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I had a fun and productive day yesterday. My old friend ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
alanro and his partner Jeanne were in town for a few days, and visited us yesterday. They got to our apartment around 11, and after a bit of conversation we went to Pancake Corral for brunch: a small breakfast-and-lunch place that turns out to have acceptable Swedish pancakes and unusually good potato pancakes. (Alan remembered them fondly from when he lived in the area.) It's between our home and the South Bellevue Park and Ride, and we'll probably go back. Lots of good conversation, while waiting for our table (it was a nice day, and we sat on a bench just outside the restaurant until we were called) and over our pancakes.
Then they took us to a furniture store. I had asked Alan if they'd be willing to drive us to Ikea while they were here, and he said sure, but there was a place in South Bellevue that he liked. Having no particular attachment to Ikea furniture, we went to Greenbaum's instead, and have now ordered what looks like a very good sofabed, good in both sofa and bed forms, and fairly easy to convert between the two. This is more-expensive furniture, the sort where you select from a wide range of fabrics rather than "do you want the white, beige, pale blue, or red" or "comes in your choice of basic black." So we are going to have a purple sofabed, but we aren't going to have it for a couple of months.
After a bit more socializing at our apartment, Alan, Jeanne, and I went to Seattle to hang out withroadnotes and baldanders for a bit. Then I went home, by buses that took longer than they should have (mostly excess waiting time), and the three of them went off to dinner.
It is nice being on the same coast as Alan again, which I haven't been in a very long time. (We've never lived in the same city, but New York to Toronto is a much easier visit than New York to either Seattle or the Bay Area.) We don't keep up as well as we might by phone, email, or the like, but a gap of either months or years doesn't seem to make a difference in that friendship.
This morning I went to the slightly-further grocery store, which has a few things the Safeway doesn't, like Goya olive oil and the raspberry hard candies I like. I somehow managed to leave behind the chocolate bar that was one of the two things I specifically went there for; this is annoying, but looking at the receipt, it's clear that I left it in my shopping basket, rather than paying for it but not having it.
After lunch, I decided I wanted some blackberries. So I took a backpack with a bottle of water and a plastic container, and walked down Bellevue Way to the bus stop where I'd picked berries a few days ago. It had been basically picked over (which was only vaguely surprising), so I took a side trip up "Wolverine Way" toward the high school, then kept going south/downhill. I picked and ate some berries as I went—a few off a hedge here, some in the Pancake Corral parking lot, etc. As I got toward Mercer Slough Park, there were enough that I put a few in my container. It was a pleasant walk on a warm, sunny afternoon, though there's a lot of vehicle traffic along Bellevue Way on a Monday afternoon, and almost no foot traffic south of Main Street.
Google Maps/directions tells me that I walked about two miles, not counting the side trips. I took the 550 bus home, and wouldn't have walked that far this afternoon if I hadn't known I had the option of a bus at several points along the way. (With the shopping trip this morning, that makes about three miles.) When I talk about living here as being an exercise program, I don't mean this sort of outing, but it's certainly more interesting than a treadmill or exercise bike.
alanro and his partner Jeanne were in town for a few days, and visited us yesterday. They got to our apartment around 11, and after a bit of conversation we went to Pancake Corral for brunch: a small breakfast-and-lunch place that turns out to have acceptable Swedish pancakes and unusually good potato pancakes. (Alan remembered them fondly from when he lived in the area.) It's between our home and the South Bellevue Park and Ride, and we'll probably go back. Lots of good conversation, while waiting for our table (it was a nice day, and we sat on a bench just outside the restaurant until we were called) and over our pancakes.Then they took us to a furniture store. I had asked Alan if they'd be willing to drive us to Ikea while they were here, and he said sure, but there was a place in South Bellevue that he liked. Having no particular attachment to Ikea furniture, we went to Greenbaum's instead, and have now ordered what looks like a very good sofabed, good in both sofa and bed forms, and fairly easy to convert between the two. This is more-expensive furniture, the sort where you select from a wide range of fabrics rather than "do you want the white, beige, pale blue, or red" or "comes in your choice of basic black." So we are going to have a purple sofabed, but we aren't going to have it for a couple of months.
After a bit more socializing at our apartment, Alan, Jeanne, and I went to Seattle to hang out with
roadnotes and baldanders for a bit. Then I went home, by buses that took longer than they should have (mostly excess waiting time), and the three of them went off to dinner.It is nice being on the same coast as Alan again, which I haven't been in a very long time. (We've never lived in the same city, but New York to Toronto is a much easier visit than New York to either Seattle or the Bay Area.) We don't keep up as well as we might by phone, email, or the like, but a gap of either months or years doesn't seem to make a difference in that friendship.
This morning I went to the slightly-further grocery store, which has a few things the Safeway doesn't, like Goya olive oil and the raspberry hard candies I like. I somehow managed to leave behind the chocolate bar that was one of the two things I specifically went there for; this is annoying, but looking at the receipt, it's clear that I left it in my shopping basket, rather than paying for it but not having it.
After lunch, I decided I wanted some blackberries. So I took a backpack with a bottle of water and a plastic container, and walked down Bellevue Way to the bus stop where I'd picked berries a few days ago. It had been basically picked over (which was only vaguely surprising), so I took a side trip up "Wolverine Way" toward the high school, then kept going south/downhill. I picked and ate some berries as I went—a few off a hedge here, some in the Pancake Corral parking lot, etc. As I got toward Mercer Slough Park, there were enough that I put a few in my container. It was a pleasant walk on a warm, sunny afternoon, though there's a lot of vehicle traffic along Bellevue Way on a Monday afternoon, and almost no foot traffic south of Main Street.
Google Maps/directions tells me that I walked about two miles, not counting the side trips. I took the 550 bus home, and wouldn't have walked that far this afternoon if I hadn't known I had the option of a bus at several points along the way. (With the shopping trip this morning, that makes about three miles.) When I talk about living here as being an exercise program, I don't mean this sort of outing, but it's certainly more interesting than a treadmill or exercise bike.