Category Archives: By The Minute

We’ve seen a number of ships go by today. Quite a busy highway, this great Columbia River of ours. You can see them in the distance out beyond the bridge, parked, I assume, waiting for their turn or their Pilot.

At a certain point today they all went from facing down-stream to facing up-stream. Were were in an antique shop at the time, and so I don’t know if they were powered into a new position, or are simply acting as weather-vanes for the current. Something to investigate.

As an aside, the Astoria post office doesn’t have an automatic terminal, and so there appears to be nowhere in town to buy a stamp on a weekend. Ah, that authentic small-town feel.

Fellow 99% Invisible listeners, and my grandmother, would be proud to know that I scoured the area looking for a plaque to describe this thing.

Finding none, I was disappointed to never be able to know. There isn’t even something describing what used to be here.

Julian decided that it’s purpose was obvious: a fish-gut cannon, (correction: “pump”) which would take the unused parts of the fish and launch them back into the ocean in a fire-boat-like stream. (with a sound that is both wet and fleshy at the same time)

This seems unlikely.

Brian then accused me of not knowing how to take “correct” picture, so here is a landscape aligned photo to please him:

A far less interesting framing, I say.

Good morning, welcome to lovely Astoria Oregon. Slightly more Pixelated than I remember.

OH wait, we found the real version of the virtual view. Looks normal.

I woke up this morning, looked at my phone, which told me that it was 2:07pm. That seemed startling, but in the dark room with no other timekeeping device I decided to open the curtains and look out the virtual window. I was pleasantly surprised to see a sunrise. Amazing how much my brain instantly trusted that virtual view.

Bev’s discovered a soft serve machine. Apparently I am bad at dispensing soft serve. The entire discussion, quickly summarized, in her exact words: “yours looks like poop.” In the background, classing up this strange discussion, is the southern tip of Whitby Island

That’s right, a virtual balcony! Complete with curtains when you don’t want the light bothering you. (no, there’s no switch or controls, it’s just a big monitor for a camera outside.) Feeling fancy!

Back at storyville. I wish we had one of these in Portland. 

It’s not vacation if you’re responding to emails… 

Says the guy who brought his laptop so he could work… (I’m self-employed, it’s different…. Right?) 

Not even on the train for 5 minutes and she’s already consulting the directions for a new stitchy…

The train rolls northward! 

Found dole whip outside of Hawaii or Disney! And some amazing Poké too!

A valuable way to kill time before our train home. 

I don’t wouldn’t normally go out of my way to talk about a coffee shop I was in. I’m in so many of them, it’s just not interesting. However, I’m going to make an exception.

Storyville Coffee, upstairs in the building right outside Pike Place Market in Seattle, is the first coffeeshop I’ve been in that I legitimately don’t want to leave. Not hipster, not pretentious, super friendly and nice people, lovely chill music playing (no hipster music to be heard), a fantastic view of Puget Sound and the ferries coming and going, good coffee, and a fantastic breakfast sandwich.

Two guys at the next table talking about open source business models, and a bunch of tourists on the couches in ther corner planning their day.

If we had a place like this in Portland I’d pay rent to make keep one of their tables as my office.