Valentine's Snowday

 The first real snow in Seattle was pure magic.

Growing up in the midwest, we enjoyed the snow, but it was an infrequent occurrence when the whole community all went outside to play in the snow on the same day.

Snow in Seattle brought everyone outside

The cafes were busy with takeout orders, fire pits were on sidewalks across the city.

Valentines decorations looked enchanting under the fresh snow

Skiing on the streets, sledding down every hill, snowshoeing across the parks and a few snowboarders creating jumps on driveways.

As I continue to explore my new city today, I ventured along the snow-covered streets up Phinny Ridge and around Green Lake embracing the winter excitement.  

Localized adventures

 The past few weeks have brought me more localized in my adventures.

Trips to Seattle park spaces have included:

Ballard Locks

Sunset Park

Golden Gardens Park

Seaward Park

Thyme Patch Park

24th Ave Public Dock

Coleman Park

and today, into Shoreline to visit Richmond Beach Saltwater Park

2021 Donation Guide

My favorite tradition of the new year and thinking about how we want to make philanthropic decisions for the next year.

Last year, the donations at the start of the year was an incredibly good idea. I had made a resolution that I would learn more about water in 2020. In a year that had so many priorities and challenges the urgency of climate and water challenges often fell to the side. Due to our January donations and my new found time to read books I ended 2020 having accomplished my goals. I had helped keep climate action groups going and I personally had learned more about water.

See our 2020 Donation Post here: https://surrealvolunteering.blogspot.com/2020/01/2020-donation-guide.html  

This year we had long conversations about what we wanted to do this year. We quickly agreed that we wanted to support BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and women. 

Starting with the traditional charity idea, I did some reading and had a few important takeaways.

- Equity, thinking about how our modest donations could help tip the scales towards greater equity.

- Due to historic inequities in funding, voices (ideas, stories, businesses, inventions) from BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and women have not had an equitable chance. 

- The donor designation dynamic has created limitations.

- The need to not only create direct charity programs but to go deeper, thinking root cause and how to support that. Is it advocacy, education, employment, wealth creation?

Reflecting on this, I started to think about small investments in startups. Finding startup founders who identified as BIPOC, LGBTQ+, or female. Explored a few apps (Republic & WeFunder), both had a good selection of businesses. The drawback came down to that these would be donations that we would potentially be engaged with for many years, any startup that got off the ground, we would be an early investor of. This multi-year management was not for us at this time.

I pivoted to exploring Donors Choose, looking at classroom funding. How to invest in the education of BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and girls.  I have used this platform in past years for donating and genuinely enjoyed the experience. I came across some great projects, that helped me understand that this year I actually want to donate to BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and women businesses/creations.  (Classic example of donors' feelings above anything else being the driver for donations).

So tonight we landed on Kickstarter as the platform for this year's donations. We each had an equal dollar amount and with the guidelines of BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and women we started searching. The goal here was not to fund things that we wanted or thought would be successful. Not to judge if the proposal or plan was good. Only to find ideas lead by BIPOC, LGBTQ+, or women, where they are who we are supporting. 

We ended with a HUGE array of ideas that we backed.

Shop Sugar Clothing https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kieshab/shop-sugar-expanding

Valleto Dance https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/valleto2020/valleto-2020-performance-and-beyond

Rofhiwa Book Store https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2025896590/rofhiwa-book-cafe-a-book-and-coffee-spot-for-east-durham  

Antarktikos Magazine https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/antarktikos/antarktikos-magazine

Aseda - Artist & Musician https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wmwio/wake-me-when-its-over-an-ep-by-aseda-safoa 

Urban Dreams, Music and Art program https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/key2dakingdom/give-us-the-steam-to-power-our-dream

Sam - Comic Artist https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mushki/mixed-0

Jank - Debut Album https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/janksetup/jank-setup-debut-album-look-whos-talking

Krafty Kravings Cookie Company https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kraftykravings/krafty-kravings

LGBT Cat Pins https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/faeryphos/lgbt-cat-enamel-pins

Black-Owned Radio Station https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/247blackradio/rhode-islands-black-owned-radio-station

Alma Ocean Kiddy Pools https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/almaocean/alma-ocean?ref=discovery&term=pool

A bunny sweatshirt https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/xpinkwolfy/x-bunny-oversized-jacket?ref=discovery&term=sweatshirts

A diverse writer residency https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/therealauthorfactory/author-factory-a-writing-oasis-for-diverse-writers

A solar charging system https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1398120161/solar-cow-school-teleporter?ref=discovery&term=solar%20cow 

I continue to volunteer a few hours each month with the Red Cross and we have recently begun to explore other volunteer opportunities in the area, hope to add additional organizations to our volunteering list this year.

As in years past the goal of sharing these is to help shine additional light into the work being done and to hopefully encourage you to make a positive impact as part of your plan for 2021. 

Day Hike a Cedar Butte

Hiking is one of my favorite COVID safe activities. Last weekend I set my alarm on Saturday AM to get to Iron Horse state park before 10am. The trail for the day was Cedar Butte and it was spectacular!

Parking was no problem, the state park lot had lots of spaces on this December morning. There is also a non state park lot that I drove past, not sure what if any permits are needed to park there.

The weather was incredibly nice, mid 50's, Sunny and the occasional gusty breeze.

The Cedar Butte trail has add on options, I added an extra mile at the very start on a very wide/ flat trail to warm up and did an additional 1/2 mile add on the way down, bringing my total miles to 5.

I was able to keep a good distance from others on the warm-up and way up the Butte. Heading down the trail did start to become more crowded. I was glad to see the majority of people were wearing masks and it was easy enough to step off the trail to let people pass.

Pictures from my hike:

The park is only a 45min drive from our house, allows dogs, and has miles and miles of railroad grade trails for walking or biking. I am sure I'll be back to explore more.

See the full hike description here: https://www.wta.org/go-hiking/hikes/cedar-butte   

Virtual Family Scavenger Hunt

Our family, like many, have tried several Family Zoom calls to help create connections during our physical distancing due to COVID.

They have been ok, I personally, am glad we keep trying but have found them less than I would hope. The three things I have noticed are:

1. Its a lot of people (11, including 2 kids under 5). 

2. The conversations don't flow super well (A side effect of the group call).

3. It is hard for everyone to be engaged.

One of my brothers and I started to brainstorm on something fun or different to try. The result was a virtual family scavenger hunt.

I built a quick PowerPoint deck to lay out the idea & then shared the slides with everyone. We allowed for 15 days from launch to zoom call, that way each household could do the hunting on their own time.

Giving back is something that is incredibly important to me, so added in that those who did not complete the hunt would donate to the Seattle Homeless Outreach.

I created a scavenger hunt list that had a COVID life flair & combined riddle clues and some that were just things to find.

Over the next few weeks, everyone e-mailed the pictures to me and I created a PowerPoint slide deck with the submissions

The Sunday after we wrapped up the scavenger hunt we had a family zoom call where I shared the PowerPoint slides.

Albeit with some minor technical difficulties, it was a fun way to guide the conversation, kept people engaged, and gave a logical chance for everyone to be part of the conversation.

It was a success and has opened up the possibilities of trying more things other than just chatting via Zoom as we continue to navigate staying home and staying safe.

A COVID Day Trip to Renton WA

This weekend, as we have several other weekends, in one of our more frequent COVID activities we headed to a community we had not visited yet, Renton WA.  Renton is a bit of a drive from Seattle, perhaps 25 min south on I5.

What brought us down this weekend was to visit the gravesite and memorial of Jimi Hendrix. An interesting spot to walk around on this rainy weekend afternoon.

The cemetery where Jimi is buried has some elements that we have not seen before, including a large section that is heavily Asian design influenced. This made sense when we learned that Renton has over 25% of the population who identify as Asian/ Pacific Islander. 

Taking advantage of the cultural influence we had Sushi Rolls for lunch (Take out that we ate in our car parked in a slightly wooded parking area).

We drove around the commercial areas for a bit, spotted a sonic, and stoped in for some happy hour drinks before heading home.

In terms of COVID safety, the adventure was a success, We had only brief (less than 3 min) encounters with people while getting our food & sonic.

It was good to get out of our apartment and neighborhood and enjoyed the chance to see some Washington history & learn a bit more about our neighboring city of Renton.

Wonder filled Washington walk in West Seattle

 With COVID continuing to be part of our lives and looking to discover new parts of the new home we ventured to West Seattle to wander, walk and discover.

While we have heard about the beach town vibe and fun by Aliki beach we opted for something that we hoped would give us more social distancing.

The first stop was a Mexican food truck to get to-go for lunch. Taquito Feliz was excellent. Good outdoor ordering, with social distancing, ample hand sanitizer, and the staff was all wearing masks. The food was on point, I had a quesadilla and my partner had a combination taco plate.

We found parking just a block away from the taco truck (co-located with the 76 gas station) and were quickly able to jump on the Lincoln Park trail system heading down a large number of earthen stairs to arrive at the waterfront.

The waterfront has a good number of benches and picnic tables, we were easily able to secure a bench overlooking the beach to enjoy our lunch. The bonus was that the park has many trash cans that we could put our trash in when we were done!

We easily sat and enjoyed the sounds of the waves, birds, and people walking their dogs for over an hour before we continued our journey, walking along the waterfront and taking a more gradual path back up the hill to our car.

Self wellness has been a focus of mine since May 2020. Over the past few months, I have been trying to determine if we could get a massage and still mind COVID safety. After a few google searches, I was able to find a spa that was offering patio (outdoor), masks on, chair massages. I booked those for our weekend west Seattle day. After we left Lincoln park we drove about 10min over to the Seaview neighborhood.

The 30min chair massage was relaxing, I felt COVID safe being outdoors and enjoyed the unique experience of relaxing while hearing the sounds of the city, with a combination of essential oils and that light drizzle Seattle smell rounding out my senses. 

After my 30min chair massage, it was my partner's turn. I explored the neighborhood around the spa, starting with a chai latte from the coffee shop down the street, window shopped the local bookseller, and did a few blocks of neighborhood walking, bringing me back to the patio of the spa to round out my 30min.

Verdict: West Seattle is a great place to explore while keeping COVID safety in mind. I fully expect that we will venture back to check out other communities across this large portion of the city.