After everyone else left, Chris stayed on as our guest for another week or so. He’s planning to come out to British Columbia for college, and he’s particularly aiming for Simon Fraser University near Vancouver. We drove up there to check it out. The school seems to be kind of a geeky hippie Shangri-La. Tucked into this wrinkly terrain miles from anything, at a legendary elevation, is this cluster of pleasant modern architecture, complete with an Authorized Apple Reseller and a boba tea cafe. While we sat in there, sucking the tapioca or jelly ballast from our drinks, girls in goth-loli and cosplay outfits wandered into the place. At first we thought the school must be even more unrealistically cool than we expected, but as it turned out there was some kind of convention going on, which is still pretty commendable.

The idea to move Northwest originally came from a conversation between my friend Ann and me. When I came out here, she knew she wanted to come join me. At the beginning of August, she finally made it. She moved in, and now the apartment isn’t so lonely anymore. Soon after Ann moved in, our friends Nathaniel from Ohio, Chris from Ontario, and Rushi from Oregon all came to visit us. Teamed with Shishka and Rayme who already live in Seattle, we comprised one of the largest gatherings ever of folks from our IRC channel. Some of Nathaniel’s friends own a very fancy restaurant in Capitol Hill, and they treated us to dinner for Nathaniel’s birthday. It was one of the finest meals I’ve ever eaten.

I guess that’s probably the best place to have biplane rides…

The Blue Angels came out for Seafair. Andrew invited me to watch them take off and land at Boeing Field. Seeing the F-18s up close gave me some nice inspiration for Crystal Bell, the main ship in Soft Landing.

One Saturday afternoon I rolled out of bed rather hungry. I shambled down to Market Street, thinking I’d stop in to Subway or something, and what should I bump into but a festival, right there where my neighborhood was supposed to be. I wandered about, gawked at the various food stands, and settled on a piroshky and a 20-ounce bottle of Pepsi. Sometimes it’s nice to live in a town where things happen.

I try to ride my bicycle to work whenever I can, but it’s not nearly as often as I’d like. I usually wake up too late, or come up with some excuse to drive instead. That’s a shame, because the ride is a good way to see the city, feel like I live in it, and feel like I’m alive at all. It also gives my brain a good amount of time to do nothing but think. Here’s a striking scene I encountered on the way home one evening.

I don’t know anything about this piece of paper. I found it in my basement. It speaks for itself, really.