would the last person to leave Seattle please turn out the lights?

[bedlamsbard]

The Senior Excursion was fun!

The zoo was...well, I'm not as thrilled about zoos as I used to be, because I kept going, "Oh my God, cages, why do you have all this info about how animals need miles and miles of space to roam and you pen them up in cages?" but it was still fun. The Woodland Park Zoo is getting a new flamingo exhibit that's opening, uh, tomorrow (and the butterfly exhibit opens today, boo), but the flamingos were already there; we just had to look through the fencing, which wasn't so bad. Granted, for those who know, I have a pretty extreme fear of birds, which made running into a peacock on the path -- running into a peacock walking around the path -- fairly panic inducing. Seriously. Birds? Freak me the fuck out. And peacocks most of all. (Funny thing is I'm fine with birds of prey, it's just birds like pidgeons and seagulls and robins that scare me.)

Wandered around downtown Seattle for a little bit with a couple friends -- not who I would have been with otherwise, but the suburban wasn't with the busses, so I ended up with the girls in the suburban, who I know, but wasn't planning on spending those few hours with. As a result, I didn't even set foot in a bookstore and thus spent no money on anything besides food.

The harbor cruise was pretty dang awesome, although not according to anyone else. "We didn't go anywhere!" one of my friends protested, and I stared at her and said, "It's a harbor cruise. Around the bay." "I wish the tour guide would have stopped talking!" lamented another friend, and I stared at her and said, "It's a harbor tour, and I thought it was fascinating." (Granted, I was also taking mental notes and going, "Hmm, how would this apply to a space-based port?" but there you go.)

One more hour on the Waterfront for dinner, which resulted in one of my friends going, "I hate fish! Isn't there anything but seafood here?" and me replying, "We're on the Waterfront. NO." We ended up going to Ivar's -- thank you God, Ivar's -- and she got chicken strips and I got fish 'n' chips and clam chowder. Oh, Ivar's.

And then we went back to Ellensburg.

Also, my camera had no batteries, so I have no pictures. GOD DAMN IT.

Comments

[mentalhygiene.livejournal.com]

re: Space Ports, CJ Cherryh's "Chanur" books have some nice descriptions of spaceports as centers of commerce and trade.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I've never read Cherryh.

[mentalhygiene.livejournal.com]

I can't speak for her other books; I've only read the "Chanur" ones. Interesting species involved, too.

on the details ... for example, I always really liked the stuff about 'jump' (lightspeed travel) -- humans need to be (or should be) sedated during jumps, other species can be awake be nonfunctional (dreaming/hallucinating), and because the actual time and the subjective time is different, stuff about needing to eat and shower afterward. Like they had special nutrient packs -- like scifi gatorade -- for right after jump, to wake the body up again. That was kind of nifty.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Huh. Interesting. The funny thing is that I've never really read a lot of sci-fi, or at least, the kind of sci-fi I'm writing. I've read Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover books -- but that's about it.

[mentalhygiene.livejournal.com]

I never really read much scifi in general, either, I liked the Chanur ones because the primary species were nonhuman. ;) I think you'd appreciate all the little minutiae that are described in the books, really.