Smells Like Teen Spirit

Sorry, but I just couldn’t resist evoking Seattle’s best known export for a blog post title. And while I’m on the subject of apologies, here’s another for the sparse Gribblog updates as of late. Part of the problem stems from Jess, Phoebe, and me having way too much fun this summer (some of you visiting have influenced this). Another big part of the problem has been my schedule at work. Things are due to wind down a bit here in the near future, but I’m only blogging now because I need to write about something else for a while. Don’t worry, I’ll turn my attention back to writing up reports for NASA soon enough!

As most of you probably know, the whole family went to Seattle a while back for vacation. Well, technically Jess was working. She was at the American Political Science Association’s annual meeting looking for exciting new scholarship to publish. I told her not to bother, but she insisted that some people find the Raul Castro–led rush to privatize Cuba fascinating. At any rate, we arrived early in the week before Labor Day and had a wonderful trip. Here are some of the highlights.

Nearing Seattle, we saw Mount Rainer out the plane window. It’s impressive and imposing.

The Sea-Tac airport (located about half way between Seattle and Tacoma, WA) is quite lovely. They have some nice tile and mosaic work all over the terminal and concourse, and the TSA agent that frisked me (you betcha!) pointed out that they have a nice kids’ play area, but it was on the opposite side of the airport from our gate. He was studying to take the CPA exam.

Jess thought that it was a bit of a walk from the baggage claim to the light rail station, but at least they have a nice train to take you from the airport to the city. It only cost about $2.50 per trip and actually ran frequently. By the time FasTracks brings us anything similar, they’ll probably have Star Trek transporters in the really cool cities.

Most of the week, Phoebe and I walked around Seattle in order to explore the place, and I learned that my latest pair of lifestyle shoes are not for a pedestrian lifestyle! We asked the hotel concierge where there might be a playground. His best guess was the park around the Space Needle. Turns out that while there is a big park with museums around the iconic building, we never found any playground equipment, but in a stroke of genius, I decided to type playground into the map app built into my trusty iPod. Sure enough, there was a playground about 8 blocks from the hotel. Hooray!

The next day, we went down to the Pike Market for some breakfast before walking Jess to the conference and heading out to explore.

We stumbled across a lovely french bakery that smelled wonderful. Everyone selected a different pastry, and Phoebe really liked the bread. She munched on an undersized baguette all day. After we parted ways with Jess, Phoebe and I headed towards the park. When we arrived it was packed with elementary-school aged kids (despite being mid week). I think a nearby private school was having a back-to-school picnic, but it was hard to tell. Phoebe played a bit, but it was clear that the many big kids were both fascinating and intimidating. I eventually pulled her away (promising we’d return) and we checked out the nearby REI store. The big REI has an almost equally big treehouse for kids to play in. It was a bit scary for me, as Phoebe could just about disappear within its walls, but she had a blast. We also found a little anniversary present for Jess (a new lunch bag, woo-hoo!).

(This may be a good point to interject that I finished the NASA report and Phase II proposal. It was a rough week with about an hour or two of sleep each night. Even then, it was all down to the 11th hour. Egads, better start much sooner next time!)

I’ve got the order of events all jumbled up in my brain, but at some point in time we went back to the hotel and tried out the pool. Phoebe had a super cute swim suit, so I dressed her up and we rode the elevator down to the rec floor. The water was a bit cool, and Phoebe can’t really swim, but she had fun playing on the stairs leading into the water for a while. She also really loved running along the side of the pool, but kill-joy dad put an end to that pretty quickly. We relaxed for a few minutes in the chaise lounges, but Phoebe didn’t have as much of an appetite for lounging as her father.

One of the highlights of the trip was a walk along the Elliot Bay. We arrived down by the market just as the sun was setting. We got a cup of coffee over at the original Starbucks (technically Starbucks 1 version 2.0), and walked across the street to enjoy the sunset. Phoebe had a great time pointing out the boats, and we got a few lovely pictures of the Sun, mountains, and water. It would have been a wonderful evening for a trip on a boat.

The following morning we were up and on our way back to Boulder. Jess had made the flight for some extremely early hour, so we had to rush to catch the day’s first train to the airport. We made it in plenty of time, and arrived at the airport with enough time to check the bags, get Phoebe setup for a free flight, and make it through the chaos of security screening. The only real bummer the whole trip was a super breakdown just as we were landing in Denver. It was so bad, I think we ended up leaving Phoebe’s little football jacket on the plane. She was probably going to outgrow it soon anyway, but it was awfully cute.