Snippets and Side Quests

April 14-18. After a break to install a grass field for this summer’s World Cup, professional football (aka soccer) has returned to Seattle. To make up for lost time, “Seattle Stadium” hosted three matches last week.  Yes, they are matches and not games as the title of this post suggests. However, “three times a match day” doesn’t go as far as “three times a game day” to put a famous Lionel Ritchie song in your head. Lionel’s soulful ballad perfectly captures how sentimental we feel about seeing our team play without watching them on a screen. It’s just not the same without the drums, banners, chants, and contact high you get following the crowd out of the stadium on the way back to your car. Of course we were there for all three matches.  Match 1 was the US Women’s National Team  versus Japan on Tuesday. It was a friendly match, meaning not part of a formal competition, but that didn’t mean that it wasn’t competitive. Japan had an iron defense that never seemed to get st...

A couple months ago we ran an errand at a farmers market and Guido decided that he needed more coffee. We were in Seattle’s U-District. Over the years bubble tea stores have replaced the coffee shops from our memory, so we found ourselves off the beaten path at a funky neighborhood place. Taped on the front door was a photocopied flyer for Pigs on the Wing. Celebrating 20 years as Pink Floyd tribute band, they were on a tour of the northwest playing the Animals album in full. The QR code was scanned, calendars were consulted, and a few weeks later we trekked back to the city to see Pigs on the Wing play. They were fantastic! (...that is really what we think, oh by the way, which one's Pink?) Guido has always loved Pink Floyd and spent countless hours listening to their full albums, as music lovers used to do before streaming. Erika grew up with Pink Floyd blasting from her dad’s 1970s, full wall, teak console stereo system or laying on her back watching live animation of The Wall a...