Your Sunday Squirrel

I went to Denny Park yesterday and here's a squirrel:

 This little guy had his tongue hanging out the entire time.  He was very twitchy and rather frightened of peanuts.  I have a better shot of him, but I'll save that for later.

But the shot of the week is not mine.  Becko went to Denny Park this morning - without my permission - and snapped some wonderful shots, including this tough-looking customer.  Let's give her a round of applause!

It's Called the Vue Lounge

I hope to God that they know they spelled "view" wrong.  Can somebody tell them?  Anyhow, for several decades, this was Suyama Peterson Deguchi, a high-end design firm.  It also housed the legendary Suyama Space, which hosted many a stunning installation.  Well, SPD has relocated to South Park after selling the building.  I just figured that it was going to be demolished to make way for some tall, skinny condo-apartment-thing.  Apparently not so.  It's going to be the Vue Lounge, at least for the short term.  It's a great space and I wish them luck.  I hope their drinks aren't too expensive.  But hey, they can be the first spot in Belltown to charge $20 for a Martini.

Breaking News: There Was an Eclipse!

These are my best shots of it...

...and they suck, much like just about everybody else's photos.  I'll tell you what didn't suck - the eclipse!  OK, so 91% of the sun was covered by the moon.  Golly, that 9% was still super-bright.  Overall, it was a great experience.  And it would be great if it happened every week.

Your Sunday Squirrel

With all of the weekend's squirrel business, I haven't had any time to photograph squirrels.  Here's one from a few weeks ago.  I previously featured this guy looking down the other way, but now he's upside down!  See that??  Upside down!  I'm going out next weekend to take more pictures.

Squirrel Fest 2017!

Well, we got up very, very early yesterday so that we could attend Squirrel Fest in Longview, which is, incidentally, a very lovely place.  It has a lot of parks.  These parks contain many trees.  These trees host many squirrels.  The prime reason for celebrating Squirrel Fest (now in its fourth year) is not the squirrels themselves - they were largely uncooperative - but for the community to show off its squirrel bridges, which span over its rather un-busy streets.  Some of them are kind of neat.  Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of them.  But believe me, they're neat.

Here's the scene.  It's the center of town.  There are all kinds of booths selling crafts (some squirrel-related, some not) and food and whatnot.  That's the grand old library in the background.

There were lots of signs like this everywhere.

There was a parade.  It lasted less than ten minutes.  Those are two humans dressed as squirrels in the back.

 Here are some young nerds with their attempted robot.  Let's give 'em a hand, folks!  It's Longview.  The co-inventor of the Hula-Hoop was from here.

Here's the lovely Becko with pepper relish of some sort.  It was billed as very hot.  It was not, but it was still tasty.

Here's another grand old thing, the Monticello Hotel, which is still totally in operation.  If you really want a Longview getaway, this is the place to stay.

The squirrel statue.  Meanwhile people zip-lining and rock-wall-climbing and trampolining in the background.  The atmosphere was very festive.  And the squirrel was dressed for it.

We took a tour of the squirrel bridges in this contraption - it's actually a former San Francisco cable car made into a trolley.  I had envisioned that we would putter around in lazy circles, but no.  The driver was really showing us what this thing could do.  So yeah, it was fast and since we were in those outside seats, we were hanging on for dear life.  And that's why I didn't take any squirrel bridge pictures.  We actually did see two squirrels during the tour, but we could only shout at them to use the bridges.  I don't know whether they complied.

That was pretty much it.  While I was gassing up, I noticed that Longview has more than a few functioning phone booths like this one.  Very quaint!

So that's it from Squirrel Fest 2017.  I'm vowing to go again next year.

Oh, and there's an article about it here.  We get quoted and everything.

Your Sunday Squirrel

This fellow is from over a month ago at Denny Park.  Funny thing, I've seen way more Douglas squirrels since then.  Compared to them, gray squirrels are paragons of calm and logic.

Suddenly...

...sunflowers!  At my parents' house in Snohomish.

They Built This Across the Street

Well, the Whisky Bar has done it.  They've built this thing.  What do you call this?  An island?  I have no idea.  I imagine that they're going to populate the area with tables and chairs, thereby making everyone enclosed the target of semi-relentless panhandling.

If you've read any of my past experiences here, you'll know that the service is pretty lousy.  Based on that, then I predict that it will be even worse out here.

Shalom, Jewish Federation Building

Well, some bad stuff went down here a few years ago.  And now, the building's coming down.  There's no connection between the two events.  What we'll see here within the next year and a half is 38 stories of adult dorms.  There's a name for it. - maybe "live share" or something.  Any way you slice it, it sounds terrible.  As a person who treasures his solitude, this would drive me nuts.  To be funneled into clubs and activities in lieu of having any semblance of real life is a depressing prospect.  Since it's a Martin Selig building, you can count on big, ugly art in the lobby and common spaces.  In any case, this will be one of the tallest buildings in Belltown.  But not the tallest.  So there.

Your Sunday Squirrel

It's another Douglas squirrel!  Hooray!  You'll notice that the background is usually the same for these guys.  The only way to take pictures of them is to get catch them snacking.  I put out a lot of grub for them, the gray squirrels and the birds.  They hit the scene, each as much as they can hold, attack each other, chitter a ton and scurry to and fro.  This guy was uncharacteristically calm for a few seconds.  Then he turned into a maniac again.