casa de libertad

The last time I remember my life being what one could call settled was in 1985, just before the Navy gave my Dad orders to report to the U.S.S. Kitty Hawk (CV-63). We were in Oakland, at the Oak Knoll Naval Hospital, where Dad was the World's Greatest BMET, and I spent endless summers playing cars in the dirt, and baseball in the neighbor's yard.

I was ten when we left Oak Knoll. At the time, half of my life had been spent in that little military neighborhood on a hill above the MacArthur Freeway. What followed was a steady stream of new cities, new schools, and a self-imposed detachment from the outside world. By the time I was in high school in San Clemente, I didn't try to make any friends. I spent most of my time immersed in trashy sci-fi and fantasy novels, and trying to learn how to play guitar like Kirk Hammett (yeah, shut up). Oak Knoll was a lifetime away. Like it wasn't even my life.

A few places since have left their impression on me. Crabtree and 209 in River Falls are special. The Armada House is unforgettable (I miss the yard cars and the barrel fires). The Bistro in Minneapolis had it's charms. But those places don't have the same innocent, happy nostalgia of Oak Knoll. They don't have the same, ubiquitous effect on my identity; my personality. I suspect no place ever will, but oddly enough, I feel closer to Oak Knoll these days than I have since we moved away. Maybe it's because I'm playing in the dirt again.

churpita's

It's a lovely place where the food is always great, wine and conversation flow freely, and bouzouki music floats into the candle-lit dining room from a portable record player in the kitchen. It's the best dining experience in Seattle. I suggest stopping by when there's minestrone on the stove.

wouldn't bother gassing up the plows in minneapolis

In November, it was funny watching hapless Seattlites thrown into a nearly vaudevillian panic over a few inches of snow. They called it a "storm", and I chuckled. They abandoned their cars on the side of the road, and I pointed and laughed. The inability of Seattle (most notably the East suburbs) to handle what wouldn't engender a comment from the most pantywaisted Midwesterner was pure entertainment.

Until last night. What in god's name is wrong with these people?

I sat (as a passenger) in traffic for two-and-half hours to go no more than 12 miles. I watched light after light cycle from red to green to yellow and back to red over and over and over and over. I watched idiots putting tire chains on to drive on wet roads. Not icy. Not covered in snowpack. Just wet. Idiots

Where snow did accumulate on the road, I watched another idiot spin his tires (throttle wide open, no doubt), slide out-of-control until he hit the curb, and start all over again; throttle wide open, tires spinning, and going nowhere.

The weather is not the problem. It's the idiots who drive here. You'd think people who drive Outbacks and Explorers and live sixty-fucking-miles from a goddamned mountain would know how to drive in inclement weather.