Good Day to Do the Puyallup

Nice day to hit the fair. Warm sun, cool breeze, Dizzy Pass (unlimited rides) day, and barely anyone here. We've done the slide and a number if rides already, because the lines are so short. Meeting up with friends and their kids, so we all get to play like crazy.

Of course we got an "elephant ear" - fried dough, drenched in butter and cinnamon sugar. Good stuff.

Writers on the Train

I still do hardcopy and red pen and then change the electronic version of manuscripts I write, or people ask me to edit. There is something very helpful being able to lay pages out, physically flip through, free form notes all over them, etc.

On the train this week, there was a guy using a pen to write notes in a paper notebook. A very fancy one with hard cover and everything. We got talking a bit, and he does "design" work for a consulting agency. It was a bit vague, but I sorted out he usually does user interface, but also environmental aesthetics and workflow processes as part of million or multi-million dollar projects. Our common ground was that nothing has replaced the sensation of putting pen to paper for writing, thinking, recording and abstracting, even if we never go back and look again more than once, if at all.

I have a bookcase full of paper notebooks of daily tasks and notes, and gaming and fiction notes. Years worth of ideas, some brilliant, some crap, most of them simply mental exercise not worth much.  I got my first Google docs capable phone in 2012 and my use of paper plummeted from about one notebook per month to about one per year.  C'est la vie and all that :)

Little Gym Puyallup

Hanging out at the Little Gym, in Puyallup, watching my kiddo learn to follow instructions and do physical skills, with other kids, is one of my great peaceful pleasures.

WA State Fair

At The Fair again. Watched Cowgirl Karen. Definitely a dying American art form.  Which is too bad, since it does take a lot Of skill and can be fun to watch.

Kiddo is on the bungee power jump again. Kid would grow wings and soar if she could. I dread the day she learns about base jumping.

Some day she'll be old enough to join me in this demon slingshot thing. Wife says I'm not allowed on it until kiddo is old enough to go with me.

Do the Puyallup 2016

The Washington State Fair will be known by "Do The Puyallup" for years to come.

First stop on the 2016 visit? Same as last two years: The Giant Slide.

Sound Transit - I'm Commuting Now

I've always found watching the world through a train window to be a bit surreal. Like watching a toy set on the table of a toy train set.  It always has that slightly surreal dream-like quality to the visual.  Always.

Never really been a public transit commuter before.  Started a new job this week. Oh sure, I've used buses and trains, but that was when on vacation or for film fests. This isn't glamorous; this is daily grind.

Taking the Sounder (light rail) this mornkbg for the first time. Nice clean trains.

Of course, being able to write this while commuting means less of my life simply wasted by traffic. That's pretty cool.

The Washington State Fair

Www.thefair.com

The wife and I never made it by ourselves. Okay, maybe once or twice, but now with the Little One it's an annual event.

Lots of food, and animals and rides, rides, rides.

It's fun :)