zai jian zao

Just to stick with the Asian food theme, Jukki (who is visiting from LA) and I had lunch at Zao's Noodle at U Village. Though I've lived near a Zao's since college, I've never (I think... maybe once in Vegas...) gone in. And now that I've been, I'll never go again. Food sucked.

So maybe I should change the title of this post since zai jian means 'until I see you again' because I ain't ever going back. So... sayonara Zao.

ooh... need to be home on tuesday...

Marination Mobile

rocking wok

Seattle, for all its Asian population, has terrible Chinese food. Those in the know usually go over to Bellevue for good Chinese food. So it was nice to find that the new owners of Rocking Wok haven't screwed the pooch. I had this craving for 皮蛋瘦肉粥 and while Rocking Wok's wasn't the most spectacular, nor the most authentic, it was decently flavored and not bad for $4.75. It's nice that it's walking distance from home, too.

if i had time

i'd go geek it out!

roost

Oh how I love the various designs from Roost. There's just that beauty-in-nature thing that they've got down. I received this set of champagne glasses (picture above) from a friend for my birthday a couple of years ago now. Of course, due to the large clumsy-bf:glass-fragility ratio, they've never been used. One day, though, champagne will be poured into these glasses and thus rationalize buying more Roost products... such as these that I love being sold at Velocity.

the other lab

I attended The Lab again last night. It was really fun and inspiring to see the creativity that abounds in Seattle. I'm sure that the uber-great Velocity folk will have links and the podcast for last night's event up soon so that everyone can see the coolness being made. I won't list all the sites of all the participants last night but here's a small highlight of the stuff I really liked:

www.cakespy.com (which I won some cute cards from! i really need to buy a lotto ticket)
www.suspectandfugitive.com (artwork from non-archival material)
www.gogreendesign.biz (follow the life of a tree)

seattle free classes and school

seattle tilth
seattle free school
spl free opera previews

Seattle has a lot to offer. I'm wanting to go to a bunch of these classes starting with the tilth container herb gardening class. :) There are a bunch of festivals and block parties happening over the summer, too. This last weekend, we went to the slightly disappointing International District Festival. I should have known better since the ID is puny and does not contain much good food. Though the one booth with decent food at the fair was the Filipino booth. So we got ourselves some halo-halo (which literally means mix-mix). It's a Filipino dessert of crushed ice, various beans and jellies, a bit of ice cream, ube paste, flan and evaporated milk.

i [heart] fremont

This last weekend marked the beginning of a badly needed summer in Seattle. This last spring was so wet and cold that this will be the best river rafting season in decades (in the Pacific Northwest). So it was glorious to see the sun this past weekend... especially since squinting because of the sun is a great scapegoat when you're watching a bunch of nekkid people parading down the street. 'No, no, it's just the sun. I'm not trying to make out what animal is body-painted on that guy's ass.' Yes, my friends, I speak of the 20th annual Fremont Solstice Parade. It's where the drag queens march (in HEELS) to legalize marijuana and the belly dancers shake to promote breast cancer awareness. Not to say that everyone who participated had an agenda. The Fremont Fair is mostly just to have fun and celebrate... naked (for some people). It was fun to watch.

After the parade, we went over to the Buckaroo Tavern. Best dive/biker bar though I didn't get into a barfight, nor do i think I got hepatitis. After the obligatory PBR, I walked across the street to Urbanweeds. I picked up an ecoforms pot urn to try to separate some of the basil seedlings. I love how these pots look and the ecofriendliness of them.

So with pot under my arm and face flush with the asian-glow, I walked (not staggered, one PBR wasn't enough) the two blocks home and reflected on what a great neighborhood I lived in. Other than the porn video store outside my livingroom window, there's great food (by Seattle standards), great bars, shops and color around Fremont. How long it's going to stay this lovely little neighborhood is uncertain though. This year's parade drew an estimated hundred thousand people, some watched the parade between the heads of ten rows of people, and the fair afterwards was sheer madness. In the throngs of the crowd, it's hard to imagine that six years ago (says an old-timer in my lab), everyone had a front-row seat to the parade and mostly it was a neighborhood thing. The gentrification of this little neighborhood didn't start that long ago. And I feel lucky to live here at this time, when Fremont still has a bit of the small neighborhood feel but with businesses that I love walking to and browsing.