High Contrast Grey.

The Boarding House. My latest stint in alternative housing structures is a communal house run by a rental company.  I have named it "The Boarding House."  The house was built in 1919 in what appears to have been a Craftsman style with four bedrooms and one bath at 2,660 square feet.  When it was purchased by the rental company it then converted into eleven bedrooms with three baths.  (Apparently, it is still on city record as being a one-family four bedroom and one bath house.  I'm not sure if this is a problem.)  It is the on the border between the U-District and Wallingford.  Our back alley is the defining line.  I joke that this is because our communal situation is too trashy for Wallingford to accept us even though we are the first strip of houses west of the Interstate. My room is the southern half of what was once the living room and has French door access to the front porch.  Since the conversion, there is now a distinct lac...

The Reserve at SeaTac job has been keeping me on the past few weeks.  I have lost Don, who just never showed up one day, and then gained and lost a Vaughn.  Now I'm working alone as a TLC laborer at this location. The pool room exposed. For a couple of days, my cleaning was paired with uncovering the pool and hot tub that had been sealed up since the building still lacked a roof.  Rainwater from last winter that was sealed beneath a layer of MDF turned into a black mold.  As it would eat away at sections of the MDF, creating large soft holes, another layer would be tacked on top of it to prevent anyone from falling in.  One of the carpenters told me that it is black mold, but not the deadly black mold.  I wish I had a respirator for this task, but a dust mask is better than nothing.  The other workers use their "not wearing a mask" as a means of stating their strength, or perhaps a sense of masculinity.  I still keep my dust mask on as ...

My latest job that I have been sent on is to work an Exxel job called the Reserve at SeaTac.  I already worked out here once before about a month ago.  I like working Exell jobs for the fact that safety actually seems to matter to them and that I am not going to be asked to do jobs above my pay grade and then still only get paid the minimum. No being asked to climb into an unprotected elevator shaft while concrete demolition is going on overhead dropping large chunks of concrete down the shaft.  I tell the foreman that I am thankful for this and he laughs with a mix of facial expressions partly because he knows that would be an insane thing to ask someone to do and partly because he realizes that I have been asked to do just that at a previous site.  A story for another post. Métro, bulot, dodo. - Tukwila Station. To get to the Reserve at SeaTac it takes an hour from TLC using public transportation.  Only one transfer, so it isn't too bad, plus becaus...

After walking in on my, now ex, girlfriend with someone else I moved back to Seattle. It has been a little over a year since I got back and have been working odd jobs to make ends meet while everything that I seem to apply to I am either over or under qualified to for. This has resulted in me working a lot of day labor construction. My idea of working this job is that it might be able to help me understand the facets of how construction is done so as I apply to graduate school in the coming months for architecture that I will have a more tantalizing résumé and the future ability to work as an architect that has less builders frustrated. First day of construction: hauling cabinets in Redmond. The reality is that I do a lot of cleaning and hauling of miscellaneous on the job site, but I have been able to find discover more about the metropolitan area of Seattle as I get sent to work all over to work a site for maybe a few weeks or maybe just a day. The location of the company...

I was finally able to make it back home to Seattle for a moment. As usual I wandered about without direction, finding new back streets that I have yet to traverse and new little cafés that I have not yet wandered into. I found this café that served crêpes as well as a few alcoholic beverages, that I didn’t get around to trying. I was quite pleased with a lemon zest crêpe filled with raspberries and a cup of black tea. The weather in Seattle was a nice change from the cold of Montana with instead light rains that required only a light jacket.

Capitol Hill.

While in Seattle we went by Golden Gardens. Stephanie had said that she had never been to the ocean. This wasn’t really the ocean but still somewhat closer than anything she would have seen in Montana. I love how this section of the city has become so overrun with life and plants. An easy escape from the city.

I went by Seattle for Memorial Day weekend. The way the art classes are structured here, we get Fridays off for constant three day weekends and since Memorial Day weekend was on a Monday we used the four day weekend to run off to Seattle. We went to see punk rock kids with accordions at folklife while as well wandering about the city seeing what it has to offer. I had never before gone to Fremont market and before going thought that it would be like the Ballard market that I would wander down and through on occasion while living in Ballard. Not being only about a block long with mostly foods, the Fremont market was as well full of crafts and random things feeling much more like a flea market. And of course Seattle had to show its love and go from being overcast to raining while we wandered up and down the booths.

The bus was 50 minutes late and I just walked the way home. By the time it came I had already reached the university and decided to just walk the rest of the way. I found a tagged no parking sign in the process. Water damaged and broken, soon to be decorating my wall. The city is always more beautiful at night.

Things are always more beautiful at night. The way store windows light up the street. A glimpse into an alternate reality of color. A faux warmth.

Ballard Locks. I don’t know what it is but covered/hidden stairways get me excited..

Walking along with Mr. Ian. Going to look at mummies and two headed cows. One of the only people who actually lives in Seattle that I think can actually pull off walking around with an umbrella with a sense of suave and not looking like a jackass. Like most Seattle-ites with umbrellas.

Ballard as seen from Lauren’s balcony. Space Needle just popping up barely over the horizon. Beautiful and grey.

Spring Break! After our long drive to Seattle we wandered into Beth’s Café at about 6am. Red eyed and not quite still in touch with the reality of the world around us. Storming. Wet. And the heart falling for the city all over again..