Keepin' it classy with bikini-clad baristas

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Seattle is well known for its love of coffee. And yes, the rumors are true that a coffee shop (typically a Starbucks) graces most major intersections and destinations. Additionally, there are a multitude of family owned coffee shops in the area and the one nearest to me is called Haven Espresso. They serve a delicious cup of coffee and amazing specialty drinks like caramel macchiatos!

What I find most interesting about this local coffee shop is that they emphasize being a family friendly establishment. Well, of course they're a family friendly shop - they sell coffee and pastries! What could be risqué about coffee and pastries?

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Then, one day when Matt and I were gallivanting around our neighborhood we ran across Sweet Cheeks. This hot pink building had a line of cars at the drive thru and, suspiciously, the patrons we saw were all male. Once we crossed the street to get a closer look, we could see the sign more clearly and realized it was called Sweet Cheeks Espresso (the espresso part of the title being in tiny lettering) and the product for sale was coffee!

We were a little wary of the place with all that hot pink paint, so instead of going inside Matt and I walked home and scoured the internet for more information. That is when we learned about the bikini barista trend that started in Seattle in the early 2000's. A bikini barista is exactly what the title claims - a woman who prepares and serves coffee-based drinks while dressed in a bikini, lingerie or other revealing clothing item.

Seattle is keepin' it classy and innovative with the conception of bikini baristas, who I am sure make business very profitable indeed. The message board at Sweet Cheeks always has something sassy to say like "2 girls for a quickie morning" or "so good you'll come twice a day". Oh and did I mention the drink sizes are "A cup", "B cup", "C cup" and "Money Shot". Really. See the picture below. 

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There are about 60 bikini espresso stands in the Seattle/Tacoma area according to a few internet listings. Some are cleverly named and some are just raunchy: Baristas Gone Wild, Brewlesque, Grab N Go Bikini Hut, Hot Chick a Latte, Java Juggs, Lace n' Lattes, Moulin Brew, Natte Latte, Pink Spot Cafe, Twin Perks Espresso. The list goes on.

The bikini espresso stand nearest us has not been in trouble for any illegal activities, but other stands have been caught in prostitution scandals over the years. Now really, these places are no worse than a Hooter's or Twin Peaks or similar establishment but they still bother me. Below is a music video for the song "Bikini Barista" by a Seattle band called Quickie. The video features baristas from Cowgirls Espresso and gives an accurate depiction of what the craze is all about.

In my opinion, sex is not and should not ever be considered a commodity. While these bikini baristas may feign selling a decent cup of coffee, I cannot help but think they have other "products" that are being purchased more frequently. Sure bikini espresso shops signs boast hilarious innuendos, the names of the coffee creations and stands are cheeky but I still can't agree with the worker uniforms (or lack thereof). People have the right to buy their coffee from scantily clad women if they like, but I am going to vote with my dollar and stick with family friendly coffee shops. Your thoughts?

When life gives you lemons...

From Google Images

I am a fairly optimistic person, as most people who know me would tell you; however, this period of unemployment has really started to drain my ability to see sunshine and rainbows in my everyday life (just to clarify, I am still extremely pleased that we moved here and with the Seattle area in general). I think if I hadn't started off with two months of chosen unemployment (I was not going to commute 45 minutes to work everyday), I wouldn't mind so much. But going on 3 months of unemployment (only 1 month of active job seeking) and 4 months since graduation, I am feeling antsy and impatient to get back to work. I am ready to help people, dagnabbit!

My entire life I have loved working with children - helping them grow, explore, and learn about life. I spent four years learning about how individuals develop, how community systems should work, and numerous tactics on how to positively influence a person's life. I am eager to put my knowledge to use in a meaningful setting! Is that so much to ask from the job market?!

My sentiments about my future career run along these lines: "I hope to never live a lavish lifestyle. I never want money to be the motivation for the work I do. I never want money to be the worth of the work I do." I have known for quite a while now that working in the nonprofit sector means I probably will never make much money, but I have accepted and come to love this fact. Wanna pay me $12 an hour. Fine, no biggie. Just give me a worthwhile cause!

I am currently on a break before going back to get my masters degree, but have often found myself wishing I hadn't taken a break just to fulfill my selfish need to be useful. The choices in graduate degree specialties overwhelm me because I cannot decide the best avenue for my career.

Do I want to be a play therapist? Do I want to work with normally developing children or children with specials needs? Do I want to be a marriage and family therapist? Do I want to work intervention with broken families and individuals or work prevention with families and individuals at risk? Do I want to be a social worker? Where can I utilize my talents to their fullest capacity?

And do you know what I hate the most right now about being unsuccessful in my job hunt? Feeling like a waste. Not a waste of space or anything of that sort, but almost like I am wasting my prosocial tendencies. It is hard to put an exact name to this feeling.

I already know being patient is my best bet for working this all out (the job hunting and the feeling of uselessness). So I remind myself  everyday "time will tell", "que sera, sera", etc. But frankly, that doesn't ward off the blues quite as well as I would hope. Instead, what really restored my sense of faith in myself was a conversation with a good friend of mine, L. We are all familiar with the aphorism, "when life gives you lemons, make lemonade" right? Essentially this means to use the bad things in your life to make something good. Yes?

Over the years, this phrase has received a number of pessimistic and hilarious adaptations, with a few of my favorite being:

• "When life gives you lemons, throw them back and demand chocolate."
• "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade...But damn, there is only so much lemonade I can make!"
• "When life gives you lemons, just say 'fuck the lemons', and bail."
• "When life gives you lemons, throw them back at life and see if life will make that same mistake again!"
• "When life gives you lemons, ask yourself how exactly can an anthropomorphic personification of something immaterial like life give me a fruit?"

But my conversation with L about optimism and lemons went somewhere totally different and completely made my pissy mood worthwhile (as well as curing it). The conversation was something like this:

Me: I am starting to feel a teeny bit anxious that I won't ever find a job. 

L: Oh, you'll find one - smart girls like us always find something!

Me: Look at your optimism! That is totally what I need to get refill for - my optimism tank.

L: Well I don't know if you got the memo, but the motto is no longer making lemonade from lemons - it's putting your foot up life's ass and getting your way.

I am so thankful for great friends who remind me to always laugh at myself and at life. And as the Doctor says, "Rule 27: Never knowingly be serious" (Season 6, Ep 8). Life is too short, eh? So I am going to keep on keepin' on and I believe that I will eventually get it right. Love, love, love to you all!

From Google Images

Today, success tastes like spinach & artichoke dip

At dinner the past two nights, Matt and I have enjoyed spinach and artichoke dip. It has been delicious and tastes exactly like success to me. Can you guess why? If you thought it had anything to do with being able to cook in my apartment with my own dishes again, then you would be correct! Hoorah!

Our beloved stuff finally made it to Washington and I can quit whining about eating off paper plates (remind me to hate myself for that later on). When the moving men were bringing our stuff into the apartment I was jumping around like a crazy monkey! Interestingly, our belongings arrived in more style than we did. See!

Hello big truck that is double parking all my neighbors!

This seems a bit excessive for our tiny amount of stuff but apparently,
they had several families worth of stuff.

And just for giggles here is a picture of Matt taking a picture of me from
our ground floor bedroom window!

Yes, did I ever mention that Matt and I are actually down a half flight in the building? It is very strange thing staring at people's feet as they walk by. Typically, houses in Texas don't even have basements so it is bizarre that buildings in the ground are normal even in apartment complexes here! Ah, the strange things to become accustomed to when you live up North.

Can you guess the very first room of stuff that I unpacked? The kitchen. Yes, I missed my dishes more than my books and I am not afraid to admit it. The first thing that we ate was cereal - from legitimate bowls instead of out of a cup! After that, we moved on to a real meal - homemade spinach and artichoke dip with toasty bread. 

I have copied the recipe we used below, in case you get the urge to bake yourself up a batch of this tasty dip. We adapted the recipe from a vegan cookbook of all places, because this version is definitely not vegan! There are a million recipes out there for this dip, so by no means will I promise you this one is the best. But for today, this spinach and artichoke dip tastes just like success.

Spinach & Artichoke Dip

6 servings 

Ingredients:

3/4 cup tightly packed fresh spinach

3/4 cup Parmesan cheese

1 cup mozzarella cheese

1.5 tsps lemon juice

16 oz canned, drained artichoke hearts (If you use marinated artichoke hearts then you may not need or want to add the spices listed below. Be sure taste test before baking to ensure good flavor!)

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp pepper

1 tsp garlic powder

1/2 tsp crushed red pepper

1/2 tsp paprika

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a food processor (or a blender would work), blend all the ingredients except a 1/4 cup of the Parmesan cheese until well mixed. Taste test for tastiness and adjust the spices and ingredients as necessary. Then spoon thick mixture into a greased 8x8in casserole dish and top with the remaining 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese. Bake in preheated oven for 20 minutes or until bubbly. Once finished, allow to cool for a few minutes before digging in (if you can stand the temptation!) with toasty bread, crackers or chips! 

And for those of you who are interested, I did a quick write up of this version on nutrition data. So if you would like to check out the nutrition facts or calorie count, you can do so here. Also, do any of you have a spinach and artichoke dip recipe you would like to share? I hear lots of recipes include cream cheese or mayonnaise.

Discovery Pass

Things are going really great here! I have been full time job searching which is absolutely exhausting and rattles my sense of self-confidence. I would lie and say I am not lonely and have not cried to spare you all the melodrama, but considering the ginormity of our move, these feelings and behaviors were not unexpected. Thank goodness Matt is here to go on late night cookie baking and eating binges with!

The tall trees and fresh pine scent still absolutely
amaze me every time I walk outdoors!

We were able to explore a tiny bit before being serious adults, but Matt started working full time after our 2nd day here so the exploration was minimal. There is a state park nearby that we can hike at to escape city living. In addition, there is a little beach area on the Puget Sound that we can walk to watch the sunset (pictures of that coming soon, I promise!).

Also! Good news to share: this morning we finally received a call from the truck driver with our stuff! He stated that he should be able to drop our belongings off to us next Monday or Tuesday (luckily, Matt’s two days off next week!). Once that happens I can officially report that we are settled in Washington but until then I will try to bask in the “glory” of simplicity and life without stuff.

Enjoy these pictures, hug your loved ones and eat some cookies. Tomorrow is Dr. Who-day and life is good. 

At the state park, the blackberries grow like the brambles they are. 

Weed-like and wild!

The beach at Dash Point State Park

Live sand dollar all sandy and squirmy! They were absolutely
everywhere on the beach. I've never seen so many!

Dead sand dollar. Pretty but dead =(

New Acquisitions

Hello all! Today is Tuesday which means Matt and I have officially been in our apartment one week. This is exciting but would be more so if our stuff had come in and I could announce that we were all settled in the new place. In reality, we are less than settled with the only furniture we have in our apartment being a folding card table, two folding metal chairs and an air mattress.

Over the weekend, we added a small bookshelf and two lamps to that short inventory! The book shelf only cost us $10 at a yard sale and is in great shape, one lamp was new from Fred Meyer for $6.50 and the other lamp base is gorgeous but doesn't have a cover or light bulb yet (which is why it was only $2 at the yard sale). I love buying items secondhand. It makes me feel better to know that these things get a new lease on life and won't end up in a landfill, especially when they are still in good working condition!

This lamp has an 80's electrical
cord which makes Matt unhappy.
He says apartment fires are bad
even if we have renters insurance.

We had a decent amount of furniture in our last apartment (most gotten secondhand) but we were not attached to many of those items and did not bother to ship them across the country. The few furniture items we did keep were our bed, our bed side table and a folding card table (that came with us in the car instead of traveling in the moving van).

Of all the items we do not currently have, the things I miss the most are from my kitchen. Over the past few years I have grown very fond of cooking and baking. I was originally intending to bring some kitchen items with us in the car for the two weeks we would be here without the bulk of our stuff. Unfortunately, I never got around to it because I knew when it came down to choosing which of my beloved kitchen items would stay in storage and which would be free to come with me, I would panic. I wanted to bring them all! So instead I chose to bring none of them.

Here is a picture of the $4 tea kettle I bought from good will.
When I realized I didn't have any way of boiling water
to make tea, I almost fell over. This was my first household
item that was purchased when we got into our apartment!

Call me crazy, but it seemed the only fair thing to do (I didn't want to hurt the feelings of any of my kitchen supplies!). Currently, we are living off of microwaveable and no cook foods (like fish sticks, sandwiches, granola bars and cereal). Before we left, I nicked a few pieces of mismatched silverware from our old set and we bought some paper plates and compostable cups.

I sure do miss me some home cookin'. Warm and cheesy baked casseroles, mellow melange soup with squash and coconut milk, quesadillas from the george foreman, homemade pizza hot from the oven, birds nests for breakfast, etc, etc. Oh food! I think the first dish I am going to make is this baked blueberry oatmeal recipe I became obsessed with over the summer. It is so good and good for you.

I originally read about this recipe as a peaches and cream casserole but it is so excellent when made with blueberries! It is super easy to tweak for personal tastes too - for a sweeter casserole add more sugar, for a different texture vary the amount of oats/liquid, for a different flavor add a different fruit, for a less creamy version use water instead of milk! I have made all these changes and was never disappointed with the results, but I might be biased by my love of oatmeal!

Sigh. All this writing about food I can't make is making me feel gloomy. Therefore, I shall end with a picture of the flowers I bought to cheer up our new apartment. Enjoy!

This obviously wasn't taken today because there is awesome sunshine in the picture. Today is all clouds .

Please let me out of this car

Route Map thanks to Google Maps!

As I posted previously, Matt and I made it safely to Seattle. We drove the 35 hours and 2,083 miles in 3 days. When we were picking our route we decided to travel West out of Texas to New Mexico then Northwest through Colorado, Utah, Idaho and Oregon before reaching Washington. This way, we could see as much of the U.S. terrain as possible and the route had plenty of small towns to stop at for snacks and gas.

The view in Colorado from the car

Unfortunately, picking this route meant we spent half of the first day just trying to get out of Texas! That darn state is ginormous and there isn’t a lot to see in West Texas besides cattle. After that we hit New Mexico, which has even less to see from the highway but at least we were allowed to travel at 75 mph. The creepy barrenness of New Mexico convinced us it would be best to stop in Albuquerque a few hours early for the night or face being stranded in the desert at night once we got too tired to drive.

On our second day, we drove through more of dusty New Mexico then we hit a dramatic biome change when we came to Colorado! For a bit we were surrounded by mountains, green trees and motorcyclists. Soon after that we reached Utah and enjoyed more canyons and dust. We were determined to get really far on the second day so we drove on to Twin Falls, Idaho where the air reeks of cow poo. It was well past dark when we reached our hotel thus it wasn’t until morning when we were leaving Twin Falls that we noticed the HUGE Snake River Canyon we had driven over last night just outside of the city. Ahh! What a sight to see and drive over in the early morning.

Apparently they have quite a few dairy farms in Idaho, which explains the heavy scent of cow pies on the air. We saw (instead of just smelled) the dairy farms on our drive and enjoyed debating about what kind of food was growing in all the farm fields we passed by. The next state we drove through was Oregon which was fairly similar to Idaho as far as we could see. We did learn that Oregon is a full service ONLY state (Oregon and New Jersey are the only two full service states in the U.S.) and that Matt hates the idea paying a premium price for someone else to pump his gas.

Halfway through day three we FINALLY reached the Washington state border. Once we crossed the Washington border the scenery began beautiful quickly. We drove through Washington wine country and enjoyed seeing all the vineyards and fruit trees. The last few hours we spent driving through Washington took the longest and were the most painful to drive just because we were so desperate to reach Seattle! We were counting down the miles there at the end.

Such a welcome sight!

Our drive was not full of misadventure (which I am so thankful for) considering how we packed our car full of necessities and had two bikes strapped to the back. If I could do this trip again, I would bring better tunes to listen to and better snacks to eat while we drove. We supported Subway consistently, drank Jamba juice for dinner twice and ate enough gummi worms to make me want to vomit.  In truth, the drive was not nearly as awful as I thought it would be. Matt and I made wonderful car buddies and switching off driving every 3 hours helped to keep us from going looney until the very end. Also, I think the Stephen King novel, titled Duma Key, we listened to was the key to our success because whenever we ran out of words for one another we could always travel to Duma Key, Florida and pretend we weren’t trapped in the car.

Our "stuff." Not very much, eh?

Now that we have signed our lease, we are just waiting for our other belongings to meet up with us so that we can resume “normal” life. Our apartment is lonely and empty without our stuff. Most days, I hate the idea of “stuff” but I am so accustomed to having my possessions available that I feel nearly naked without them. Cross your fingers that it reaches us all safely! 

Speaking of "stuff" here are two relevant youtube videos on the topic that I really enjoy: The Story of Stuff & George Carlin talks about "Stuff" Enjoy!

Houston, we have arrived!

Just to quickly update you all, Matthew and I did arrive in Seattle safely and in high spirits last night! We signed our lease today and get our keys to move into our new apartment tomorrow. Internet access has been a little sketchy, so I don't want to write too long of a post right now. But very soon you can look forward to a lengthy post with pictures about our 2,000+ mile drive!

Love to you all from the Pacific Northwest!

In rural America, Wednesday is trash day

When I last posted all our stuff was still hiding in the garage, but no longer! Our second attempt at getting our belongings moved was more successful. Matt and I drove the 40 boxes, queen sized bed & box spring, and bedside table down to the end of the driveway so we didn't have a repeat power line fiasco. It didn't take us nearly as long as I thought it would to get everything up there, but I wasn't worried about leaving it out there for a few extra hours till the moving man came by.

Unfortunately, I forgot that here in our rural part of Texas, Wednesday is trash day. Where does trash go? The end of the driveway. So when Matt tells me the moving van is here an hour early, I panicked as I realize that is not the moving guy who has come to pick up our stuff.

As I ran up the driveway, I am hoping they haven't already thrown our belongings in the dirty trash trailer being hauled by the pickup truck. I hailed the garbage man (a friendly enough old man with missing teeth) and his two trash thugs (highschool aged boys without the sense to wear t-shirts) and explain why all the stuff was in the driveway.

The garbage man replies (in a heavy Texas accent) "I thought it was mighty strange tha someone would throw away all this nice stuff. The boxes was labeled an' everythin'." I replied, "Yeah, I am so sorry for the confusion, please don't take our stuff! I forgot all about trash day."

"Well, Miss, I understand now, but I was confused at first. I even laid on that bed and thought to myself...this is a reaaaally nice bed for folks to be throwin' away." Hah. Really?

This is my life. I almost gave away my expensive tempurpedic bed to the garbage man (the bed Matt and I are still paying for in monthly installments, I might add) because I forgot about trash day. This gentlemen probably would have slept many sweet nights on that bed. I bet he probably deserves them more than I do because he does a dirty, generally thankless job for our little town. As Matt says, "All glory be to the garbage men!"

In other news, Matt and I packed up the car tonight. We are leaving in the morning - a day earlier than planned but we are anxious to be off. I hope you are looking forward to a half whiney/half delirious post on the morrow.

Adios, Tejas!