Using those things on the end of my legs

Yesterday morning I took my car into the dealership for some regularly scheduled maintenance... I'd timed the appointment for around when rackham usually heads to work, so instead of mekle showing up, leaving his car and the two of them heading out in Rackham's MINI, we each drove a car over to the dealership. The two of them headed off in Mekle's car and I drove the MINI back home. I'd actually had a tentative plan to go walking with taradaktyl around the time the car was supposed to be done, so I'd figured I could walk to her place, go walking with her from there and then see if she could drop me off at the dealership afterward. However, she ended up having some other things come up... so I started trying to figure out who I could call to give me a ride (or whether I should just drive over in the MINI, pay for the car and pick it up later) when it hit me that the dealership really wasn't as far away as it seemed. I mapped it out online and sure enough, it was about 2.1 miles from our house... and how many miles do I generally walk every day for exercise? You got it. Two.

Of course, if it had been raining, there's no way I would have done it... but it was a rare and beautiful sunny day. It took me about 40 minutes to get there, which isn't too bad considering all the stops I had to make at intersections and such and the fact that there were hills (something I don't have to deal with at the walking track). And now my non-American (and probably a few of the American ones) friends are laughing at me for feeling so good about walking 2 miles to the dealership... but seriously, it's just not usually done here! It's a whole different mindset...

The one interesting thing was that I hadn't noticed, when I'd dropped the car off in the morning, that the dealership had NO CARS in the lot. None. But when I was walking by the lot on the way to the service department, it was pretty glaringly obvious. I'm not entirely sure how I could have missed that when I was driving in... bizarre! I asked about it and apparently they're having a problem that a lot of dealerships are encountering these days: they lost their funding. The lady I talked to said they're scrambling to find another lender and think they'll be back up and running within a week, but yikes!!

In other news, my in-laws are visiting for the weekend, so we should be doing a lot of running around and sight-seeing. Just in time for the colder, rainy weather to come in... and just in time for all the St. Patrick's Day festivities downtown. Could make parking interesting.

Seattle sight-seeing and shopping

As I mentioned, my in-laws are in town for a few days, so this morning we headed into Seattle and stopped by Weaving Works, where my mother-in-law (who is a weaver) wanted to do a bit of shopping. I picked up some more Procion dyes for tie-dyeing projects and then decided to bite the bullet and buy an Inkle Loom. I'd borrowed one from my mother-in-law a few years ago, but due to the car accident I ended up not being able to do much with it before she needed it back. The loom wasn't horribly expensive and I'm hoping that owning one of my own will be a bigger incentive to really learn how to use it.

After that we headed down to the Seattle Center and spent most of the morning and early afternoon wandering around the Science Fiction Museum (something I always love but don't get to do nearly often enough). Things were, of course, a bit different from my last visit... since the collection rotates things through from time to time. I still love seeing all the stuff from the Golden Age, and some of the items and recollections from folks who were in First Fandom (I've been lucky enough to meet a number of them over the years, but the stories still fascinate me). And as always, I left the SFM with a list of books I want to read and, luckily, I already own most of them!

We grabbed lunch at the Seattle Center... I ended up ordering the very seasonal corned beef, cabbage and potatoes which was, well, no better than okay. Not fantastic, but at least it was a step up from "merely edible." We definitely need to pick up some corned beef sometime this week to prepare at home. The best part of lunch was grabbing some beignets from another food vendor... ooh, light and sweet and yummy!

After lunch, we headed back over to the Experience Music Project... which is pretty cool, but not the sort of thing that interests me enough for repeated visits, so I spent most of my time in a special section with video and headphone sets watching various interviews with SF&F authors and personalities (including Frederik Pohl discussing how he, along with several other members of the Futurians, were ejected from the first WorldCon -- yes, Fannish feuds have been around for a VERY long time). My favorite, though, was Nichelle Nichols talking about the "first interracial kiss on television" -- the one between Uhura and Captain Kirk on Star Trek. So funny!! Especially how William Shatner sabotaged the one "non-kiss" take that they did (he dipped her toward the camera and looked up at it with his eyes crossed). The Science Fiction Museum is well worth your time, if you're ever in the Seattle area... and be sure to check out the EMP, even if it's just to find the few SF&F exhibits that are sprinkled throughout that section!

We spent a bit of time wandering around the Seattle Center before heading home... and I even got end the day with my annual St. Patrick's Day indulgence: a Shamrock Shake from McDonald's!