As part of my weekend explorations of Seattle, I visited Wallingford. This neighborhood, like most Seattle neighborhoods, consisted of a few commercial blocks along a congested avenue lined with shopping and cafes. I ate lunch at a weekend-breakfast place, and sat at the bar watching the short-order cooks. The grill chef—his stubbles length led me to the belief that he used the same razor on his head and face—served the finished plates to the counter, yelling “Alisa Please,” “Tim Please,” and “Samantha Please,” to pick up their respective dishes. I thought of many awful jokes about waiters from the Please family, or the Please Restaurant, but I resisted sharing them with you (well, sort of). The mushrooms in my delicious omelet must have been funky to sketch such absurdities in my Moleskine.

Besides the grill chef, there was an omelet chef, and three kitchen helpers, who chopped up the vegetables, prepared the toast and batters, and washed the dishes. They all wore the white chef shirts and checkered black and white pants that seem standard in kitchens. I wonder who started that. The restaurant smelled of frying butter, and because one table was in the bar area, the hostess asked everyone she placed on the waiting list if they were over 21. The waiting time for all patrons: 10 minutes regardless of how many people were waiting.

After lunch, I walked through Wallingford before settling on a Tully’s coffeehouse as my morning writing place. Tully’s had a nicer sitting area than the next-store bucks of stars. While I would have preferred a non-chain coffeehouse, the choices were slim. I wrote random warm-up thoughts, bad stories, and complaints, all of which I’ll post separately.

I spent the late afternoon in a quaint teahouse with a variety of tea choices and convenient electrical outlets and wireless access. I drank Hantou Dawn Oolong tea, served by the owner, a white man with wild black hair framing his baldhead, and thick, black eyebrows, which jutted out an inch on both sides of his head. He had a definite tea fetish, and served the tea with an almost-religious deference. He was chatting with the customer in front of me—a chat that resulted in me waiting an additional fifteen minutes before ordering my tea—about a former employee at the teahouse who moved to China and married a Chinese woman he met in the first Chinese restaurant he visited. I’m not sure if that was fate or desperation.

While at the teahouse, I tried to organize my thoughts, but my mind, still rattled from a caffeine overload, bounced too fast for me to grab onto. The tea was very tasty, but the service confused me. They provided two teapots, one full of the tealeaves and hot water, and the other empty. I poured the tea from the first teapot into my cup using the strainer. After drinking the whole teapot, I realized by watching my neighbors that I should have strained the tea into the second teapot, and poured my cups from there. At least I reckoned that they gave me an oven mitt to cover the teapot while it steeped.

As I drank the tea, I realized that the caffeine was too much after my morning mocha, and my mind soared miles ahead of the rush. I was comfortable with that, but I knew I’d need to organize these thoughts eventually, and the thought of picking through and finding gems was disconcerting.

After riding out the explosions, I drove home, and stopped at a shady carwash. The owners were adding to the twenty-year old carwash a barbeque shop and barbershop. For twenty dollars, they hand washed my car, even cleaning the inside of the rims, an area that hasn’t felt a sponge since I bought the car. Even though it rained halfway through the carwash, the interesting characters that worked or just hung out there made it a worthwhile stop. It’s nice to occasionally the corporate culture and find such neighborhood places.