Thanksgiving mice

Last weekend we discovered that a family of mice moved into our garage. A few of them have also found some way through the walls/floors into our kitchen cabinets, just in time for my parents' Thanksgiving visit. Great. It appears to be a design flaw in our townhouses: several of our neighbors are afflicted as well.

They appear to be high-IQ mice; they mostly just lick the peanut butter off our traps without setting the traps off. Very frustrating. I'm about ready to buy a cat even though I'm allergic to them.

Anyway, Happy Thanksgiving.

Crab Season

We both felt like getting outside today, but it's cold and snowing in the mountains. Instead we went for a long walk at Shilshole Bay Marina and the Chittenden Locks, both of which are in Ballard - Seattle's old Scandinavian fishing village-turned-neighborhood.

Probably the highlight of the day was meeting a guy crabbing right off one of the piers at the marina. It didn't appear to be very difficult: he just tied a chunk of raw salmon to his net, let it sit on the bottom for a few minutes, and pulled it in. He easily caught his limit of a half dozen 6-7" Dungeness and Red Rock crabs in a few minutes.

We posted the pictures here.

Great photo

I saw this picture in the newspaper and thought it was worth sharing. It was taken this morning on the campus of the University of Washington in Seattle.

Election brownies

I proudly went to vote today in this historic and cliché-ridden election. After descending to the basement of my friendly neighborhood sunflower-worshipping hippy-church, I filled out dozens and dozens of little bubbles (western states love their ballot propositions).

Even though I didn't have to stand in line, I know that turnout was high: I voted at ~1:30pm and they had already run out of "I voted" stickers! Apparently the poll workers felt so bad about this that one of them ran home and made fresh brownies - small consolation to be sure. By the way, the brownies were still warm but I detected nothing "stronger" than dark chocolate in them.

Halloween

Erik & Anya in full Halloween costumes

For Halloween we went with a few friends to a large party at a space in Fremont that doubles as a night club and art gallery. Fremont is probably one of the most liberal neighborhoods in America, so we chose our costumes with an astute sense of irony. It worked beautifully; we got lots of compliments and everyone we talked to seemed to get the joke.

Today we were walking home from brunch and took a few pictures of fall color in our neighborhood. The Northwest isn't exactly known for its fall color. But while it's certainly true that there aren't any hillsides covered with trees that actually lose their leaves, there are some maples - mostly of the Japanese variety - that put on a good show.

A handful of Halloween and fall color pics are here.