I look forward to camping and hiking all year. This weekend, we decided to revisit Middle Fork, an area of the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest about an hour east of Seattle.

Camping is one of the ways we can unwind from city life. As residents of the lively Capitol Hill neighborhood, we are constantly surrounded by the noise of people, emergency vehicles, delivery trucks, helicopters, planes descending to Sea-Tac Airport, and even traffic from I-5. We replaced this constant hum with the relaxing sound of the Snoqualmie River. We didn’t even have cell phone reception.
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Already, our group pool is brimming with great pictures from yesterday’s Solstice parade in Fremont. There are too many to post here now, but a few selections for your viewing pleasure … be sure to check out the photographers’ own sets for more.

photo by Suzie [flickr :: photoset] .

photo by Tyler Kantzer [flickr].

photos by Beth [flickr :: photoset] and Mike D [flickr :: photoset] .

photo by Grundlepuck [flickr :: photoset]

Last night: Elderly man drives car into Sound, killing passenger

Today: Hit-and-run accident involving 9 month old baby in Ballard (but baby is OK)

I took this picture this morning at the Race For The Cure that Erin was running. As I was watching the last of the first wave start the race, I realized that I was about 15 feet away from Jean Enersen interviewing Christine Gregoire live on TV. Fun!

photo by Tyler Kantzer [flickr] via our group pool [#]

• Even though the won the battle, preservationists lost the war. Denny’s is slated for the wrecking ball. [myballard]
• Traffic circles, demystified. Now can someone please make a site listing traffic circles in need of gardener adoption? [capitolhillseattle]
• “straddles the line between nature walk and easy hike” = sign me up! Who wants to go to Twin Falls? [seattlest]
• Being able to carry on a casual conversation during a Cancer Rising set sounds like blasphemy. But now I’m sorry that I left McLeod before Paco started. [lineout]
• Modest Mouse played a secret show in New York last night. Isaac Brock got crazy, with a banjo, a mosh pit, rants, and playing guitar with his teeth. Barrie might need to re-evaluate her SEA vs NYC scale. [vulture]

Now we know the answer to the hot question of last August (Which location would H&M take over in UVillage? Answer: Abercrombie, despite my misinformed guesstimations about Anthropologie last winter.) But another question remains: just how could Abercrombie and Fitch fail to thrive in the UDistrict generally, and in UVillage more specifically? What other location could have provided more of a target demographic? And is this a sign of trouble for the chain and its slightly-creepy founder?

Also, that location must have been huge if H&M is moving into it. I confess to never really having set foot within the old store, but perhaps some of my fellow authors (Dylan, I’m looking at you) partook of what Salon once called a look of “youth, sex and casual superiority.”

Most of the films that played SIFF 2008 didn’t have distribution yet, but a some of them did. If you missed them during the festival, or just want to see them again, you’ll get a shot at a few this weekend. Plus, still more films!

• One of my favorite films of this year’s festival was Mongol, a gorgeously filmed historical drama based on the early life of the man who became Genghis Khan, leader of the world’s biggest empire. Epic battles and political infighting blend almost seamlessly with smaller, more intimate moments between the man who will be emperor and the love of his life, all set against a dazzling backgroup of richly detailed ancient cities and the harsh beauty of the steppes. At the Egyptian.
• Also at the Egyptian: this weekend’s Midnight Movie selection is The Crow.
• Savage Grace, at the Harvard Exit, is another SIFF selection. This one stars the incomparable Julianne Moore in the ooky based on real life story of the spectacularly dysfunctional Baekeland family.
• Metro Cinemas has The Children of Huang Shi another film based on actual historical events. (And another SIFF selection.) In this case an English journalist and an American nurse join with a Chinese partisan group leader to rescue 60 orphaned children imperiled in war-torn 1930s China.
• SIFF selection Bigger, Stronger, Faster is a documentary that takes a sharp look at the effect of performance enhancing drugs on our already intensely competitive culture on both a general and a very personal level. At the Varsity.
• Also at the Varsity: The Animation Show, a collection of independent animation from all over the world, collected by expert curator Mike Judge. Not appropriate for children.
• The Grand Illusion continues their “Best of the Rest” series celebrating five years of late night films with a late night showing of Joysticks, an 80s teen sex comedy centered on an overbearing father’s war against the kids at his local video arcade.
• If you’ve only ever seen Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo on a TV screen, rush down to the Grand Illusion for a 50th anniversary screening of this classic noir. Arguably Hitchcock’s greatest film, definitely one of his best, Vertigo is a complex thriller that’s worth viewing anywhere you see it, but there’s something particularly satisfying about watching it in a darkened theater with an audience perched on the edges of their seats in suspense. James Stewart and Kim Novak put up masterful performances and the excellent cinematography of Vertigo is what made me fall in love with San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge years before I first got the chance to see it in person.
• Northwest Film Forum hosts a benefit for Mercy Corps’ relief efforts in China for the victims of the May 12 earthquake in Sichuan, China, with a showing of Made in China, a 2007 SIFF selection and director John Heide’s documentary inspired by his father’s boyhood as a young American in pre-World War II China that focuses on a community of other Americans with similar childhoods. Friday, June 20.
• Also at NWFF: Passing Poston, a moving documentary that examines the lives of four Japanese American former internees at the Poston Relocation Center begins Friday, June 20. The directors will be in attendance on Friday night; Friday and Saturday feature appearance by Ruth Okimoto, one of the film’s subjects, and Saturday after 4 pm there’s a panel discussion with local Japanese Americans to talk about this sad and shameful chapter in American history.
• Rabbit in the Moon, which begins Saturday, June 21, at NWFF is a documentary by sisters Emiko Omori and Chizuko Omari on their own family’s experience at an internment camp, the mysterious silence surrounding the death of their mother there, and the lingering anxieties and social issues that continue to haunt their community even now.

Chaya’s post about cyclists prompted a lot of discussion recently. As a cyclist and pedestrian, I try to be fully aware of my surroundings at all times, try to act in a predictable manner, and watch out for those who aren’t paying attention. It’s all about safety. Me vs. a vehicle or another cyclist could easily result in injury at best, death at worst, and I try to do what I can to minimize that.

My confession is that I was totally “that girl” the other day. I was walking my dog down Capitol Hill to meet with a friend. I had the dog on the leash, my iPod on (not very loud at least), and was texting my friend to let him know that I was a block away. So let’s see: 2 electronic devices and a 10-month old puppy on a leash. The dog walked one way, I walked another. I paused to finish my text, turned to call the dog, and realized that I was blocking the entire sidewalk while another pedestrian stood there waiting for me to get my act together and move.

So I admit it. I can be just as distracted as the next person. I’m going to surrender my soapbox this afternoon and sit down for some crow. Can someone pass the salt?

Maybe you already know. Maybe you used to know. Maybe you’ll know again soon. Whatever your perspective, this column looks to answer one question: what’s it like being single in Seattle?
Post #3 in a series starting here and continued here.

So what happened after I broke up with my boyfriend? Not much, to be honest. Blogger Boy No. 2 started avoiding me. We would plan get togethers, then he would be “too busy” and cancel. I wrote on my LiveJournal, “So you know that guy I drunkenly mentioned a few days ago? Ugh. Ugh. This is turning into such a mess. I just talked to him a few minutes ago and ended up with tears in my eyes. Either this guy has the best work ethic in the history of mankind or he’s seriously blowing me off.”

And it turned out he was seriously blowing me off. Finally I just gave up and decided to just be friends. I called him and told him as much. He says, “Well, good, because I’ve been meaning to tell you, I was dating this girl and things have turned sort of serious…”

I’ll leave you to sort out the many-layered irony of this ending for yourself. But it does bring up a number of lessons about being single in Seattle.

First, don’t put the burden of a major decision, possibly a major life decision, on to one person. I had been mulling a breakup for months but finally found a catalyst in BB2. That’s the wrong way to go about it. It puts tremendous pressure on the catalyst, and isn’t healthy for you.

Second, guilt is a multi-faceted thing. If the other person starts getting all guilty, there’s probably more to the situation than what he or she is saying.

Finally, don’t drink wine in Volunteer Park. You may end up falling for someone who wears yellow flip-flops and doesn’t know who Dana Vachon is.