Rachel K. Linens 'n Things

I slept a proper night's sleep! Hooray for me!

Zaydeh and I had a 'proper breakfast' this morning of eggs, potatoes and mushrooms. We made too much and fed the leftovers to the trash can.

Then we decided to take down the mighty linen closet -- full of Bubbeh's stuff. So we divvied up napkins, napkin rings, napkins (thousands of them), place mats, tablecloths and odds and ends that we found. I can't believe how much she put in that closet that we never knew about! Pot holders and aprons GALORE.

So Zaydeh and I will wont for nothing. Hooray for Bubbeh! I also found a big box of embroidery kits, which I want to practice embroidery on of course, and a lot of spare yarn and knitting needles. A woman after my own heart! Meanwhile Zaydeh and I appear to have more and more in common every day... such as our fondness for milk and Hitchcock. Or our love of too-strongly-brewed coffee.

In the evening I met up with Sarah and Ian and their neighbour, Justin. Justin's a youngin' from Berkley who moved up here to work for Amazon doing clever computer things that earn him more money than I will ever dream of. Speaking of not dreaming of money, tomorrow I'm going to take a crack at applying for jobs. We'll see how it goes.

Anyway, the four of us were driven (how nice!) to an izakaya in the International District called Kaname (which probably means something in Japanese but I sure didn't know what). The food was good. It was different than the stuff I've been eating for the past couple of years, but it was still full of tofu and there was beer so no complaints here! It's really nice having Sarah back as a friend in person again! No more of this internet friend nonsense.

Today Megan, my future roommate and platonic life partner, stopped seeing this nice kid she was dating for the past month or so. I guess when the sparks aren't there the sparks aren't there! But it's hard to explain that to someone who sees sparks despite the fact that you DON'T. Alas, such is life.

Rachel K. Arabic Culture

I slept last night! In fact, I slept for about fifteen hours and woke up around 1 in the afternoon. Oops!

Soon after, Zaydeh and I set out for the Seattle Center to see the Arab Culture Festival. We hopped on the Mighty Monorail from Westlake Center and got off at its only stop, Seattle Center.

It was another hot, sunny day today and people were pretty hot and sweaty at the festival. A few kids and some teenagers jumped around in the big, outdoor fountain facing the Space Needle. There were three stages at the festival, two indoors and one outside. We saw bits of belly dancing, 'hip hop' freestyling, and one blonde woman who did a seductive sort of dance with a lit candelabra on her head. Odd.

Still, we were doused in culture and it felt very good after being suffocated in "Japanese Culture" and other mayonnaise-soaked things for two years straight. There were some protesters, claiming that being at an Arab Festival would besmirch our names on Judgment Day. Such protesting evokes the name of Jesus Christ, who similarly used to preach the word of God while crashing someone else's party. Oh wait, he didn't. That was just those three jerk-hats.

Bigotry aside, we visited a Starbucks and sipped on some iced drinks and talked about what buses I should take to get to the apartment in winter when the sun sets at 4pm. The consensus is that Alaskan way is a great place to be, but it's better to be indoors after dark. The piers attract a lot of 'transients', so it can get a little sketchy. Fortunately there are a great many buses, and one such bus even dips down onto Alaskan Way (just for me!)

We came home with a bag full of pita, hummus and baba ghanoush -- a success in my book.

Zaydeh then told a long story about his 'rabid socialist' parents and their days spent owning a co-op in the Bronx. He even said, "I took the subway, which in those days cost a nickel." No onion on his belt, but maybe he left out some details. The story continued on to describe how he had gotten into genius school against his will by taking an examination with a 104º fever and writing about killing chickens. He misread the prompt, "killing time" as "KILLING-time" and the rest, as they say, is history.