Sleepless in Seattle

The fun bar where we spent X-mas night

So where am I now, dear readers? Surrounded by mountains and the sea, temps a good 30 degrees warmer than at home, even occasional appearances of the sun..Merry X-mas to us! I still had a few free passes left over for the fancy airline perk lounge so that's where we had breakfast waiting for our plane. The staff all had Santa hats on and were unusually cheerful.
The purpose of our trip was not to escape Michigan so much but to surprise my sister-in-law for her 50th birthday. The other brother and his new wife flew in from NYC almost 11 hours after us. We wanted to show up at the doorstep together so much of yesterday was spent trying to kill time when very few things were open. First stop, the International District for dim sum, which I guessed correctedly was open on X-mas. Our first choice had a line out the door but there are plenty of dim sum places. Excellent shrimp-cilantro dumplings!

Me in my
giant pumpkin coat. I didn't think I'd need a winter coat with highs in the upper 40s but towards the end of our stay, the temps went down

What else would be open? We went to see Black Swan, directed by a former student of my new sister-in-law. Beautiful music, interesting staging, scary effects..I liked it but I suppose most would find it too weird.  Still we had plenty of time left to kill plus we were very tired as neither of us had much sleep the night before. The NY plane would not get there until 10 pm PST, which meant 1 am by our clock. Plus there was the long drive back from the airport. We visited Steve's mom, which was a risk because we were afraid that she'd spoil the surprise but she promised not to. We certainly surprised her. But still we had 4 hours to kill. I drove our rental push button car around aimlessly in the rain hoping to find something open. Finally I saw neon and parked cars! A divey neighborhood/bar/ coffee shop. Perfect! Full of people with no where else to go along with Cujo the lab and a chihuahua who walked freely through the place. A Vespa and a bicycle was parked in the middle of the dining room. There was a sign warning if you bitched how long it took to make the food, you'd be refered to the McDonald's down the streeet. I will post a picture once I return. Had some yummy tomato curry shitake soup. A nice vibe..it reminded me of our old college coop with nothing matching. The owner asked what movies we wanted to watch...the vote was for The Transformers (?).When we finally left to the airport, they all wished us Merry X-mas!

I planned on sleeping for a bit in the cellphone lot as I was so.so..so tired but as soon as I closed my eyes, the plane arrived early.The four of us pounded on the door close to midnight (3 am EST). Yep she was surprised!!!We stayed up a few more hours..lots of laughter.

The birthday girl surprised. Only hint of us coming was her husband's sudden interest in sheet cleaning and keeping her up past her bedtime. Looks very good for 50, dontcha think?

The sun shined in our window a few hours later. The weather changes back and forth from sunny and calm to gale force wind and rain every hour or so. I ran around Green Lake twice..a good and very popular place to run. So nice not to worry about ice. Too cloudy to see the mountains today though.

Coots on Green Lake