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January 16, 2000 |
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Another morning day. I woke up before 7am. I put on my workout gear and
was getting ready to do my earliest run ever, unless of course, you account
for the time difference between Florida and Seattle, but I'm not counting
that right now. The previous earliest run I had made was 8am or so, and
that was only a few days ago. Yes, I know what my friends would say about
that… Bullshit! No, really! I was up and ready to run at
7:15am. It then occurred to me that I didn't know what time the gym
opened. Everytime I had checked in the past it was to find out what time
they closed; I always figured that I would never be up
that early. Never say never. So I did what any reasonable person would
do… I checked their web site. They opened at 7am. [Woo
Hoo!!] I went to do my run and weights; got back by about 9:30am.
Once I got back I lounged around for a little while waiting for my heart
rate to slow down and my body to cool off a little. I then got a phone
call. [Very strange] Getting a phone call is not the strange
part; getting the phone call on my cell phone is the strange part.
It was Ling, my cousin. Naturally, I
asked why she was calling me on my cell phone when I'm at home. Uhmm, my
phone line is busy? Really? I check my computer, and sure enough
I had forgotten to log off. [Duh!] I log off and call her back.
She's having some trouble with her computer. Despite my talking her
through some things, I wasn't able to get her computer working properly. I
was going to finagle Aileen into
helping her out. I also felt that I was abandoning her, but I had plans
for this morning. [Yes, smartass, this morning!] I had
made tentative lunch plans with Pam and said that I
would be calling her at 11am. It was about 10:30am now and I decided to
take a shower.
I called Pam. I got directions to her place, where
she moved to only days ago. Her parents were in town to help her settle
in. I would be meeting her parents today. We made plans to meet at her
place at about 12:30pm.
I made it to her place uneventfully, even found reasonably close parking. If you have ever been to Seattle, you'll understand that parking is at a premium here. I did have to parallel park on an incline with a manual transmission, which would've propelled me into a state of panic only a year ago. I managed just fine.
I walked up to her place, and there was one of the gadgets to buzz your guests in. There was only one problem. I never got the apartment number and her name wasn't listed by the buzzer. I'd like to think of myself as pretty resourceful, so I called her number from my cell phone. [Busy signal…] Okay, so much for that idea. I'm patient, I can wait, although I do note that it is a particularly chilly afternoon, even for Seattle. [Minutes pass…] I call again. Busy. I then wonder to myself if it is normally this windy here in Queen Anne Hill. [More minutes pass…] I call again. Busy again. I debated whether or not it was a good idea to call the apartment office, they had a sign up right in front of the building with their phone number. A sign, I might add, which was partially sheltering me from the wind. I broke down and called them, expecting them to either buzz her to tell her or something to that effect. Nope. They actually told me her apartment number. Swift move… How do they know I'm not a stalker? Well, I buzzed her apartment and she let me in. [Way Cool!]
I met her parents; they were very friendly. She showed me around her new place as I tried my best to warm up. It was a gorgeous place. It had a wonderful view of Elliot Bay, which, I might add, looked particularly turbulent at the time. I'm not saying that simply because the wind was rattling the window, not at all.
We talked about getting lunch right there on Queen Anne Hill. I already mentioned what an incredible dream it is to find parking here in Seattle, so we decided to walk. Did I happen to mention it was windy out? We wandered into the streets of Seattle to find a good place to get lunch; there were a number of places a few blocks away. Now this I found a bit peculiar, about half the restaurants in Queen Anne were closed and wouldn't open for lunch. I could certainly see a couple of them doing this, but we were having a hard time tracking down a place. We ended up eaching lunch at a pizza place; Pam treated me for lunch. [Thank you!] We sat down for lunch and chatted.
After lunch we decided to get coffee. On the way to getting coffee, we were struct by some pretty strong gusts of wind; a couple of them nearly made me lose by balance. It was also pretty cold, and naturally I was a tad underdressed. Story of my life. We ended up getting coffee at a local café, or rather they got coffee. Despite my living in the Seattle area for this long, I haven't developed a taste for coffee. I was there for emotional support. Hmm… maybe the reason people get coffee here so frequently is because there isn't anything else to do. Me? Bitter? Not at all. After coffee, we headed back to her place.
Did I mention it was windy? Oh, and cold. Let us not forget cold.
Once we got back to her building, we decided to take a look at the penthouse. It was still under construction, but it looked impressive nevertheless. The windows on this floor were rattling too. Curious. Once we got back to her apartment, I was getting ready to leave. Her father asked me that, since I was an engineer (could I make this up?), would I be able to fix Pam's alarm remote. It would appear that the buttons had become dislodged. "Uhmm… I'll take a look at it." About five minutes and a number of household tools later, we managed to get the thing open. Superglue We needed superglue. The buttons were actually levers and the connecting point (axis) had come loose. We didn't have any superglue in the place. Damn!
You know… I was already there. I had no immediate plans. It wouldn't take that long to fix it. I offered to walk down to the mini mart and get superglue. Pam and I walked down to the mini mart, which naturally didn't have it, though they claimed they were out. Yeah… sure! Well we were already out, walking the couple of more blocks wasn't going to kill us. [Did I mention it was windy? …and cold] We went to the grocery store and picked up the superglue and returned. Oh, and it really did fix the remote. And you had your doubts, didn't you? I left shortly after that. It must've been past 3pm by now.
I was paged sometime during the superglue trip. I had two messages.
First message was Nancy. She just wanted to chat. It wasn't a particularly good time, so I checked my next message.
It was my friend Len. We had dinner plans that night, like we do most Sundays. It's somewhat of a tradition. I called him back. It would appear that the winds are uncharacteristically strong today and that it had knocked power out at his place a few times. Since his car was at the shop and he had no means to escape his lack of electricity, he would just be sitting at home until dinner time. I suggested I could pick him up and we could go goof around somewhere and kill time until dinner. The winds were strong enough to have closed down the 520 bridge, so now I had to find other means to get across Lake Washington. Lovely. I took the scenic route.
I picked up Len and we drove around goofing off for a while. We were initially supposed to have dinner with Jim, except that Jim forgot us and double booked. [Weasel!] Jim just wanted to see Len's reaction to my little adventure in Florida. Meanwhile, all Len and I really did was kill time until dinner, although I think both of us ended up buying something. I do tell him the story, and he seemed incredibly and genuinely amused. As for dinner, we went to our favorite Chinese restaurant. It's a little creepy; they know us by name. Dinner was wonderful as usual. No complaints there. I dropped him off at home.
Once I got home, the lights did flicker a few times, and for a while, I was reading by candlelight. Although, once the power came back, it stayed. Life is so boring without power. What ever possesses people to go camping?
January 16, 2000