Ahh, Seattle.

In the midst of the blessing, we often fail to recognize its existence.

This past Sunday, the flurry of preparation, suitcase-pacing and tornadic activity that is my life landed me in the Seattle/Tacoma Airport.  I LOVE this part of the country, with its rain and mountains, rain and pine forests, rain and wilderness, rain and character-filled cities,.....and its rain.  Though I'm not particularly a fan of the wet stuff, it feeds and nourishes the ambience and environment that makes the Pacific Northwest unique among America's geography.

Upon landing, I drove straight into the Capitol Hill section of downtown Seattle to it's most famous coffee shop, "Bauhaus Books and Coffee".  It's part hippie gathering place, part laptop computer orgy, part old-fashioned library, and entirely a wonderful place to grab a latte' and a red-pepper/cucumber and hummus flatbread!!  After getting my order I walked upstairs, but quickly turned around upon seeing EVERY SINGLE TABLE with a laptop on it, and opted for a downstairs table by a window.

I read a hippie newspaper, and focused on an article supporting gay marriage by comparing heterosexual marriage to things like marrying your pet, marrying multiple wives, marrying by arrangement, and marrying into the swinging lifestyle (know,.....thine,.....enemy!).  Evidently this story upset me so much that I decided to dump half of my delicious $4.50 latte on top of my half-eaten flatbread!  What a mess, and so many looks of, "great job little tourist idiot!"  Fortunately the staff helped me clean it up when they saw I was abusing the forest's ecosystem by using too many napkins to wipe up the spill.

I finished up, actually enjoying the coffee shop and its lovely view of the Space Needle and headed out for a walk around this very eccentric and artsy-fartsy part of town.  I passed a man dressed as a Geisha, a topless man in spandex pants laying seductively across a series of newspaper boxes, and was caught off-guard by the blur of three boys racing on a severe downhill slope on their skateboards through a red light!!  The stroll took me past more coffee shops, some lovely cafes, a cool restaurant that's totally open-kitchen dining (checkmark mentally to take Tina there someday!) and a quirky furniture store that seemed to specialize in things nobody would ever want.  I grabbed a slice of yummy streetside pizza, and headed towards an open-air market near Seattle Central College.

Organic everything filled my eyes in a vision that would've given a vegan multiple orgasms!  Ethnic food booths, farm-to-customer produce kiosks, cruelty-free lemonade (okay, I made that up), and nary a pesticide, fungicide, or suicide to be found!  Wandering the booths I considered all the options, and selected,....nothing.  It was worth it just to be in such a "seattle-y" kinda place and enjoy the atmosphere.

Finally, it was time to head back to the car and start my drive to the town of Spanaway, about 40 miles to the south.  It was to be my home for this entire week, and will be the focus of my next blog post.  My mission, which I chose to accept with gratitude, was being the choreographer at a summer camp of 50 kids for one of the true legends of my profession, Mr Kirby Shaw.  He of the 30 million plus music copies sold, of the collaborator with jazz god Bobby McFerrin, and of the status of most published arranger in the history of high school choral music.  He and I were to lead our enthusiastic troops through the fields of musical battle, and onto the stage for a show this Saturday.  Although I'll elaborate more in my next post, it's been a fun, weird, rewarding week so far, and the best is yet to come!