Archive for the ‘Seattle’ Category
Thursday, September 18th, 2008
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God help me, I hate shopping malls. But I needed new clothes, I have been wanting to learn what all the fuss over H&M is about, and sometimes, there is nothing for it but cross a giant swath of asphalt and dive into the belly of the suburban consumer beast.
Our biggest nearby mall is Southcenter; it’s now using the shiny new name of Westfield. I can’t help but ask where the field is because there’s no sign of if and to the west, there are six lanes of traffic dumping commuters into Interstate 5 and the smaller highway that goes to the airport.
Westfield on an early September evening is packed with a lot of good looking people from all kinds of different ethnic backgrounds, it’s a chain retailer’s American dream fantasy come to life. At the south entrance to the mall, there are a handful of restaurants, a giant Barnes and Noble, and a three or four story parking garage. Oh, and Blue C Sushi. As we walked past, the husband said, “Hey, it’s Fish Wednesday, how ’bout sushi?”
Why fight it? I agreed and we found ourselves in a booth next to the conveyor belt while brightly colored plates slid quietly by. Tempura eel with cream cheese. California roll. Spicy tuna roll. Braised tuna with a special dipping sauce. Sesame noodles. The random plastic toy. A bottle of soda. A plastic sign that said “Beef, it’s what’s for sushi.”
Behind the counter a bunch of cheerful Spanish speaking guys cranked out roll after roll of sushi goodness, slicing and stacking and setting in motion. I like Blue C, it’s fun to watch the little plates roll past. It’s fun to stack up the plates by color. To watch the videos of Japanese hipster kids on the big screen monitor at the back of the restaurant. There’s a lot going on but it’s not noisy (or it wasn’t last night) and most of what we had was really yummy, save the tuna sashimi, which should have been a better cut of fish. I had a Cricket Cola at the recommendation of the young man keeping an eye on us - it was tasty too.
Sushi is pretty labor intensive and it’s hard to reproduce the kind of variety you’d like at home. Blue C isn’t the best sushi I’ve had - I think that was at some nondescript place in Honolulu - but it was really quite good.
Blue C has four locations, go check it out.
Posted in Seattle | 6 Comments »
Saturday, September 6th, 2008
The Burien Firefighters were holding an open house when we passed through which is why we parked the car, got a seat on the curb, and watched them slice up a car as though were a Thanksgiving turkey. They were demonstrating a simulated rescue on an 80’s Mazda two door hatchback - they popped off the door, removed the pretend injured guy inside, and then, for grins, took the roof off.
The guy sitting next to me talked his little girl through the entire process because I believe that was her uncle playing “Injured Guy in Car.” The best part? “Can girls be firefighters too?” he asked his little pink clad charge. “That’s RIGHT! Absolutely they can!” Right on, modern dad.
With the car sliced and diced, we finished running our errands, and ended up at Alki Beach too late for the dedication of the new Statue of Liberty Plaza. That’s right, New Yorkers, we’ve got our own much smaller version of Lady Liberty. She faces the sound and reminds visitors that at the site where Seattle was founded, the settlers believed they were establishing the new New York. We ate celebratory cake, learned about what it takes to be a seal sitter, and talked to the folks who think you should turn your backyard into a wildlife habitat. Obama boosters registered voters while the big band played.
The left coast. Seattle. It’s where you wanted to be today.
Posted in Seattle | 8 Comments »
Sunday, August 31st, 2008
On the right, a neighborhood girl and her chicken, Neptune, outside Makeda Coffee in Seattle’s Greenwood neighborhood. Neptune is a frizzle bantam. She stayed on her leash, tied up to the bench outside until the girls got their drinks.
I asked one of the owners about pets in the shop. “I think I’d draw the line at a chicken,” he said.
Posted in Seattle | 6 Comments »
Thursday, August 28th, 2008
I’ve been nominated for a “!Love This Site” award, go figure. The nomination appears on Diviine Caroline, a site I post to four times a month - and apparently, they nominated me themselves. There are a bunch of other blogs in my category - travel - but nominations are open. You could nominate yourself or your favorite blog, but hey, why not vote for me? Because you want the fabulous prize? Of course you do. It’s a 250USD Visa gift card. That’s a nice starter chunk towards a ticket to Santiago, Chile, don’t you think?
If you wanted to stand between me and Santiago, you can nominate yourself here. If you think there’s nothing you’d rather do than read Nerd’s Eye View dispatches from Santiago, Chile (or whatever place catches my fancy, should I win) then you could vote for me here. (Did I mention I’m coming to stay with you, Santiago reader? Don’t worry, I don’t smoke, steal stuff, and I’m a pretty good cook.)
I realize these things are more about popularity than quality, so when the prize goes to someone else, I will make snarky remarks about how, yeah, they sure knew how to get votes. Unless I win, in which case, I will say things about how popularity is all fine and well, but without stellar quality, you can never be popular and isn’t it nice that all my hard work is paying off? I will say either or both of those things with such grace and style that you will not know what I am talking about, and I will say glowing things about the winner, too. You’ll be confused. That’s why I’m telling you what I mean right now. It’s this kind of candor that makes Nerd’s Eye View so popular.
Whatever you decide to do, you could also take a few minutes to check out Divine Caroline. It’s a very pretty magazine style site focused primarily, but not exclusively, on writing for and by women. The ads on the my sidebar come through their network. I’m a “featured writer” which means that sometimes my stories show up on their home page. For the record, I haven’t seen a big spike in traffic since joining their network and I earn very little money off the ads, but I stay with them because I like the way the site looks.
And because they like me.
In case you don’t know the reference, here’s Stuart Smalley on Wikipedia.
Posted in Seattle | 6 Comments »
Sunday, August 24th, 2008
I am a shy person. I am uncomfortable in large crowds and noisy places. I don’t mind strangers if there are three or four of them, when there are three or four hundred I don’t know what to do. So I find a quiet place to sit and drink my coffee. This is a real shame because as I read the blogging about Gnomedex – which I thoroughly enjoyed – I feel like I missed out. “What great people!” “What great connections!” It’s out there, over and over.
Never mind all that. If I wanted to meet you and didn’t, it’s because I’m a dork. I might be dropping you a line later, please don’t think I’m stalky.
Do you read Wired? We do at our house – from time to time we subscribe and in general, I think it’s pretty freaking great. It’s a weird mash of new technology discoveries, science, storytelling, gadgetry, pop culture, and out there geekiness. Gnomedex was like that, only live. And like Wired, not everything in the conference appealed to me, not everything engaged, but most of it was hugely entertaining and, in some cases, inspiring.
A traveler who uses photography to educate and inspire social change (Amanada Koster:SalaamGarage) spoke on the same stage with a grad student (Jon Malkin: UW) who’s working on the voice activated joystick that allows disabled people to interact with computers. An educator who uses social media to raise money for a cause she’s passionate about (Beth Kanter) spoke on the same stage with the guy who runs one of the most popular, funny, and frivolous humor sites on the web (Ben Huh: I Can Haz Cheezburger). A controversial journalist tried to lead a contentious and noisy room through a conversation about blogging (Sarah Lacy) in the morning and that afternoon, a scientist who navigates the Mars Rover (Scott Maxwell) – that’s right, on Mars, the planet – brought the room to an awestruck silence with a picture of the earth from the surface of Mars.
Wow.
As a traveler and photographer, I was surprised and delighted to see subject matter on the program that spoke directly to my interests. As someone who exists on the edge of the technology playground, it was exciting to see new ideas – I enjoyed the “open source hardware” presentation (Jeremy Toeman: Buglabs) way more than I would have imagined. And on the consumer side, there’s no denying the appeal of the I-Want-One-Now open source media center project (Dave Matthews: Boxee).
There were a couple of dead spots – I was having trouble staying tuned in to a presentation on Vendor Relationship Management (you might be glazing over as you read those words) and the laptop security session that followed sent me in search of more coffee and out on to the balcony to get some daylight and to watch the cruise ships load.
But on the whole, I loved the presentations – they sparked some sleeping synapses in my brain. For me, the take away from Gnomedex wasn’t what the presenters are doing, fascinating though it was. It’s a question, really. How can technology be used to make the world a better place?
“What’s Gnomedex?” That’s come up a lot over the last few days. I can tell you what it was this year – a presentation of big cool ideas by people using technology to do amazing things. I’ve heard that in the past, it was way geekier, considerably less appealing to entry level nerds like me, people who use tech but don’t really care about what’s under the hood. Not so this year. If there’s more of the social and cultural aspect of tech on the program for next year, I’d totally go again. And for those major geeks who like the under the hood stuff, you should too because people like me need people like you to build stuff for us.
Digesting that giant pipe of information over the last two days? Totally exhausting. Being surrounded by humans with their brains firing like mad? Absolutely exhilarating. Gnomedex? Awesome. You should go with me next year.
For the record, I have a little bit of blog angst from time to time, but nothing getting up and walking away from the computer won’t cure almost immediately.
Related Notes:
- You can watch the Gnomedex talks- the recorded videos are on the site.
- Did you vote for travelblogging at SxSW yet? Please do.
- Trick for calming restless nerds? Talk to them about space.
- Major thanks to Elliot Ng from Uptake who sold me his Gnomedex pass for 1/2 price.
Posted in Seattle, Werk | 7 Comments »
Thursday, August 21st, 2008
Disclaimer: Tonight’s Fish Wednesday is sponsored, unofficially, by Three Olives Vodka. Why? Because they sent me the sample vodka I used in the recipe. Just so you know, I’m not much of a drinker, so I’ll bypass the deep analysis of the vodka and tell you what we had for dinner.
Penne with Vodka is one of those classic recipes - easy to make, mildly impressive, and always delicious. There are lots of variations but I think all the basics involve making a red sauce with a generous helping of vodka and heavy cream tossed in. The recipe that came with my bottle of Tomato Vodka calls for heavy cream and Parmesan cheese, but I wanted to make fish and I don’t typcially care for fish in cream sauce, it’s a little too Swedish for my Mediterranean tastes.
I amended the basic recipe by simply leaving out the dairy products and doubling the vodka for good measure. When it was almost done, I dropped a nice piece of snapper in the pan. The sauce was sweet, had a little bite, and was great over flax penne with salt cured Nicoise olives and green salad on the side. Yum
Want to make it? It’s easy. This made the perfect amount for two.
- 1/2 medium yellow onion, diced
- 2 Roma tomatoes, diced
- 1/2 c. tomato puree
- 1c. of vodka - I used Three Olives Tomato
- Fresh ground black pepper
- Chili oil
- 1/2 pound snapper fillet
Saute the onion until it’s just starting to brown. Add the two diced Romas - don’t use crappy supermarket tomatoes, get good ones, it makes all the difference. Grind some black pepper over it and when the tomatoes are giving up their sauce, add about half a cup of tomato puree. Pour in half a cup of tomato vodka (it’s what I had and I think the tomato flavor helps, but you can use regular vodka too, of course. If you’re so inclined, add a splash of chili oil. When all that has simmered down to a nice thick sauce, add the snapper fillet and another half a cup of vodka. Cook it until most of the liquid is gone - the sauce should be really thick and the fish should be falling apart.
Serve it over penne and wash it down with the red wine you have left on the counter from last time you made red sauce. It might also be nice to run the sauce through the food processor until it’s smooth, grill the fish, and pour the reheated sauce over the fish and the pasta, but when you’re cooking with vodka, things like the food processor seem unnecessarily complicated.
Eat your fish. It makes you willing to try new things. Like flavored vodka.
Posted in Seattle | 2 Comments »
