Backtracking

A few posts back I mentioned hot chocolate, the Sorrento Hotel, Tromso, and one other thing I can't remember at the moment, and one I can but don't want to follow up on.

Let's start with the easy: Hot chocolate.




Last Saturday was not a good diet day. The too-rich-and-sugary-even-for-me peppermint hot chocolate was preceded by lunch at a Mexican restaurant in Pacific Place. Said lunch included a pomegranate margarita. Some people do the red meat disclaimer when ordering: "I never eat red meat..." Yep, we care. I choose to bore you with a different disclaimer: "I never drink, especially during the day..."

I accept your apathy.

Non-caloric activities in my Seattle day with Dee included Nordstroms, little funky stores in Pike Place market, and lots of walking.

After that I met with a wonderful new friend, who gave me a tour of Seattle nightspots. My favorite was the Sorrento Hotel, which is 100 years old. I normally dislike old buildings. I know this is freakish and wrong and you're going 'I looooooove old buildings...", but I tend to gravitate to modern, contemporary, futuristic, zen, whatever. In fact, my aversion to the opposite is typically so strong that if you want to see me shudder mention some combination of 'quaint', 'old' and 'bed-and-breakfast' in a sentence. Ugh! . This hotel though is gorgeous. It was weird, as we walked up to it I fell in love with it. It was almost a feeling of Deja Vu. Here's a link if you want to see what I'm talking about http://www.hotelsorrento.com/.

Ok, Tromso, Norway. The last letter of Tromso is supposed to have a strike through it...ok, yes, I can Google that, hold on: Tromsø. A 'Random Article' Wikipedia search had dictated I set my next story in Sweden. Been there and done that, so I migrated it to Norway. Tromso. Whoops, Tromsø. Tromsø is the northern-most college town in the world. It's well within the Arctic Circle. Factor in that it's one of the best places to see the northern lights, and it makes perfect sense that I want to write about it. While I'm generously providing links, here's one to Tromsø: http://www2.uit.no/www/inenglish. My story's setting is mainly at the university, so that's why that particular link.

The story I'm writing is a happy one. Yes, happy. In graphology (handwriting analysis) there is a practice called Graphotherapeutics. If you lack self esteem and / or ambition it's likely that when you cross the letter t, the bar is low across the stem. If you want to increase your self esteem and / or ambition, according to graphotherapeutics, cross your t's higher. I'm writing a happy story in order to similarly reprogram my subconscious. I'm also writing it simply because it came to me and I'm having fun with it. I'm not quitting my day job, so fun is what it's all about, right?