I had a great time at the Vashon Island lavender festival today with Phillip and Lynn. To be honest, at first I was just tagging along. Flowers are not my thing. (On the hikes I took with Pet, I was always more interested in the rock formations than the plants she'd point out to me.) But I did enjoy myself today. I am very glad that we found the smaller Vashon Island festival, and decided against the larger Sequim lavender festival.

I have recently discovered Nowhere Girl. Normally, I have a tough time reading for long stretches online, but I'm glued to this little story. (I'm on page 34 of part 1.) I don't know why I don't read graphic novels.

Here's a Solid Gold Oldie from Harvard research.

Phillip has a knack for finding events on campus that I'd be interested in. Last night, it was Ursula K. Le Guinn reading and signing her new book Changing Planes. I enjoyed it a lot, she inspired me to start writing again, and I wished it would have lasted longer. She read for a half hour, answered questions for fifteen minutes, and I waited in line for another half hour to get my book signed. I wanted to have her sign Left Hand of Darkness, but the University Bookstore (who sponsored the event), had it only in paperback. I prefer my signed books to be hardback, or at least trade paperback. So I bought Changing Planes for her to sign.

Between work and the reading, I had time to get some tofu teriyaki on University Way. I went to a little place where every customer except me was Asian. Phillip wants us to move, and I've been resisting leaving Broadway. But lately Broadway has seemed to be breathing its last breaths, while the U-District has been feeling more and more like Broadway used to be.

This is freaking me out. Yesterday, on my way home from work, I saw a hat in the middle of the street, across from the pea patch. I debated whether I should pick it up, or leave it for the owner to come back to look for it. I decided that it wasn't probably that valuable a hat - a grey baseball cap with a Volkswagen logo - and the owner, I figured, could easily get another one just like it at any VW dealership. So I took it home. I'll add it to my hat collection. One thing that helped me decide that it could easily be replaced was the fact that a patient forgot a hat like it (or maybe exactly like it) at our clinic and hadn't claimed it in three days. This is the freaky part: I got into work this morning, and the patient's lost hat was gone, and no one seems to know what happened to it.

Deseo el jugo de zanahoria.

The day after I posted the comment about Casino Royale being more character development than action, I turned the page and read the most exciting car chase (which Bond lost) I may have ever read. It was followed by a gruesome torture.

Tonight was the second Spanish class. I must not have been playing close enough attention last week, because I told Karen & Beth over dinner Sunday that the instructor told us we were not going to have time to get into irregular verbs. Tonight we learned the irregular verbs ser, estar, tener, ir, conocer, saber, hacer, poner, dar, pensar, poder, decir, oír, traer, ver, querer, venir, and salir. This class is geared mostly for people planning on travelling, so a large part of tonight's class was about learning the names of popular foods. No complaint, but it wasn't what interested me.

I'm exhausted tonight, and just slightly bored. While doing some internet wandering, I invented a game. I generate two random words with my Franklin Spelling Ace® XL, and then enter those words into Google, and tell it I'm Feeling Lucky. For instance, BEEPER BYWORD got me to this cryptic site.

I noticed for the first time this morning that 951 had been covered up on the bus stop sign at Harvard & Eastlake. A check on Metro's website confirmed that route 951 had been discontinued last Frebruary. The 951 - express from Capitol Hill to Boeing Everett - was the bus I used to ride twice a day for over a year. For some reason, I feel like a piece of my history is gone.

Having rented both "Kiki's Delivery Service" and "Spirited Away" this weekend, and having long ago picked "Princess Mononoke" as one of my favorite films from the first time I saw it, I have turned into a true fan of writer/director Hayao Miyazaki. His studio has turned out some of the most amazing animation I have seen in ages. How do they make computer animation look so hand-crafted? I am in awe of the attention to detail - reflections on car windows, shadows under trees, the way a skirt billows in a breeze, the texture of a rusty pipe, and more.

Meanwhile, I am enjoying Casino Royale a lot better than I frankly thought I would. I'm about half-way through the book. I don't know if this book is typical of the Bond stories that followed it, but this one is an exciting spy thriller based more on character development than on action. This is a different James Bond than the one I'm used to in the movies. This is a civil servant Bond, one who presents a luxurious lifestyle and taste, but still worries about whether his bosses will approve his expense account, one who vomits after nearly getting killed by a bomb, one who meets up with his fellow agents to exchange reports. The plot is slightly far-fetched, I think (trying to discredit an enemy agent by possibly bankrupting him at a legitimate game of baccarat), but it does make it sound at least plausible.

We got a call from Karen & Beth earlier this week. They're going to be in the area this Sunday (today), and would we like to go to Kokeb for dinner? I was thrilled with the idea (I hadn't been to Kokeb in years), but Phillip wasn't so hot for it. Friday evening, I called Kokeb, to confirm that they would be open on Sunday. I got a recording telling me that the restaurant is open for dinner seven days a week, from 5 PM to 10 PM, and if I'd like to make a reservation, please leave a message after the beep. I saw no point in making a reservation, so I hung up.

This morning, Phillip decided not to go, so when Beth called at 4:30 to tell me they were on Mercer Island, heading for Seattle, I told her that Kokeb was on, but it would be just the three of us. (I still can't get used to the idea of Karen & Beth with a cell phone.) I got to Kokeb at five minutes to 5, parked right in front, and waited for Beth & Karen. The restaurant building was as run-down looking as I remembered, but I thought it was a little uninviting to have black plastic sheets lining the inside of the windows, and closed shutters in the door. A little after 5:00, Karen & Beth had still not arrived, and Kokeb had still not opened its doors. A man walking by stopped to read the sheet of paper taped to the door. I realized that the first words on the paper were, in large letters, "OFFICIAL NOTICE." I got out and read the notice. Kokeb had been evicted, by order of King County, and anyone caught on the premises will be convicted of trespassing. I still haven't found out why they were evicted.

I called Beth, and learned that they were lost somwhere around Dearborne Street. I told them about Kokeb, and we decided on Queen Of Sheeba, another Ethiopian restaurant, right here on Broadway - a place I have always seen but never visited until tonight. I wish Phillip had gone.

I had a craving for a latte this morning, so I walked a block down Summit to Top Spot. I pleased to see that business was booming for this non-Starbucks neighborhood coffee shop. The line for drink orders reached the door, and tables were full of people reading or writing or tapping on laptop computers.

This is why I don't hate Starbucks as much as it's cool to hate them. Starbucks has grown into a bland corporation branching out all over the world, with each shop looking just like the other one, and yet (unlike Microsoft), it allows independant coffee houses like Top Spot and B&O Espresso to thrive.

On the subject of coffee, we watched "Kiki's Delivery Service" on DVD last night. I loved it. I thought it was odd, however, that Kiki put sugar cubes in her hot chocolate. I figured it must be they like it in Japan (or Europe). Then I learned on Internet Movie Database this morning that in the original Japanese, the bakery owner (I forgot her name), offered Kiki some coffee, but Disney though it was inappropriate for a child to drink coffee, so it was dubbed into English as "hot chocolate." I liked Phillip's comment: "Disney thinks it's OK for a 13-year-old girl to go off and live on her own for a year, but not to drink coffee."