cascadian telegrams

field day

school’s (almost) out… for.. summer!  field day 2010 included face painting and a photo booth.

waffles with dawn, eric and ian

we had a lovely brunch with homemade waffles by our foodie friends Dawn and Eric – thanks guys!  Forgot to ask for the recipe, will have to loop back w/them on that :).

Ian is getting big and more engaging like babies do at his age, it reminded us of Malcolm way back when :)…. adorable!

Eric made this time-lapse video of a day in the life of Ian (‘Ianisqatsi’) done in the the style of Koyaanisqatsi which I thought was genius… check it out:

Ianisqatsi from Eric Wright on Vimeo.

nova scotia

Just back from an awesome nine-day trip to Nova Scotia to visit the ‘rents, auld friends and flames and enjoy the salt air, the scenery, the quiet and the company. It’s a long trip – we’re travelling from nearly the westernmost point of North America to the easternmost, and it is a full day of travel – but it was great fun.

 

 

  As you can see from the above picture, Malcolm caught his first fish (a mackerel, actually he caught five), went clam digging and mussel picking, got to build a wooden go-kart with his granddad and generally run amok.  We played in the waves at Roseway Beach, hiked out to deserted beaches and beautiful lonely places along the water and partied with some of my childhood friends accompanied by cider and guitars – fun!

Here’s a couple of snaps:  Hiking out at Fox Bar near my parents’ place in Roseway

This tiny out-building on my parents’ property was a general store during the war (tobacco add inside still on the wall says “Loose Lips Sink Ships!  Do your part quietly for the war effort.”)

The ostensible purpose of the trip was for my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary which was August 8, 2009 – I’ll post separately on that.

One thing I love about Nova Scotia are the seemingly-endless (and usually-deserted) white sand beaches.  On a foggy day you feel like you’re walking through a dream.  Appropriately-ephemeral music (I preferred Sigur Ros’ Tak) helps to set the mood.  Most days, I’d run the 3km or so from my parents’ house down to Roseway Beach, walk on the beach and listen to the waves and some music, and then run back.  Susan did the same. Lovely.

Here’s the rest of the snaps.  Of course, I posted too many to Flickr.  Sorry about that, I need to be more selective.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mcm/collections/72157622056627530/

individual sets:

Roseway

50th Anniversary Party

Fishing and Hiking

Art of The Table

As Malcolm was off with his best m8 Julian and family at Great Wolf Lodge for the evening (Happy 7th Birthday Julian!) we took advantage and had a nice dinner out at Art of The Table (just down the street in Wallingford) with Alan and Elizabeth.

Man what a great, funky little place this is, with a very creative chef and fixed-price, fixed course dinners.  The “theme” this week (each week is a different theme) was ‘sexy summer salads’, but rather than four courses of, well, salads, chef Dustin Ronspies riffed on fresh summer ingredients (all locally-sourced organic or grown in their kitchen garden) such as beets, locally-caught albacore tuna in a ‘salad nicoise’ variation, farro, eggplant and mint with elderflower syrup on the ice cream dessert (with an english bean salty sorbet as a palate cleanser before the final course… adventurous!).  For completeness, here’s the menu:

Supper Club Series of
Several Seriously Super
Sexy Summer Salads
July 16th, 17th & 18th, 2009

first
Local Farmers Market Salad
with Greens, Herb Marinated
Goat Cheese, Beets, Hazelnuts &
Apricot~Champagne Vinaigrette

second
"Tuna Nicoise Dustin's Way"
Local Albacore Tuna Two Way-Seared
& Confit, Braised Fennel,
Baby Potatoes, Fava Beans,
Tomato Provencal, Olives,
Fried Capers & Other Goodness

third
Cherry Wood-Grilled Chicken
with Farro Salad, Grilled Zucchini,
Japanese Eggplant, & Pesto

last
Summer Fruit Salad with
Elderflower Syrup,
Garden Mint Ice Cream &
Lemon-Lavander Wafers

door opens at 7pm
Supper begins at 7:30

Dustin introduced each course by banging a little gong to get attention and then described what we had been served, and each course was accompanied by a different, appropriate wine.  The wines weren’t locally-sourced – all from France or Italy – but perfectly appropriate.  It was lovely but low-key and informal in that nice, “Seattle hippie” way that always makes me smile inside.

The other thing we really liked was that they expected diners to stay for 3-4 hours and enjoy the ambiance… stretching out the evening like that was a pleasure.  It is much more like dining in Europe where you’re out for the entire evening, rather than the American pattern of trying to push you through in 90 minutes or so… it is not good service to be asked if you want dessert or more food every 10 minutes, and AOTT certainly stays well away from that!

It was 11pm by the time we left, but the arrival of food and good conversation with our friends was paced so adroitly that we didn’t even notice the passing of time.  Susan declared it to be one of the best restaurant experiences she’s had in Seattle.

A splendid evening, and we’ll be back.

toward artificial life

… not the virtual or computer-kind, but the real, protein-based kind, from my Copenhagen friend (and Danish sprog skole classmate Michael):

Some press on my recent work:
"Harvard scientists have cleared a key hurdle in the creation of synthetic life, assembling a cell’s critical protein-making machinery in an advance with both practical, industrial applications and that advances the basic understanding of life’s workings.
...
Using the bacteria E. coli, Church and Research Fellow Michael Jewett extracted the bacteria’s natural ribosomes, broke them down into their constituent parts, removed the key ribosomal RNA and then synthesized the ribosomal RNA anew from molecules. "

brunch with fc krush alums

a belated post on a lovely brunch at Volterra from Sunday 12/7.  Pictured above are Malcolm (our chimpanzee, who wont’ sit still),  Mike and Jackie’s daughter Anna and Susan and Alex’s children Charlie and Clara.  Mike and Jackie just moved to Boulder and were back in SEA for the weekend, and while Susan and Alex still live in SEA we don’t seem them often enough, alas :(.

There are a group of us (including Andy and Tracy and their two boys.. not here this time) who lived in Capitol Hill circa 1999-2000.  The ‘glue’ was our Seattle City Soccer League team, FC Krush (NB FCK in Copenhagen :)) .   I was hopeless as a footy player but it was how my then-coworker Mike Gilbert and I met Andy and Alex and we all became fast friends. 

Coincidentally we all had kids roughly around the same time, which was nice in that it made our bonds even stronger, but bad in the sense that each of us, in turn, moved from CapHill in search of a more kid-friendly (and affordable) place.  Still:  Nice to see them, every periodically.

As for Volterra:  A nice place for brunch, supposedly good Italian food but will have to go back and try dinner here….

scaling mount rainier

a coworker friend of mine just scaled mount rainier and blogged about it, which I thought was extremely cool and something I'd love to try some day so I'm linking it here. 

I don't want to make it sound easier or less dangerous than it actually is though:  just a few weeks earlier, some climbers had died trying to ascend "the mountain".  So... respect!

zoo

this is actually a week old but we had a nice visit last weekend to Woodland Park Zoo with John and Jacki.

pretty nice view of some lions, monkeys and hippos!

   

Christmas 2007

Though we're still cooped up in our little temporary housing apartment in downtown Seattle, it was a nice Christmas.  Susan made a lovely roast lamb Christmas Eve and Malcolm got to open his presents a day early as we spent Christmas Day with friends (heaven forbid he'd have to wait until after that to open presents... he was beside himself with excitement for weeks leading up to Christmas).

By far the most interesting thing he received (from his Uncles Dave & Matt and Aunt Colleen - Thanks!!) was an ugobe pleo robotic dinosaur.  It's like a little robotic pet with light, motion and sound sensors and servo motors for walking and exploring its surroundings.  It is eerily lifelike and highly freaky to our cat Charlie

Malcolm appropriately named her 'Emmo' (appropriate as in 'emotive'... interesting also that he decided that the pleo is a 'she') and he's following the included instructions on how to train, feed and take care of her.  Cool/weird... I feel like I'm looking at the first robotic pet or something.

We spent Christmas Day with our friends Susan & Alex and their kids Charlie and Clara @ their new place down in Ranier Beach... what a great time!  I sometimes forget how nice and relaxing it is to spend time with those guys.  We got a bit of snow in the afternoon which -- gasp!! -- let the kids go out and play in the snow for a bit... that doesn't happen often enough from our 13th floor flat

 

Susan H. made a delicious Christmas dinner and much fun was had hanging out and chatting, dancing and letting kids run a bit wild ;)...

 

Being an 'orphan' at Christmas was never so much fun!  Snaps are here.

Ugly Cookies and Holiday Playday

  

oh the holiday season is in full swing now, with a 'Big Holiday Play Date Extravaganza' with Zoe, Kai, Sarah and assorted friends (plus some Danish æbleskriver as a bonus) then our friend Megan's annual Ugly Cookie Day to see who can make the ugliest Christmas cookie... I vote for either Borat in a Thong or Larry Craig in a Men's Room Stall (no photo evidence of that one).  The nicest/ugly cookie IMO was the Spice Girls set :).

Thanks for including us Megan!  (Note to self:  Not really for boys... Malcolm and I crashed but I tried to stay in the basement w/Brett)

Snaps from Ugly Cookie Day are here.