S.H.A.

space needle!

whole lotta’ good, a little bad. that would sum up yesterday.

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we started off at the Seattle Art Museum (or, SAM). for those that follow on Twitter, you saw that i was none to pleased with some stuff happening shortly after we arrived.

i can understand rules/regulations regarding bag sizes in museums. people can be clumsy and lord knows not everyone is careful or slow moving enough to ensure nothing awful happens. so the fact we had to stick Jackie’s big ol’ camera backpack into checked coat area wasn’t bad. it was that the woman in front of us, with a giant bulky purse twice the size of Jackie’s bag got in with no problem. this after we paid the full “suggested” amount for tickets while they paid nothing.

we shoulda’ just told them it was her purse, or full of adult diapers, or something.

other than that, the Seattle Art Museum was really very cool. it was sort of like the zoo in that when we thought we had seen all that there was to see… there was more just around the corner. very big, very neat.

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next stop was the Pacific Science Center. before i say much else, i must qualify it with this: it really was quite neat and big, and packed full of fun stuff. but…

i should’ve been about 15 years younger or had kids with me to really get the full-on, great experience. there is a great IMAX theater there, and they’re showing TF: ROTF (which we could’ve caught, but we ran out of time). after that, they’ll begin showing Harry Potter: HBP.

and then, of course, we visited the Space Needle. very cool, very quick, very tall. its a tourist thing, but definitely worth the time to see and do.

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what happens next is when all hell broke loose.

so far, the worst part of this trip has been the driving. not surprising, but nothing could’ve prepared me for the insanity that has been a complete loss of GPS. traffic hasn’t been that bad; its not knowing where the hell we are when we’re driving. nothing drives me over the edge more than not knowing where i am or how to get where i’m going.

as we’ve learned on this trip, Liam (the TomTom) has been utterly useless. i dunno if its just GPS units in general or maybe just our model, but whatever signal he’s trying to pull is as weak as Coke that’s been sitting out for five days. its terrible. as a result, we’ve resorted to using the iPhone’s GPS and maps, which quite honestly, has been quite nice. the biggest problem is a lack of voice. Jackie navigating is just fine, but its really quite helpful to have that GPS voice saying exactly where to go at just the right time.

all this boiled over into an… incident… driving from the Needle to Hale’s Ales for dinner. we were at a red light, needing to make a right hand turn. when the light went green, a couple of people crossed the street (no problem). i waited, then i started, confident that the family that was coming after them was stopping, because 99% percent seemed to have.

except the (i’m assuming) 10-year old daughter. out of reflex, i honked, because i was moving (because they had stopped) and wanted to stop her in her tracks so something worse didn’t happen.

you woulda’ thought i had pulled my pants down and flashed the entire family. i was admittedly already quite agitated with not really knowing where we were going, so with the windows rolled up, i dropped a curse word to let loose some frustration. dad marches in front of the car, and… (sigh). it got ugly. REAL BIG effing ugly.

his belief was that i had honked at his daughter for taking the right of way (which she did have in that situation), when, that wasn’t the case at all.

it was bad. real, real bad. i’m not embarrassed by this. if anything, i hope he was more ashamed than i was, as he made the effort (after marching in front of the car) to stomp over to my window and begin to yell at me.

of course i gave as much as he did. the whole thing was stupid; it could’ve gotten much worse than it did (hard to believe if you ask Jackie about it).

but… there it is. the one thing that has sucked the most about this trip has been driving. its a necessity considering the pregnancy and the couple of long drives we’re making, so we’ll deem it a evil necessity.

after all that, though, we had a wonderful dinner at the pub with our friends (and me mum’s) Carrie & Darren. Carrie is Brit expat who helped us out so much on our London trip last year, so it was great to finally meet her in person and hang out for a bit. had a great dinner with beers and such. hooray!

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when i originally started this post, it was 9am PST on Wednesday. now day five has come and gone, and i figured i’d go ahead and wrap this up here.

today was Experience Music Project/Science Fiction Museum day. probably the second awesomest thing so far (after the Zoo). the EMP was giant and packed full of incredible stuff, including rooms to go and play guitar or drums or keyboards or to sing in. there was even an area where you and friends could play together and make a CD to take home. very cool.

there was also the SFM, the real draw for us. while we’re in town, they’re doing a giant Jim Henson exhibit. if you know Jackie, you know she idolizes Jim Henson, so to be able to be up close with his creations and drawings and notes was one of the first concrete things we decided for this trip. it was well worth the cost of admission; Jackie was absolutely over the moon the minute we stepped in. very cool, very nostalgic, very eye-opening into the genius that was Jim Henson.

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and because no post of mine would be complete without a rant, here is today’s!

what is the deal with no photos? more specifically, not having a clear policy on photos? when we checked the website for the EMP/SFM, it seemed that no photography, whatsoever, was allowed…

No film or video photography is allowed in the museum galleries.

alrighty, so just like the SAM visit: galleries equal (basically) the entire building. that’s fine. we’ll just leave the “good” camera at the hotel and only worry about bringing one lens along for the day.

except not. apparently, in the EMP/SFM, “galleries” applies only to specific special galleries, like the Guitar History walkthrough or the Henson exhibit, not the larger open spaces.

as you can imagine, one of us was really pretty pissed about this. that’s twice so far she’s been barred from doing anything with her camera, once in clear-cut fashion, once again through vagueness in policy wording. as a result, our pictures from the past couple of days have sucked as we’d relied mainly on the smaller camera and not-so-great lens (and not-so-great skillz) to get us through.

here’s the deal, folks: make your policy clear, concise, and straight up easy. more people have cameras at this point in history than ever before and more people are taking those cameras more places than ever before, including places that don’t allow it. many have point & shoots that require little to no planning or forethought, but i’m seeing more and more folks lugging around DSLR cameras than i thought possible.

help us out, guys. we don’t like leaving with a bad taste in our mouths because your camera policy sucks. simple “yes & no” will do.

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speaking of pictures: here is day 4 and here is day 5. nothing spectacular, but enjoy them all the same.

also, we’re naming our daughter Ice Cream Sandwich.

p.s.- we really are having a brilliant time. i just like to write about things that get under my skin. i’m a jerk like that.

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g’night!