Sent from my iPhone
… to delay going to the office just a bit and walking around downtown near the train station. Wait, that didn’t come out right. I mean the train always gets me here round 8:10; the question becomes whether to cross the street and climb the stairs to the cube, or to cast my lot randomly in one of the coffee shops that cluster in the area thick as relic stands in Vatican Square.
[ fyi I made the mistake of re-reading Another Roadside Attraction recently. It didn’t age well; or maybe I did, too well. At any rate I need to purge the fog of Catholic allusion and extended absurdist metaphor]
Today I’m at the All City. Compared to the Zeitgeist (gold standard), it is smaller, sunnier, more expensive, just a hint more uptown (which you can tell, ironically enough, by the increasingly grunged-out baristas). Less crowded. Nondescript fairly quiet loop-based muzik playing out somebody’s movie’s incidental personal soundtrack outtakes. Fine for typing. Not as good for the people show. Missing the lived-in well-bred boho vibe the of the Z.
A fifty-something couple in bike gear are having a serious meeting at the table next to me. He is wearing his “#1 WAMU Dad” tee shirt. She has a not-so subtle official Stanford bike team jersey; maybe from the day. Before the ride they need to iron something out; Sandy, Don and Doug apparently dropped the ball on something. Don in particular.
Just saw somebody from work. Crap. Never happened at the Z. That seals it.
The MotionX-GPS interface pretty much ignores standard iPhone UI conventions, demonstrating that developers don’t need to be constrained by the platform’s display/interaction conventions. Not at all sure that’s a good thing in the end, but this is a really powerful and actually useful app that takes a creative approach to iPhone UI.
The free version is fully featured until you try to save waypoints or tracks. Unlocking those features costs you a mighty three dollars. This thing should be tons of fun for hiking/biking/exploring the city. I’m glad I never gave in to that silly impluse to buy a handheld Garmin, but now I may need a portable power solution for the iThing.
Apparently the train takes a more direct route from Edmonds to to Seattle than I’d thought; I never noticed the whole beeline-over-water part of the journey: http://tinyurl.com/q3fjgy
Still amazing that it works even this well from inside the train.
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At the Zeitgeist counter window looking across at the Cadillac. They’re playing “Madman Across the Water” in it’s glorious entirety. I’d forgotten that break in “Holiday Inn” where the string section (Paul Buckmaster-arranged, if memory serves) bobs around Davey Johnstone’s mandolin (and somebody apparently couldn’t resist adding the sitar) — great dynamic groovy pop rock for sure. Persistent double-tracking of Elton’s vocal stands out now. A definitive padded-felt tumbling drum sound, loosely swung, before gated reverbs and midi and DX7s spoiled everything. Great stuff to start the weekend.
… is blowing Sinatra out the door of the Zeitgeist as I walk in, along with any chance I had of waking up in the current century.
On any morning, waiting in line in any noisy, crowded, high-ceilinged, brick-walled coffee shop, I will ineveitably be full of optimism for the day ahead and for humankind. Today, thank goodness, is no different. How much of my reflexive joy is chemical anticipation of the pitch-black Americano in my immediate future? Not that it matters.
The management has shrewdly arranged for the waiting line to run parallel with a battered wooden newpaper rack full of … actual newspapars! My bias toward giddiness gets a extra lift from headlines telling me not to worry about the flu, to celebrate an uptick in existing home sales, to go ahead and give the banks another 65 billion. Sure, banks, you’ve earned it. I feel generous today.
Behind the background chatter and clinking cups, the Sinatra, the hissing espresso machines, you hear bursts of conversation and alot of laughter, even at 8 AM. Everyone behind the counter giggles along with the lady in front of me who, for whatever reason, mentions loudly that in high school she had run with a crowd of THespians (she emphasizes the initial voiced dental fricative ð). The theatre crowd is still the best crowd, she says.
There’s no people like show people.
… facing the Cadillac Hotel across the street. Music since I’ve entered: Kate Rusby > Nick Drake > Jackson Browne > Leo Kottke. Relief from corporate indiezak @starbucks and @tully’s. Zeitgeist has a Boulder vibe, skyscrapers in the mid-distance notwithstanding. Reassuringly 20th century.
Sitting next to a fireman from the station around the corner. The UPS Waterfall park beckons on a bright warm morning. The guy wearing shorts is breaking some deep unwritten Seattle code. People give him extra room in the coffee line.
Short of relaunching my erstwhile academic turgidity, I need a place with more room to stretch than allowed by 140 per. So tumblr at the Zeitgeist may fit the bill.
I plan to do no copy-edits. We’ll see how it goes. Typing it out like that just looks wrong.
Misaffordance
The “Car Talk” Martin?
iPhone assists in maintaining a steam-era work schedule
my dad in the mid-Eisenhower years
