The Rest of the Crap I Did in Seattle

I'm just going to try to wrap the rest of it up in this last post. I'm helping a friend with a query tomorrow and Friday, and then perhaps we'll get into other things next week. We'll see.

First I have an announcement: the winner of Tawna Fenske's Making Waves is Heather M. Gardner. She got 4000 points, so it was basically a mathematically forgone conclusion. I have your email address, Heather, so I'll be in touch about your snail mail address. Thanks for playing, everyone.

Okay. So, back to Seattle. We did lots of different things, some of it very touristy like visiting the Space Needle and touring Pike Place Market, and other stuff more personal, like visiting my cousin in beautiful Port Townsend on the Olympic Peninsula (it's not far from Port Angeles for you Twilight lovers).

So here are some more photos, in random order:

The girls and I in front of the Market.

This photo pisses me off because Mount Rainier was prominent and majestic, hovering behind the city to the right, but you can't see it at all in this photo.

Madison with a silver statue man outside the market.

Madison in front of the Post Alley wall of ABC gum. Disgusting. In case you haven't figured it out yet, Kylie is shy like her dad, and Madison is a ham sandwich.

Madison playing giant chess in Occidental Park, against a street person. I didn't give her any help, and she lost, but you can learn just as much from losing as you can from winning, sometimes more. Right, Ted?

Tree huggers.

That's the Chief Seattle fireboat, but more importantly this is what it looks like outside Ivar's where you give your french fries to the gulls. I thought Andrew would like this, because he likes gulls.

Funny story: the day we were walking to the monorail, I literally saw a gull trying to bomb Kelly. I told her to watch out, she jumped back, and the bird shit seriously would have hit her if I hadn't saved the day. I'm her hero.

Once There Were Birds.

This is a sculpture outside the Science Museum.

This one's a little blurry, but I helped Madison make this shirt with bubble paint for when we finally went to see Harry Potter.

This is basically the view from my dad's house. Looking at this really makes me hate Georgia.

Finally a decent photo of Mount Rainier.

What a beautiful city.

This thing is called the Fremont Troll. You can't see it, but it has a Volkswagen in its hand.

This is a plaque outside the elevator to the grid inside the Seattle Opera House. Marcus Rush was my dad. Rest in peace, pop.

This is this really weird but kind of awesome old fort in Port Townsend. You would think it was from World War II, what with the war in the pacific and everything, but it was built around 1911. I don't know who we were scared of then, but it makes for a cool place to explore.

And that's it. Is that enough photos for you guys? Sorry the post is so long, but I wanted to squeeze the rest in, so we could move on to other things ... like, oh I don't know, talking about writing.

Anyway. Have a great Wednesday, all!

Japanese Garden at the Washington Park Arboretum

Okay. Finally back to Things I Did on Vacation in Seattle with my Family. Is that title too long? Who cares. It's all about the photos anyway.

If you don't know this by now, I consider myself an Asian-o-phile. My writing includes several things I find awesome about Asian culture, like martial-arts, calligraphy, religion, mysticism, and so forth. I don't know exactly where that love comes from, but it's been there as long as I can remember.

My daughter Kylie is the same, except she is really fascinated by Japan, in particular. She's already taught herself to speak some Japanese, and even write the simplified form (Hiragana and Katakana, as opposed to Kanji, which is the more complicated writing most of us are familiar with).

Anyway, the point is, one of the most beautiful places we visited while in Seattle was the Japanese Garden at the Washington Park Arboretum. They have a real Tea House, which was unfortunately closed when we visited, and a pond that is filled with some of the largest Koi I have ever seen.

Here are some photos:

These lanterns are either iron or stone, I can't remember. They're absolutely beautiful at night, though.

Here come the Koi.

For some reason I couldn't capture one with his mouth wide open. They look really funny if you can.

This lantern was a gift from Seattle's sister city, Kobe, Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan. It weighs three and a half tons, and is hand carved out of granite. It is nearly 200 years old.

That's my daughter, Madison, pouting on the grass. We had a bit of a meltdown that day because we'd been doing so much walking.

Those are turtles, sunning themselves on the rocks. Madison would not believe us that they were real because they literally did not move for hours.

Our camera is shite, and none of us are great photographers, but these pictures turned out okay, don't you think?

If you'd like to know more about the Japanese Garden at the Washington Park Arboretum, please visit the website.

Bruce and Brandon Lee's Graves

Okay. So I promised to talk about what I did while I was out of town. One of those things was visiting Bruce and Brandon Lee's grave. Bruce, and his son, Brandon, are buried next to each other at Lakeview Cemetary, on Capitol Hill, in Seattle.

It's a famous cemetary, filled with the graves of many of the cities founders and captains of industry, but the Lee grave and memorial is the most famous, and most visited of all of them.

If you don't know who Bruce Lee was, I probably can't help you, but I'm sure most of you do, so I'll just go ahead and get right to the pictures:

Your Inspiration Continues To Guide
Us Toward Our Personal Liberation

"Because we don't know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five time more. Perhaps not even that. How many times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless."

For Brandon and Eliza
Ever Joined in True Love's Beauty

The key to immortality is first living a life worth remembering.

Rest in peace, gentlemen. We will remember you always. May your lessons shroud the earth in their humble authenticity.

NOTE: The giveaway for Tawna Fenske's Making Waves is still open. Scroll down to yesterday's post to find out how to enter.