It's raining, what a surprise!

It rained today around lunch time. It's been overcast the whole time, but the rain has been sort of on and off. The guy I work with joked "Hey look, it started raining. In Seattle. What a surprise." Welcome to the land of rain and coffee, as Ammon puts it.

The whole programming team decided to use my visit as an excuse to go out to lunch at this great Italian restaurant. The pizza was excellent, and the salad was good too. It's funny how good things taste when you drench them in enough olive oil. As an aside, though, the pizza we got in Brooklyn is still better. I swear, the first person who figures out how to make Brooklyn-style pizza outside of Brooklyn is going to be a billionaire. Anyway, the not-quite-Brooklyn pizzeria claimed to be a "certified Neapolitana" -- apparently there's some kind of international organization that sets standards for genuine Italian pizzerias. One of the coders commented "it's kind of funny that they're trying to claim that the pizza is genuinely Italian. I mean, in Italy, pizza is crap food. You just stick whatever you have in the fridge on the pizza." Well, there you go. Maybe it's like claiming that a burger is good because it's genuinely American (Arctic Circle, anyone?)

As for everything else -- I still haven't had any seafood yet. I'm not sure if I want to go to a proper seafood restaurant, or if I want to spring for sushi. There's also a Bulgarian restaurant off to the east somewhere ... ah, there just aren't enough meals between now and then to try things out, and I'm going to blow my diet to the moon this way. I think I'd probably just better plan on coming for a longer visit some other time. I mean, it's not like it'd take more than about two days to drive here.

There's a big show called the "Experience Music Project" that someone recommended highly. I went by, only to discover that they're only open during my working hours. I don't know what the point of closing at five is, but they close at five. Humph. Of course, the guy who recommended it is someone that I'm working with, so I'll just have to see if it's worth skipping out on some productive office hours to go. The show itself is in a really crazy-looking building. I was too cold to take a picture, but if you want to take a look, point Google Earth at 47 degrees, 37 minutes, 17.44 seconds north and 122 degrees, 20 minutes, 53.54 seconds west. Oh, and I really wish there were a good way to link to Google Earth.

Today's photo is of the needle again, this time from the top. It was actually taken yesterday. I would really like to get a good photo across one of the inlets -- there is a gorgeous shot of all these brightly colored, three-story European style buildings nestled among tons of trees on a hill that slopes down into the water. Great postcard material. It's a pity that all I have is my phone. I should probably purchase a real camera.