Another beautiful drive north (I know it sounds redundant, but it’s true!) through Oregon. One of my big debates this week was whether to stop in Portland and for how long. I’ve never been, and I’ve heard amazing things about the city. I ended up having a long lunch break for a couple hours at a little cafe (J Cafe, I think?) near the convention center. Not an ideal way to see the city, but I did observe my fair share of piercings and tatoos and funky personalities.
By the time I got into Seattle, it was after dinner and Terri, a friend from LA, picked me up and we went for drinks. The previous time I had been in Seattle was about a year and a half earlier, and I had seen Terri then, as well, so she and I have had one of the shorter spans of time since we last saw each other. So our conversation was different from a lot of the others I’ve had. Actually, I’ve been surprised by how different each conversation is. I thought I would get tired of saying the same thing over and over again, and I am explaining the same events of my life repeatedly, but each context with each person is so unique, that it hasn’t gotten repetitive. So Terri and I glossed over a lot of the catch-up conversations quickly and got into a deeper conversation about the difficulty of finding your place in a big city, of finding community, of finding a date. Terri used to live in the neighborhood where we were hanging out, Capitol Hill, so it was fun to view the neighborhood in a local way. We grabbed drinks at Bleu Bistro then walked back to the car past the “Mystery Coke Machine,” which Terri and her friends dubbed MCM. In addition to the regular Coke, Diet Coke, and Mt. Dew buttons, there are two “Mystery” buttons that spit out different kinds of soda–you never know what you’re going to get. First you tell the machine what kind of soda you want, you put your money in, and see what comes out! We got a can of Squirt and a can of 7up. Not too eventful, but fun nonetheless.
The Mystery Coke Machine has two "Mystery" buttons that spit out surprise beverages.
Terri tells the Mystery Coke Machine what kind of soda she wants: grape or orange.
Then you put your money in.
It costs 75 cents to have this much fun!
So it wasn't grape or orange--we got Squirt and a can of 7up.
Then Terri took me to the top of Queen Anne hill for a beautiful night view of the city. I didn’t know my camera could take such great night shots:
Terri and I at the top of Queen Anne hill.
It was a great night with Terri seeing a few Seattle treasures.
The next morning, I discovered Fresh Flours bakery and coffee shop very close to the Woodland Park Zoo and my friend Susan’s apartment. I camped out there enjoying their Blood Orange Hibiscus tea and wifi for a good chunk of the weekend. I had gotten in touch with high school color guard (the flags that perform with the marching band) member Ivy and we decided to go see high school friend Susan (and my host for the weekend) at the Woodland Park Zoo. Susan is a zookeeper in the raptor program, so twice daily she does a show featuring the birds of prey in flight around a grassy arena. Ivy was excited to attend the show, so we braved the cold and rain (really, Seattle, you couldn’t be more creative than that?) to watch falcons and hawks and vultures and owls. Ivy works at Microsoft, who employs a whopping 50,000 people in Seattle, working on their new cloud system. It was interesting to see Ivy in such a technical field because what I knew and remembered of her was quite creative. She pulls long, hard hours at her job and is considering a transition in the not-too-distant future. So we had a relaxing (albeit chilly and wet) walk around the zoo, which is quite a lovely facility. Susan gave us a behind the scenes tour of the raptor program. Many of the animals were hiding out from the rain, but we did see a lion. We also learned, thanks to some feisty high school volunteers, that hyenas are descended from cats and wild dogs are (obviously) descended from dogs, but that hyenas and wild dogs are NOT related. Who knew?
Ivy and me after our trip to the Woodland Park Zoo.
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Connecting Cross Country 
I know that zoo! My aunt and uncle live on Woodland Park Ave just down the street. 🙂
When I was visiting with Dirk and Alicia they mentioned that they had connected with your aunt and heard her music. So fun!