Nothing much really.  Very little.  Lots of Jdrama watching.  Spending 3+ hours per day scouring job search sites.  I'm trying to send out 2-3 resumes per day to decent candidates - but I'm finding relatively few.  I had an interview with Amazon last week that I thought went pretty well, but I have yet to hear back.

 

Started playing Neverwinter Nights 2 but my heart just hasn't been in gaming since I finished S.T.A.L.K.E.R.  I have the urge to drink sake! (all these Jdramas - lots of sake in Honey and Clover...)

 

Oh, one picture from Seattle Coffee Works from last Friday when I was in Seattle:

 

Hopefully more of something soon!

"My left name is tremendous savings, Ms. America!"

Past week update: Still waiting on the job front.  Bored out of my freakin' mind here.  Pounded down a whole anime series (albeit a short one - Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya) in 2 days (and really enjoyed it).  Started another, Nodame Cantabile.  I have some thoughts on anime, maybe I'll post them later.  Got to play some Guild Wars with Jon and MS on Friday and that was a lot of fun.  Been playing S.T.A.L.K.E.R. again and lovin' it.  Danny needs job.  Insert Gauntlet joke here.  I miss having a gym.  I need to move and join a gym and get a job.  Yeah.  Let's do that.

 

New Stuff: Today I went out.  I really had 3 goals when I left.  Check out PCC (local co-op and natural market highly recommended by other supermarket employees I've encountered.).  Go to Remedy Teas (to see if it's the same as the one in Philadelphia) and Vivace Coffee (because it's supposed to rock) in Capital Hill.  Buy groceries from TJs.

 

I ended up visiting 2 different PCCs (the West Seattle one was way better than the Greenlake one - http://www.pccnaturalmarkets.com) and bought some nice organic produce and some other goodies.  Neat store that I'd probably regularly attend if it was closer to where I lived (it may be soon...)  I got free sausages from the guy at the meat counter.  He put 'em in a package and wrote "Sample" on the front.  Told me to give 'em a try.  The checkout lady thought it was so cool.  I didn't go one after another.. I just saw another one while I was out (probably 5 hours later) and wanted to see how they differed.

 

I went to Teahouse Kuan Yin in Wallingford (http://www.teahousekuanyin.com) and, of course, after talking at some length with the employees about their selection, saddled up to a house favorite combination of their Yunnan and Yunnan Gold.  Really nice teas there.  Maybe a little on the pricey side.  But pretty decent.  Very decent selection.  And definitely a great place to take visitors!  You better like tea if you come visit me.  Well, that and everything else.  I sat and drank my pot of tea while looking out the window at the relative downpour (at least that I've seen here - NJ and CA rain put WA rain to shame!  TX rain is probably the craziest I've seen in my life, though.) on the small city street.  It was nice to be inside drinking warm tea knowing that once I finished my pot, I was going to have to slog my way back to the car... hurray!

 

I then drove over to the Capital Hill district - an area I'd not yet been to.  It's roughly East of downtown and <gasp> on a pretty serious hill.  Got to show off my manual transmission mettle in the face of hilly adversity.  My clutch sucks donkey balls... or at least is just about as difficult as the one on the Celica <laughs>  Who the hell puts a stop sign at a 45 degree angle on a 45 degree incline road and thinks to themselves "well gee, that's just fine...".  Okay, I'm exaggerating... maybe.

 

In Capital Hill, I actually ended up at Victrola Coffee (http://www.victrolacoffee.com -  a suggestion from the girl at Teahouse Kuan Yin) and happened upon Remedy Teas (I found out it was newer than the one in Philadelphia and my guess is that it is a blatant knock-off).  You be the judge: Capital Hill: http://www.remedyteas.com; Philadelphia http://www.remedytea.com.  Lots of walking around, driving, looking at houses and neighborhoods.  Got a really lovely cappuccino from Victrola from a blue haired chick who was very impressed with her boobs.  We had a little "discussion" about the virtues of various milkfat percentages in espresso drinks.

 

Drove a while more, took the West Seattle bridge out to... West Seattle and drove all the way to the North End and found a neat little park that allowed me to look back over at the cityscape.  To be honest, I don't really like cityscapes.   They're boring.  They each show a slightly different city, perhaps, but they don't really offer anything interesting in the way of photography.  They are not without hope, however.  I enjoyed de-emphasizing the city in the later selection:

 

Boring City Shots:

 

Slightly More Interesting City Shots:

Most Overrated Landmark:

Okay.. it's a cool shot, but the Space Needle is really boring.  Seattle needs a better icon.  It's far too cool a city for that thing to be on absolutely every piece of literature in existance about the city.  Boo.

 

Okay, then I went to the other PCC market and bought more.  I realized I hadn't eaten anything since my meager breakfast, so I bought a cup of soup and a roll there.  Saved my life, I think.  I was really hungry!  I then traipsed over to another TJs I knew about on the way home (and enjoyed a beautiful drive along the sound that I found last time I went to West Seattle - definitely a drive I will share with any visitors).  Bought a big pile of groceries at TJs then drove home.

 

Lemony asparagus, yet another portion of my wonderful heirloom quinoa tomato dish from three nights ago, sauteed chicken breast with parsley and lemon, and a hefty bottle of MS's favorite Young's Double Chocolate Stout later and I'm saying good night to you all.  I'll leave you with this shot of my suprisingly successful quinoa dish:

 

Talk with you soon, my friends.  Hopefully I'll have some good news this week!  If I don't, maybe I'll share a section of my brain with a bullet and the wall ;-)  Let's hope we can just have some cake instead.

Michael Pollan, the author of a book I'm currently enjoying, has written an interesting article (it's about a year old) on the western diet and the recent history of nutritionalism.  It deals with the separation of the concept of eating whole foods and eating nutrients (we market things like No Trans Fat rather than "bread").  This distinction arose in the late 70s and now dominates our eating culture.  A high quality article, to be sure if a little academic (read: not exactly efficiently written), but it still has a rich content that makes for a solid read if you're even remotely interested in why our culture of eating packaged foods may be killing us.

 

 

A little bit on The Omnivore's Dilemma (thank you Jason!): Corn corn corn.  It's what we are as it's most of what we eat.  Nothing new, but amazing to see it presented so.  You never realize how much corn we actually get.  I've actually been thinking about how my diet measures up as I really try to avoid packaged, prefabricated products wherever I can.  It's undoubtedly better than average, but it's still surprising how many processed goods sneak into the most unlikely places.  Hugely interesting if you've ever wondered about the relationship between dietary evolution and the leading causes of death.  Mmm... sounds fun, eh?

 

The book suffers from the same academic writing plague.  Sometimes you'd think they get paid by the word.   Maybe I have been ruined by my study of the law, but every sentence that doesn't further your purpose shouldn't be included: like improvisational acting.  I remember it from Anthropology: articles are often 10 times longer than they need to be.  Just because you say the same thing 10 times doesn't make it any more true than if you say it well, once.  It often feels like a stream of conciousness type writing rather than a carefully crafted argument.  I find myself wandering past sentences that seem to have no effect and then having to go back to see if there was something buried in the text.  It may just be that he's not the best author (I'm sure most academics who are forced to writing volumes of information aren't). 

Hello friends and neighbors,

 

I figured it was time for an update.  So I'm done with the bar and I'm hot on the trail of the ellusive job.  I know it's out there somewhere, and I'm doing my darndest to find it.  I've registered with 5 or 6 search firms and tallied uncountable other resources in my job search arsenal.  Is it enough?  Who knows, but I'm going forward... one step at a time.  I have a great little story to tell you about last Sunday when I went up to Daniel's broiler for Jonathan's birthday.. but that'll be covered in a subsequent post.  Actually, there is a good chance I'll be interviewing for a job at Amazon.com next week.. but I'll provide more details on that as they arise.

 

So today was a big day.  I had two meetings up in Seattle downtown.  One with Corestaff and one with Robert Half Legal.  Both went great.  The agents I dealt with at both companies were very friendly and helpful.  I had to be up there by 10:00 AM this morning, so I took off from Federal Way about quarter to 9.  I parked in an expensive lot downtown (my parking fee was $24 today...) and found some breakfast at a little shop where I got a denver omelet on some bread.  It was actually quite good.  And warm.  It was really cold this morning (and I didn't bring a jacket).  And I had a small cup of coffee to accompany it.  The first of many coffee drinkings today.  

 

I then met with Robert Half Legal at 10.  It was up on the 43rd floor of this very tall building and the view from the conference room was amazing!  I could see a beautiful view of Mt. Rainier and of the surrounding city area.  Totally amazing.  I wanted to have my camera with me so I could really commemorate the superb view from up there.  The meeting was done in about 40 minutes, so I had a little while before my 12:00 with Corestaff, so I went on a little adventure.  I had heard about a great espresso cart (in fact the best reviewed espresso on Yelp for Seattle) called Monorail Espresso.  Now Leah gave me a great Seattle guide which I had with me, but it didn't include this place so I started asking around.  I walked far and wide looking for this place and it turns out I actually passed it twice during my search.  I asked 9 people where it was an no one seemed to know.  Finally, I found a guy who knew and I walked back to where it was located.  There was a very pretty young woman manning the kiosk (it was a very small window with an espresso machine and just a little space) who quickly engaged me in espresso and barista talk.  I told her how her location had garnered rave reviews and it earned me a free small capuccino.  We talked a while more and she was a really sweet lady and all too willing to chat me up, even though piles of customers were coming up to the window. 

 

I then headed on my way, back to my second meeting.  I was early... so I went outside and took some pictures of the grounds outside the big Union Square buildings.  Here are some of my favs:

      

  

And then I went back in my for my interview with Corestaff.  It lasted about 40 minutes and then it was back to adventure.   I really hadn't been to downtown before, so here was my opportunity to wander around to my heart's content.  So, Pike Place Market it was!  And wow did I find things.  But first, some more pictures I took from out by the little park outside of it:

    

I met all kinds of people and saw all kinds of cool places and store.  I spent a good amount of time talking with a cute girl named Vie (I asked her if she was a Hugo Weaving fan...) at a place called Rose's Chocolate Treasures (www.roseschocolatetreasures.com)  It was a really neat little place that blends a little burlesque into the design and products.  A little sexy, a little chocolate.  How could I not check it out?  They actually made their own chocolate for their truffles, conching and all.  And she gave me a free Beet and Tangerine truffle and we had a great discussion about chocolates and truffles and I told her how I though truffles were the root of all evil in the chocolate world but that her place was more okay because they made their own stuff.  I then walked a few doors down to a tea shop.  One that Kent Webster sent  me an email about, acutally.  It was called Perennial Tea Room (www.perennialtearoom.com) and checked out their wares.  Not a bad selection.  A little more diversified than the place in Kent I like so much, but still a nice place.  I also found all kinds of awesome things in the Pike Place market (awesome produce, fresh fish, fresh pasta, spices, specialty goods stores, all kinds of prepared foods, a crepe place I'll have to try, tons of arts and crafts).  There was an amazing specialty foods shop that I pretty much fell in love with: wines, truffel oils, vinegars, tastings.  The woman owner there was like my clone.  She loved specialty foods of all sorts and liked everything she sold in her shop.  How cool is that?  I could only hope to have a job so neat someday.  I signed up for their mailing list and I will definitely go back: $5 wine tasting, special limited evening wine and food pairings with a professional chef.  Wow.  I also got an Almandine (almond croissant) from a beautiful french bakery, a fantastic panini from a sandwich place with a very hungry and overworked employee.  And there was a trip into a really nice knife store (Seattle Cutlery www.seacut.com) which has caused me to reconsider what my knife purchase will end up being.  I just basically went everywhere and loved every minute ;-)

 

My last stop was also a great one.  I was at Seattle Coffee Works (www.seattlecoffeeworks.com), a place that proprietress of Monorail Espresso told me I had to visit if I was a coffee enthusiast.  It was an amazing treat!  The owner (at least I would assume he's the owner), Sebastian, is a coffee fiend!  He has 10 different coffee grinders at work sharing the best of local espressos and it was the first place in my life where I have seen an option for an espresso tasting, appropriately called "The Works".  I had to bite.  How could I not?  So, three double espressos, hand pulled simultaneously and I ended up with this beautiful display:

Which was followed shortly by this beautiful display:

It was way too fun.  I got to try an Italian style, highly mixed varietal dark roast espresso, a New Seattle Style (according to Sebastian) lighter roast, fewer origin espresso and a "transitional" espresso.  The transitional one was my favorite (I found out afterwards that it was his favorite as well - a totally amazing espresso from a master blender roaster), though each had its unique flavor.  We had a wonderful discussion about coffee originals and I got to talk with Kristi (the woman below), Sebastian's new assistant (she had started today).  Both really nice people and way fun to talk with.  I think I might have spent nearly an hour and a half in there.  I also got to try an excellent Costa Rican origin coffee which Sebastian was convinced would eradicate my blanket dislike of most South/Central American coffees.  It was damn fine.  So, factoring in my earlier adventures for the day, I actually drank a good part of 9 shots of espresso today and a good half cup of coffee.  This may be the most caffeinated day I've ever had. 

    

And then drove home and here I sit with my leftovers from last night, huddled in my room with the rest of a bottle Viognier (Bear's Lair), my grilled chicken breast, some wonderful Bhutanese red rice, and some steamed broccoli with onions.  Yum.  What a great day!  I really loved visiting that area - maybe I'll get to live up there.  I'd be in trouble if I did!

 

Talk with you all soon!