Springtime in Seattle: Day 1

Quick bit of background: Lacuna Coil & The Gathering are playing together on the Hottest Chicks in Metal tour, Seattle is the closest location that I can see them at, same day my sister has an interview at the Naval Shipyards in Seattle, so I take an extended Memorial Day weekend.

Debby and I arrive in Seattle on time, and it takes no more than 20 minutes from landing until we have our luggage off the carousel. It then takes us 40 minutes to get our rental car, because, on a holiday weekend, there is exactly one person at the rental agency. When we got to the line, there were 5 groups in front of us, by the time we got through to the counter there were about 20 groups behind us. And, of course, about 1/3 of the people have special needs, like "I've never rented a vehicle before in my life, and I just learned English last month", or "I reserved a minivan because there's 7 of us. No, a Ford Escort will not work."

I was also supposed to call my friend Kristin when we got in to arrange dinner, but I forgot to put her # in my phone, meaning that I had to get to the hotel and get Internet connectivity to look it up before I could reach her. Fortunately, she was really close to the hotel when I called her an hour late, and we were able to get some food and drinks at a small restaurant with really good seafood.

Her friend Bill also joined us for dinner. Apparently, Bill had been on some of the same newsgroups that I was on back in the olden days before HTML took over. For you whippersnappers out there, "newsgroups" were text-based message boards that we used on the Internet back before social networking sites (or any other web site, for that matter) existed. Somehow, Bill managed to metaphorically paint a target on his forehead very early in the evening. Maybe it was when he mentioned that he was going to meet up with his ex-girlfriend in Las Vegas (and share a room), maybe it was when he mentioned that he had no idea why the gay waiters at the restaurant always hit on him.

After dinner, we visited a small neighborhood used-book store that had about 10 cats living in it. Fortunately, the owners kept it clean and free of that "lived in by cats" smell. While not terribly large, it still managed to have an impressive collection of books of all sorts. What interested me most about this store is how difficult it would be for a store like that to exist in Phoenix. Not just because it's a weird store, but mainly because the typical layout there is a 1 mile X 1 mile grid of primarily single-family homes, with commercial areas limited to the edges of these grids, which prevents both the population density and the ambulatory lifestyle that contribute to the viability of smaller retail outlets. Since we have to drive anywhere to do anything in Phoenix, this also means that we spend a considerable amount of resources on transportation ($3/gallon of gas!) instead of more useful (or at least indulgent) pursuits. This also explains why the number of DUI's is so high: very few drinkers live within walking distance of the bars, or at least of bars that they want to go to.

Reflections

This past Saturday, I got to see a friend of mine who I hadn't seen in several years because he moved out of town (John). While there, I caught up with a lot of people who I very rarely see. What interested me the most was how much I had grown apart from them in the meantime. For the most part, they all were exactly the same, just older, but still doing the same things. When you talk to someone almost all the time, it becomes easy to run out of things to say. If you talk to them less frequently, getting together allows you to catch up on the interesting experiences. If you talk to them even less frequently, you lose a lot of common ground, and with the gulf of years, it becomes very difficult to know where to start.

In the time since I've talked to most of them, I've changed jobs, changed (or at least stopped seeing) girlfriends, been in two active bands, briefly got involved in the movie industry, and got a pilot's license. However, when talking to them, a lot of this doesn't come up, even though it's new to them, it's old to me. How much have they gone through in that time that I'd love to hear about, but they've grown weary of, or forgotten?

Sunday, at the coffee shop, I ran into some other friends. I was wearing my "Don't try new things, it may change your boring life" t-shirt, and one of them asked me what new things I'd done recently. The last significant thing I've done is get my license, and that was a couple months ago. Which means that it's time for something new. Suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Also, I haven't heard anything about the drummer & guitarist we jammed with last Thursday. At this point I'm incredibly skeptical, since it generally doesn't take this long to hear back from someone if they want to be in a band with you. I'm not sure how much more of this I can take, really. So maybe I'll try something new, and see what happens.

In vacation news, I'm still planning to go to Seattle at the end of May, and it wouldn't hurt to have travel companions.