My silly coworkers!
Hung out with my coworkers this Friday - what a novel concept! :) We all went over to Erin's house after the staff meeting and made a fabulous meal of pasta and homemade sauce, great breads, wine, chard, Caesar salad, broccoli, and fabulous Tofutti Cuties for dessert! Sadly, we were missing one lovely Jen for the evening... next time hopefully we'll get her out with us! This photo has Vanessa, Elisa, and Megan all giving special smiles for the camera... Too funny!
Testing the chard
Kaylee elegantly taste tests the chard while Elisa and Dustin start fixing themselves plates.
Erin and I
After a long week, what better way to spend a Friday evening with friends over a lovely home made dinner?
Ahhhh!
Megan enjoys the chance to play with the camera...
Mother and daughter...
My beautiful boss Brett with her beautiful daughter Kaylee... They have so much fun together... it really is amazingly beautiful. :)
Mike
After dinner, I decided to skip the movie (I'd already seen Almost Famous), so I left Erin's house and I headed to Tawni's place to get ready to go to a party. Mike is one of Tawni's fun roomies and his fashion is casually elegant and funky.... just perfect to hit the artist's warehouse loft for the night's party.
Tawni
Tawni and I eventually dressed for the party and mingled for a while with the random crowd. Saw Rob and Mike there and that was pretty cool. After we left the party, went hit the Roanoke Bar on Capital Hill where Lewis joined us for drinks and merriment.
City Skyline
I took this just after dusk from a park a mile from my house. What a great view... awe inspiring if you ask me! It's great to have so much beauty everywhere!
Another picture from the same viewpoint in the park...
Love the creativity!
Seattle's a city full of naturalists, activists, and artists... This car was parked next to me at Trader Joe's and was just begging for me to take its picture. :)
Bar hopping in Ballard
Jane and I chose the Old Peculiar pub in Ballard as the first stop in the evening's entertainment. Tawni, Vivian, Sarah, and Jonas all joined us for drinks and some great live blues music from the Imaginers. We were going to hit the Tractor afterwards to see the Big Wu, but we skipped that and went to Conor Byrne's Pub instead for more drinks and some live traditional Irish music.
Brotherly Love
Sarah gets a little loving from her big brother Jonas who was in town visiting from Detroit. Jonas, a self proclaimed hottie, made my whole evening... We talked for a few hours and while we have lots in common, it seems to have made us very different people. He's an odd combo of amazingly high self-esteem despite low self-confidence; I believe he said he was full of faith but lacking any hope (or did I get that backwards?). He thinks we'd end up "spending lots of time getting to know each other" if we were in the same city. I think he's also the first person to tell me I'm "deceptively flirtatious." Interesting. :) How did I acquire this knack of meeting great older, hot, intelligent and ambitious men that never seem to live in my same city? Geez...
We tried...
Ross joined me Sunday afternoon in a noble attempt to catch "Tchaikovsky in the Park." Stop me if this sounds too far off, but I was kind of expecting to see a free outdoor symphony, in the park, doing Tchaikovsky. Little did we know the show wasn't free or even in the park. Turns out it was actually only a 1/2 hour long, indoors, and at a local Asian Art Museum. Ah well. Ross and I hung out at Volunteer Park anyway, enjoying the view over the reservoir while waiting for Erin to arrive.
The Big Black Sun
Erin and I smile for the requisite tourist photo of us with the Black Sun sculpture and the Space Needle in the background. :)
Ross ventures out...
I was excited to get Ross out of the office for an afternoon, but felt like a failure for not predicting the "Tchaikovsky in the Park" a little better. Turns out Ross is actually a Tchaikovsky fan, has a few CDs and everything. That's okay though, we got some fresh air, got to explore another park, and enjoyed good company.
The water tower
What a great water tower! The brick that built the tower is pretty amazing - looks all deformed and burnt. We speculated on what the story there is, but I think I need to hit the library and find out... too interesting! (This photo is from Seattle Parks and Rec, I got caught up in the discussion and views and forgot to capture the building or the intriguing brick on film).
View from the water tower
Here's the photo from the observation deck when you climb to the top of the water tower. It has very nice panoramic views of all over the city, not to mention history of parks, maps, and more. Love the city that loves it parks!
View from Mercer
Even after you leave the park and leave dinner at Bimbo's Bitchin' Burrito Kitchen, the roads wandering down Capital Hill still offer fabulous views of the city skyline... Just another beautiful day in the beautiful city... :)