13 Jan

Writing Event: Person, Place, Thing

A compilation of nine pictures. From top left: an Asian girl playing with bubbles in a park; a canal in Venice at sunset; a red acoustic guitar lying on a gray wooden floor; colorful paper lanterns hanging from a ceiling; a Black woman standing under an umbrella in the rain; an orange sunset behind an empty bench and a leafless tree; brick arches in a cellar; violets growing out of an old pair of boots; a white man with a thick gray mustache, curled at the ends.

UPDATE: I’m making a last-minute trip to Ohio to see a sick family member. My friend Stephanie will be hosting this event instead. She’s fabulous, and I know you all are going to have a great time with her. Write lots of awesome stories and please tell me all about it when I get back!

Winter’s a great time to begin writing something new, but it can be tough to shake off the gloom and get inspired. Why not get together with other awesome writers and tackle some writing prompts?

On Sunday, February 2, 4:00–8:00 p.m., we’ll gather at Friday Afternoon Tea to start some fresh stories.

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19 Feb

Goodbye, My Friends

Sheet moss festooning a vine maple. Totally not a many-tentacled swamp monster… okay, okay, maybe it’s both.

Sheet moss festooning a vine maple. Totally not a many-tentacled swamp monster… okay, okay, maybe it’s both.

Seattle is a fertile environment. Plants will grow on anything that stays still for too long. I’ve cleaned sprouts out from the crevices around the trunk of my car, and I have a friend who found a small carpet of moss growing under his windshield wipers.

The upsides of this include the lush greenery everywhere and the vegetable garden that delivers buckets of yummy tomatoes despite my black thumb. The downsides include things like mold, which is a real issue in many buildings. Today, I learned it is a problem in my home. Read More

18 Feb

Puppy Meets Puget Sound

Golden Gardens in Winter

I hope you all had a nice long weekend! I spent some quality time on Presidents Day trying to figure out which of the electronics in my apartment was creating that lovely “I’m about to catch on fire!” smell. Turns out it was my computer, which led to even more quality time frantically backing up files in case the power supply was about to blow. My (fantastic, wonderful, and perfect in every way, and I’m totally not saying this just because he might be reading this right now) husband was nice enough to clean the dust out of the innards of my computer and test everything out for me. He thinks it will be fine, but if this blog post ends with a sudden fiery bang, well, you’ll know why.

The rest of my weekend was less exciting, but I did make it out to a local beach called Golden Gardens. With volleyball nets, fire pits, plenty of sand, and a gorgeous view of the Olympic Mountains across Puget Sound, Golden Gardens is mobbed in the warmer months. This time of the year, though, it’s a different story. Read More