the move went even better than i could have hoped, which is not something that gets said that often, i think. hiring movers was maybe the smartest thing i have ever done. and now we’re in the very small but very appropriately-sized cottage in a neighborhood i like much more than the old one.

to contrast the new neighborhood with the old:
new: our next door neighbor introduced herself and then came back the next morning with fresh-baked scones (mia says they were tasty).
old: the next door neighbors actually yelled at us on our moving-in day and then were dicks for the next 10 months until we left. i have never come so close to pooping onto the hood of someone’s car.

new: people here almost stumble over themselves for the chance to say hi.
old: i couldn’t get the next door neighbor on the other side to even make eye contact after four months of daily bus rides together.

oh, something else: i started sailing lessons tonight a few miles from the house down at my new favorite place in seattle: magnussen park. it’s huge and i had never been there before tonight and i suspect that this is where all the fun happens: motorcycle school, kayak rental, decrepit warehouses, wilderness classes, decommissioned navy brig, public sailing facilities, and noaa (the people who tell me about tides and ocean swells). and that’s only what i saw tonight. i think it’s going to be just fine.

we’re moving. again. it’s been almost ten months, so i guess that it’s time. with the situation here not being particularly good (whopping 17% rent increase, construction about to begin about 15′ from our bedroom, etc) and our friends vacating this pretty awesome 1920s sears cottage over near the university, it seemed like the right decision.

in the move, we’re losing a bunch of square footage of living space, but we’re gaining a full basement (i’m psyched to renew my love affair with a 10″ sliding compound miter saw), our own washer and dryer, a backyard, and no shared walls. oh, and it’s $350/month cheaper than our rent would be here, so we can continue to earn like tech workers but spend like grad students. if frugality was a crime, we’d be doing life. a life that looks a lot like our current lives, now that i think about it.

whenever my seemingly yearly move plans are mentioned to my parents, my mother sweetly (and i don’t think sarcastically) replies, “that’s why you’re in my address book in pencil!” so yeah. saturday. new neighborhood: ravenna.

pardon my pigpile but this is really the biggest news story of the day?

what i love about this whole brouhaha is that it brought itself to life inside a vacuum of its own creating. tell me that’s not heavy. right-leaning news outlets are all about the muslim, kill whitey, unpatriotic, terrorist fist-bumping rhetoric. no one outside of people who are 100% plugged into left-leaning news commentary actually know that any of this back-and-forth is going on (i took an independent poll). then the obviously left-leaning and obama-loving new yorker puts image to the left-leaning news commentary about right-leaning rhetoric and everyone (obama included) lambastes them and it’s all over every news outlet in the country and everyone is running to make sense of what’s happening. and unless my math is incorrect, i’m pretty sure that this story is going to collapse under its own weight right about… now.

i noticed a new underwear store for men opening up on matt and eliza’s block when we were walking past the other night. this is the sign in their window:

are there more cock and ball logos like this? the only one i can think of is that old skate company limpies.

it’s funny that kids used to skate with that giant flaccid phallus silhouette on their chests.

- woke up, felt urge to puke
- went into bathroom, realized bathroom was gross
- held in vomit while cleaning toilet
- toilet cleaned, vomit released
- ate bananas in attempt to settle stomach
- felt a little better
- ran 18.7 miles (wished i did 20)
- ran ice-cold water in the tub
- made giant fruit salad
- sat in ice-cold bath while eating giant fruit salad
- looked around, wished that i cleaned tub, too

tonight i went out to dinner with matt, eliza, and jesse. it was going normally until eliza thought that michael bolton was sitting two tables away (though really, something like this was bound to happen, as it always seems to). it seemed somewhat implausible, as this wasn’t fancy dinner, it was neighborhood sushi dinner in seattle washington and definitely not the best neighborhood sushi dinner in seattle washington.

whether or not this person was michael bolton was hotly debated for some minutes, with pictures being brought up on iphones and held up for comparison. i was pretty sure that it wasn’t him (no nicollette sheridan, in seattle washington, etc), but i had a hard time convincing eliza. i had one piece of information that i was pretty sure would clinch it, but couldn’t bear to bring it up as it had been used as a weapon against me some months ago when someone said, ‘hey jay, you know who else is vegan just like you? michael bolton.’ boom. ouch.

however, my competitive instincts took over and on our way out, i told eliza to check and see if he was eating fish. he was. not michael bolton. ‘really?’ she said, ‘then why would he wear his hair like that?’ double boom.

mia is in phila for the weekend because that’s the kind of patriot she is. she called me from the wedding of three centuries, which was taking place at independence hall. apparently the guy who plays ben franklin is marrying the woman who plays betsy ross. i had a million follow-up questions, but there was a concert starting and she had to go.

oh. wait. this actually made the news? really? follow-up questions averted.

full story here and here.

last night, mama de pooka dropped by to pick up some stuff and she started telling me about this restaurant she went to last week in tacoma that has the calories and grams of fat listed for each menu item. she and her food-companion sat down, opened the menu, dropped their jaws, and left to get food elsewhere. what surprised her were two things 1) that a burger/nachos kind of restaurant in tacoma would have nutrition information and 2) that the aforementioned nachos contained somewhere north of 1000 calories. holy shit.

this made me wonder what would happen if all restaurants had to list calorie counts next to each item on the menu. would people stop going out to eat? if not, would they change how they ate? would it be bad for business for restaurants to label? would they simply change the way they cook to use less fat? or would they lobby the fda to increase the total recommended number of calories again?

a very edited-down set of alaska photos are up on flickr now. it was hard work, i think because of the photo-major-hyper-critical-self-critique thing that doesn’t ever go away even when posting vacation photos.

enjoy.