Plum Crazy

So here I am in Seattle taking a mini-vacation. Got to the hotel around noon PDT. First thing I did after leaving the hotel? Bought coffee, of course. I'm in Seattle. I steadfastly refused to go to Starbucks, though, even though there does seem to be one every half-block in downtown Seattle. I've seen them every few blocks in NYC, but the caffeine coverage in Seattle is much greater. You can barely walk a step downtown without seeing a coffee bar.

I decided to opt for Seattle's Best Coffee. That is the name of the franchise. Damn good coffee, though (is anyone else having an Agent Cooper flashback now). I had a skim Irish Cream latte. I could easily get addicted to those. Yummy. Fortunately, not to worry. As of even date, there are no Seattle's Best Coffee franchises in Hoboken, and I don't remember ever seeing one in NYC either.

After that, I wandered around for a bit. Somehow I managed to accidentally wander into the shopping district. I swear, it wasn't my intention. I think I must have shopping antenna or something. So I bought a pair of shoes. And a hat.

I returned to the hotel for a bit, and then decided I needed to actually eat something, as the last thing I'd eaten had been about 10 hours earlier and consisted of a bagel and cream cheese. But first I went to the Pike Street Market. I must say that, although I could understand how amazingly cool it would be to shop there if you lived in Seattle, as a tourist attraction, it didn't really bowl me over. I was like "Wow, people selling fish. I've seen people selling fish at the Fulton Street Fish Market." I walked down to the Sound and then back up to the Market. Then I finally ate dinner at a small cafe in the Market that overlooks the Sound.

I was fairly tired at that point, so rather than doing anything massively exciting, I took in a movie. I went to see M. Night Shyamalan's new flick "The Village". What an annoyingly stupid movie. He needs to stop worrying about twists and focus on telling good stories. "The Sixth Sense" was a good story that happened to have a twist. But the twist became "the thing" about it. "Unbreakable" was also a good story, but it had a twist too. So I guess Shyamalan figures all his movies need a twist. I hated "Signs", both the story and the twist. This one was worse.

Now I'm awaiting my friend's arrival from California. What a boondoggle. He should have been here several hours ago, but alas no. This is why I was eating dinner and taking in movies by myself. At least there'll be no more of that for the remainder of the trip (tomorrow and Saturday, basically).