It’s a swamp, it’s not a swamp, and meeting my life coach

Oh, Holiday Reader, 

Have I told you that I lived here as a child? I was 1.  Or 2.  I don’t remember.  And my mother, when I asked for clarity earlier in the week, claimed she couldn’t really remember.  Where did we live? “On the third floor.” 🙄 Helpful.  All she claims to remember of our year here was that it rained every day. 

The point here is that it was “rainy” all day today.  But, as our tour guide said, rain here isn’t like rain in East Coast cities — it’s more of an eternal mist rather than an actual dripping rain.  

The day began with food porn, which is probably good, because yesterday ended with it. 😂  The restaurant at the Westin advertised great things so we decided to try it.  They get many stars — good stuff. Pics: 

I had the chicken and waffles.  I like chicken and waffles and this was a high end version. That the chef had put his own twist on: that’s chipotle sauce on it (yes, it had a bit of heat, which is surprising with the sweet of maple syrup) and then cinnamon cream on top. 

RR had the Benedict with the touch of “avocado hollandaise.”  Neither of us know how it was done, but she loves avocados, so it was right up her alley.  🙂

We then walked the two blocks to Top Doughnuts for afternoon snacks. 

Our afternoon activity was the Underground Tour.  Not like “underground” as in subversive, but underground as in under ground.  It seems that the current city of Seattle is actually built up 20’ from its original heighth, which was actually no height at all — sea level.  They did so by using water cannons (straight from your local strip mine) to knock a 48% grade down to about 18%.  

Doing this put the first floor of a number of buildings “underground.”  Thus the tour.  

Our tour guide’s name was Mike, and he was the infamous character of a tour guide.  If I added up all the jobs he’d held for all those years he did it, he’d be about 150.  and he was clearly a aspiring actor.  No offense, Michael. 🤣  He did a pretty good job.  

Things to know: Seattle was built on a bad spot, but started as a lumber town.  Got rich sending lumber to San Fran.  Populated when the Feds gave every couple who’d move there a square acre of land free.  Never mind that there were already people there. (And chief Seattle’s name wasn’t Seattle)

A fire destroyed the place in 1889 and they were in such a hurry to rebuild that they did so again on the sea level spot. Eye roll.  The Klondike gold rush enriched them, too, as everyone came through here on their way there. 

They also made a lot of money in the 20s importing alcohol from Canada.  Who knew? 

And, then, the adventure of the baseball game. 

First, for Josh, I have to begin with an “obvious brothers” — ballparks are better in good weather.  It was 50, rainy and biting at T-Mobile stadium.  It has a retractable roof, which was, OC closed (one wonders how often it is open in the land of cloudy, wet weather), but it’s not enclosed.  You know they saved millions on HVAC and not closing two walls. :).  It’s a perfectly good ballpark, we were told by the elderly (hahaha) trio behind us it won architectural awards when it opened, but there wasn’t much in terms of ballpark to recommend it.  A bit like Ranger Stadium..

Except for the food.  They had several exotic stands (Hawaiian?) and the “world famous” garlic fries stand reeked for sections of the stadium.  I think it is the first stadium ever to actually have a wine selection — as we discussed, I think the wine bar in SF had only one vintner.  Here’s a picture of RR’s dinner, pork dumplings.

MY LIFE COACH

This may be a staple of this trip’s blogs: the guy.  Tonight…well, here we go.  We took the elevator up out of the stadium (it doesn’t matter) and got on with this “couple” — he was without a coat.  To his credit, he had given it to his companion, a petit woman who seemed to be freezing.  She was Hawaiian.  It was not Hawaiian weather. 

He talked incessantly from the moment we walked up (I concede I thought he was just talking at first to keep warm…but no it wasn’t THAT), through the elevator ride, then during the walk to the train station (10 minutes?) and then we just, just missed the train and he talked incessantly for the ten minutes we waited.  She said like two sentences the whole time.  I thought about pushing him under the train just to get him to shut up.

He was from San Francisco.  Or “the Bay.”  He had made lots of money, since he was making over $100k a year by the age of 21.  In his 30s he could retire and he had enough money to “live anywhere.”  After quizzing RR about what we did for work, she politely asked what he did.  “Well, I’m what you call a life coach.  But you know I’ve learned almost everything is sales…even though it took a long time to admit it to myself.”  There was clearly a lot that he had trouble admitting to himself. :). “Do you know how hard it is to convince people that they need a coach for sex and dating?”  I conceded that I probably didn’t but I thought it ironic that a life coach so wanted me to end a life, in just 20 minutes.  

We separated on the train, but, as luck would have it, we ended up on the same elevator going up to the street level.  KMN!

But we survived.  And so did he.  I look forward to an early morning and maybe a day full of like minded life coaches, in the home of my favorite life coach.  God help me.