Down near the Port of Tacoma.....such contrasts - gnarly rusted stuff and beautiful mountains and ocean. Gig Harbor and boats. Big jets landing at Joint Base Ft. Lewis McChord, lovely old buildings in Old Town Tacoma, wavy lap siding on old houses.
Clear skies, sunny all day yesterday and today, 50 degrees. Sorry, guys.
From my favorite Executive Transsexual, Eddie Izzard.
Lina and I traveled to Seattle in 2008 to visit IslandWood, an astonishing Masters program that utilizes hands on training with kids, teaching them about sustainability, our relationship to the world and much much more:
From their website: "...IslandWood's educators combine scientific inquiry, technology and the arts to help Puget Sound-area students discover natural connections with the outdoors.' It's a very cool graduate program in conjunction with the University of Washington. Check it out. http://islandwood.org/
Anyway, this was our first trip to the Pacific Northwest. Land of my dreams; who knew?? Lina and I had a wonderful time and I was smitten with the Northwest. We rented a car for a few days and in addition to driving down to see the Museum of Glass in Tacoma (fell in love; guess why I moved here?!) we also drove around the Seattle area searching for a cupcake shop that Lina had seen earlier whilst wheeling around town with her friend Luminous Leigh aka Madam aka Bidsy.
Lina, without GPS or EVEN A MAP or EVEN THE NAME OF THE STORE was like a homing pigeon. In the rain, in the night, she guided us to cupcake and coffee heaven, the magical Cupcake Royale. http://www.cupcakeroyale.com/index.html. You have to understand Lina's profound love of buttercream icing, especially when it's on a cake. She literally LUSTS for awesome cake, usually late at night when any sensible cake store is closed. I love her passion for cake and Cupcake Royale has obviously figured out that she is not alone in this passion:
So here's the roundabout punchline to this post. This is for you, Miss Lina:
Heinous.
But this one is worth it. Trust me. And those of you that know me know that I'm not even a sports fan.
At the end of my street?? Holy cow.
These are from my sister Anne's visit. First stop, Pike Place Market. And coffee, of course!
A brief cruise by Beecher's Cheese. Amazing mac and cheese. Beyond description.
http://www.beechershandmadecheese.com/story_tour.php
Next stop, Experience Music Project Science Fiction Museum : http://www.empsfm.org/ Well, the outside, anyway.
The next day back in Tacoma, we drove around the Five Mile Drive in Point Defiance Park, the tippy topmost point of Tacoma. Where I live now is just off the map to the south! Anne and I were amazed to see this kit of raccoons. Jokes were made about being surprised to see live raccoons instead of roadkill (me.) 
For some reason this song, sung by James, just slays me with sweetness. Takes me back to my last year in high school.
This was recorded at the 2009 North Sea Jazz Festival in the Netherlands. This was the same year that Lina's ex-boyfriend / now good friend Alex Mallett played at NSJF with the band Riot Box from Montreal.
Little snippets of things unpacked...
I know this seems a rather gruesome ending to what started out as a happy post, but every time I see or smell yellow mimosa, it floods me with memories; sensory, visual, hard wired into my atomic structure. The good memories come from living in Aunt Lolo's house on the French Riviera outside of Vence on the Moyen Corniche, where we were able to experience first hand the glorious flowering of the mimosas. During our familial wandering phase we ended up living there for six months after our evacuation from Uganda.
How about this glorious vision of Satsumas that I picked up at Metropolitan Market:
What smells kick off your brain - transports you to another time and place?
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