Today I wanted to take some pictures of the gorgeous spring flowers around the Pike Place Market. Seattle skies didn’t cooperate - it was pouring as I walked to the ferry. The light wasn’t great for most of the pics, but the cherry blossom shot turned out especially interesting because of the raindrops on the lens. Click to enlarge the photos.

Daffodils in the rain. These are actually growing
on the roof of the walkway into the market.

These cherry trees grow on the terraces
of the Harbor Steps condominiums.

These are just a few of the clematis blossoms on
the vine that’s over-running our front porch.

And this is how badly it’s overrunning the porch!

Over the last week, my office has moved. The new office is pretty fabulous- it’s in the white building right behind the plaza.

We used to be in the lovely and historic Smith Tower, on the edge of Pioneer Square. Because the building has applied for permits to convert to condominiums, each office must move out as its lease expires.

Project managing the details of an office move is annoyingly tedious, especially when your resources are limited. The various bits & pieces include:

• lease details
• the improvements and refitting of the new space
• office layout design
• the physical move
• the fairly complex technical details
• disentanglement from the old space.

We had a point person on the refitting, office layout and physical layout – and he rocked! My focus was the technical detail and implementation, which didn’t come together quite so smoothly because it was late getting kicked off and we had some service delivery issues. It’s almost done now – we’re just missing a few little details like a printer/fax machine (tomorrow). And Seattle dial tone.

The location is lovely, in the heart of downtown, right across from Westlake Center mall and fronting Westlake Park. We have huge glass windows and can watch the fairly fascinating park happenings all day long. We see leaf blowing, downtown volunteers assembling, the fountain being turned on (and back off, when a prankster puts soap in it), goth kids, executives, homeless, transvestites, retail fashion victims, street musicians, preachers, drug dealers, and many, many pigeons. On Saturday (move-in day) there was a zombie march and choreographed Thriller performance in the park.

There is a fabulous coffee shop across the street in Westlake Center, Dilettante Mocha Café, with 8 different varieties of mocha. I highly recommend the 63% dark chocolate mocha – and will have to ration myself. The mall also boasts an excellent international food court with about 20 different small, inexpensive restaurants.

We are a couple blocks from Pike Place market, Pacific Place mall, the major downtown hotels, the convention center and the opera house. There are so many shops and restaurants in a 5-block radius I could live here and never send a dime of my paycheck home. I may be trekking across to work in-office more often – and my kids will be volunteering to go to work with me for the day!

This weekend, my good friend Barb was in town, and we went exploring.

On Sunday, we visited the Tacoma Museum of Glass. It was not what I expected, but it was fascinating.

There were three main rooms with varied glass art exhibits, plus a glass-focused gift shop. Some of the installations were amazing – my favorite was a 40 square foot spider web suspended from the ceiling, covered with clear glass bubble ‘dewdrops’.

The part that I didn’t expect was the Hot Shop ampitheatre, where the visiting artist, this week Lino Tagliapietra, and his team created glass objects, live, in front of an audience.

It was, as I said, fascinating. We probably sat there and watched, on and off, for a couple of hours. The process was so complex and intricate, we had no idea where the artist was going with the piece until he was almost completely done with it.

The artist had a team of 8-10 people working in various support roles, and his process included layers of molten glass, colored cane or fused bits, shaping, glassblowing, axis changes, stretching, and finishing, creating pieces with total clarity, intricate patterns and improbably fragile, graceful shapes.

If you’re in Tacoma area, it’s definitely worth a visit.

This weekend, we took the whole family, teens included, to see Spamalot.

For those that haven’t heard of it, Spamalot is a Broadway adaptation of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It remixes many of the original sketches with cheesy original songs and hilarious visual effects.

A few of our cast members were not the headlined cast – some parts were played by understudies – but it was still seriously side-splitting. The actor playing Arthur was a veritable Tim Curry clone, and the other actors were made of awesome as well. The Lady of the Lake part was particularly hilarious – overblown singing and melodramatic stage presence.

If you want serious theatre, this is probably not your cup of tea. If, on the other hand, you’re in the mood for Camelot puns, fart jokes, oblivious characters and carnivorous rabbits, then find some tickets and enjoy the show!

This morning, on the ferry, I observed an interesting couple sitting in the booth next to us. They were fifty-going-on-fifteen.

He: Artfully tousled salt and pepper hair. A dozen piercings per ear, including big hollow plugs in his earlobes, a pierced nose and a pierced lip. A soul patch. Big patchwork cargo pants. Doc Martens.

She: Dirty, fuschia streaked short shaggy hair. A half dozen piercings pier ear. A pierced lip. Visible tattoos. Carefully mix/matched thrift store gear, including a tatty, dirty plaid wool jacket, a Grateful Dead tie-dye shirt, menswear pants and Vans slipon shoes.

You have to wonder – if they have children, what are the poor kids going to do to rebel? Become CPAs or GAP store retail managers? And why aren’t the kids telling them what NOT to wear?

When I get feeling a little midlife restless, I learn something new. Last restless phase, I learned to solder jewelry. I don’t pierce and tattoo myself – although that’s probably my generation. I just don’t want to have to live with certain body parts pierced, tattooed, wrinkled and sagging when I’m 85.