sunday, july 29th-richmond to seattle

up and out of the house early and on to the plane easily. it was a small 3 seater jet, and it was cold. i am NEVER cold. switched planes in o'hare to alaska airlines which was very nice...headrests, blankets/pillow. i flew, however, with a massive headache, and spent most of the plane rides suffering.

seatac airport was confusing and we had to take a train to the baggage. picked up the car (toyota corolla, the only one they had) in the lot. i had made reservations in the union station parking lot for the baseball game, and it was pretty much a breeze getting to safeco field. we had time to walk over to the infamous ujimaya asian market-pretty overwhelming! there were so many things to look at and they had hot chestnuts for sale outside the store. i had never seen hot chestnuts! inside they had a food court along with the regular market. austin had sushi and ginger, i had udon noodle soup that they cooked on the spot. pam was up for trying new stuff and ate pickled seaweed, eggrolls and ginger with austin. other things of notice in the market were the manpuc buns, ducks and various meats hanging up. we didn't have a lot of time to do much there, and when we go back to seattle, i will definitely take a more leisurely visit there.

the market was literally across the street and down the block from safeco, so we joined the crowds and headed to the game. we walked around the entire length of the stadium to will call to get our tickets. we had great seats and it was a great field! it was 70's retro day, with people dressed up and lots of skits and things between innings and at the 7th inning stretch. each of the players had been assigned a song to represent him, and they had taken their pictures and "disco'd" them up and projected them on the huge stadium teleprompter thing at center field. seeing ichiro susuki was great. he got his 1500th hit which was great! he also had a bloop over the pitcher and stole second and third base! seattle finally beat the athletics in the 9th. reitsma almost gave the game away. we also got to see mike piazza DH for the athletics. JJ closed.

leaving after the game should have been easy, and would have...if there had not been a game. unfortunately, my carefully planned avenue of escape was blocked due to traffic, both foot and car, from the game. as a result, we got all turned around and finally just winged it up 4th avenue. i had been studying the seattle map for awhile and had some clues about where to go. however, i wasn't paying a whole lot of attention and was apparently not driving in the right lane. a fire engine was coming up opposite of us and he finally said on his loud speaker "move to the right!"
which amused austin and pam to no end!

from there we had no problems getting to ballard, which is a quaint, older section of seattle near the docks. shelley and bart were great! i had some apprehension about meeting them and staying with them for 3 days. after all, i had never physically met them over 10 years! their house is an older house from back in the day, but they have just done a massive renovation to it, adding a full basement and deck, which bart is working on. they have beautiful flowers everywhere, and great landscaping! this is true for all over ballard, not just their yard! their house has all sorts of neat things, and all modern conveniences for appliances. their bathroom has a sunken tub, cd player and television, and the toilet has a bidet with water shooting up and it is heated!

shelley got out the massage table and did reiki on me. the headache pretty much took me out and took a lot of joy off of the day for me. i feel asleep, and then got back up for dinner, which she had made up of all of our favorite foods! she had made chicago hot dogs, bangers (sausages that are scottish), three bean salad, lemonade tea from trader joe's, artichoke dip on bread! after dinner we went out to a place called sunset hill to see...you guessed it...the sunset. it was quite pretty and we took pictures of the sun coming down over the mountains across the water. we then went to the locks and watched the sunday boats come in. they had a salmon fish ladder there and an funny silver octopus sculpture which we took pictures of. the salmon were HUGE! there was also a beautiful garden there leading to the locks and everything seemed to in bloom and GREEN! real grass, not weeds! :) we parked right near the lockspot, which is the bar where they filmed AFTER THE CATCH, which was the post THE DEADLIEST CATCH roundup of all the captains and some of the crew. (the deadliest catch and after the catch are on the discovery channel and it is a reality show about crab fishermen in alaska, although some of them are based out of seattle.)we didn't go in, but i did have my picture taken in front of it.

austin slept on the pull out couch downstairs and pam and i were in the guest bedroom on a murphy bed that pulls down out of the wall! there is no need for air conditioning here as the temp is a cool 7o degrees and NO HUMIDITY! (there has been nice sunshine here, which i didn't expect as you always here of seattle being rainy and gloomy! ) they have little fans in the windows the provide something of a breeze. the computer is in this room, and austin has already gotten hooked up courtesy of bart, who is a big gamer. austin was a happy camper! bart gave austin his copy of AGE OF EMPIRES III which austin had not played yet. we also were introduced to sluggo the cat, who is a maine coon. he has a round thing with a ball inside the middle that he can bat around and that was pretty amusing.