Jan comes across a mention of the long-obsolete Xbox Kinect gaming console, which reminds him that we used to own one around 2010. The Kinect included a sensor that could see the bodies and poses of people in the room; the focus of the games was generally to have you control on-screen activity by physically jumping, crouching, swinging, etc.
Evan and Liya liked an Adventures game with an outdoor theme, but Bree’s favorite game was called Kinectimals. The game featured a tropical island populated with big cat cubs: a lion cub, a tiger cub, a leopard cub, and so on. Activities in the game included jumping around in real life in order to encourage the cubs to jump around on the screen, or throwing a pretend ball to have them run and chase a virtual ball on screen.
Bree was so small that the Kinect sensor often couldn’t see her. In order to let her play, Jan would stand behind her. When Bree jumped, Jan jumped — the Kinect would seem Jan jump and so make the tiger cub on screen jump.
When Bree is reminded about it, she says: “I LOVED THAT GAME!”
Jan has started learning a little Czech in advance of our family trip to Czechia in June. Since both Angela and Liya have been using the DuoLingo app, Jan gives that a try. It’s slow going, and includes some vocabulary highly unlikely to be useful to a tourist, like a unit on the words for farm animals. But DuoLingo is finally getting to some important tourist phrases, like “Potřebujeme kávu”.
Evrim and Jan visit the quad at the University of Washington to see the cherry blossoms. It’s sunny when they leave the house — but cloudy when they arrive. They have lunch nearby at Shultzy’s. After lunch, it’s sunny again, so they go back to the quad to see it in its full glory.
Angela attends a Hands Off! protest at Seattle Center. Some 25,000 people gather as part of a national (and global) series of protests against Donald Trump’s regime.
Evrim begins taking swimming lessons at Medgar Evers Pool. She never learned to swim as a child, so for Christmas Jan signed her up for an adult beginners class. Jan takes her to the pool building, entering for the first time since our own kids took lessons there years ago.
Angela, Evrim, and Jan head to Whidbey Island for a short excursion away from home. For the trip there, we go the long way around, stopping at Mt. Vernon to see the vibrant tulips in bloom. There’s a long wait afterwards for lunch at the Calico Kitchen.
We continue on to Fidalgo Island, then stop at the viewpoint looking out over Deception Pass, before driving onto Whidbey.
We eventually reach the little town of Langley, where we’ll spend the next two nights. We enjoy a quiet dinner at Savory, just a couple of doors down from our rental.
After breakfast we walk over for coffee at Langley Kitchen. There we say hello to Jim, who also founded the Madison Kitchen cafe in our own neighborhood. (It’s still going strong.) Jim says we’re lucky we stopped by this month — he’s just sold the business and will be transferring the cafe to the new owners next month. We enjoy catching up with him for a bit before letting him get back to work. We also say hi to Patricia, a cafe staff member who used to work with Jim in Madison Park.
We spend the day alternating between our rental and poking about Langley. In the evening we have a nice course dinner at the Inn at Langley.
We take a late-morning ferry back across to the mainland, stopping at a Chinese restaurant in Lynnwood on the way back.
We’ve been having some beautiful Spring weather. Jan and Evrim decide it’s time to get the back patio furniture ready for the season by taking off the winter outer covers and washing the cushion covers.
The winter covers have a belt with a clip that passed under each seat or couch. It’s a bit hard to reach the clip on one chair, so Jan tips the chair over onto its side, releases the clip, then tips the chair back upright. He pulls off the cover — to reveal a dazed and confused cat. Moxie had been taking a nap in the space between the cover and the chair cushion.
Jan takes the train down to Portland to catch an evening concert by a Japanese band he likes called Hitsujibungaku. The group has a modest fan base in Japan; this is their first U.S. tour. Portland is as close as they’ll get to Seattle on the tour, so Jan’s come down to see the show at Portland’s Revolution Hall. (The band hadn’t mentioned on their site that they are also going to perform this weekend at Sakura Con in Seattle.)
The concert is just about perfect. It’s a small venue, and Jan’s able to get a spot at the very front, so the three-person band is right there. The crowd is enthusiastic, and the band seems to pick up on this. The bassist normally displays the sort of reserved cool favored by bassists everywhere, but even she is eventually jumping around the stage and rocking out. The band plays every single one of the songs Jan was hoping to hear.
Afterwards Jan waits in the Meet & Greet line and gets to say hello to the band.
For the first time since we got married, Jan will be traveling over our wedding anniversary, so we celebrate two days early with a dinner at Shaker + Spear downtown.
Jan flies to Boston to meet up with Bree for some college visits. It’s her school’s Spring Long Weekend, so after her last class she takes the train from New Haven up to South Station Boston. Jan arrives first and checks in at a hotel right next to MIT.
It’s after dinnertime by the time Jan meets her at the station, but Bree hasn’t eaten dinner yet — she purchased a sandwich to eat on the train, but she forgot to eat it. Since she always craves pasta, Jan takes her to an Italian restaurant near MIT.
A busy day for Bree and Jan. They have a tasty breakfast at Bakey, deservedly known for its tasty chocolate babka. Then they head to the MIT admissions building for the first college tour of the day. They’re assigned to a particular tour group, but they discreetly switch over to a different group that’s led by a theater major so Bree can ask theater questions.
Bree’s trying to find a college that has both a good engineering program and a strong theatre program where she can study costume design. MIT has the former but maybe not the latter — the tour guide says they’re one of 3 theater majors at MIT.
After the tour, we have a good lunch at the Mamaleh deli. Jan orders lemonade, and the cashier recommends the pickle lemonade. It’s not terrible — pretty good, actually.
Bree then meets up with Haya, a freshman woman was two years ahead of Bree at her Seattle schools. Haya takes Bree to a lecture on Differential Equations so she can see what that’s like.
From MIT, Bree and Jan take a cab to Boston University for tour #2. Jan toured the B.U. campus years ago when his stepbrother Stephen was looking at colleges. Today’s tour guide is a chatty woman with a distinct verbal tic: after every explanation, the guide says, “Does that make any sense?” No one on the tour says anything. At this point, the tour guide cheerily says, “Perfect!”, and then starts walking to the next stop. She does this at least 20 times during the 75 minute tour.
After retrieving their bags from the hotel, Bree and Jan have just enough time for a quick dinner at Dumpling Xuan. The bao turn out to be fantastic.
Then it’s time to head to Logan Airport and catch a flight to Pittsburgh for one more tour tomorrow.
Bree and Jan start the day with a tour of Carnegie Mellon University. Bree’s particularly interested in CMU because they have a good costume design program. Sadly, one thing CMU doesn’t not have is a good place for breakfast on campus — Bree and Jan make do with a sad meal at Au Bon Pain.
The CMU tour is fine if unremarkable. The most distinctive stop on the tour is The Fence: a small fence in the middle of the main quad that’s been painted by student groups for 100 years and now has an incredibly thick coating of many inches of paint. It’s an interesting tradition but The Fence looks a little creepy.
The rest of the day is open. Late in the afternoon, Bree’s interested in going to the Shadyside neighborhood to visit the Black Cat Market cat cafe so she can pet cats. The cat cafe is busy when Bree and Jan arrive, so they make an appointment for after dinner, then head to the nearby Sojo restaurant for Korean food. Bree gets a large Korean barbecue mixed platter that she finishes by herself. She is very happy.
After dinner they walk back to the cat cafe, then spend half an hour in a room with 20 cats. This is a good time. The cafe has an interesting model: they partner with a cat rescue operation, and serve a venue for where people can meet some of the rescued cats. All of the cafe’s cats are open for adoption. While Bree and Jan are there, a woman comes in to pick up two of the cats and take them home.
Bree flies back to Choate in the early afternoon, leaving enough time for her and Jan to walk back to a different part of Shadyside for crepes at Creperie Moulin. These are fantastic. Afterwards they stop at nearby Kawaii Things which lives up to its Japanese name (“Cute Things”). Bree happily shops for some gifts and some things for herself.
Jan’s flight back to Seattle isn’t until tonight, but he rides to the airport with Bree so they can have lunch together and wait for her flight. Bree boards her flight back to school, then Jan spends the rest of the day killing time in the airport until his own flight home.