Day 1: The Pre-Party

 Clark (Whose comments are in green) and I arrived in Seattle late Wednesday night.  The rest of the crew arrived throughout the day on Thursday (mostly at night) which gave us an extra day to do some extra sight-seeing, friend-seeing and yummy eating.  We met up that morning with Clark's former co-worker, Holly, for a tasty breakfast at Portage Bay Café. 

 On our walk home we snapped a shot by the "graffiti-with-no-consequences" building.

 With Mel & Justin in tow, we stalked Kurt Cobain's former house and bench.  It's a rather tall bench... Apparently this is the bench where Kurt Cobain sat and considered his life before taking it in his garage just a few yards away.  It was his birthday and fans had come by the bench and left birthday presents for Kurt including a skeleton in a coffin type PEZ dispenser.  I'm a big Kurt Cobain fan, so this was a fun time.

 Enjoyed a lovely (and chilly) view of one of the many waterfronts in the area.  Can't recall the name of this particular one.   

 Found Bruce Lee's grave site.  We did find Bruce Lee's grave site.  We were looking for it.  It's not like we were walking through a cemetery and stumbled upon it.  This is Amy and I doing some martial arts maneuvers in his honor.  We are not showing off out best sailor impersonations. 

 The first Thursday of the month is free museum day in Seattle, so we dropped in the Asian Art museum where Cass entertained us with a puppet show.  This picture is actually me performing ventriloquism on Cassie while she's doing ventrioloquism on that puppet.  It's a puppet inside a puppet.  Basically like a real life MC Escher painting.

 Pretty grounds. 

 Lunch at the Volunteer Park Café.

 My hot chocolate stayed beautiful the whole time I drank it. 

 Later we headed to the EMP (Experience Music Project) / Science Fiction Museum.  The talented Cassie Rae designed this exhibit!

 Becca and Brian arrived and met us at the museum where we enjoyed some live music.  I love this because this is where Clark first got to feel little Baby Schmutz moving around.  It was a sweet moment.  Baby must have liked the music.  There is something really weird about feeling your baby move around.  I think it has been my favorite moment from potential fatherhood thus far.  And I don't think there was any correlation from the music to the baby moving.  He moves when he feels like it...which always seems to be when I'm not around.

 The EMP guitar tower.  Actually not just a guitar tower, but a sculpture made of several different instruments.  There were some keytars and accordians in there.

 More fun at Cassie's house.   I told Cassie that this wall of animal masks reminded me of every scary movie I had ever seen.  Don't I look scary?  I'm the guy with the pig mask on, if you couldn't tell.

 C & Clark dressed as the goat and the pig.  Such funny boys.  When you wear these masks, you have no peripheral vision.  Which reminds me of a funny story involving my friend Dan, a man dressed as a banana and a hammer.  If you ever are hanging out with me, remind me to tell you that one.

By nightfall we had all of us (sans Ashlee) together from across the country.  Makes me smile just to look at this picture.