Thus, no school for Liam this year.  And it’s starting to annoy us.  Liam would definitely benefit from a school environment to meet some new kids, stretch his brain and give his overworked mom a bit of a break.  It’s times like this that we begin to think about a relocation to a place where we don’t have to put up with a lottery system to deal with the fact that supply and demand are so heavily screwed up in the education system. 

 Don’t get me wrong — I’m okay with the fairness that the lottery system provides, but I’m having a hard time understanding why co-op pre school are missing out on a simple supply and demand discussion.  There’s simply not enough spaces available where people live, so we either get to: (a) do day care, (b) do a private school (like Montessori) or (c) suck it up and deal.  None of those choices seem appropriate — especially since (a) and (b) basically mean your kid goes somewhere five days a week — when, in fact, we want more like 2-3 for half a day.

So… who knows what’s next.  Back to the drawing board and doing some more research.  And Amy’s back to looking at house options to get out of our neighborhood.   

So last night we wound up at Volunteer Park Cafe again.  We haven’t done Tilth in almost two months — but ever since that New York Times article, it’s been impossible to book the restaurant online between 5 and 8pm on Fridays.  I think they’ve blocked this time off, because as far out as 8 months, they don’t have availability and I refuse to believe that any Seattle restaurant has such a following.

We had a shorter wait than usual and dinner was, as usual, really tasty (I had Cafe Fries and the Short Ribs, Amy had a Pot Pie appetizer, a salad and the Cafe Steamers).  I think Amy and I have come to really enjoy the staff at the Volunteer Park Cafe.  They’re kind of slightly overwhelmed but super friendly and we’ve always had great interactions with everyone there.  Oddly, tonight Ericka wasn’t in the house.  I wonder if she’s on vacation or if she’s got other plans.

Whilst we were away, Liam and his babysitter dyed some easter eggs.  He was most excited to walk through the dozen eggs this morning pointing them out “This one is golden, this one is blue, this one is also blue, this one is green and a little cracked…”  Not a bad way to begin the weekend at all, really.

Flock does part of its job well enough, tbqh.  But I found that I couldn’t reliably get status updates a-la NewsFeed like I wanted in the browser.  I also found that for Twitter it had a hard time beating Twitterific.  Flickr?  Well, we’re not well integrated into the world of Flickr yet — and I’m not sure it’s the right place for us to stage our photos (perhaps Smugmug would be better). As to WordPress, they’ve got a fancy WYSIWYG editor on their website.

Done, done, done and done.  Short version: what’s the reason for using Flock again?So, I’m back to Safari after a tumultuous morning and early afternoon of attempting to fix my MacBook’s intransigence (it had no desire to restart or cleanly shutdown).  In the end, disabling Spotlight indexing on my root drive seems to have been the magic moment.

So, Spotlight’s gotten the boot too.  Will I miss that more than Flock? 

Take, for example, the presence of restaurants nearly exclusively in strip malls.  Typically these are “Bar-B-Q” or “Roadhouses” or some other bastardized version of TGI Fridays.  Last night, after failing my “Save versus your Admin Booking the Wrong Hotel” we finally managed to settle into a hotel at about 10pm local time.  Off we were to the nearby Holiday Inn to sample the delightful offerings from the late night menu of their sports bar.

The food was fine.  The beer was tasty enough.  The karaoke was, however, traumatizing.  I, for one, will never listen to Prince quite the same way again.

However, the relatively random point of this entry was to note that I had plane karma on this trip.  After forking over $50 to upgrade to economy plus on each of my flights I was assigned a middle row (I figured due to my luggage situation, I’d rather have the legroom to the “sideroom” offered by a non-middle seat).  On my way out to DC I had a nice gentleman decide he didn’t want the window seat with lots of legroom — he’d rather take another window seat with less legroom to give me and the guy sitting in the aisle a row to ourselves.

I’m pretty sure that guy next to me had to be a jedi, but I thought they weren’t supposed to use the mind trick for stuff like that.

On the way back to Seattle, my luck again has held — a nice couple was flying in my row and had the window and aisle seats.  Thankfully they preferred to sit together and, as a result, I got yet another window seat. 

So.. I’m thinking that upgrade option may also be a subtle “upgrade karma?” decision when at the kiosk checking in.  I think I’m sold on it.

In other news, United has seemingly remembered that a disaster movie is probably not the right choice of entertainment on the plane. 

Back to some old Wait Wait podcasts, as my Kindle’s vaunted staying power has reared its ugly head and I ran out of juice with two hours left to go on the flight.

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Tags: flying, washington dc, karma, kindle

Amy and I have been thinking about a move to Whidbey Island. We both grew up in places with woods and relative freedom and lots of places to run around and get ticks — and we kind of want Liam to have the opportunity to experience that too. It doesn’t hurt that Amy’s family is on the island too. Closer proximity to them means more exposure for Liam — especially for Amy’s mom, whom he adores.

After looking at some properties in the Seattle area and the Eastside, the tour of Whidbey was eye-opening. There’s a basic level of “modesty” which seems to pass for normal in many of the older properties on the island. Given we’d like some land — it tends to be older properties that we’re looking at.

Chip commented that he had been on perhaps the most unique and bizarre showing of houses at the end of the day. There was the crooked house, the “worst designed house I have ever seen”, the house with the urinal, the soulless “it looks like a giant mobile home” on clear cut (not far from the Chinese Junk house), the cute house that was overpriced beyond reason, the hippie farm, the labyrinth bed & breakfast with (made) beds in the closets, the “no, this is the worst designed house I have ever seen — and it’s purple!”, and the cottages that smelled like dime store lavender plug-ins.

We didn’t come out of the tour eager to buy on Whidbey. Not yet anyway.

In our tour, Chip helped me learn a bit of “real-estatese”. “We don’t use the word crappy in the business, instead we use modest.” Such a modest word has taken on entirely new meaning in our household.

As to Whidbey. Well the crooked house remains under consideration. If we could get it at a low enough cost to funnel a lot of money into rebuilding it on the inside — it seems to have the right bones and the 4 acres, while not exactly estate-worthy, are enough to have some options about a guest house for a parent or two at some point.

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Tags: whidbey, real estate, crap, modest

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Tags: dinosaurs, birds

But then, she started to lose.

And rather than ensuring her message was uplifting, and appealing and focused on how she was going to lead — perhaps drag — our country out of the dire pit of constant fear perpetuated by National Security (sic) types she has succumbed to the lowest common denominator with absurd attacks on Barack Obama.

The silly things started early.  Like a kindergarten “essay” from Obama refuting his claim that he hasn’t aspired to be President.  Then Bill steps in and flings plenty of mud around — seriously annoying a major constituency with statements that are ill-considered, ill-tempered and off-key.  Now, apparently it’s “you didn’t credit your friend”-gate. 

Bill, of course, can borrow from his friends and colleagues without attribution.  And I’m certain in all her years of public service, Hillary has naturally never had a case where she’s co-opted someone else’s message without attribution.  Yet despite this, we get a public double standard.  Bad Obama.  You didn’t credit your friend.  So you can’t possibly be inspiring.

This is idiotic and it misses the point.  Clinton and her staff are attacking, attacking, attacking because they find themselves unable to craft a vision that uplifts the Democratic party and advances her based upon her qualifications.  Sure enough, if we nominate her to the Presidential race and should she win — we’re simply guaranteed 4 more years of the Republican Attack Machine — except this time it’s going to be manned by Democrats loyal to the Clintons.  After 12-16 years of this, I’m done. 

Hillary Clinton and her staff need to grow up and stop behaving like national politics can be approximated with playground politics.

She’s losing this race.  She’s losing the Democratic chance at a President if she’s the nominee.  She’s lost my support.  She may have even lost my vote if she’s up against John McCain in November.

Go Obama.  I just put my money where my mouth is.

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Tags: politics, obama, clinton, annoyance

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Tags: liam, counting

And it’s tasty.

First off — I ordered too much food.  After my dinner I was pretty certain I was about to burst — and that’s after we opted to take home dinner leftovers and an extra dessert.  Portions are good size, and they’re rich and yummy.  So don’t go thinking you can do an appetizer, a pasta and a main course or anything similarly crazy.

(speaking of crazy, Amy just monkeyed with the lights at the base of the staircase for a good 15 seconds for no apparent reason)

Amy and I shared a mussels & sausage appetizer that was suitably yummy (though, I find the mussels at El Camino to be in a tastier sauce).  I segued into a seared scallop appetizer with various greens and Amy had her usual: beet salad (she loves beets).  The scallops were tasty — and by the end of my second appetizer I was beginning to question the intelligence of having it to begin with.

Around came our main course and thankfully the Kobe beef cheek capalucci (I think I’m spelling that correctly) were only four in number, arranged around a generous mound of kale and served in a butter-sage sauce.  As to the butter, this wasn’t a light film — no, my pasta was easily in something like a 1/8-1/4″ of clarified butter.  The pasta was super rich and oh so yummy. 

I managed to eat three.

Amy’s oriecchette bolognese was superb, and a large portion of it got saved for lunch the following day.

Despite being stuffed to the gills, it was still early, so we cranked out the dessert menus.  I don’t quite remember one.  Chocolate.  Caramel.  Yum.  Rumors of nuts in the crust, so that put me a little off my seed.  Nothing like the possibility of being poisoned (despite asking) to make one grumpy.  The special dessert of honey, chocolate and home-made marshmallow (basically home made moon pies) got saved for later.

(they were actually just devoured today.  Liam woke up pretty grumpy from his nap — he’s finally gotten tired of coughing and having a cold — so we pulled out the sweets to up his blood sugar and enhance everyone’s mood.  Amy scarfed down a few on her own)

My tea was plain old chamomile.  Not some foofy excessively blended hemp, rosemary, cumin chamomile or some such hideousness.  Just simple chamomile.  That was nice.  Kudos to Volterra for not going the extra mile for a “unique” tea that tastes like tar.

We ate for a respectable $100 (with one glass of wine).  The final verdict was that it was yummy — but the “too hip for us” La Spiga remains my pasta favorite in Seattle.  Of course, I frequently fantasize about Locanda Locatelli in London.  Mmm..

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Tags: food, italian, volterra, date night