Days Off

Days Off- basically I have too many of them right now. For the third week in a row the fruit has refused to ripen. Average temps in the desert this week were 75-80 F, which sounded pretty good to me for ripening, but I was wrong. So Leigh and I are off work Monday through Friday this week, working the weekend only again. We've been all but promised there would be a full load of fruit for weekend markets. I hope the Farming Gods smile upon us this time. It would be kind of OK if we just had a ton of fruit to unload this weekend because our customers are waiting with baited breath and I'm sure they'd be excited enough to buy more than normal amounts of fresh fruit. This means high commissions for me, almost enough to make up for so many lost hours of work.

It's nobody's fault, of course, but frustrating nonetheless. In about 7 weeks I need to pack up and head to Anchorage to get an apartment and start my job. I'd like to have a nice savings to do this, but it all depends on the fruit at this point. Leigh and I have been talking about her staying down here a few extra weeks to get the farm through the tail end of fresh fruit season. That depends on other factors, of course, but we're talking about it.

So we're going to Plan B, trying to find other work but that doesn't seem to want to happen during the week. All the events are over weekends when we actually work markets, so it's tough. I tried to get a retail job two weeks ago but all the shops were looking for long term employees. I'm not that good of a liar to say I was sticking around, plus I've promised my weekends to my family for the markets and shops tend to require you to work weekends.

In the meantime, we're trying to keep busy. I bought some yummy whole grain spelt flour at the market this weekend and decided to make a strawberry pie using strawberries from the market and a homemade pie crust a la moi.

The crust turned out pretty great. It's hearty and nutty in flavor with a great texture. It's like pastry crust but with a little extra characteristic I can't quite put my finger on, sort of like bran muffin or that great cereal Cracklin' Oat Bran. I kept the strawberries more whole than normal and used a fraction of the sugar called for and it turned out great, maybe even better because it's naturally sweet and not sticky sweet. I can't wait for the fruit to come in so I can start trying to make apricot and peach pies and tarts, but my next spelt projects include pancakes and scones.

Leigh and I spent yesterday afternoon exploring Ballard. It's a lovely neighborhood now on our list of places we'd like to live. It has a small town feel with lots of fun businesses. We visited a few shops to poke around and bought some tea at a neat tea shop that sells pastries, pots of tea, cold drinks and loose leaf tea to take home.

While walking back to our car we found a restaurant called Bastille. They had a 1st anniversary party for the restaurant tonight with a very impressive $1 menu. I was so excited that I decided to make an evening of it and get dressed up and Leigh wore the sweater I bought her in Spain for the first time, which made me very happy.

Bastille's special happy hour menu included a champagne-based cocktail, crottin chevre with beet salad, croque monsieur sandwich, mussels, fancy mac'n'cheese, and a few other items for only $1 each. Leigh and I each had a drink and a few munchies (they were in the "small plate" category, but very hearty because of all the yummy cheese) for only about $7. Awesome.

So we still have 3 days off. Tomorrow we want to do some hiking and I'd love to find some work for Thursday, Friday or both, but I really don't see that happening. Maybe I'll just do some more baking....

Portland for the Day

I know west coasters (if there are any who ever read this) are probably thinking, "Dude, you drove Portland to Seattle and back in a DAY? Why didn't you stay over?"

Well, Leigh and I had the weekend off at the last minute and so we decided to get out of Seattle. We've been finding ourselves spending a lot of money on our days off here and doing the same things over and over again. Then Leigh found out one of my favorite bands, The Cliks, were playing at Portland Pride this weekend AND that it's a nice walking city with good shopping, no sales tax and home to Powell's Books, the biggest used book store in the world. With these things in mind this little trip just had to happen.

First we tried to get a free place to stay from my cousin who lives near Portland but he and his family were out of town this weekend. Then we tried for a cheap hotel, but it was too last minute. Not to be outdone by fate, we just got in the car and started driving. In the end we spent about 8 hours in Portland and 6 hours driving in total. It was a loooonnngg day, but really fun.

We got a late start, so we didn't even get to Portland until after 3pm but we found a parking garage pretty easily and the city was very easy to maneuver on foot after that. Some things we noted pretty quickly included how cheap parking is all over the downtown area, how close things are to one another in spite of the addresses suggesting otherwise, that retail stores have GREAT sales (as opposed to Seattle where people buy stuff at full price more often, so the price conscious shopper must wait until more typical sale seasons like August and January). Plus there are any number of affordable eateries, local breweries, and community events. In all a great little city, like a smaller Seattle or bigger Missoula.

We did a little shopping (I now own entirely too many shirts from the GAP), walked around a bit, perused the vendors at the Pride festival and then got some dinner at a local pub called The Life of Riley (yummy and not overcrowded). Around 8:30pm we went back to the Pride festival for the evening music. I thought there would be a few good bands but it turns out there was a serious lull in entertainment right before the Cliks too the stage at 9pm. Oh well. Leigh and I bought a drink and then listened to the The Cliks play their set until 10pm. This was the 3rd time I'd seen them play live and in the past year they haven't written anything new but have changed band members in a serious way, so the show was good but not overwhelming by any means.

After the concert we walked up to Powells to check out this giant bookstore. We were not disappointed! In fact, it was worth the drive just to bask in the glow of this book mecca. The books, both new and used, are arranged by color-coded rooms and on the shelves are further divided into very logical categories. In the French section I browsed not only language learning books but also books written in French under categories as varied as classic literature, children's books, young adults, nonfiction, history, art, philosophy and religion. I did not find a Bible written in French, however, which was sad because I have been wanting one for some time now. I did, however, find the entire Harry Potter series in French but to have purchased them all at once would have set me back about $200. Maybe next time. Leigh enjoyed the fiction section and picked out a few things while I bought a French pocket vocabulary book and a travel memoir.

We got home to West Seattle around 2am, tired and happy. Juneau the Cat was pretty irritated with us for leaving her alone all day without hugs or entertainment. So spoiled... Today the weather is total crap, cold and rainy. Where's our summer? When we lived here 6 years ago it was already roasting hot everyday by the end of June. This year it still feels more like a rainy autumn.

Well, back to work on Wednesday. Hopefully Summer will show her face pretty soon...

Summer Work

Well, farmer's market season is slowly picking up for Leigh and I here in Seattle. We both worked full days last weekend including a "training day" on Saturday and full days on Sunday. The farm expects to have fresh apricots for market this weekend, so we will have even fuller days. Hopefully soon we will be working the same hectic four day weeks I experienced last August: four 7-10 hour days of loading, hauling, markets, and work around the Seattle storage location. The more hours we work the more money we earn and the more exercise we get. These make up about 75% of our reason for coming to Seattle this summer. The other 25% is having fun, which requires money that we just can't justify spending at the moment.

So once again we have nearly a full week to enjoy being lazy around the house and exploring our old haunts. Today we're chilling out at the library for some time. It's nice to poke around on the Internet and be in a library atmosphere. I hope that libraries never become obsolete not matter how much the Internet changes our educational culture.

Leigh and I have started studying a little bit of German, including buying a workbook for home study and sticking Post-Its around the house with vocabulary words. I have no idea how effective this will be, but it's fun to try. I'm also studying some French from a workbook and today I plan to attend a French conversation meeting at a cafe in Capitol Hill. Honestly, I'm terrified. I haven't been around French at all in over a month and I've hardly spoken a word in as much time. Plus while in France I mostly listened to French and spoke very little, so my mouth isn't as fluent as my brain yet (does that make sense?).

I want to keep practicing so one day it's almost as easy to speak French as it is for me to speak English. There are several reasons for this, including that it's just fun, but also because I recently learned about a new visa program through the French government for young professionals under the age of 35. If I find a paid traineeship of some sort by the time I'm 35 I can get an 18 month visa to work in France. Not only would this be super fun, but Leigh is also eligible (and interested if the job is in English, which is very likely) if we do it in the next 5 years and it would be the perfect way for me to build an international career network. I'm thinking Strasbourg, Nancy-Metz, or Grenoble (because all of those areas border German speaking countries and are close to fun major cities). But that's another blog for another day down the road....

In the meantime I just want to improve my language skills. Last year was my gap year and this year is like my career training year. My job is best compared to a new doctor's residency year, a time for learning on a steep curve and meeting tons of professionals, and my free time will be spent trying to improve other skills like languages and academic writing. On top of all of this I want to have a life, make friends and keep up with hobbies. Phew! I'm exhausted already! But life is here to be lived, right?

Anyway, back to Seattle and my summer of fun and hard work. I'd love it if it got warmer and stopped raining for 5 minutes...

Seattle Free Week

This past week has been lovely and lazy. Leigh and I worked two days last weekend, but had Monday through Friday to ourselves to do as we pleased. We cleaned the Seattle House, ran some errands, caught up on some TV shows (well, I caught up on them because Leigh has had access to TV since late January), slept in (awesome!) and enjoyed the city a bit.

Yesterday was particularly nice because we planned to spend the day in Seattle. Our goals were to hit the U-district (our old stomping grounds) and Capitol Hill, both by foot. We took the bus to the U-district and wandered around The Ave (University Way), which has both changed and stayed the same since we lived two blocks over about 6 years ago. We got Bubble Tea at our favorite place, which has changed only in decor. The prices are about the same, which is nice, and they have our favorite flavors and a few new ones too. We then walked through the UW campus and got a little turned around, but that was kind of fun because we got to wander through the UW Medical College building. Leigh enjoyed that very much because we got a glimpse of some top-notch facilities.

Then we started walking in the general direction of Capitol Hill, across a short bridge and through a park along the water. Without a map we just kind of headed in the correct direction and wound up wandering through some adorable neighborhoods. It was practically a garden tour. Seattle has an abundance of cute little houses (none exactly the same) with fun gardens. I remember the week I worked as a canvasser here (begging for money for a non-existent cause) we had a term for these houses- "Giver Houses" - because the owners took the time to make their homes naturally beautiful, so they'd probably give us $10 for our "cause."

Anyway, we made it to Capital Hill after several hours of slowly walking and enjoying ourselves and had some Pho with chicken for dinner- YUM! and only $5.75 for a bowl the size of my head! After that we walked downtown, which only took a few minutes because it's a straight shot downhill, and caught our bus home. We were out of the house traveling on foot from 2:00pm until after 10:30pm. Needless to say I slept like a log last night. It was great.

Today we're taking it easy, enjoying the library here in West Seattle and searching for an international grocery store so we can get some harder to find ingredients to get us through the summer. We're really enjoying having a kitchen again and settling into our temporary home. Hopefully we will get a gig to work a few hours tomorrow, but if not I think we'll try to get tickets for the Seattle Storm game. Either way I'll be happy. On Saturday we start working early mornings and the summer will only get busier after that, so we're relishing in the calm right now.

Weekend Work in Seattle

Leigh and I drove from Rock Island to Seattle last Wednesday morning, unpacked our trusty car Betsy and settled into my grandparents' house in West Seattle, where we will call home for the next two months. It's so nice to be back here. This is a great city. It has everything we love: nice scenery, mountains, trees, good food, good music, lots of stuff to do, chilled out people (mostly), good shopping, not overly capitalized (this is debatable, but I'll claim it here), etc, etc etc. It's great. We haven't started working farmers markets yet, because the fruit isn't ready, but next weekend we're going to help out at one so my grandpa can walk us through set-up and such before things get crazy. Then we'll be ready to roll when the fruit is ready to be eaten.

This weekend we got a gig working a promotion for a cable TV show. It paid well and was two days of easy work, so it seemed like a good deal. Every time I do a promo I get really excited about making some quick money with little to no responsibility, but then when I actually start working I quickly remember why I hate doing these things. The level of commercialism is so intense that it's suffocating. It's sad to watch people spend their money on stupid paraphernalia without giving it much thought. They get caught up in the event and next thing you know they've dropped $50 on something worth $10 or less. We give away stuff that's worth about $0.35 and they get super excited about it. Those "prizes" probably end up in a junk drawer at home. Plus it never fails that I work with a project leader who talks down to people, tries to be a "cool boss" and then at some point gets snippy with the promo staff.

Then there's the permanent crew, the ones who travel from city to city throughout the whole tour. On a rare occasion you get a crew that works their ass off, but typically you get a lot of recent college grads who are overpaid on an over-staffed tour who stand around sipping Starbucks and barking orders and the promo crew while they do NOTHING. Today I got stuck doing the job of two people for about 30 minutes, no big deal, but meanwhile three such permanent crew members literally stood and watched me work my ass off while they gossiped about the celebrity guests rather than help me for about 90 seconds and make my job 50% easier.

Anyway, the weekend is over and we should get paid soon. That'll cover the June car payment and will put about $200 into savings. Not too shabby for 2 days of easy labor. Hopefully we'll start working 4 days per week at the farmers markets soon. The more we work now the easier things will be when we get to Anchorage. We need an apartment, furniture, and we both need all new work clothes (thanks to a combination of wearing out everything we owned whilst in France and losing a notable amount of weight) plus we have the travel expenses of driving to Anchorage. We'll be fine, we just need to keep our eyes on the prize.

This week should be fun with little or nothing to do, but if given the chance to work we'll definitely take it.