Category Archives: WA State – King County

A chance to fly

The moment I saw the Indoor Skydiving/Vertical Wind Tunnel 349 Tukwila Pkwy, Tukwila I knew I had to go see it. So today my husband decided that it would be fun to go to Fry’s Electronics (he has an odd idea of fun). I agreed to go if he’d stop with me to see people flying.

It was so cool! The wind tunnel part isn’t oh too big.  While we watched one person was in at a time plus the trainer, but I think it can hold more than that. The folks that were flying put cool flight uniforms on and had some training. As each one went into the wind tunnel their legs floated up and with the help of the instructor they were flying. Most of them had some time during their session in which they got the feel for it and flew on their own. It looked safe.

Each flying session was a couple of minutes and most of the flyers had a great time, especially the kids. Though the woman at the end didn’t seem to be overjoyed. Two flights for a beginner cost $59.95 or four flights cost $99.95.

For more information, check out their well considered website http://www.iflyseattle.com/

 

Learning About Ebooks

Today I took an interesting class in ebooks (the way of the future!) at the Puget Sound Educational Service District at 800 Oakesdale Avenue, Renton, WA 98057. It’s a nice office building with plenty of training and conference rooms. They do good work there.

No, I don’t think ebooks will completely take over, but what a great option. I once lifted my dear daughter’s backpack to discover it must have weighed 50 lbs! Putting all of her text books on an ebook reader would have brought that weight down to something much more reasonable. Another plus is that library patrons can read their library books from anywhere.

The website for the PSESD is http://psesd.org/

 

It’s the Year of the Dragon

What luck! The family decided to get out of the house today and each of us picked a place to go. Dear daughter wanted to go to Uwajimaya in the International District of Seattle. When we got there we learned that it is the Chinese New Year and they were having special events, such as a dragon parade. While we were there was grabbed lunch in the food court and picked up some groceries (pocky, drinks, fortune cookies). Uwajimaya is a wonderful store, which is full of treasures. It actually started in Tacoma, but when the US entered WWII the family was sent to Tule Lake Internment Camp in California. After the war, they felt more welcome in Seattle and settled themselves and their new store there. It was a loss for Tacoma! It is the largest Japanese grocery store in the Pacific Northwest.

http://www.uwajimaya.com/

   

Starbucks in Federal Way

 

So I was going to stop in the Port of Tacoma and take a great photo of an industrial building. But it was raining and raining hard. So this fair weather photographer stopped at the Starbucks at 34024 Hoyt Road SW, Federal Way instead. My FourSquare check in phone program declared that I had checked into 40 different coffee places! Really? I should be jumpier 😀

Capture

I think the Starbucks’ Create Jobs for USA campaign is interesting. Sounds like a good idea to me!
www.starbucks.com/responsibility/comhttp://www.starbucks.com/munity/create-jobs-for-usa-program

Auburn Mountain View High School

I had a meeting today at Auburn Mountainview High School 28900 124th Ave SE Auburn, WA 98092. It really does have a lovely view of Mr. Rainier. Itis a lovely, newer school that is well maintained. There are 1,450 students.

Bat and Seabird Guano at Indoor Garden Depot

I found myself in Federal Way today with a few minutes to spare and Indoor Garden Depot at 1401 S 324th St. #103 looked interesting.  I was kind of expecting house plants, but instead it was everything one would need to grow indoors plants. There are five Indoor Garden Depots, three of which are in Washington State.

http://indoorgardendepot.net/

 

 

California Pizza Kitchen at 150 Andover Park West, Tukwila, WA 98188 had above average pizza and for as nice as it was I was expecting to pay more. Dear daughter and I shared a pizza and had some to take home. Even with our fancy dancy lemonade drinks we got out for under $20, plus tip.  The manager appears to be a character, walking table to table checking on everybody.  Altogether it was a positive experience.

This was our first time in a California Pizza Kitchen. There are three in Washington State with the others being in Seattle and Bellevue. The chain was stated in 1985 in Beverly Hills, CA.

Their website is here: http://www.cpk.com/

Monorail & EMP

Monorail & EMP by Gexydaf

On Tuesday we did another Seattle day and visited the EMP Museum, which has two main components, the EMP (Electronic Music Project and the SFM (Science Fiction Museum). The museum is located in the Seattle Center near the Space Needle. Because of time restraints, we only did justice to the SFM. I loved the Battlestar Galactica exhibit. It reminded me how much I had enjoyed the series, And the Avatar exhibit was pretty cool too!

http://www.empmuseum.org/index.asp

 

Bill Speidel’s Underground Tour

The joys of out of town company include visiting places usually reserved for tourist. On Monday we went on Bill Speidel’s Underground Tour in Downtown Seattle. The 90 minute tour began in Doc Maynard’s Public House (608 First Ave, in Seattle’s Pioneer Square, between Cherry Street and Yesler Way.)   After opening remarks, the rather large group follows the excellent tour guide underground to explore the long deserted original sidewalks of the city.  For those that don’t know, Seattle’s downtown burnt down in 1889.  When it was rebuilt, the city founders determined that it should be elevated to help with the sewerage problem (the toilets were geysering during high tide) .  Some of the property owners could not wait for the slow process of the government’s installation of fill, then roads and sidewalks. The property owners went ahead and built their stone and brick building and when the infrastructure was later installed, the main floor of the buildings became the basements. They were later condemned. The tour took us through a three block area and was very interesting and engaging.

 


  

http://www.undergroundtour.com/

Lake Union Crew

 


This is the amazing view (notice the Space Needle in the background) from the Lake Union Crew Building at 11 East Allison in Seattle. It wasn’t until I was writing it up as a new place that I realized the entire building was a boat and moves around as needed! That makes it one of the most amazing buildings I’ve ever been in! Here is somebody’s photo of it floating around. (Thanks znep!)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/znep/113675036/

There were some great houseboats next to the Crew building and I’ve included a photo of them 🙂

The Lake Union Crew website is here
http://www.lakeunioncrew.com/