A Weekend In & Out of Tacoma

I was all over this weekend, it felt like.

Starting with a long and lingering dinner at CI Shenanigan's Friday night. Mary's aunt and uncle were in town and we thought the waterfront restaurant would be a good treat. We were there for my dad's birthday a few weeks ago but before that I hadn't been there in years. It is a pretty cool place. And they've discovered a novel way to do dessert.

Saturday morning it was an early riser so we could catch breakfast. We tried PSP but they didn't open til 9, so we jaunted over to 6th and went to the Old Milwaukee Cafe. From there four of us took the excursion to the beach (like the one with the ocean on it) and pitched a couple tents at Twin Harbors campsite just south of Westport.

We spent the day in Westport and along the beach. It happened to be the Kite Festival, so we watched the hundreds and hundreds of kites while standing in the surf. (Note to self, standing in the surf is awesome and should be done at least once a year.)

In proper spirits, my friends egged me into volunteering to judge part of the kite flying contest. I was a guest judge for the "Open Field Individual Unlimited" competition, which was part kite flying and part performance art, put to music. It was quite a sight and I took my judging responsibilities very seriously. I had to judge on entertainment value, theme, and clarity of execution of theme.

Hmm ... from the kite flying we returned to the camp space and bunkered in for the night with grilled corn on the cob and hot dogs. Today was wet, though, and we escaped the coast early.

Mary and I got back in time to walk the bridge, which was pretty cool, except that their pedestrian management system showed especially poor planning when it came to navigating around the podium area. A bottleneck of the worst kind erupted and people started getting a wee bit testy. I know I pissed off at least one guy by cutting in front of him (he announced loudly that he was going home because people were too rude).

Once out on the span it was great fun, but the 20 minutes it took to go 50 feet were awful and irritating.

Much fun, though. I'm interested to see what tomorrow morning looks like. My "Good To Go" transponder is on its way.