This year is the 24th anniversary of the Seattle AIDS Walk. A whole generation has passed since the Northwest AIDS Walk began. AIDS used to be the unstoppable disease that killed much of a generation of gay men.

AIDS is still a serious problem, but the development of antiretroviral drugs in the Nineties means that people with HIV are living longer, healthier lives than before. More than 1.5 million Americans are now living with HIV/AIDS: 9,000 of them in King County. 40,000 people are infected every year, and most new infections are among African-Americans. The U.S. is getting off relatively lightly: about one-quarter of the adults in southern Africa have HIV!

The Lifelong AIDS Alliance provides a variety of services to those living with HIV/AIDS in Washington State. LLAA cooks 190,000 fresh meals each year, helps 3500 people, provides case management for 1200 people, provides 2300 people with health insurance support, packs 45,000 grocery bags, and distributes condoms and safe-sex information to high-risk populations.

Donations to the Lifelong AIDS Alliance are down significantly over the last couple of years, while the need for their services has grown in this perilous economy. This year's goal is to raise $750,000 and recruit more than 4000 walkers.

I've walked in the AIDS Walk every year since 1992 and I've raised thousands of dollars for AIDS. Please help me raise money again for this year's walk on Saturday, September 25th. I aim to raise at least $500.

You can sponsor me by going to http://www.georgevreilly.com/aidswalk. I'm also a member of the Freely Speaking Toastmasters team. We'd love to have you join us or sponsor us.

Note: Emma and I are having a fundraising barbecue on Saturday, September 18th, noon to 5pm. Email me for more details.

I thank you, the Lifelong AIDS Alliance thanks you, and the people you'll be helping thank you.

Two months after our memorial for Frank Maloney, we took the ferry over to Vashon Island to scatter his ashes. It was a beautiful September day, sunny but not too hot, and a 20-minute ferry ride was most pleasant.

Kim and Holly fed us lunch at their place and we all fell in love with their six rescue kittens. We drove to a secluded beach and each of us scattered a teaspoon of Frank's ashes upon the waters. We sat there for a while and talked and wandered. Then, back to Holly and Kim's for cake and coffee.

I know that Frank would have thoroughly enjoyed the day: the fine weather, the ferry ride, the beach, and the food. He would have reveled in the kittens and shone in the company of his friends, who continue to miss him.

I took a large number of photos. The best, somewhat edited, are up at Flickr: ferry, kittens, and ashes.

I spent 90 minutes phonebanking for Approve 71 after work today. I called voters who had already been identified as leaning progressive and asked them to vote APPROVE on Referendum 71 in November.

Under the recent Domestic Partnership law (SB 5688 aka the “everything but marriage bill”), registered domestic partners (same-sex couples and opposite-sex couples with at least one partner over age 62), and married couples, are now treated equally under the law in all parts of Washington state.

The Religious Right objected and put together an initiative which scraped together just enough signatures to be on the ballot. They'll be voting to REJECT the bill, which would overturn domestic partnerships in this state.

Civil rights should not be subject to a vote. It's important not to have a repeat of last year's Proposition 8 debacle in California. It's important to me personally and I'm putting time and money into the campaign.

If you want to join the effort, sign up at Approve71.org, and become a fan on Facebook.

Phonebanking will take place regularly in Seattle and other locations. In Seattle, it's happening at the Equal Rights Washington offices at 7th & Columbia, beside the freeway offramp. If you have a laptop with Skype, bring it along.

See you there.

On the First Thursday of every month, there's an Art Walk around Seattle's Pioneer Square. All the art galleries stay open late and thousands of people wander around looking at the art.

It's a shame then that in the four years that I've worked in Pioneer Square, I've only Art Walked a handful of times. Maura and Joseph joined us on Thursday and we spent a pleasant couple of hours talking and wandering around, mostly through the Tashiro-Kaplan building. Muhsin was supposed to come too, but couldn't find parking as the Seahawks played a pre-season game.

There are other First Thursday events: many of the museums are free after 5pm. The Seattle Art Museum, the Science Fiction Museum and the Experience Music Project, and the Museum of Flight all are.

Chuckanut Drive is one of Washington State's best yet least-known scenic drives. Take I-5 north from Seattle for 70 miles. Just past Burlington, exit on to state route 11. The highway heads northwest towards the coast across the fertile floodplain of the Skagit valley. For nine miles, you drive past farms and fields. Then the road rises at the coast, changing character instantly.

Now you're driving along the rocky, forested shoulder of the Chuckanut mountains. One hundred feet below as you drive along the twisty, shady road, you can catch glimpses of the waters of Samish Bay through the trees. If you look closely, you may see the train tracks, practically at water's edge. Look out across the bay and you can see the San Juan islands and, behind them, Vancouver Island.

There are a handful of viewpoints. Stop, get out, look around. There are oyster beds below, though it's hard to tell.

When you get to Larrabee State Park, turn down into it. Walk under the train tracks and go down to the rocky promontories and along the beach. Stop at Cove Road and go down to the boat slip and watch the kayakers.

A few miles further along Chuckanut Drive and you'll reach Fairhaven, a small brick town built in the 1880s. Once a fishing village, it now has retirees and restaurants and stores. Fairhaven has been absorbed into the nearby city of Bellingham, but it retains its own character.

South of Bellingham, I-5 runs through the rocky forest along Lake Samish, on the east side of the Chuckanut mountains. It's the most scenic part of I-5 in all of Washington state.

We made the trip just that this afternoon. The photos are at Flickr.

Approve Referendum 71. If you're eligible to vote in Washington state in November, remember this: Approve Referendum 71.

On May 18, 2009, Governor Gregoire signed Senate Bill 5688, aka the “everything but marriage bill” or the Domestic Partnership Law, a law ensuring that all Washington families are treated the same, with the same protections, the same rights, and the same obligations as their neighbors. Under this law, registered domestic partners (same-sex couples and opposite-sex couples with at least one partner over age 62), and married couples, are treated equally under the law in all parts of the state.

Key rights and obligations in the law include:

• Death benefits for the partners of police and firefighters killed in the line of duty.
• Pension benefits for the partners of teachers and other public employees.
• Victims' rights, including the right to receive notifications and benefits allowances.
• The right to use sick leave to care for a seriously ill partner.
• The right to workers' compensation benefits if a partner is killed in the course of employment.
• The right to receive unemployment benefits if an employee must leave a job to care for a seriously ill partner.
• The right to adopt a partner's child without paying for a home study.

The areas covered by the law include labor and employment law; pensions, survivor and other public employee benefits; family law; insurance rights; higher education; banks, financial institutions and loan agencies; creditors' rights and business licenses.

Opponents of the domestic partnership law are seeking to repeal it. Referendum 71 would ask voters whether the law should be approved or rejected. A vote to "APPROVE" keeps the law so that all families will have these protections in all parts of the state.

The Religious Right promptly put together a ballot initiative to strike down the new DP law. They gathered signatures, but submitted barely enough to qualify. For the last few weeks, the office of the Secretary of State has been verifying the initiative signatures. It was too close to tell one way or another whether they would pass. Today, they limped past the threshold of 120,577 verified signatures with a margin of about 900.

Final certification is expected on Wednesday by the Secretary of State. Barring a successful challenge by Washington Families Standing Together, Referendum 71 will be on the ballot in November.

Putting rights up for a vote is indecent. Stripping citizens of hard-won rights is fundamentally unfair.

Please spread the word. Tell everyone to Approve Referendum 71.

The wording is confusing but remember that you're voting to affirm the recently passed law.

I expect this to be a difficult battle. The Religious Right is well-funded and well-organized, they're already fired up and angry about everything Obama does, and liberal turnout tends to be down in odd-numbered years.

If you can spare some money, please make a donation to WAFST.

By the way, don't assume that you're correctly registered to vote. Please check that you're currently registered. Check that your friends are registered too.

Approve Referendum 71, for fairness.

Senator Patty Murray visited us at Cozi this morning. She was there to hear from small business people about healthcare reform and she met with half-a-dozen local small business owners, including our CEO, Robbie Cape. I sat in on the meeting as an observer to take photos.

We heard a number of stories.

Jason runs a record store. When they decided to insure all of their employees, it meant that everyone had to take a pay cut. One guy didn't want to take part, but Jason convinced him. Weeks later, that guy broke his arm and ended up in the emergency room. Not long after, the same guy had another accident. Later he said that he'd have been completely broke without the insurance.

Debbie runs a restaurant on Capitol Hill. She said that she was ashamed to admit that she couldn't afford to offer health insurance to all her employees—her margins are too low. Debbie's insurance broker told that her premiums are higher because she's in the wrong zipcode—lots of HIV-positive people on Capitol Hill—and because she has a 60-year-old employee.

Jason's self-employed girlfriend became pregnant. They had to search hard to find a policy that did not consider pregnancy to be a pre-existing condition!

Will has a self-employed friend who is a healthcare exile. His friend has been unable to find health insurance in the US as he has diabetes. Instead, he and his family live in France where they're enjoying the French system.

Robbie firmly believes that it's important to have great healthcare for all his employees and their families. But this raises his costs and places him at a competitive disadvantage.

Karen is in her early sixties and has adult onset diabetes. She has insurance by the skin of her teeth, some grandfathered coverage. If she lost that, it would cost $500 to cover her, another $500 for her husband, and another $500 for her medicine. $1500 is almost the cost of her mortgage. She's trying to take care of herself and hang on for Medicare.

Robbie was galled that Cozi's insurance costs are going up by 25–35% every year. Small businesses have no leverage to negotiate with the insurers.

Patty talked for a while about the work that her HELP committee has been doing. They've passed a bill out of committee, but the Finance Committee is still at work on their own bill. Under the public option, her bill reimburses half of the cost of the premiums to companies with fewer than 50 employees.

The public option would spread the risk across a much larger pool, which should help drive down costs. Those of us who have insurance now are paying about $1000 each to cover the costs of catastrophic care for the nearly 50 million who are uninsured.

There was unanimous agreement that the current system is unsustainable and becoming ever more unaffordable. All present were in favor of the public option.

Patty is having a number of small meetings. She feels that they're more productive than town halls. I can only agree. She said that her office is getting constant calls from both sides.

Patty posed briefly for group photos, before leaving for her next meeting.

There was more, but that's all I can dredge up from memory at this late hour.

Afterwards, we posted an innocuous update to the CoziFamily fan page, “WA State Sen Patty Murray just stopped by our office to talk about small biz perspectives health care reform. With more than eight of us in the room, there was UNANIMOUS support for a public option!” A firestorm immediately broke out in the comments. Our very own townhall :(

(Why Cozi? Back in June, a handful of us, including my colleagues Will and Mira and I, met with our representatives to push for the public option. We got an enthusiastic reception from Patty Murray's office; less so from Maria Cantwell's staff. A couple of weeks later, our group put on a rally outside the Federal building where both senators have their Seattle offices. Then Robbie was asked to make a statement for a press release from Patty, which led to his being asked to host this meeting.)

Update: Robbie's take

I rode Seattle's new Light Rail system for the first time yesterday morning. I walked to the new Beacon Hill station. It took me just over 20 minutes at a brisk pace, so I'm not likely to walk there often. I could have taken the 60 bus to the station, but it only runs every 30 minutes.

When I got to the Beacon Hill station, I couldn't figure out if my book of $2.00 tickets for Metro bus tickets were valid on the train or not. The first three workers I asked didn't know either. The cop I asked said “yes”, so I took the elevator 167 feet down to the platform and rode the train into the Pioneer Square station next to the Smith Tower. After looking on the Sound Transit website, I don't think the cop was right.

I'm not the only one who's confused either. Seems like everyone else is confused too. Bus transfer tickets work, at least, and light rail tickets are accepted as transfers on the bus. Unlike the buses, there's no ride-free zone for the light rail in downtown Seattle.

We took the light rail home from the Mariners game last night and transferred to the 36 bus after a short wait. (The 36 runs down 15th after 7pm; the 60 and the 39 stop running about 9pm.)

I found the trains and the Beacon Hill station to be clean and pleasant. The train reportedly runs every 7½ minutes, which I haven't confirmed. It certainly travels faster than the bus.

The light rail seems nice, but I'm not likely to use it often.

Tonight was the annual Irish Night at the Mariners and we bought tickets for $11.

Even after 20 years in the States, I still know next to nothing about baseball. I picked up a copy of the Baseball Field Guide before last year's Irish Night, and found the first chapter very helpful in explaining the basics. I re-read it last night and it helped me follow tonight's game.

Neither the Mariners nor the White Sox could score a run. Inning after inning the game went on, zero-zero. No one had scored by the bottom of the ninth, so play continued. A tenth inning. An eleventh. We called it a night and took the new Light Rail to Beacon Hill.

The game finished in the 14th inning when the Mariners finally pulled ahead.

I mentioned three weeks ago that I was putting together a group of people to see Greenstage's production of Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors at the Seward Park Amphitheater. Six of us braved the rain last night, ate our picnic, and enjoyed an hour and a half of ribald slapstick.

Almost all of the cast cross-dressed. The main male parts, the two sets of identical twin brothers, were played by women, The wife, her sister, and the courtesan were played by ugly men in the best panto dame tradition.

The play, like so many of Shakespeare's comedies, requires an endless series of confused identities, which could be cleared up in moments if only someone paused and said, “Wait a minute!”

Much running around, no subtlety, fun.

Lots of photos at Flickr.

Seattle Shakespeare are also putting on free, outdoor productions of Shakespearean plays, Taming of the Shrew and Richard III. Both end on August 2nd, before we get back from Europe. Cathy saw their white trash production Taming yesterday and raved about it today.

Two picnics this weekend.

Today we held the tenth annual BiNet Seattle picnic for the bisexual community, which I once again organized, with some help from Emma. Almost all of the preceding ones were held at Ravenna Park. Even though I booked the picnic back in March, Ravenna Park was unavailable this weekend, which was the only weekend that really suited me. We went to Golden Gardens Beach instead. It's a nice park, but parking is atrocious on a busy weekend, which may explain the poor turnout. There were only 10 people, down from 20–30 for the last few years. Three new faces; the rest were regulars. As usual, Emma and I brought the meat, charcoal, plates, and tools, and did the cooking.

Tomorrow's picnic will be before the open-air production of Comedy of Errors at the Seward Park Amphitheater. This one's easy: no-one's cooking. We're just bringing food that's ready to eat.

We held our rally for healthcare and the public option at lunchtime, outside the Jackson Federal Building where both Senators Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray have their Seattle offices.

Turnout was good: about 100 people, I'd say. We had about half-a-dozen speakers over 45 minutes. A cameraman from King–5 covered it, but I can't find anything on their website. A handful of people went upstairs to the senators' offices and delivered 291 pages of petitions.

One concrete suggestion that I came away with is to write a handwritten letter to the senators advocating for healthcare reform. Handwritten letters carry more weight than printed letters or calls and much more weight than emails.

Do it soon. If July slips away without significant progress on legislation, it will get watered down.

The news came halfway through the rally that Regence BlueShield are raising premiums by 17%. It was not well received.

I took a pile of photos. The best ones are at Picasa.

Mira and Will addressing the rally.

A couple of weeks ago, a group of us visited our senators' offices to talk to their staffers about the Public Option in health care. We're organizing a downtown Seattle rally at the Federal Building on Thursday at 12:15pm, where both Senators Cantwell and Murray have their offices. It's one of the large number of rallies that MoveOn.org is organizing at senators' offices all around the country on Thursday.

Will sent out this email to a number of people earlier this evening and I'm going to reprint it here.

"I think it's fair to say that July is going to be the most historic and consequential period for health care reform—perhaps in all of history. Never at any time can I recall has so much come down to just a few weeks."

—Former Senate Majority Leader and Health Care Expert Tom Daschle, speaking today

I am part of a group of Seattle residents who are passionate about seeing quality, affordable American health care with a choice of private and public plans. The health care issue is currently being considered by Congress.

The reason for the urgency is the timeline Congress operates on: basically there needs to be a draft bill ready before the August recess in order to get a bill done by the end of 2009. If there is no bill by the end of the year, it's highly unlikely that a new plan will come together during Obama's presidency, and the issue will continue to worsen as it has since the last health care reform attempt in 1993, 16 years ago.

I'm personally passionate about the health care issue because I have a friend who is literally a health care exile. He has diabetes and is an independent contractor. This is a lethal combination in the US. He cannot get private health care because of his "pre-existing condition," and he can't work for a company because he is in a particular line of work (advising failed states on incorporating American values on media laws into their new constitutions) where it's very hard to find a company who will employ him. He's even offered to pay for all diabetes-related expenses in order to get a private health care plan, but no insurance company would agree. As a result he lives in France along with his wife (also an American citizen) and their two children.

I'm also passionate because my Mom would like to retire after having worked hard her whole life (she's a physicians' assistant at a nursing home), but she continues to work in order to pay for the health care to cover my Dad's prescriptions. I'm also passionate because my Aunt, who is over 70 and lives on a fixed income after having worked at a university her whole career, pays $700 a month just for prescriptions because of the "doughnut hole" in Medicare Part D.

And their stories are nothing compared to families that have gone into personal bankruptcy to cover health care costs, or had a loved one die because they couldn't get preventive care, early treatment or screenings.

Maybe you, or someone you know has had trouble getting the care they need at manageable prices. If you're passionate about fixing this problem, you're not alone. But it's not clear yet that Senator Cantwell (D-WA) understands the scope of the problem. She sits on the crucial Senate Finance committe, but she has not come out in support of giving Americans a choice between a public and a private plan. She has some ideas about health care, but it's not clear they are enough to really fix the problems my family and my friends have. And given the urgency of getting this settled in July, time is short.

We need to push Senator Cantwell (whom I campaigned for, by the way) to come out clearly in support of guaranteed health care for all Americans, while giving us choice and control. Please join us for a short rally in front of the Senator's office downtown on Thursday at lunch time (12:15p). More details here: http://tinyurl.com/seahcr. If you can't be there, please get involved in other ways (ask me how).

—Will

P.S. - please help spread the word by forwarding this email.

Want to learn more? Listen to this NPR story from this morning.

Learn more about other rallies in the US on the same day.

Finally, please let me know if you don't want to get emails from me of this nature and I won't send any more.

Thanks, Will!

Today, I did something that I've never done before. I visited my US Senators' offices, with a handful of others, to help stiffen their spines on healthcare reform.

It started by accident last night when Mira mentioned on Facebook that she was going to visit Rep. Jim McDermott, Sen. Maria Cantwell, and Sen. Patty Murray's Seattle offices today to talk to them about the “public option”.

McDermott and Murray were already supporters of the public health insurance option. Cantwell's position was murkier and she came out in favor of some kind of lame “co-op” compromise earlier this week. Mira and her friends had no difficulty in setting up meetings with McDermott and Murray, but Cantwell's office refused to schedule a meeting.

I joined them at the Jackson Federal Building, where both Senators have their Seattle offices, after they had already met with one of Jim McDermott's aides. That had gone so well that they had difficulty in tearing themselves away in time.

We went to Maria Cantwell's office first, where we spent ten minutes in an unsatisfactory exchange with the staff at the front desk, who wouldn't commit to anything more than passing on comment forms. As we were leaving, her State Director, Chris Endresen, came out of the ladies' restroom asked us what brought us there, and invited us in for 15 minutes.

Ms. Endresen's position was that Senator Cantwell is a policy wonk, who is working hard on various health-related bills. We were very clear that we were all in favor of healthcare reform and the public option, and would like to see Maria take a lead on it. Moreover, polls indicate that 72% of the public feel similarly. The aide remained non-committal, though she did tell us to look out for an op-ed next week from Maria, outlining her position.

We went downstairs to Patty Murray's office, where we had an appointment with Mary Conroy, one of her aides. She has been working on healthcare issues for nine years and sees this summer as a major opportunity. There are two bills being developed in the Senate, one from the HELP Committee, the other from the Finance Committee. Murray sits on the former, Cantwell on the latter, so Washington State has more influence than most.

We asked Mary what we as ordinary grassroots activists could do, and she told us that Washington CAN had been taking the lead locally, that they had done good work with rounding up small business owners to advocate for healthcare reform and tell their own stories. We told her some of our stories.

One woman said she had been unemployed for 18 months, that she could no longer afford COBRA, that she would fall apart without her depression medication, and for now she had managed to get a year-long grant paying for that medication from a pharmaceutical foundation. Paul said that only yesterday his wife had been diagnosed with a heart murmur. She's thinking of changing jobs and that would constitute a “pre-existing condition“. He had thought of starting a business a few times, but that the cost of providing health insurance had always been a huge obstacle. Isn't it ironic that America venerates small businesses, but makes it so difficult to start them? Will mentioned a friend of his in France who's a “healthcare exile”. His friend is a self-employed consultant who works on constitutional issues with countries like Bosnia. He's also a diabetic who would find it difficult and expensive to get good insurance in the US. And I mentioned that my wife's health is poor and that she has not been well enough to work this year. We have insurance through my job, but were I to lose my job, health insurance would be a big worry. (Some recent COBRA change that I hadn't heard of seems to partially mitigate this.)

Mary also referred us to the Herndon Alliance who have been doing good work on framing the issues around healthcare reform. She said that the main tactic of those who oppose reform is more subtle than the Harry and Louise ads of 1993. They are playing for time and urging more study, in the hopes of making us lose momentum. There's about two more months before whatever bills are written get locked down.

Anyway, we spent an hour there and felt far more welcomed than we had been at Maria Cantwell's office. Night and day.

Next stop: look more closely at Washington CAN.

Greenstage continue their Shakespeare in the Park this year with performances of King John and Comedy of Errors at a number of Seattle-area parks over the summer. Emma and I enjoyed their Twelfth Night at Seward Park last year. Best of all, it's free!

The play starts at 7:00pm. Come at 5:00 and have a picnic with us near the Amphitheater. Bring food that's ready to eat—the Seward Park PCC is less than a mile away. There's some seating but you might want to bring your own chairs.

If you come even earlier, Seward Park is worth a trip in its own right. Old growth forest trails and a 2.5 mile lakefront walk.

Please RSVP to the Evite. Feel free to invite more people to join us.

I walked past this truck at Second and Pike on Monday and did a double-take. Eric was intrigued too when I showed him a photo later, and we went back to investigate yesterday.

They only opened a few weeks ago. As yet, the menu is limited. The Maximus is a pulled pork sandwich with a hot sauce, while the Minimus has a tangy sauce. They have a vegetarian sandwich, chips made from potatoes and vegetables, and hibiscus and ginger lemonades.

I don't much care for barbecue as a rule. The Minimus with a sprinkling of Beecher's cheese was good, but not outstanding. The pork was flavorful and not overwhelmed by the sauce. The sandwich was a little small and inevitably messy. The ginger lemonade was pleasantly tart. See Yelp for more reviews.

The pig is very cool and undoubtedly draws a lot of business. There's nowhere to sit near the Pig. We sat down at First and Union and looked down at the waterfront.

I'll be back. Occasionally.

Kubota Garden is a little-known gem in the Rainier Beach area of south Seattle. Twenty acres of hills and valleys in a Japanese style.

Emma and I met Lyndol down there this morning and rambled through the garden for two hours. It was a fine, overcast day, with temperatures in the low 60s and occasional drizzle—and a pleasant relief from the record heat of earlier this week. I had visited there before: it's at the far end of the Chief Sealth bicycle trail. Lyn had too, but it was Emma's first visit.

The gate was locked when we arrived at 10:30, though the sign proclaimed that it was open from 6am until sunset. We walked in anyway. It was still locked when we left, but a few others also found their way in.

We climbed up the “Mountainside” to the top of the turned-off waterfall, we crossed all the bridges, we found Mapes Creek. Fujitaro Kubota bought swampland in 1927, but most of it has been drained since.

I resisted the urge to take photos for about half an hour, but a grove of twisted trees compelled me to whip my point-and-shoot off my belt. The best photos can be found at Flickr.

We've had record heat in Seattle for the last two days. It hit 91°F today.

If I wanted to live in Arizona, I'd live in Arizona.

For many years, I ignored the freeway sign for the Rhododendron Garden at exit 143 on I-5. Five or six years ago, I visited the Rhody Garden and I've gone back every spring since.

It's worth visiting at any time of year, but from March to May or June, it's in bloom. Twenty-two acres of rhododendrons, azaleas, ferns, and other flowers, near the Weyerhauser headquarters in Federal Way, Washington. There's a bonsai garden next door—unfortunately now closed to the public. As you stroll along the shaded hilly paths, you can almost make believe that the constant traffic noise from the nearby freeway is running water.

Rhodies come in all shapes, colors, and sizes, from low bushes to 30-foot trees. They are native to North America, Europe, and Asia, and thrive in the Pacific Northwest.

Emma and I brought Lyn there last Saturday. It was surprisingly empty for such a fine day, though they said they had been overrun the previous weekend for Mother's Day.

I put the best photos up at Flickr. Enjoy!

For various reasons, I hadn't cycled to work in about three weeks, just before the clock went forward.

It was very pleasant to cycle home in broad daylight for a change. Very pleasant.

Emma, Eric, and I went to Gay Bingo this evening. It's a monthly fundraiser for the Lifelong AIDS Alliance. This is not your grandmother's church bingo: the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence are the ushers and the show is MC'd by a drag queen.

Every Gay Bingo has a theme. Tonight's was the Love Boat, the campy 70's TV show. Many in the audience dress for the occasion. I wore the nearest thing to a lounge suit that I had; Emma accessorized a nautical top with a scarf. We brought Jill and Dick the last time we went. They have an enormous collection of costumes and they were some of their choice Fifties glad rags.

I've been there perhaps ten times over the last 15 years. For the first decade, it was held in the basement of a synagogue on Capitol Hill. It was always packed. Finally, they moved to a larger space, the South Lake Union Naval Reserve building, a few years ago. That's always packed too.

It's always a lot of fun. And for a good cause too.

This is, by far, the snowiest winter that I've ever experienced in Seattle—and I was in Ireland for the worst two weeks.

At least the snow that came down yesterday and today didn't stick.

There's a little-known special election coming up on February 3rd for the new elective position of Director of Elections for King County.

I recommend that you vote for Sherril Huff, and so do the Seattle Times and the Stranger. Everyone else in the race is unqualified.

I mentioned recently that the #39 route is closing, which would leave me without a direct connection to downtown Seattle. The new #50 route would run along 15th Ave S, two blocks from my house, to the Lander St Light Rail station in SoDo.

We attended the Metro Open House at the Jefferson Community Center this evening.

My concerns are slightly assuaged. The new #50 should run every 15 minutes and run until about 11pm. That's better than the #39 which runs every 30 minutes until 7pm, then hourly until 9pm.

In addition, the #60, which also travels along 15th and goes past the Beacon Hill Light Rail station, would run later and longer, giving me another route to downtown.

But neither of these alternatives gets me to downtown without a transfer.

I also asked about routing the #36 along 15th all the time, but it's a trolley bus before 7pm and changing the route would require stringing overhead wires.

The closure of the #39 is not yet certain. Keep those letters coming.

Salumi's has the best selection of charcuterie in Seattle. The range and quality of their cured meats is truly impressive. The flavor, excellent. Their counter staff, friendly and family-like. The line goes out the door.

But. But. But.

Their service is wretched. That line moves at a glacial pace. I've never taken less than 20 minutes to get a sandwich; sometimes twice that. The staff are slow and inefficient. Their stations are badly laid out and they have to fumble around each other in their pokey little store.

Every time I watch them at work—and I always have plenty of time to watch them work—I want to drag them over to Jimmy John's or Bakeman's. Jimmy John's is fast, efficient, and cheerful. Bakeman's is fast, brusque, and serves up a side of attitude. But, by God, you get a sandwich in five minutes or less.

Salumi's could double their speed and still be Salumi's. I wish they would.

Seattle's Metro Transit is changing a number of routes in South Seattle. They're proposing to close the #39.

Here's my letter to Metro:

To: metro-feedback-se@kingcounty.gov

Subject: Please keep the #39 open

I live two blocks from the busstop at 15th and S. Nevada, served by routes #39, #60, and #36. Metro is proposing to close the one really useful route, the #39 which takes me to work in Pioneer Square. The #60 gets me to 12th and S. Jackson, nearly a mile from work. The #36 only runs down 15th in the evenings; otherwise it runs through Jefferson Park, half a mile away.

The new #50 route will be a poor replacement, getting me only as far as the busway at Lander Street, about halfway to Pioneer Square. Transfers are inevitably tedious and it's all too easy to miss your connection, especially coming home in the evening.

The Beacon Hill Light Rail station is a mile away from me. It's unlikely that I will use it much, even though I work next to the Pioneer Square station.

Closing the #39 leaves me and my wife with poor transit options. But's it's not just me.

There are a lot of people on Beacon Hill who ride the #39, many of them low-income or immigrants. Every stop north of me on 15th and Columbian has plenty of riders. The VA Hospital is just to the south of me and the #39 stops at the front door. I see veterans on the #39 every morning; I don't know how the more disabled ones will manage.

I urge you to keep the #39 running. If you don't, please route the #36 along Columbian Way all the time, so that there's a direct bus between downtown and Beacon Hill.

We'll be attending the open house:

I tried to take the bus into work today, but no bus showed. I later learned that the #39 had been “temporarily suspended”. Emma drove into downtown Seattle, getting off at the James St. exit. James is steep and it was closed to traffic. She let me out at 7th and James and I walked down to the Smith Tower.

Other people were not so lucky on the steeper streets, as you can see in the photo of a bus hanging over the interstate.

This is the worst snow we've had in several years, and Seattle is not equipped to handle it. Most years, we only get a day or two of snow, leaving at most a couple of inches. It's not economic for the city to have a lot of snow-clearing infrastructure, though I did see two big trucks with plows attached this morning. Most drivers have little experience in driving in the snow or on ice, and do about as well as you'd expect. All of this is compounded by Seattle's hills: it's hard to go any great distance in this region without having to traverse a hill.

And there's a big weekend storm coming in Saturday evening. I'm glad that I'm flying out in the morning and will miss it.

And so to bed.

When we went to bed on Wednesday night, most of the weekend's snow had melted. We were woken around 5:30am by two large thunder claps, attributed to thundersnow. The snow was falling again and fell for most of the day.

We were sensible and stayed home. So, it seems, did almost everyone else at Cozi. I worked remotely for part of the day. Otherwise, we watched movies. I felt no desire to go outside and make snowmen, though we certainly could have.

We fly to Ireland on Saturday morning. I'm a little worried about getting to the airport.

It snowed in Seattle yesterday. We drove over to Sammamish last night to my CEO's house for the Holiday Party. The snow wasn't sticking to the roads, so although visibility wasn't great, getting there and back was not difficult.

It was cold today and colder tonight. I saw only a light dusting of snow fall today, but the snow that was melting earlier has refrozen.

We had to go out this evening, over to Burien to see Frank. The main roads were fine, but we had a slightly alarming descent on a hill near us as we headed over there. Coming home, we had a couple of unpleasant minutes trying to get up a hill near Frank's. The wheels spun and spun, but the car wouldn't go forward. Several times, I deliberately let it slide backwards a few feet, hoping to find some traction further down. In the end, that worked.

I don't much like snow, but I hate ice. I hate walking on ice. I hate the lack of control. I'm always fearful that I'll slip and fall, that my feet will fly from under me and that I'll crack my head. Or that I'll break an arm when I try to break my fall.

I hate driving on icy roads. The skidding. The uncontrolled drift. The wheels spinning.

That's why I live in a climate where we don't get a lot of snow or ice.

I look out the window. Drizzling—not too heavy—I'll ride to work. Pack my clothes into the panier bag. Spandex tights, coat, yellow jacket, helmet, gloves: on they go. Bike's in the garage, seems okay, slap on the bag. Pull it out, reset the odometer. 17 minutes today?

Ignite the blinky lights, pull away. Down the side roads, until I'm compelled to take the arterial. Press the crosswalk button, wait for a break in the traffic. Two minutes, three, does this fucking light ever change? Off like a shot, past Jefferson Park. Maybe they'll finish by next summer. Hit the next light at 2:30. A long, gentle uphill for the next 8 minutes. Next left, zig and zag back to 14th. The prettiest block on the whole ride: gardens, a much-tended traffic circle, craftsman bungalows.

Keep going past the apartment blocks. Wait my turn at Beacon Ave, go through. Busier now, buses on 14th here. Past Mira's, past the school, road zigs. Pass the highest point, buses go left, I don't. Road narrows, start descending gently. It's all downhill from here.

Brake hard at PacMed when 14th runs out. Wait to get onto 15th. A break in the traffic. Off again. Hurtling down to the Rizal Bridge. Amazon's overflow parking on either side. If I don't have to stop at the light, I'll hit 30 without breaking a sweat. Fly across the bridge, hope to fuck it's not icy.

Watch my mirror. Can I get into the left lane? Yes, then turn left at Weller. Down the hill, hard right at 10th. I'm in the International District now, unmissable when I take a left at King. Downhill again, slower this time. Too many intersections, oblivious pedestrians, parkers heedlessly opening doors.

Right at Sixth, around the Post Office. Jackson, wait to make the left. Only two blocks, dodge the buses. Fourth and Jackson, nasty, nasty. Make the right, get into the left lane. Two more blocks. Prefontaine's diagonal gets me to Third and Yesler. Half a block to Smith Tower. Eighteen minutes. Slipping. Do better next time.

Up the steps, through the corridor. Into the bike cage. Not too crowded today–the rain's good for something. Wiggle the bike down the ramp. Grunt, hoist bike into the air, impale the wheel on a hook. A bicycle abattoir it is. Climb the stairs to Seven. Read email, cool down, shower soon.

I mentioned the other day there were to be protest marches all over the country today against Proposition 8, the anti-gay marriage amendment that passed last week in California.

Thousands marched in Seattle, from Volunteer Park to Westlake Center. The P-I and the Seattle Times say 3,000. The Stranger says 6,000. I was one of them. It was a lot. Westlake was jammed.

The crowd was in good spirits. Pissed off at the votes in California, Florida, Arizona, and Arkansas, but determined to keep on fighting. Certain that time and right are on our side, that we will in the end triumph.

Equal Rights Washington is coordinating the fight in this state. Give them your time and money.

I've slowly been working my way through Shakespeare's Kings (recommended), so when I realized that Henry IV was playing at the Seattle Shakespeare Company, I decided to go. It's an adaptation of Henry IV, Part 1 and Part 2.

Henry IV usurped the crown from his cousin Richard II. The crown sits uneasily upon his head, rebellion is brewing, and his heir, Prince Hal (the future Henry V), is a wastrel who carouses with thieves like the fat rogue Falstaff. Hal, Falstaff, Henry IV, and Harry Hotspur (the rebel leader) are the central characters in this play. Hal's dissolution is compared unfavorably to Hotspur's chivalry. He must redeem himself in his father's eyes and cast off the influence of Falstaff, the "tutor and feeder of my riots".

This is an energetic production, with a good deal of sword fighting in the battle scenes in the second act. The larger than life Falstaff steals many of his scenes, while Hal must move nimbly between comedy and tragedy. Most of the cast adeptly juggle multiple roles.

Ends Sunday, November 16th. Recommended.

I'm the Secretary/Webmaster of Freely Speaking Toastmasters, a club whose membership is primarily LGBT, but is open to all. We were chartered in September 1988. I joined in 2004, after I left Microsoft and hence Microsoft Toastmasters.

We're so proud of being 20 years old that we've celebrated twice! We had a brunch for the current membership back in September, and tonight we had a party for current, former, and would-be members.

Not a huge turnout, but a lot of fun. Many of us spoke about what had drawn us to FSTM and what set it apart from other clubs for us.

I've been a member (and officer) of three Toastmasters clubs, FSTM, Microsoft Toastmasters, and Atlas Impressions—a club that I helped found last year, before I left Atlas. The two work clubs are fine in their own right, but each of them allots only an hour for the meeting, which is only barely enough. FSTM meets 7:00–8:30pm on Monday evenings at Group Health on Capitol Hill, and the extra half hour allows for a more relaxed pace. In particular, not only does each prepared speech get a formal evaluation, it also gets five minutes of open evaluation from the audience. The open evaluation is unusual in Toastmasters clubs. I feel that it engages the audience and it invariably gives rise to several suggestions and criticisms that the evaluator overlooked. FSTM is much more social than the two work clubs, and the membership is rather more diverse than high-tech workers.