Summer in Seattle - Part 3

So these next posts will go by a lot quicker, I'll just be going through what I've been doing on the weekends.

July 24-26. On friday night I met Julieanne (one of Susi's friends that I met in downtown on the July 4th party) and we went to hookah. The place was kinda pricey and had a bunch of black people (rare, because I expected at least like 2 or 3 middle easterners). And they kept playing infomercials instead of the usual music videos. But it was a good time. We ended up missing the 1:20 am bus so we walked around, found a rock concert that was ending, and finally found a bus stop and took the 2:20 am bus. The next morning we went to Elie's place (went to her place for the July 4th party) and had a pool party/BBQ. One of the guys, he was in the military and based around here, loved cooking and BBQing. So he prepped pounds of chicked, pork, beef - the chicken was amazing! We hung out and played in the pool/jaquzzi for a few hours and watched the SeaFair parade as it was passing by. Then I luckily got a ride home from Reza, not my TA, he alse works for Microsoft. The next day I just did some laundry and relaxed, recovering/relaxing from the weekend.

August 1-2. That Saturday I met Julieanne (I'm so happy I found someone to explore Seattle with. Unlike Chicago, where I was unfortunately not able to find someone to just go out and visit the sights. Having someone to go around with makes life so much easier) and we went to Pike Place market. It was my first time there and it reminded me a lot of San Fran's Fisherman's Wharf. The cool thing was that it is actually a lot bigger than it looks and at one point it goes down 4 stories deep. I got my souvenier shot glass there! Oh, and I saw Starbucks FIRST store there. Then we went on to see the rest of downtown, we ended up at the Library. Reminiscient of Cerritos Library, except 10 floors tall and amazingly massive. I don't have a pic of it, but being inside made it look pretty epic. We then ended up at the pier and just overlooked the water for some time, bunch of boats going by with the other side of Seattle across the way, also a bunch of really wierd people walked by - I swear the definition of Seattle, just wierd. We then got lunch at a sushi place, which I expected more out of since it was Seattle and they fish so much.

But we then met DREW at EMP/SFM (Experiance Music Project/ Science Fiction Musueam). This place was really cool. There was a Jimi Hendrix exhibit and a Jim Henson (the guy that did the Muppets) exhibit. Henson was a genious, and I didn't realize it until I saw that. But there were also things about music from the northwest, like Hendrix, Quincy Jones, and a lot of contemporary stuff. We spent at least 3 or 4 hours there, which was great cause we got in for free (work gave me 4 free passes) and got the ipod tours for free too (also from work). After that we got some Mexican food in Udistrict and Drew went back home. Julieanne and myself went back to my place, played some pong with the roomates, and rented Amelie (the parts I was awake for were good).

That Sunday (yea, Saturday was long) Julieanne took a direct bus back to Issaquah and Drew called to see if I wanted to go sailing. Of course I said yes. We decided to take out an FJ (a two person boat) but he had never tried it. So with the directions he go online we took some time to rig it. Then we had to capsize it in from of the dockmaster so we could show that we could right it ourselves. Unfortunately I lost my sunglasses at this point, but it was a lot of fun.

August 8-10. On Saturday I went to the Soils Classification Class offered by work. It was 8 hours on a Saturday, but it was just amazing. I learned so much (got a really useful booklet with everything a new geotech needs) and got to interact with some really expeianced geologists. That was actually the conclusion of a 58 hour week. Once I got home I didn't do anything really and just kicked back.

On Sunday, I met up with Susi, Nina, and Erica (the german, fin, and swede) and we went to a concert at local gasworks park. It was an old refinery that they decided not to take apart completely because it would be cheaper and look cool. It was a surprisingly hot day, too hot to wear jeans like I did, but the performance we saw from a soloist Aussie was pretty cool. She had a really good voice, but the girls were bored/hot so we left. To cool off we decided to see the Hangover, myself and Nina hadn't seen it. Yea yea, I JUST saw the Hangover. It was epic, so amazing, I need to see it again (and I haven't said that since Remember the Titans). Then we hung out at my place until we decided on dinner. After an hour we still had not consensus. We checked out Thai Tom's but the line was too long so we ended up going to Pam's Kitchen - Trinidad-Caribean cuisine expecting Carribean cuisine. We walk in and see 3 indian waiters and look at the menu...naan, curry, yogurt, aloo...yea Pam was an Indian who lived in Trinidad for some time. They ended up with indian food with Carribean spices. It was really good, kinda pricey, $12, but was easily 2 meals, my favorite kind. Then the girls left and I tried resting some before the next week.

At this point I had been going into the field for a week (and will continue to do so until I finish up here). Now, I get to see everything that goes on at a construction site (where this pic is from). Even though my job is not very difficult, I push a metal rod into the ground and see how far it goes, it gets hard when something goes wrong. I learned, contractors are your friends until something goes wrong. I have to tell these guys (who have been working these jobs for over 20 years) that they did somehting wrong and need to re-excavate and re-compact to get the proper ground stability. They really try to cheat you our of your job and tell you false information sometimes. I asked one if I had probed a trench, that he was in, yesterday and he said yes. I checked my log and saw soemthing wrong. So I asked, when did you dig this trench. He said this morning. The prick didn't want to me to probe it. Reasonable, if it wasn't to spec I have to tell them and they have to move some huge machinery into place to compact it. Overall, a great learning experiance though.

Oh yea, on that Monday Drew called again to see if I wanted to go sailing, this time it was a race. It was really laxed but a good experiance, except for the lack of wind, the cold, and the rain. haha, but we learned a lot, the people out there are really nice and had a lot of advice.

Today, I'm planning on going to the Hempfest concert (no, I don't smoke), I heard it is a great people watching experiance and wanted to see a little more of Seattle. I'll update you about this next week.