Nothing Like the Sun

Last night, a coworker and I tried out Seattle's newer Moroccan restaurant, Mamounia, which just happens to be in Cap Hill (my neighborhood).  ( Mmmm ... Moroccan food ... )

( Doin' the funky Sheikh ... )

Afterward, I took a walk through Cal Anderson Park (what we in the neighborhood like to call "Teletubbyland"), where I watched some guys (mostly bike messengers, it turned out) play bike polo--which, frankly, I'd never even heard of, before--on the soccer field, under a bright full moon.  Meanwhile, I listened to a couple of fellow spectators arguing (hopelessly, pointlessly) about whether there's a God or not ... 

I've been thinking about heading up to Ballard, one of these weekends, ever since the summer weather started to set in, and I finally did, today--although not (as planned) para tomar el sol or to get Puerto Rican food: Jen was up visiting from San Francisco (for the first time since February!) and we met attam for lunch at Ray's Boat House, which was one of Jen's old haunts from her Seattle days.

Then I spent a lazy, sunny day on the water reading about Medieval Spain. I learned, among other things, that the name of the Spanish Catholic shrine, Santiago de Compostela, is a corruption of the Latin Sanctus Iacomus de Campus Stellarum--"St. James of the Field of Stars."