She goes on curating your domestic museum

What I've been listening to: Vienna Teng, Dreaming Through The Noise. It's a *fantastic* album. I can even appreciate the songs I usually skip through (the more jazzy, experimental sounding ones), but there are only 2 of those, and the other ones are so good that it makes up for it.

I drove to Seattle today for the last day of my class, and it was amazingly traffic-free both ways. I think I actually got there quicker than I do on weekends! Handy tip: if you get to downtown early, park at Pacific Place - it's reasonable, compared to other parking garages and nearly empty before 9am. I paid $18 for about 6.5 hours. On weekends, or for 4 hours or less, it's much cheaper.

I said goodbye to Buddy the Espresso Dog and his coffee-making person Scott. They seem to have a sort of friendly strangers coffee club - anytime you go to his cart there are a few people sitting or standing around talking to each other about various interesting things. That's what I like about cities, or at least accessible ones like Seattle. I don't really feel threatened or afraid (like I did the few times I was in NYC) and it's got a well defined, fairly clean downtown (unlike LA). Again, another thing about Seattle that reminds me of Pittsburgh.

Which reminds me - I'm going to Pittsburgh in October for Kristine's wedding. YAY! I can't wait - I haven't been back there since Karthik and Maya's wedding 8 years ago. Thanks to Deloitte Consulting, I got us free first class tickets to Pittsburgh and a 3 night stay at a nice hotel. Consulting was the job that keeps on giving, I guess.

I did some shopping today but nothing terribly exciting. Replenished my stock of Aveda shampoo with the nice big liter sized bottles, and got a free tote bag. Since I buy so much stuff there, I joined their rewards club for $10 and got a little makeup bag of samples (I'm such a sucker). But they send me cards for free samples every month, and I got a free regular sized lotion for my birthday. I love that store.

Today I got a pair of nice jeans at J. Jill to tide me over the next few months, in a size I really prefer not to own. Quel horreur. But at least I'll have something decent to wear.

This week I finally went back to the gym for a free "bhangracize" class. It was really fun, more like a dance class than exercise and the hour went by pretty quick. I've learned my lesson signing up for series of classes (I never make it through the whole thing) but if they offer single sessions again, I'd definitely go. The class was *packed* and the music was fun. Exercise is so much better when it doesn't seem like a chore.

So where is everybody? I haven't gotten too many comments lately.