Partially tourists –

– but starting to act almost as if we live here. On Wednesday we went to the sculpture garden and then up the space needle – pretty tourist-y. We took the bus home at close to rush hour though, almost like we live here.

On our first morning here, last Saturday, I woke up feeling like, thank goodness, my cold is better, but then Mark started coughing and his cough was worse than mine had been. And now I have the worse cold, too.

[portfolio_slideshow pagerpos=disabled]

After the Space Needle, we stopped at a bakery to get a late lunch, and against my better judgement I had a egg & bacon sandwich on bialy – good, but by the time we were back home after the long bus ride, with my head stuffed up from the cold, I felt really queasy and didn’t want any dinner. Although – they spent millions remodeling the Space Needle recently, adding a glass floor, so maybe it was staring at stuff – like the roofs of Uncle Paul’s museum – with rotation – that made me so queasy. I talked Anna into coming with me to watch the dog while I went into the store, and we went down and up the long hill to Leschi Market (+300 feet, for the trip back Google says) and got me a 6-pack of Rolling Rock tallboys and Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food ice cream for Anna. I only drank one of the beers but I feel better having it. The first time I opened the fridge, I thought, “can this be my brother’s house? no beer.”

On Thursday it was pretty rainy, so we kind of stuck closer to home. We had toast and cereal for breakfast, and drove to University Village, for some not-terribly-successful shopping; Victoria’s Secret and Pink both failed to have what Anna was looking for, although I did get myself stocked up with shampoo and Advil for my cold. I had to go sit outside at Starbucks at University Village, because I was miserably too hot – the cold is messing up my thermostat. One of the times I got up to pee in the night I had chills and shakes, and then in the morning I had to throw off the covers because I was too hot.

Oh, and Thursday afternoon, I took my laptop and walked through the rain to go use the faster wifi at the Douglass-Truth branch library. I’m going to see if I can reserve a study room there or at another Seattle Public Library to give the online presentation I’m going to have to do Jan. 23rd.

We had dinner out at Steelhead Diner, and then walked past the gum wall, and market by night. Pretty tourist-y, again.

On Friday, Mark and Anna’s last day here, I took the dog for her walk wearing pajama pants and my flowered rubber rain boots – pretty local. And we met friends for breakfast at the Hi Spot – a neighborhood breakfast joint.

We took the bus to Pioneer Square, and I went to a fabric store to get some material to make an apron with vegetable transfers – test for my demo at the 2019 Garden Expo in February, back in Madison. We got a coffee at Dollop, our transplanted Chicago coffee place, but their Seattle location is sharing space with a co-working operation so no seating – a little disappointing. We wandered through the public library, then took light rail over to Broadway & Denny, so I could go to Blick, and we all could go to Elliott’s Bay Books. I bought a solar printing kit at Blick, but I think I might take it back – I ordered a box of the iron-on transfer sheets I’m more used to using from Amazon to be delivered here in a day or two.

Took the bus home, took the dog for a walk, made dinner: stove top mac & cheese, that I like better than the last recipe I tried, which had too much sauce for noodle, and was just kind of too roux-y; sauteed cherry tomatoes and the leftover green beans from last Saturday; and Anna had a piece of chicken brought home from Steelhead. The innovation in the stove top mac & cheese was making a small amount of roux then adding a measured amount of water to cook the macaroni, then the milk, then the dry macaroni, and letting that all simmer till the mac is done and has soaked up all the water, and then adding the cheese. The sauce consistency was very much like Annie’s, and I used a really good cheese combo: Jarlsberg, some BelGioioso, from WI, even though I bought it here, kind of a cheddar with a chipotle crust, and some sharp white Kirkland cheddar and Reggiano from the door of my brother’s fridge. Anna still didn’t eat any of it but that wasn’t unexpected.

I’ve done a load of wash, well, two actually but the first one was just dog stuff so doesn’t count, I’m slowly figuring out what goes in compost, peeking into the bins and trying to figure it all out, using the city’s website, although I’m still not sure I’m using the right container for the compost – it wasn’t in the closet when I got here, so I think Jen camouflaged it by washing it. At least, I hope so – the nice clean container seems too nice for compost – I bet it’s actually for flour, and now I’ve ruined it for that purpose.