Snippets and Side Quests

Apparently, the best margaritas in Texas are at Esparza’s, a Tex-Mex fixture in Grapevine. Never heard of Grapevine, Texas? If you’ve been to DFW (Dallas Fort Worth) airport, you’ve been in Grapevine, although Erika would say you haven’t been to Grapevine. So what brought us there? Was it country music, barbecue, or sports? No! It was BGG Spring, a five day board game convention. BGG stands for Board Game Geek. The convention itself was fabulous. It was in the airport. Literally. The hotel was just outside the C concourse, which seems weird, but somehow worked great. We played three or four different games a day, met a bunch of interesting and fun people, and brought home half a dozen FREE games. What could be better? Texas is known for its friendly people and hospitality, but there can’t be anywhere more friendly than Grapevine. When DFW airport was constructed on the cantaloupe fields and dairy pastures of this small town, this enterprising community shifted gears and doubled down o...

We had never been to Orcas Island together.   Erika has been there so many times. For about a decade her family visited at least once, but often twice, a year.    They camped there annually with dear friends, the two families establishing their own little traditions and rituals. It was a place of exploration and imagination for the kids as they grew up. For Erika, Orcas Island will always be imbued with memory, magic, and saudad e.  Saudade comes from the Portuguese language, describing an intense feeling for which there is no English equivalent. It encompasses both a type of nostalgia for the absence of something much loved but also a longing for something that never happened. Sadness or melancholy is implied, but also a sense on fondness.  Saudade is bittersweet. You may know this feeling if you have a before and after moment that profoundly altered the path of your life. Saudade is the feeling Erika has knowing her grandmother and children never got to meet e...

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...