In Seattle

Posting while Paul ablutes himself for a grueling day tomorrow. The weather has been decent, with a promised steady rain in the forecast for this afternoon a no-show. Part sun both days! We'll take it, though it was hovering just above freezing on our long walk to breakfast this morning.

The Westin, which like the Monorail and the Space Needle dates from the 1962 World's Fair, is two side-by-side concrete cylinders, with what were once balconies to the wedge-shaped rooms now mostly taken for room space, but with the railings and inaccessible vestigial balconies remaining to give it that distinctive "this hotel was built when no one thought about liability" look.

Most of our fellow guests are at a Microsoft conference, TechReady, where Microsoft product plans are presented to employees from around the world. We hear much Russian, French, and Italian. I may go down to see if I can snoop in some of the sessions tomorrow. Despite hosting a large conference with many attendees from around the world already here over the weekend, the hotel has closed its main dining rooms - no standard breakfast buffet, no nice dinner spot.

Last night we went to the Queen Anne district for dinner at Ben and Eugene's; Ben used to work with Paul at Big Giant Networking Co., and they were on the first leg of the Mediterranean cruise we did summer '07. Now Ben works at Microsoft, and there was much Microsoft conversation at dinner.

Seeking breakfast, at 8 AM today we walked a freezing three blocks to Lola, a restaurant recommended by the apparently unreliable hotel's desk clerk. A little high-end for my taste -- I was intrigued by the idea of Pacific Octopus for breakfast, but not intrigued enough to try it. The omelette was delicious but the meal was heavily saturated with butter and salt.

Then we walked over to the Pike Place Market then north along the waterfront to the Olympic Sculpture Park, then to the site of the World's Fair to see the Space Needle up close, then to the nearby Science Fiction Museum housed in a Frank Gehry building along with the Experience Music Project, both Paul Allen-funded additions to the landscape. Fun artifacts included original phasers, tricorders, and communicators from Star Trek, the only Deathstar model, both Robbie the Robot (Forbidden Planet) and the robot from Lost in Space, many original costumes (Captain Picard's Borg facewear, for example), and models from most of the science fiction movies ever made. More interesting than I expected. The literary side was not neglected either, though it was shown mostly in displays of "issues" surrounded by some of the books which had addressed them.

Took the creaky old Monorail back to the hotel, which made us late for lunch with tdjohnsn and rlegters at brew pub on Pike, just a half-block from the mail drop which used to be my official US address while I lived in Vancouver. Much fun talk later, we had to leave to get to the gym, the Golds on Broadway above the QFC supermarket. Weirdly dim and dark, in the two-story concrete void left by a failed multiplix cinema, the place was quiet since the Superbowl had just begun. More gay than Mountain View but less than SF gyms.

Then it was back to the hotel to clean up and off to dinner at Lola, since we liked it for breakfast. We had a lovely multicourse price fixe meal that would have set us back much more in SF, and here we are about to go to bed.

I'll be on my own tomorrow and most of Tuesday, so I'll be hiking around, going to the gym for a very long time, and checking out the place.