When All You Do Is Drive

Sometimes I work on the weekend.

And when I do, my schedule might look something like this:

Saturday...

7 am Leave Salem

Drive 23 miles

Pick up student

Drive 35 miles

Pick up student

Drive 29 miles

Participate in 4 hour meeting

Top off gas tank

Drive 231 miles

Stop in Pendleton for gas and dinner

Drive 185 miles

Drop off student

Drive 14 miles

10:46 pm

Check in at hotel

Realize that it is really 11:46 pm

I've crossed over into Mountain Standard Time

Further realization that Daylight Savings begins tonight

...it is now 12:46 am and I don't have any

proof of where the last 2 hours went

Sleep

Sunday...

Wake

Fill the gas tank

Drive 172 miles

Stop in Pendleton to stretch

Drive 192 miles

Pray that the car will make it to Troutdale on gas fumes

Drive 66 miles

Return vehicle to the Motor Pool lot

Arrive home after 36 hours and 949 miles

I like what I do

And that's a good thing.

Postcrossing

Some recent postcards received via postcrossing:



From Lisbon, Portugal.



From Bamburg, Germany.



From Benson, Arizona.



Near the North Sea, Germany.

You can click any of the pictures to see a larger image. Some day I will fix the configuration of my blog so that my photos aren't cut off!

Weekend Excursion: Seattle

Even though I was working this past Saturday, I wanted to take advantage of the extended weekend. So, directly after my training ended I continued driving north to Seattle.

I used Bellevue as my home base (thanks to a cheap room via Priceline), and set out to explore Ballard and Capitol Hill.

Lunches were based on recommendations from Yelp, and both places I visited were spot on. Mmm!



The first stop was Lunchbox Laboratory for a ridiculous "Burger of the Gods" with caramelized onions in balsamic vinegar and gorgonzola sauce. Oh, yeah, why not add tater tots with rosemary sea salt and a blueberry custard milkshake to the mix? For some reason, I think I can be indulgent on vacation.



I fought off the post-meal slump by visiting a condo open house, walking through the REI flagship store, and falling in love with this little number by Mash Studios:


As I was thumbing through a local paper, a review about the current exhibit at the Seattle Asian Art Museum caught my eye. Entitled, Garden and Cosmos: The Royal Paintings of Jodhpur, I was intrigued and decided to go.


The paintings were so vibrant and detailed, I wish I had been able to capture an example with my camera. The exhibit definitely gave me more insight into an era if Indian history that was unfamiliar to me. Once the exhibit concludes in April, the next stop is the British Museum in London.

And, late last night, I enjoyed an impromptu get together with a childhood friend I hadn't seen in years. She and her husband relocated to Washington after several years in southern California. It was fun to reconnect, reminisce, and meet her baby daughter, Vanessa. It was a perfect trip to get through that mid-winter slump that seems to settle in around this time of year.