October 18, 1999
We had a great weekend with Adam, our friend from Montana. Well, we had a great time once he finally showed up. He was initially supposed to arrive around 9PM, but then he left later than he expected to, and there was snow, so he called us around 10:30PM to tell us that he actually probably wouldn't be arriving until around 4AM. Yikes! Well, Keith and I figured we'd take turns staying up waiting for him, and I took the first shift. I stayed awake until around 4AM, but couldn't make it any further than that, so I woke Keith up and told him to wake me for relief in a few hours.
When Keith finally came back to bed, I woke up and noticed it was light out. I'm very perceptive like that in the morning. "Hey! It's light out! Why is it light at 6AM??"
Of course, it wasn't 6AM, it was more like 8AM. Adam apparently took a few sleep breaks on the way, and he didn't arrive until the morning. I asked Keith if Adam was sleeping now and he said no, he'd decided to stay up and organize his cards for the tournament. Yikes! No sleep and a tournament?
Adam is a rabid Star Trek: Customizable Card Game fanatic. He has zillions and zillions of cards, and he goes to tournaments when he can. If you're not familiar with this type of card game, it's sort of like Magic: the Gathering. You buy cards in these little packets like you'd buy baseball cards, and it's a crap shoot which particular cards you get. You can play a game with these cards, and how well you do depends on the cards you play, and some cards are better than others, and more rare, and anyway, that's the tournament he was going to on Saturday.
I rolled out of bed around 10 or so because Nathanael was knocking on our bedroom door and asking Keith if they were going to play Krieg today, or what? Yikes! Why is Nathanael knocking on our bedroom door? Apparently Adam let him in, and apparently Keith had agreed to play Krieg with Dave and Nathanael today. So we both got dressed real quick-like, and made some arrangements. I didn't want to drive Adam to Wizards of the Coast by myself, because I wasn't sure of where it was, and I didn't want to get lost and make him late, so Keith told Dave and Nathanael that they'd have to put Krieg on hold for maybe an hour while we drove to WOTC and back.
I still can't believe that Adam went to play this all-day tournament after having driven all the way from Montana and having got no sleep whatsoever. He seemed OK, but man, I would have passed out or something. He did OK, though. I think he placed 21 out of 50, which is not too shabby. Apparently the top guys at these tournaments travel around the country going to all the various championships and tournaments and stuff, and they have ALL the rare cards. Or, I guess they do, anyway. It seems like they'd have to.
We went out to eat at the Mediterranean Kitchen, which was good as usual, and Adam noted that they don't really have "ethnic" food in Montana. I told him I wasn't really surprised.
At home we played Trivial Pursuit (he won, argh) and watched SNL, and then everyone went to bed and collapsed from exhaustion.
Sunday was our big "Let's Tour Seattle!" day. Adam is thinking tentatively of perhaps moving to Seattle someday, so he really wanted to go see the city and all it has to offer. We were happy to oblige. The first thing we did was dim sum brunch at a really nice Chinese place in the international district.
I love dim sum brunch. It's just so tasty and fun. Adam also seemed to approve. He'd told me before the trip that he wanted to eat at "interesting restaurants", and I think dim sum brunch definitely qualifies as "interesting". Especially if you're from Montana.
After that, we drove around for awhile looking for card shops, but didn't really find anything good. So we decided to take a ferry trip. For those of you who are not from Washington State, you may not be familiar with the ferry system. Western Washington has several islands in the Puget Sound, and the most convenient way to commute from most of them to Seattle is via ferry. You can walk on or drive on, and it's relatively cheap, and the view is great. This makes it a cool thing for tourists to do, also.
So, we took the ferry to Bremerton. It was a really nice day, which was surprising and lucky. The sun was out, the view was great, and there were seals. I'd never actually seen seals before outside a zoo. They seemed to like sunning themselves on the buoys in the Sound. Of course, if I were a seal, I'd probably sun myself on a buoy all day, too.
We didn't actually get off the ferry at Bremerton, because we had dinner reservations for 7, and if we missed our return ferry, the next one wasn't for an hour, and that would have put us under considerable time restraints. So we just stayed on for the return trip, and watched the sailboats and seals and remarked on how nice the houses were on Bainbridge Island, and Keith told the story of "My Ass Point".
Apparently, one of the first settlements in Seattle was on this point that sticks out into the bay, and the settlers named it "New York". Yes, New York. Anyway, the natives started calling it "New York Asti" (I think it's "Asti"), which translates roughly to "New York, my ass". But of course the settlers didn't know that, so "Asti Point" it remains. I think "My Ass Point" has a much nicer ring to it, frankly.
When we got off the ferry, we had time to kill, so we wandered around downtown for awhile. Adam remarked on the wealth of Starbucks that Seattle has. There was literally one on every block. I had not noticed this before, but now that I have, I'm a little frightened. I mean, do people really drink that much coffee? Or are all those Starbucks just a front for the nascent alien invasion? Can anyone really ever be sure?
Adam bought a few drinks from Starbucks. He said he felt it was a priority, since he was in Seattle. We agreed. How can you really experience Seattle without drinking the coffee? We did not carry out this thought to its logical conclusion by giving Adam the experience of doing Seattle smack (Seattle's other big industry). Maybe next time.
We walked through downtown for quite a while. We hit the mall, we remarked on the architecture of Benaroya Hall, we commented on how San Franciscan (i.e. "steep") some of the streets were, and Keith told us stories about Seattle's history and the World's Fair that gave us the Space Needle and the monorail.
I never really saw the point of the monorail before last night. It goes from Seattle Center to the Space Needle, and it's like, a 90-second trip. It's ridiculously short, and they charge something like two bucks a person for a round trip. I mean, come on, what's the purpose?
Last night I discovered the purpose. When you've been walking all day, and you're windblown from the ferry, and you're really hungry and you have dinner reservations at the Space Needle, the monorail is GREAT. It RULES. I loved it. Zoom, we were at the Space Needle.
In fact, we were there a little early, so of course we had to go to the arcade. Adam started playing some game I'm not familiar with that he's apparently really good at, but I had found my Mecca. Oh, yes. This arcade had.... MS. PAC-MAN. Ah, heavenly bliss. I've lost some of the superlative Ms. Pac-Man playing skill that I had in the 80s, but I still had something. At least, I managed to get the high score. Oh, it was wonderful. But after that it was definitely time to eat.
Dinner at the Space Needle was way cool. The restaurant rotates, so you get this slow 360-degree view of the city, which is really pretty, especially when it's clear like it was last night. Also, the food is excellent (and expensive, but hey, how often do people from Montana come to visit?) I had the filet mignon, Keith had prime rib, and Adam had some elaborate-looking seafood thing. Then we ordered dessert. Adam and I both ordered the "Space Orbiter", which is a dish of ice cream that comes on a bed of dry ice, which they pour warm water on to create this huge fog bank around your dessert. It was pyrotechnically spectacular.
Adam had originally planned to leave after dinner, but it was pretty late (also I think he wasn't quite ready to leave), so he stayed last night too. We played Trivial Pursuit again, and this time I won. Rar.
He left this morning, fairly late (after I went to work), but we told him to visit again any time he feels like it. We really had a blast this weekend.