Small town Seattle update: I have learned that the chair artist is the niece of my friend & co-author (who owns Market Street Shoes) and she may be changing its official gallery name to my silly joke.

My dad was an engineer who had zero spelling or grammar skills but he invented ridiculous bedtime stories for us. My particular favorite was a riff on Little Red Riding Hood titled Big Brown Riding Boots starring me in my big brown riding boots.

All you can seat shrimp

Eavesdropping on someone's work chat made me realize that some East Coast people think Washington has a specific Orca Island to go see orcas, which is funny in at least two ways.

Super happy for my neighborhood's most interesting restaurant. It's been a rough year for them (for, I think, all but the popular breakfast place) and hopefully they're getting a needed heap of reservations from this.

Hopefully not the space toilet company

A pal with a Smith Tower office share took me to the observation deck/bar yesterday. Goofy beautiful, great raspberry mint fizz drink, now noticing how much better it would be without all the car business. Habitat beach is also 10/10. (My slow self crossed ok, but two scooter dopes didn't yield.)

This includes the phrase Chekov's Urine Filter and is a necessary follow-up to my brief chat with @apollo18.bsky.social yesterday about space toilet gossip.

My publisher and my primary freelance outlet have basically put "thou shalt not use AI" in my contracts. I know my situation isn't unusual, but many non-writer pals find it surprising in these times. They are getting pushed to use it for, like, email, so they assume I use it for my writing.

So many of my neighbors have done this it has reached a possibly weird place on my block, like crows are the mean girls (complimentary) and everyone does their bidding (also complimentary).

Glad to see this. Internet gambling is illegal in WA as of 2006. "In one Kalshi advertisement, one person texts another that they “found a way to bet on the NFL even though we live in Washington,” which seems to acknowledge that Kalshi knows that they are attempting to skirt state law."

I need a Boop to flip one of the Mariner's snack ferries asap

I'm tired and read this as "kings and mightiest potatoes must die"

Cars in this Canadian transit center are essentially 1:1 with the stout bollard shorties here

My typing teacher was also a Baptist preacher so ASDF [pause for sinners to repent] JKL [big finish] SEMI lives in my head more resoundingly than anything else I was meant to learn in 9th grade.

"What has been legalized is extraction" is one line of an entire great piece. Gift link, shared in relief that this crap isn't legal in WA.

My takeaway is that plentiful cardamom baked goods noticeably increases happiness

The chap at the back left reminds me that my mom used to knit tiny items for my dollhouse using toothpicks for the knitting needles. I like how serious they all look going about their business.

Never cross a picket line, even if it offers the opportunity to yell "scabs, you suck!" instead of "refs, you suck!"

No heroes but Humpy

Not just Hollywood! @tomasaurus.bsky.social rocked this brooch last summer at a wedding and I lost track of the number of compliments he got. Also, vintage brooch shopping with awkward straight men is fun, you'll know immediately which salespeople deserve your money.

If you've paid attention to the wording of food recalls over recent decades (you probably haven't!), you'll know they are often optional. Companies declining that option is a not-surprising part of our gross and terrible current era. Please don't support dangerous companies like this one.

Seattle folks, I made a game for you! (The rest of you can play too, but it's like 8/10 hard for Seattleites, it's gonna be real tough for anyone else) www.seattlemet.com/news-and-cit...

New posters in my neighborhood or maybe they're depressing word search pages

I will continue to mutter that "spring forward" is not a thing people actually do and so it is not a good reminder for how to move clocks. Personally I have sprung sidewise and forward--surprised by small critters mainly--but never forward. Fallen forward, though? Many, many times.

This is fantastic. I want to know how her pizza was!

For those not clicking the link: "Public Health said all students, staff, and families are being informed of the case this week, regardless of their level of exposure, emphasizing "people in the community do not need to be monitoring for symptoms or concerned about TB spread."

Today's most societally boring/most personally exciting news: the neighbors are building a catio, stage 1 is complete and this brave chap is ready for it.

Strawberries. I've had some renowned varietals right off the plant and into my mouth at their perfect ripeness and even they do not appeal to me. And, if they're cooked at all, they turn into sand-covered slugs.

Ponies is a great deal of fun. And watch We Are Lady Parts if you missed it a couple years ago. The PWHL doc is so much better than I expected, like the first 15 minutes is mostly about the first collective bargaining agreement in women's hockey.

Turned in the most recent book manuscript and its photo heap today. Writing back-to-back books is not as bad as multiple books at once but it feels so good to not have a current book deadline. I'm proud as hell of this one, about little free bakeries and why they matter. Yes, with recipes.

I have this problem with Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers and I've concluded that I don't actually like either enough to conclusively settle which is which

Because being American isn't embarrassing enough yet

These are not technologies that Seattle has been using forever that are difficult to contemplate not using. Just go back to June 2024 when SPD had a handful of license plate readers and no CCTV cameras.

Parade ready, with what "12 as 1" means to me

This Cooper's hawk absolutely did not care that I was a few yards/meters away. Nice to spot on my block today, possibly summoned by the endless Seahawks chat.

Do we think Bob has ever heard and understood the phrase "read the room?"

Explaining the somewhat invisible but endless bits of garbage capitalism and calling the NFL a crime syndicate while watching and enjoying yesterday's spectacle = me crushing my auntie responsibilities to the teens watching the Super Bowl in my basement

Statler and Waldorf are why GenX is the way it is. We were absolutely trained to interrupt our giddy enjoyment with cattiness and snark until that's all we have left.

As @gfrancie.bsky.social wrote recently: cannot wait for the state fair seed art

I just remembered that Dick Cheney is dead and damn, the emotional lift I experienced. What a comfort! Might bake a celebratory cake all over again.

All I really want for him is all the traffic-calming plans that he cancelled for his lakeside street to be implemented. He sounds bitter. I'm cool if he stays that way.

Autocorrect in a text just gave me Marshawn Lunch and that has to be on the menu of at least one sports bar, right?

It's pretty silly in these times but I am chock full of glee that our former jock mayor did not get to have the Super Bowl mayor experience.

Tom Olivia Newton Brady needs to never ever ever do that again

Activists raise money to send to the detainees inside. As a for-profit contractor, CoreCivic charges prisoners fees for things like phone calls and food.

I baked my granddad's dog biscuit recipe for the little free bakery box today and neighbors meeting and chatting over their goofy lil butt-waggling dogs was a not-terrible thing here this afternoon. Also? Neighborhood signal chat got a few new additions.

Freddie is helping our whistle kit project