Rambling all over town

This weekend I was down with a sore throat and sinus troubles, which I now think were allergies. I have tried various remedies for allergies over the years, but the side effects of the drugs is often worse than the allergies themselves. To me, anyway. So we stayed home the whole weekend, although The Boy and I did make it out for a walk on Sunday afternoon in the pretty pretty sun. We walked to the Bluff park in the Sunset Hill area of Ballard. We wandered and did one of my favorite things: look at the prices of local houses on the market. WhoooWee! $800,000 if you're lucky! One had the price reduced, but it had been over a million, so there you go.

Today I took The Boy back to BFD, then worked in the garden a bit. I had a cappucino made at home and drank it out in the yard--which is one of the nice things about living in a basement apartment; there is a yard. Around noon, I tootled on my bike around Greenlake to the U-District and went to volunteer. I was really sad to hear that one of our kids had been in a shooting over the weekend and was in the hospital. Everyone was pretty shook up and drop in was almost empty most of the time. I like the kid quite a bit--he always has something interesting to say and he seems like a good guy.

After drop in, I rode to Fremont along the Burke-Gilman Trail. That ride is so much more pleasant than being on the road. I got there about 4:30 and had some time to kill, so I sat at Canal Street Coffee and read. It was absolutely beautiful out and there were a lot of people sitting out at the porch tables in the sun or shade. Since I was still a little hot from my ride, I chose the shade. It was bliss, even when some strange guy came up and dissed my book of short stories by Stephen King (he hadn't read them) and told me that SK steals all his stuff from some guy named Theodore Sturgeon. I just looked at him straight on and said "Thanks for the tip." and went back to my book. I haven't read any SK for years, and when I did, it was mostly in middle and high school. I don't pretend that he is the end all/be all of writing, but these stories were good, if a little horror movie-esk, and I wasn't going to let some ...guy... tell me what to like. If he was trying to wow me with his mental powress, he really struck out.

For the next stage of my all day odessy, I locked my bike up and walked around Fremont, stopping at the library and checking my email, wandering up to the Troll then back around the streets until I made it to Blue C Sushi just in time to meet a friend for dinner. We spent more time than we had intended gabbing and eating happy hour food--happy hour was over at 7, and we had finished eating by then, but we sat in the bar for another hour and 45 minutes.

I left there, feeling giddy from all that socializing and was happy to find that my bike was still where I left it. I fumbled around, trying to remember how the bike light worked--glad that I brought it, since by 9pm it was dark out--and finally got back on the trail to Ballard. I thought I would catch a bus once I reached there, but I just kept on truckin' all the way home. And then I took advantage of another cool thing about my house--the hot tub. I have only used it twice, but it is nice to know it is there.

There you go, I don't write anything much for a week, and then I give you a narration of my day. Maybe next time I will have a nice story for you. Maybe...