numbers

ah. we have returned safely from seattle. i feel like counting things.

1. hotel. we stayed at the roosevelt hotel, on the corner of 7th and pine. quite convenient for the shops. we got there early, at around 1pm, and check-in time wasn't until 4pm. there was a room ready, however, so we were upgraded for free to a suite. sweet! it was a fine room. it didn't quite have the character we ordinarily look for in an older hotel, but it was fine. the mattress on the king-size (!) bed was wholly wunderbar. it was, if memory serves, a posturepedic encore 750 plush. we gotta get us one of those. the issue with the higher-end hotels, something with which i had not before been confronted, is tipping. the bellman brought our bags up and i knew i should tip him but i guess i balked. i was waiting for a window of opportunity, an outstretched hand, a clearing of the throat, but nonesuch occured. he left our room untipped. kara remedied that situation by passing the tip through the front desk person when we went for a walk a few minutes later. that seemed to go okay. on leaving the hotel at the end of our stay i was smoother and tipped the bellman with aplomb (much more valuable than a fiver).
2. movie. we went to see transamerica, and it was rather bad. i wanted it to be good; i so wanted it to be good. i love felicity huffman (though i'm not a watcher of "desperate housewives"), and she gave a terrific performance. it's that the story was boring. i would have been much more interested in seeing this character's daily life in the last week before the surgery. i didn't need the oh-i-have-a-son plot and road trip and the forced deceptions a la "three's company." but anyway. we saw it.
   
3. shopping. oh, we did some of that. kara found pants she liked and that liked her, and this was pleasing. we did a whole lot of browsing. we did make it to the elliott bay book company and i saw some people i recognized who didn't recognize me. (it's been 6 years and i worked there only a few months, so i didn't expect much.) i bought a novel by a favorite author of mine named nicholas mosley and kara bought a book of plays by craig lucas. it's a great bookstore; we were there over an hour i think. plus there was lots of window shopping along pioneer square.
4. birthday. kara's birthday was monday. it was serendipitous that paul scheduled his talk for that day. i gave her some marbles and let her loose on seattle.
   
5. fado. we had lunch monday at an irish pub on first avenue called fado. we drank guinness; i ate salmon and kara had a cheese sandwich (see the photo way up at the top). there was piped-in music and at one point a song called "half past two" by a band called the stunning played. i hadn't heard the song in years. on 12/26/1991, st stephens day, i was in cork, ireland, and that night my then-girlfriend ciara and i went to see this band. i love that song. i miss ireland.
   
6. paul. monday evening we went to benaroya hall and saw paul auster and his wife siri hustvedt have a conversation up on stage. they essentially took turns asking each other questions about their writing. i've read four or five of his books and one of hers, and maybe that's why he was much more interesting to me than she was. but he was truly great. i am inspired and galvanized hearing writers speak about their writing. i am brimming with ideas for the second draft of "nocturnal dyspnea."
7. dogs. we dropped them off at the kennel sunday morning and picked them up tuesday afternoon. kara worries about the dogs when they're kennelized. she dreamed, on the posturepedic mattress in the roosevelt, that sagan bit someone and max died. terrible dreams. but when we arrived at the kennel yesterday both dogs were fine. they had been well behaved and they were happy to see us. incidentally, the cats were fine as well, left alone in the house for two nights with the heat off as they were.

and now we are back in tacoma. i went to work today; kara will be home from work shortly. i think we'll have pork for dinner.