Last weekend, Julianna and I finally met up—in real life—with Brandon and Amanda, a couple I had "met" through Facebook about a year ago because of our mutual interest in film and photography. They run ARBR Pictures (http://arbrpictures.com/), and are just flat-out wonderful people—talanted and warm and great conversationalists. We hiked the Pacific Trail loop at Discovery Park, chatting the whole time and pausing every now and then to take a few photos. Afterwards, we got lunch at Skillet in Ballard and talked, talked, talked, got ice cream at Parfait next door and talked, talked, talked, and then talked some more in the parking garage before parting ways. I think "we clicked" is the best way to put it.
The previous weekend, we got to meet up with our pal Farnoosh—in Seattle on a book tour promoting her new volume of poetry, Great Guns (http://www.canarium.org/farnoosh-fathi/)—and then headed out to Hood Canal for a mini-holiday at the Alderbrook Resort. One of the perks of the event planning side of Juli's job is that hotels occasionally court her for business, which means we get to go out together to check out the premises. I'd been to Hood Canal once before—my grandparents rented a timeshare there after my college graduation—but I had forgotten how beautiful it is. It was cold and rainy most of the time, but it didn't matter. We saw salmon fighting their way up a nearby stream. A sea lion breached right in front of us and did a few lazy barrel rolls. I explored an abandoned house on the water. On the way home, we stopped in Olympia to pop into Olympia Coffee Roasting—which, for my money, makes the best coffee in the state—and had lunch at The Bread Peddler.
Up next: A lazy Thanksgiving.