Mukilteo Musings

It is ONLY IN SEATTLE time--I seem to have a backlog this morning.

1. Only in Seattle does the family topic of discussion focus on my son's visit to a Starbuck's yesterday. Evidently, somebody took the Java Chip drink he'd ordered by mistake or on purpose??!! Of course, they fixed him another. This has never happened to us before and it is an outrage!!

2. Only in Seattle does one risk life and limb if you cut into a ferry line. Man, that is something you don't do here. It is a toss up if it is worse than taking the wrong drink at Starbuck's.

3. Only in Seattle are there long triangular shaped plastic bags at the entrance to Nordstrom's. Evidently, they are umbrella bags for wet umbrellas. My kids saw them and asked me "why do they have those? Nobody has an umbrella!" At the University District street fair over the weekend, it started to rain. There were crowds of people. I saw a young blondish tan couple open their umbrellas; they looked around and saw no umbrellas and promptly closed them. Not cool!

4. Only in Seattle do they feature a wine tasting shop called The Tasting Room in the Seattle times Sunday magazine (www.seattletimes.com/pacificnw/) with a full page picture of the owner with her...Golden Retriever, Stanley. Two weeks ago we went to this shop near Pike Place Market and we met Stanley and we will go back.

5. Only in Seattle do we greet the arrival of Copper River Salmon to our markets with the same excitement the French welcome Beaujolais. It is here and the signs are up everywhere--at every grocery store. And the paper had a huge full page color ad for one store, "First of the season...there's a reason salmon lovers wait all year for this gem out of the Copper River:... glacier-fed waters of this...rugged river [in Alaska]"

6. And finally, Only in Seattle does Nobel Prize winner for medical research, Lee Hartwell, introduce my husband and his program at UW to visiting scientists from across the country at a very important meeting last week IN HIS BIKE SHORTS. In planning for the event, his e-mails to my husband were not deep questions about what he should say but rather, WHERE HE COULD PARK HIS BIKE.

Man, I love Seattle!!!