Seattle Bars: We Don't Dress Up

While Portland is pretty weird, Seattle definitely has it's own quirks.  Ken scouted out an odd concert he wanted to see at a bar in Freemont (that's north of us on), and took the cousins and I to go see.

I was coming down with a cold, so I didn't bother dressing up.  I looked like I was ready for bed with my glasses on and messy hair, and wore a comfy hoodie, jeans, and running sneakers.  I would never have gone to a bar in NYC in running sneakers.  I hardly every went outside in running sneakers if I wasn't actually running.  Needless to say, I looked pretty questionable and would have looked like a monster in NYC.  To my delight, most of the girls at the bar were dressed as casually as I was.  My lazy pajama attire fit right into the Seattle bar scene.

The first band was not awful, but not interesting.  We were getting ready to go when the second group, a Funk band, came on, and if you'll take a look at the pictures below, I think you'll see why we stayed.

The main singer was wearing USA sunglasses with guitar-shaped frames and the keyboard player was wearing a bald eagle shirt and knitted scarf.  Both had sweet sweat bands, and the lead singer (who is shown below eating his guitar) was wearing sweatpants.  Even the bands go to Seattle bars in sweatpants.  I will never feel under-dressed going outside in this city.

Cyclocross

The morning after our pizza competition, we went to watch Brett's Cyclocross race.

Cyclocross is a sport for people who are too old for team sports and too restless for marathons.  The Portland Cyclocross season occurs in the fall, with 8 consecutive weekends of races where fit, outdoorsy men in their 30's-50's ride and carry their light-weight bikes through an obstacle course.   Because of the autumn season and the Northwest's climate, most of these races take place in the rain and the mud adds an extra element of obstacle excitement.  

The race we watched was 1.5 mile loop with a couple of jumps, a stair case-ramp compo, plenty of tight turns that required hopping off the bike, running with it, and hopping back on, and lanes almost too narrow to pass the other competitors.  Spectators consisted of the riders' wives, if they were generous enough to wake up early and stand in the rain to watch the insanity, and in the case of Brett, the rider's mom, dad and cousins.  I'd never heard of the sport before, but maybe that is because it is more popular in the Pacific Northwest than the Atlantic Northeast (there's a shocker).

As the race was starting, details for the upcoming holiday party were announced (Not only do they compete, but they socialize too!), letting riders know that the theme was "Office Party."  Of course it was.  These Portland guys are so cool, their idea of fun is recreating an office party (an running around in mud), because heaven knows they don't work in an office.

A PDX Pizza Competition

Last weekend Ken and I drove down to Lake Oswego, slightly south of Portland, to visit my aunt and uncle, Lore and Bob.   (Lore is my mom's cousin.  I believe Lore is my cousin once removed, and her kids are my second cousins.  I messed that up in the last blog post, but have since gone back and corrected the error.)

Lore informed me that we were to have a three-way pizza competition with the four of us and her son, my second cousin, and his wife, my second cousin-in-law.  Ken was very excited when he heard this, and thought we were sure to win.

"I don't know, Ken.  Brett and his friends had pretty crazy, high stakes pizza competitions when he lived in Berkeley.  They included quail eggs, exotic seafood, and anything you would never really put on pizza.  He's been competing for years."

I had heard incredible things about these Berkeley pizza competitions, and I knew we didn't stand a chance against Brett.  Ken and I have made only about 5 pizzas together, and most of them were barbecue chicken.

"Want to do steak and blue cheese pizza?" I suggested.  Everyone loves meat pizzas, and throwing on deliciously cooked meat can disguise inexpertly cooked pizza dough.

"Let's do Kielbasa!" Ken decided, clearly still as infatuated with Leavenworth as I am.  It was a good idea, too, because it's creative and it couples well with beer, another master of disguise.

We kept our pizza theme a secret, banning Lore and Bob from spying on us in the grocery store.  We picked up an onion and smoked mozzarella and decided to experiment with Alfredo sauce and Dijon mustard as our base.  For the kielbasa, a helpful grocery store clerk guided us to a locally sourced sausage from a place called Olympic Provisions.

"Locally sourced?" we said, "that's perfect for our Portland family!"  I had been acquainted with the northwest's love for homegrown since college, and ever since Portlandia came into being, the whole US has become aware.  Portlanders go crazy for birds, bicycles, and locally sourced nonsense.

The competition was on.

Lore, Bob, Ken and I set to work on our pizzas.  Lore and Bob used traditional ingredients of high caliber: crumbled sausage, home-made tomato sauce with a delicious bouquet of spices, oven-roasted peppers and carefully sliced olives.  Ken and I slowly revealed our intentions, and went so far as to "pretzel" the crust with coarse salt and egg-glaze.  We tried to braid the crust but didn't have enough dough.

Brett and Gillian came late and borrowed ingredients from Lore and Bob, but used their own meat and added banana peppers for some spice that the other two pizzas lacked.

Our pizza came out first.  It was bit floppy and flat, but interesting and effective and declared a "contender" by pizza masters Brett and Gillian.  A contender?!?  That was much more than I could have hoped for, especially with our experimental sauce.

Next we sampled Bob and Lore's creation, over which Gillian oohed and awed, impressed with their fresh, local toppings.

Finally, Brett and Gillian's, the first-seed pizza, was extracted from the oven.   And it was amazing.  It was baked to perfection (was that because the oven had been on longer?), piled high with ingredients, and had a delightful banana pepper-zing.  Both taste and texture were remarkable.

Then came the voting.

Brett voted first, and chose ours due to its creativity.  Sweet!  We could win.  I voted for Brett and Gillian's.  It really was the best pizza.  Lore and Bob also voted for Brett and Gillian's.  It turns out that Brett had turned the oven up higher without our knowledge, consequently baking his pizza into a well-structured masterpiece.  Ken voted for ours.  It was down to Gillian...for whom would she cast her vote?   She found the peppers on her own pizza too spicy and was waffling between Lore and Bob, who desperately wanted a vote, and our kielbasa sensation.  Gillian loved Lore and Bob's fresh, local ingredients.  I tried to sway her by arguing that while the individual ingredients were wonderful, they were not cohesive.  They hadn't united in the oven.  She loved our smoked mozzarella, but still, Gillian was leaning toward the fresh, local produce.

"Wait!" I said, recalling the origins of our meat.  "Our kilebasa is local!  It's from Olympic... something."

"Olympic Provisions?" asked Lore.

"Yes!" I said, remembering the full name.

"Olympic Provisions!" exclaimed Gillian, immediately deciding her vote.  "That place is amazing!  It's in Portland!" 

We had won!  Well, tied.  But that was quite the victory for us, considering how experienced Brett and Gillian are.  Ken and Ashley, underdogs, had tied the pizza competition against reining champions and had learned the secret to any contest in the great northwest: Go local.

More cousins!

You thought I was up to my ears in amazing family that lives near by, and you are right, but now I'm past my ears!

Our cousins Nate and Jaimie (one is a cousin, one is the cousin's fiancée, but I won't tell you who is who so there will be no biases) who previously lived a short 3-4 hours away in Portland have moved up to Seattle and now live only 1.5 miles down the road!  It's a little too far for my taste because we tend to walk everywhere, but if we walk fast it is only about 25 minutes. 

On their first weekend here, we all went to watch Max's regatta.  As five cousins (me, Ken, Nate, Jaimie and Kelsey) packed in the car and drove to the water, and I thought, "Wow, this is the Pierce childhood I missed out on!  All the cousins together hanging out all the time."

I thought about that for a couple of minutes and realized how very untrue this long-held notion was.  As little cousinettes, Caitlin and I always felt so left out because we lived in New York and only saw our mom's side of the family once every year or two (or three, depending on the availability of the family member).  I'm sure Lindsay felt this way too, but she was so much younger that she legitimately was left out.  And for good reason!  A ten year old does not want to play with a five year old.

When Cait and I went to Stanford, we began to get move involved.  We saw the Pierce family much more frequently, flying up to Portland 2-3 times per year.  When I moved in with my grandmother the summer between my first and second years of grad school, I totally made it in the cousin world.  Not only did I hit it big with my first cousins, but my second cousins as well!  Now we live in happy cousin harmony, in the idyllic world I dreamt of being a part of as a child.

However, thinking more realistically, back then, one first-cousin family lived in Portland and the other in Seattle.  I don't think the two families drove 3-4 hours to watch each others sporting events.  The second cousins didn't see each other that much, either, because one family lived in Connecticut while the other two families, who are not close in age (and therefore probably didn't have an amazing, jealous-worthy time when they got together), were in Portland.  The first cousins (the Pierces) and the second cousins (the Harrises) aren't really close, and I doubt they saw each other at all outside of weddings and funerals.  We Hogan girls were not nearly as left out as we imagined.  Except Lindsay.

But it's a good thing that I perceived myself to be left out for 18 long years, because I have since made huge efforts to see my cousins (and aunts, uncles and grandmother) much more.  I've tried to go to all the cousin weddings since they started, and have only missed two.  I even flew out for the bridal shower for one of the ones I couldn't go to be a good cousin.  In the past month and a half, I have seen at least 7 aunts, 3 uncles, 1 grandmother, 11 cousins, and 3 baby cousins, and only 6 of these encounters were due exclusively to the family women's weekend.  And finally, the most impressive example is that I moved to Seattle.

Scuba Ken

Ken has a new job!  He got it a few weeks ago, but I was busy being too tired to blog about it, so here this news is now.  He starts shortly after Thanksgiving at a company called Deep Sea, located about 42 miles north of Seattle.

You may be thinking, "That's a long commute!"

It is, but Ken will be designing something well worth the drive.  Scuba and kayaking equiptment.

You are probably thinking, "That is so much cooler thank kitchen towels!"

It is.  It certainly is.

And now for a little Q&A with the designer himself.

Ashley: Ken, how excited are you?
Ken: 100!   

Have you ever scuba dived?
No.

Why not?
I had jacked up ears as a kid.

Ken has baby ear canals, and changes in pressure cause severe pain.  One of the first things he told me when we started dating was that he couldn't sky dive.  That was almost a deal breaker, because ever since I was a little girl I always dreamed of having a sky-diving wedding.  There is something horribly romantic in reciting our vows to each other in a space between heaven and earth, which I feel accurately describes the our love for each other if love were a place as well as an emotion.  Sometimes I think that love is a place.  After getting engaged, we compromised and decided that I would sky dive to the ceremony and he would just hang out on the ground.  The venue we selected is perfect for this because not only do they have a sky diving school nearby, but the ceremony site is clear of plants and trees so my dress won't catch.

Will you learn to scuba dive?
Yeah, it has ram horns.  It's pretty awesome.

Ken was answering a question about the monster he is painting.  However, he has previously said that Deep Sea is going to pay to get him scuba certified.  How his baby ear canals will fare is a question for another day.

Is the apple-pear cobbler (with organic apples and pears that our wonderful aunt Susan made) going to make you sink to the bottom of the Deep Sea?
Yes

Are you also adding vanilla ice cream to that?
Yes

I'm on my "I have to go wedding dress shopping next month" diet, which isn't really much because I don't have to wear the wedding dress next month (I have until August!), so I'm drinking wine for dessert and foregoing the delicious cobbler that is taunting me from the stove top.

How do your past design experiences relate to this upcoming position?
I've designed military equipment, including a Halo diving suit, which is a high-altitude, low deploy suit.  It's for jumping out of planes.

It seems that Ken has a trend of designing things he can't use.  Due to his baby ears.  He also isn't a Navy Seal, but I'm sure if he tried....

What will you wear to the office?
We allowed my cousin, Max, to answer this question for Ken.
Max: Jeans, but nice jeans.  Very nice and well trimmed.  Black socks, dark brown loafers.  White long sleeved collar shirt under a blazer.  A black blazer.

A black blazer? What about the brown loafers?
Max: Well, black loafers, then.  It indicates a certain touch of formality with...
Ken: ...A willingness to conform.  To the Northwest.
Max: You should make those horns....you should leave them white.  With shading.

Again, they are back on the monster painting.  

How does the office environment compare to the big apple? (Not apple-pear)
Ken: Cleaner.

How will you incorporate kitchen towels into your new designs?
Maybe I will dry off with them.

Thank you Ken and Max for your limited concentration!