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.