cafe for my August concert, seeing the Young Fresh Fellows with the Paul Lynde Fanclub and The Need Machine. I know nothing of the latter two bands, and only one song by the Young Fresh Fellows, their theme song. Sunday I have to do some condo cleaning, as my friend Doug will be arriving late Monday night for a week's visit. We plan to do much gaming, and also probably drive down to Portland for an overnight visit. Anyone have any suggestions for things to do in Portland?

I mentioned in my post last Sunday that it was the fourth anniversary of my arrival in Seattle, and that I'd have to write more about that "tomorrow". I knew at the time that I shouldn't have said that last part, and sure enough here it is a week later. Oh well.

Last year, to quote that entry, "I marked the occasion with a long walk through parts of Seattle I haven't really been in before, though that hadn't really been my intent." This year I had decided in advance that I wanted to do something similar. As I've already done a fair amount of walking around downtown, I figured I needed a different part of Seattle, but I wasn't sure where. I asked John whether there were any places in Seattle he's always intended to visit but hadn't actually done so in all the years he'd been here. He didn't end up thinking of any, but did say he and Elizabeth would be happy to join me for whatever I thought of.

I ended up deciding we should go for a walk in Seward Park. This is a peninsula jutting into the southern part of Lake Washington, across from the mid-part of Mercer Island. (Click here for the Google Maps page.) I'd driven by the entrance once a few years ago, while out just exploring new parts of Seattle, but had never actually spent time there. It turned out that neither John nor Elizabeth had ever been there either, so it was a nice new experience for all of us. There's a pathway going around the shoreline and several trails through the old-growth forest that covers the peninsula. It was reminiscent of Stanley Park in Vancouver BC, although that park is about ten times larger and, like the Vancouver area in general, more dramatic geographically.

The day was much more restful than last year's four-hour walk downtown, though. We spent at most a couple hours walking in the park. Before going to the park, we had brunch at B&O Espresso, one of my favorite restaurants and certainly my favorite place for brunch, and after the park we went to Kai's Lounge, one of our favorite hangouts, for drinks. It was a thoroughly pleasant afternoon all around.

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Because I spent the afternoon with company, I didn't spend time thinking about my time here in Seattle so far, or about places I still wanted to go, like I did last year. However, I did include visiting other places in the Northwest as one of my goals for this year. I just hope I can afford to do any travelling this year. I finished last month with a couple hundred dollars extra, which I attributed to getting the raise at the beginning of February. Then a few days ago I got a letter from the condo association pointing out how I hadn't yet paid my dues that I should have on the first and I should send them in immediately. Oops. With the coupon book for the dues in a file holder, I'd completely forgotten about it, and that was why I had extra money - some of which I'd already spent on new jeans (in fairness, I had to buy new jeans no matter what, as my existing pairs had developed holes in the knees) and also on a few new (used) CDs.

So between the late condo dues and also my high electric bill, I've now used up all my paychecks for the month and I've had to pull some money out of my small savings account to cover the rest of the month. Last month, before I got the first paycheck with my raise, I got my Quicken account caught up from the last time I'd updated it in the summer. Now I need to update it for this month, and then use it to work up a budget. From the analysis I've already done so far, it seems that I should be just making ends meet now that I have the raise, so I'm not quite sure why I instead seem to be just overspending my income.

I also started my taxes a couple weeks ago, and realized immediately that I was missing a form - I hadn't received one for the 401(k) fund that I had cashed out last summer. I had asked the office manager at work to update my address with them, but apparently she never did; although when I called them about it, it turns out she probably couldn't have, because they treat the accounts (my old one and my new one with 3sharp) wholly separately even though they're both for me. I got that straightened out and have the form now, so I'll finish my taxes later this week (I was going to tonight but TurboTax is down for maintenance). I do know so far that I'm going to have to pay taxes, contrary to the claims of numerous people about being able to expect a good refund as a first-time home buyer; but I figure that's because I never actually paid taxes on the place last year (the closing date was late enough that the previous owner paid them), so maybe next year I'll get a refund. On the positive side, so far TurboTax says I won't owe very much, so it comes down to whether they withheld enough when I cashed out the 401(k).

I've gotten over the dismay from realizing I'd forgotten my dues and thus would be "broke" this month, so right now I'm inclined to feel that things are going to work out. I do keep veering from hope to dismay, however, and it's getting quite distressing. I'm feeling insecure a lot because of the uncertainty of continuing to make ends meet and the probability of more major expenses (some kind of car or condo trouble, most likely) coming up and getting added to my credit card debt, which I'm dealing with v-e-r-y s--l--o--w--l--y. I was struck by what a trap property can be, and how risky is this bet that paying toward ownership will be better than renting a place. Much as I love my new place, I'm still not sure I made the right decision last summer, and I only hope time proves it to be the right one.