Dan B. sent this update and proof-of-life photos from the Seattle meetup on April 4.
It was a great day full of momentous events. In Seattle it was Meet-up day spurred by satby’s first visit.
It was sunny and the Cherries, Magnolias, and Daphne were in full bloom. Mike, my partner, and I took her to Seward Park, a peninsula in Lake Washington with old growth forest, then to Mike’s garden, and my garden. I’ll let satby describe them in comments. Then we were off to Tamara and Karl’s house with Dim Sum in hand.
The Meet-up was in the basement/garage of their house. It’s got 13 1/2 foot ceilings.
Attending
Dan B.
satby
opiejeanne
mr. opiejeanne
John S.
Thalarctos Minimus
John Cole (via Zoom)
Up and Up
Mike
plus our delightful hosts!
*CaseyL and Beautiful Plumage were both feeling under the weather so weren’t able to attend.
Not pictured were the Homemade lemon cookies by The Up and Up.
Satby brought Ally buttons and soaps fir us all. The Up and Up brought a trans flag. And if you hadn’t guessed, the conversation was cracking good! And we got a video call from John and Steve. Big Kitty!
I believe satby will be back. And she did get to experience Seattle drizzle on her last day.
opiejeanne
Nice photos of the group. I totally missed the ally buttons and the flag, maybe that happened before we got there.
Fun meetup, and I’m glad I got to meet all of the ones I didn’t know before, and see some friends from before the pandemic. We all look a little different than we did 3 years ago, including me. I look a lot older, but it’s better than not getting older.
WaterGirl
@opiejeanne: It sounds like the meetup was a great success and a lot of fun!
Great photos!
Baud
I can see why Republicans are so afraid of us.
WaterGirl
Is that an empty bottle of wine on the table with Dan B, Mike and Mr. O.?
sab
It’s nice to have faces to go with familiar nyms.
Dan B
@WaterGirl: It still had a little wine. It’s greenish white so nearly invisible against the marine themed table cloth.
WaterGirl
@Dan B: I can’t wait to hear what everybody has to say about your garden!
edit: Amazing that there are people who did not eat dessert! I’ll take some of the strawberry rhubarb pie, please.
Dan B
With all the Cherry trees and Magnolias I believe that she thinks pink is Seattle’s favorite color.
Dan B
@WaterGirl: Mike’s garden is much more impressive currently. Mike has made the toolshed in my garden into a madcap clubhouse. Woodstove, chairs and chaise lounge, headlamp, fabrics on every wall, and a TV when it’s the season (soon).
eclare
Thanks for the photos! Looks like a good time.
Dan B
CaseyL was feeling unwell and I believe Beautiful Plumage was also under the weather.
delphinium
Nice photos-looks like everyone was having a fun time! Lived in Bellingham and then Seattle for a bit and need to go back for a visit.
Dan B
@WaterGirl: I didn’t have desserts because I’m lactose intolerant. I took tiny tastes of Mike’s. The tiny bit of OpieJeanne’s Almond tart was amazingly flavorful. She’s promised the recipe.
WaterGirl
@Dan B: Sounds lovely!
delphinium
@WaterGirl: I know-both those pies look delicious : ).
WaterGirl
@Dan B: So can you not eat anything with a crust that would have butter?
edit: I guess that’s why you were only allowed to be half-in the dessert photo!
zhena gogolia
Cool! I love Pike Place Market (been there once).
Dan B
@WaterGirl: I did not taste butter in the pie crusts, probably lard, so I ate half a slice of the apple pie Mike took home. Yum!
Black Diamond, not far from Mt. Rainier, is named after the coal mine.
JoyceH
@zhena gogolia:
Ooh, Pike Place! I used to hang out there a lot when I lived in Seattle – back in the 80s. I’d like to get out there again someday – a while back just out of curiosity, I was trying to look up the place I used to work, and it’s now a maritime museum! Used to be a Naval Reserve Center, but I guess with that prime bit of real estate on Lake Union, it was too good to last.
Dan B
@delphinium: A recent visitor complained that Sesttle looks like LA now. Amazon has built dozens of skyscrapers. For a few years we had more large construction cranes than any other city in North America except Toronto. The view of the skyline from the other side of Elliot Bay in West Seattle and from the Watertower in Volunteer Park is mind boggling to me.
opiejeanne
@WaterGirl: Nor the caramelized almonds on top of the crust, because heavy cream is part of the caramelization.
It made me a little sad.
And I need to compliment The Up and Up on the cookies because they were delicious.
Dan B
@JoyceH: Museum of History and Industry. Mike’s Dad had an office in there. Mike’s got several pictures in MOHAI from when he was in the Tacky Tourists of America, a group that threw fundraising parties like The Prom You Never Went To, and Things That Go Bump in the Night (Halloween party), and The Cruise – with a tour boat for 200 with big red lips in front. They raised over $100,000 for local gay rights groups.
WaterGirl
@opiejeanne: I wouldn’t have thought of that ahead of time, either.
I would be much slimmer if I couldn’t eat dairy.
opiejeanne
@Dan B: Bellevue is unrecognizable since 13 years ago, and for a while there was a forest of cranes on both sides of the freeway, but mostly to the west. From a little distnce it looks like Seattle used to look.
delphinium
@Dan B: I lived there a little over a decade ago in the Queen Anne area and remember all of the construction going on around Lake Union area before I left. It is such a beautiful city with lots to do and loved being able to walk or take a bus everywhere.
JoyceH
@Dan B:
When it was a museum or a reserve center? (Wondering if we overlapped.)
Dan B
@opiejeanne: Satby was surprised that there was another forest of skyscrapers in Bellevue. She saw them and her first floating bridge from Lake Washinton boulevard on our way to Seward Park.
Dan B
@JoyceH: He was there before it was a museum. You might have overlapped. His office was second floor, west side. There’s a nice park with a pond that people use for powered model boats and if course the Center for Wooden Boats is just to the east. That end, and most of Lake Union use to be extremely polluted from the boat yards and the gas works plant that turned coal into natural gas.
MomSense
Hello you beautiful jackals. Looks like a fine time was had by all!
CaseyL
The meetup looks like it was a big success. I’m so sad to have missed it, and esp. to have missed a chance to meet satby. Do please come again to our fair city!
Speaking of changes in Seattle, the U District (i.e., University District, the neighborhood by the University of Washington) is the latest area to go from “village” to “mini-metropolis.” So many highrises being built, and I think they’re all apartment buildings.
JoyceH
@Dan B: When I was there, we had an oil slick situation. It wasn’t a bad oil slick, as slicks go, but there was a bunch of baby geese that lived on our property and paddled around in the lake, and they got in the slick. “The geese are in the oil slick!” – and some of my guys launched the canoe to fish them out. The local weatherman had been featuring footage of the geese behind the local weather printout thingie, so he came out with a camera crew. We wound up with three local news stations reporting on our geese! And I was the command’s spokes-model, with strict instructions not to say that the slick came from the commercial shipyard next door, though it had. “We first noticed the oil” pointing emphatically at the shipyard “over THERE.” And that was my illustrious television career…
gwangung
Sorry to have missed this (though being with family in AZ is cool in and of itself).
Yeah, the forest of apartments springing up around the District is kind startling. That kind of controlled development crowds out things that give a neighborhood any character like the arts; what’s even more frustrating is that there are ways to incorporate arts into development through tax breaks, but a lot of developers seem lukewarm on that.
Dan B
@CaseyL: True. Seattle is a narrow isthmus with only five bridges between the southern and northern sections and two between Seattle over Lake Washington and Bellevue. We’re good at breaking them (sinking too). Now if we could persuade developers to build on the Lowe’s site in the south of downtown. It’s zoned for ten stories but Amazon wants to put a fulfillment center there, aieeee! They consider the diverse neighborhood to be hood for light industrial rather than much needed residential.
BeautifulPlumage
I, too am sorry I missed the meetup and meeting Satby. Looks like you had a great time with great food & company!
Dan B
@gwangung: We have a visitor in late May / early June so there should be another meet-up.
Sister Golden Bear
Great to see all of you!
Although there should be a rule that phots from future meet-ups include a “snarling jackals” pose photo.
JoyceH
@gwangung:
If you’re ever in DC, right across the Potomac in Alexandria there’s an art center that features over 70 artist studios – people can tour and watch the artists at work and buy finished products etc. It’s call the Torpedo Factory because it used to be a, y’know, torpedo factory.
I always thought that would be a fun setting for a mystery series or a TV show.
gwangung
@JoyceH: Ah! That’s cool! That’s the kind of funky place that you can create and have some character.
(I should say part of the problem is that there aren’t a lot of arts types out that that a) have the drive and b) have the knack to combine fundraising and real estate savvy to make arts developments a reality….)
raven
@JoyceH: My aunt worked there during WW2 when they actually made torpedos there.
satby
Well, I just got home from my kids’ house in Chicago where I spent the night after 48 hours on Amtrak’s Empire Builder from Seattle.
DanB and Mike are wonderful hosts and tour guides! The gardens were gorgeous even though blooming is just starting, the flowering trees around Seattle were indeed a lovely pink, and the meet up company was fantastic craic!
Dan B and Mike both worked in landscaping, so each garden is complex and has an amazing variety of plants and flowers. Plus water features, little conversation nooks, interesting pots: just delightful! I must have asked Dan B a million times “and what’s this one?” pointing to all the interesting foliage. And my soon to be planted Lenten roses will be all his fault.
Meeting everyone was so nice. Dan and Mike not only provided the dim sum, they also schlepped plates, silverware, wine glasses and cups to their friends house so their friends wouldn’t get stuck with clean up. HEROS
satby
@CaseyL: @BeautifulPlumage: We were sorry to have missed you. I suspect you all don’t need an out of town visitor for another meetup to happen though. If you do, I will be back, I loved Seattle!
satby
@Dan B: I was! Plus the all wood skyscraper (?) they were building. I think it was for condos?
satby
TO DIE FOR! Thanks opiejeanne!
Dan B
@JoyceH: One of the first fundraisers the Tacky Tourists of America did was on the same tourist charter boat. It was the Up Your Duwamish, a river through the industrial flats, and a superfund site. A friend of mine was monitoring all the point source pollution. He was announcing the pollution over the P.A. system. And some nice things as well. Also on board was Kathy Gertson, a local TV broadcaster. It was the first live broadcast for the station. My friend is a graduate of Notre Dame, the University in satby’s city. A TV moment!
Dan B
@satby: It’s a ten story building by a woman architect. Time to Google it. There’s an eight story all woid structure building in Portland
Susan Jones is the architect. Bloomberg and Seattle Times have good articles. Cross laminate wood buildings can potentially be 18-20 stories. Much greener than concrete or steel!
eclare
@Dan B: I’d like the recipe! Trying to imagine an almond tart. Is it like a pecan pie?
Dan B
@eclare: It’s quite thin. Others will have a better description since I only managed to taste one almond sliver. I’ll email opiejeanne to see if we can get her to post the recipe.
satby
And second opiejeanne ‘s rec on Up and Up’s lemon cookies too. I’d like that recipe as well.
It was all great!
UncleEbeneezer
@Dan B: Are you an architecture buff? If so, do you know the Unfrozen podcast? One of the hosts, also named Dan, is my former lead singer and a close personal friend. He’s also SUPER-smart and one of the funniest people I have ever known, so I imagine the podcast is pretty fun.
UncleEbeneezer
Uh oh…don’t tell some of the other BJ threads that y’all were attacking Feminists! /sarcasm
Dan B
@UncleEbeneezer: I studied architecture but got booted out because the homosexual thang. I was offered scholarships and was in an honors program. Then boom! I’ll look up the podcast, thanks.
Dan B
@UncleEbeneezer: I’m not mentioning the name of our next visitor until I get a feel for local Jackals…
Dorothy A. Winsor
What a fine looking group!
The Up and Up
It was good seeing everyone. Hopefully CaseyL, Yutsano, Plumage, others unable to attend can make it to the next meeting of the Seattle Jackals.
Dan B: I picked up a copy of A Guide to Architecture in Washington State by Sally B. Woodbridge and Roger Montgomery when I was taking images of mid-century modern structures on the local historical preservation’s Threated or Doomed List.
UncleEbeneezer: I did bring the Trans Cascadia flag I mentioned earlier. There were other variations of the Doug Fir flag at one point for sale, Pride, Non-Binary, but the copyright holder stopped granting permission on printing. Sovereign citizens were apparently using the regular Cascadia Flag as a protest on paying taxes or gun laws or some such. Why we can’t have nice things. You can find one probably on Etsy, ebay, ?
satby: A recipe for cookies? … hmm. Let me look.
opiejeanne
@eclare: I’ve sent the recipe to Dan B and to WaterGirl, along with a photo of same.
You can also see the recipe and a photo, here:
https://flic.kr/p/2mRtTwr
https://flic.kr/p/24CFyL3
WaterGirl
Lenten rose pics from Dan B or Mike’s garden to follow.
WaterGirl
WaterGirl
WaterGirl