Sunday, Bloody Sunday

That title really has nothing to do with this blog entry, other than it just got the song stuck in my head and it's Sunday today.

Because this entry is about yesterday.

Yesterday was an uncommonly beautiful day here. I mean, it was gorgeous. Not a cloud in the sky, the sun was warm but the breeze kept it cool enough to be enjoyable. Perfect walking-with-jeans-and-t-shirt weather. Liz and I headed out to the Space Needle around 11. We took a roundabout way, ditching the car in Bellevue and bussing in so we wouldn't have to pay to park the damn thing. I'm glad we did, because it means better exercise and we took the monorail from Westlake Center to Seattle Center (the later being home 'o the Needle). We lucked out, because the monorail was free from 10 - 3 yesterday due to a huge St. Patrick's Day parade that we didn't attend.

The Needle was OK. The view was great, and I was amused, pleased, and frightened all at the same time to discover that I could indeed purchase Starbucks coffee in the observation deck of the Needle. I didn't freak out on the elevator ride up either - I thought I would as soon as I saw the elevator had glass windows.

We then walked around the Seattle Center for a while. We skipped the EMP (you have to pay to get in, and our Citypass didn't cover it) but we went to the Pacific Science Center. We opted against seeing an IMAX movie (between the shows the run on the INHD channels and my previous experiences with IMAX, I've seen most of them). Without the movie, the museum took, oh, about 15 minutes to go through. I'll summarize my experience in two words, two much-overused, but in this case wholly accurate, words.

IT SUCKED.

To be fair, I've got COSI as a point of reference, where it takes you at least a good day to see everything. Hell, even the old science museum in Tulsa was better than Pacific Science Center before it was converted into a school. I'm really, really glad I didn't pay money to get into this place.

At this point, we were kinda hungry and I wanted to get comics so we bussed up to the UD, where there is plenty of stuff to eat. We ended up at a Mexican restaurant on Portage Bay in Lake Union, which supposedly has the best fish tacos in the world. Since I've never eated fish tacos I have nothing to compare them to, but they were pretty good. We noticed that this place also rented kayaks, and since I'd never been kayaking, I thought we could give it a shot. I've been punting and canoeing and sailing, but never kayaking. It's not hard to learn, though.

The only problem with the kayak is the way you have to sit in order to operate the pedals (there's a small, pedal-controlled rudder). If your legs aren't situated correctly, it's very easy (as I discovered) for them to fall asleep. And once they're asleep, it's easy for them to slip off the pedals. And once they slip off the pedals while asleep, it's very hard for you to put them back on the pedals until they wake up, which in my case took a good fifteen minutes. During this time, the rudder was pointed to the right. So, it was a struggle to keep the stupid thing on a straight path. The guy who rented us the kayak was understanding, though, and didn't charge us (we made up for it by putting a big tip in the jar). So after an hour of sleepy legs and dinking around on Lake Union, we headed up to the comic store, where I picked up this week's crop o' funnybooks. Then we bussed back to Bellevue and drove home.

Between the walking and the kayaking, it didn't take long to fall asleep last night.

Today, a Game of Thrones tournament at the WizKids store. Tomorrow, back to work.