Condo 4 Sale again

Boo! The condo is up for sale again. Our non-buyer found us via a Craigslist ad we placed while we waited to officially list the property. We were a little wary having had some CL issues in past when we tried to give away a washing machine -- but the transaction was proceeding. Then Mr. CL started getting cold feet and asking ridiculous questions about the building. That was the first sign that we were about to get burned. Tonight, he's decided to back out. It's within his rights as a buyer. But he's leaving us hanging. So, file this post under plaintive whining -- we have to keep the place cleaned up for walk-throughs again!

--j

Charting Seattle's blog interest

One of the best blogs about blogging turns us onto this neat new trick from Technorati -- the weblog search engine.

Here are two 'live' charts of references to 'seattle' and 'portland' in blogs tracked by Technorati. Portland, we got you beat, sucka! Really, we're not going to gloat about the head-to-head thing -- in both charts you can see the growing swell of blogging in general. It's especially cool to be able to track this swell in relation to what we've been writing about.



Posts that contain Seattle per day for the last 30 days.



Posts that contain Portland per day for the last 30 days.

--j

One question about the Seattle Center suicides

Sure, there are bigger questions for the families or friends or witnesses. But from our perspective, we've got to ask just one -- why the Seattle Center? Is it becuase the venue is the last warm, free, public place in the city? It would be sad to see the place changed because of this. While the lame carnival rides are an embarrassment, the eclectic mix of entertainment and mall food inside the Center has created an oddly charming gathering place.

2 public suicides at Seattle Center called unusual
By Sara Jean Green
Seattle Times staff reporter
Seattle Center officials say two recent suicides in the Center House are unfortunate, but they concede there's little they can do to prevent such a thing from happening again.

Counselors have been made available to Seattle Center employees who may have witnessed the most recent suicide, which occurred Friday when an 84-year-old homeless man shot himself at the end of an evening jazz performance. The King County Medical Examiner's Office on Monday identified the man as Forest David Howe.

--j

2 restaurants for cheap eats

As we wind down our days living uptown, the combination of wanting to try things we never got to and a total lack of time has us eating out quite a bit. And our looming huge mortgage has us looking to save a penny or two even when we're too lazy to cook. Recently, Belltown's Toi and Lower Queen Anne's Marinepolis Sushi Land fit the bill.

Toi lured us in with their 'Blue-Eyed Devil' all-Monday night happy hour. Why we always fall for the happy hour thing, I don't know. Happy hours are never really that great of a deal and you end up ordering off a limited menu and missing some of the best things the restaurant has to offer. Toi's happy hour was typical -- they even have the classic happy hour menu item that is a 1/2 serving of a regular entree at the low, low price of 1/2 the regular entree! We'll let you figure it out. We did better when we happily abandoned happy hour and ordered a bowl of the spicy tom ka soup and blew away all of our happy hour value with a 10 buck Grey Goose martini. So much for being cheap.

Meanwhile, cheap is the best thing going for Sushi Land -- it is definitely a low-priced option for kaiten sushi action. With the cheapest plates at $1 a pop, the neverending flow of kaiten boats is a fun way to get stuffed. But you definitely get what you pay for. We usually joust each other with our chop sticks for the last bites of unagi -- but it turns out we've been eating at fancy-pants sushi joints with good unagi. The stuff at Sushi Land was mealy and flavorless. Better were the simple preparations like the spicy tuna or California rolls. You can get the full scoop on Marinepolis SL over at SushiFinder.com -- you'll also see a note or two over there mentioning some problems with the health department. The concerns are legit -- you can see for yourself over on the King County Health web site. There were some major issues last year and some problems as recently as this October. But this kind of thing comes up with lots of restaurants -- people just tend to think about it a lot more when it comes to eating boats of raw fish. Um, yum?

BTW, to be fair, here are Toi's inspection notes -- no such issues there. Still, the next time we're feeling cheap, we'll take our chances with Sushi Land.

--j

Tags: uptown, seattle, restaurants, toi, sushiland

The other side of the smoking ban: body odor

From the always sweet-smelling Stranger, comes this excellent point re: the impact of WA state's indoor smoking ban:

While the positive reviews stream in, there was one dissenter: "Something negative I did notice [at the Laptop Battle] was far more B.O. and a lot of farts and food smells," gripes Andrew Luck. "It was really gross. Bring back the smoke, 'cause people smell even worse when you get that many in a room."

-- j