Seeing Seattle

It is trip time again!  I never even finished sharing all of my adventures from our trip to England and now I have another adventure to write about!  We just got home at 10 o'clock tonight, but The Lady said we should stay up and write about our trip to Seattle now.  She said something about it really doesn't seem so late since we are still on Seattle time and that is different from Dallas time.  I don't quite know how that works.  All I know is that I am a sleepy blue and orange monster. but I want to tell you all about our trip, so here goes...

We left on Thursday after The Lady taught her classes.  Mr. Guy helped me pack my things while she was at school.  He told me that we were going to Seattle so that The Lady could learn new stuff about picture taking.  I thought she knew about picture taking, but apparently there is lots more stuff that she needs to learn.  Mr. Guy and I picked The Lady up at school and we went to the airport.  After we got checked in, we had some lunch.

We don't eat the "M" meals very often.  It is special airport food.  I sure do like those french fries!  While we were eating our lunch, Mr. Guy got a message saying that they had changed the gate for our airplane.  We had to go to a whole different terminal.  I was afraid that we would have to walk, but Mr. Guy said that there was a thing called SkyLink that would take us.  He said it was kind of like a train.  A train at an airport seemed a little strange to me, but as long as I didn't have to walk, I was okay with strange.

We didn't have to wait too long for the train.

I was happy to see Seattle on the sign when we got to our new gate.  I didn't want to have to move again.  Really, I didn't have to walk at all.  Mr. Guy is always a good sport and carries me.  Oh!  I got a new shirt for this trip!

It's perfect, don't you think?

When we finally got on the plane, I put my little monster head down and went to sleep.  I don't remember any of the trip.  I didn't even have a snack.  I guess all of that moving from terminal to terminal tired me out!  Next thing I knew we were picking up our luggage and getting in a fancy black car to go to our hotel in Seattle.  I went right back to sleep.  The Lady said that it wasn't as late in Seattle as it was in Dallas because we gained two hours.  Here's that time thing again!  I just wanted to go to bed.  So, I did!

I was nice and rested when I woke up on Friday.  Friday was the day that The Lady's picture taking classes started.  The event was called Click Away.  I like that name.  It makes sense to me since I always hear The Lady's camera go click, click, click when Mr. Guy and I are around.

Mr. Guy and I looked around while The Lady was in her morning class.  When she was done, I asked what her class was about.  She said, "Boudoir photography."  I said, "Boo what?"  She explained that it was a special kind of picture taking where ladies wear the kind of clothes that people don't see them in most of the time.  I asked her if she meant pajamas.  She told me that that wasn't it.  I must have looked confused because she finally explained that the ladies wore fancy underwear.  I don't know why anyone would want their picture taken in their underwear!  The Lady explained that this kind of picture taking helps ladies feel pretty and helps them to accept how they look even if they may not always feel pretty.  I thought about that and wondered if anyone wanted to take a picture of a blue and orange furry monster in his underwear.  Then I changed my mind.  I think I'll stick to just letting The Lady take pictures of me in my t-shirts!

The Lady also took some classes in taking wedding pictures.  I guess I won't be in any of those pictures either.  I am too young to get married.  But even when I'm older, I don't want to get married.  I don't think that there is a girl monster out there who would love me as much or take care of me as well as Mr. Guy and The Lady.  I think that I will live with them forever.  Besides, the closet with all of my t-shirts is at their house.  

This was The Lady's favorite place at the conference.

The Lady got a new camera there.  I asked her if you had to have a special camera to take pictures of people in their underwear and wedding people.  She said, "No."  She told me that she could use her new camera to take pictures of me and Mr. Guy too.  So far, she hasn't taken any pictures with it yet.  She said that she wanted it to stay packed in its box so it could travel home safely.  I bet she will take some pictures of me this week...I will be wearing a t-shirt, not just my underwear!

On Saturday night, Mr. Guy, The Lady, and I went to The Seattle Space Needle.  We had to walk almost a mile from our hotel to get there.  That wasn't so bad, but it was raining.  The Lady said that it rains a lot in Seattle and that she likes the rainy weather.  I don't mind the rain, but I sure wish I had had a raincoat!  Mr. Guy did his best to keep my warm and dry.

When we got to the Space Needle to buy our tickets, they said it would be two hours before we could ride up the elevator.  That is how you get up high so you can see the city.  While we waited, Mr. Guy and The Lady took me to the Chihuly Gardens.  I asked them what  grew in the Chihuly garden.  The Lady said it was a glass garden.  They grow glass?, I thought.  That sounded a little strange to me.   The Lady told me that it is a glass sculpture garden.  Dale Chihuly, the glass artist, makes all kinds of beautiful shapes with colored glass.  I was a little nervous to go to a place where everything is glass.  I am a careful monster, but I was still worried that I might break something.  Mr. Guy said that it would be fine as long as I didn't touch anything. He held me very close so that I wouldn't trip and fall and break something accidentally.

Some of the glass looked like Christmas trees.  They were brightly colored and had lights shining through them  They were beautiful!

The light bouncing all around through the glass was really neat looking.  I liked the place where the glass was on the ceiling.  I knew that I could not break anything if the sculptures were up high!

While we were looking at the glass on the ceiling, I met a really nice girl named Lindsay.  She was from California and she wanted to be my friend.  Though I have done a terrible job with my Hundred People Project, Lindsay made me want to get back to it because she asked to have her picture taken with me.  That made me a happy little monster.  Her mister friend took a picture of us and The Lady took one too.  Now I have twenty-five people!  I will make it to a hundred.  I will.

After I had my picture taken with Lindsay, I saw something that looked like a big glass bowl.  Mr. Guy said that they should put Chex Mix in it.  I don't think that is what it was for!

It was a very pretty blue bowl!  I liked Mr. Chihuly's glass because he used a lot of blue and orange, the best colors for almost anything!  I was nervous being this close to Mr. Chihuly's big blue bowl.  I didn't want to stay in this spot for very long!

Next we saw more glass sculptures up on the ceiling. More orange glass!

This part was in a great big glass building, but it was just plain building glass not the cool kind of glass used for the sculptures. 

There were also lots more glass sculptures outside.  I don't understand how they don't get broken.

Mr. Guy got mad at The Lady because she let me sit on the wet rain covered bench.  I didn't mind, but  my monster underwear did get a little wet.  That was OK because nobody was going to take pictures of my underwear!   I do definitely need a raincoat before we again visit any place with lots of rain.

After we finished touring the garden, we still had an hour before our elevator time.  We went and had a snack, fried cheese curds.

The words "curds" is kind of an ugly sounding word.  I was pretty sure that I didn't want to eat anything called "curds."  Mr. Guy said that they were good and that I should try them.  I did and they were, but the word curds still does not sound appetizing!

Finally it was time to get in the elevator line to ride to the top of the Space Needle.  The Space Needle is 605 feet tall.  That is like 600 hundred of me standing on top of each other!

I was a little scared, but not too much so.  We got in line with lots of other people.

The elevator ride to the top was super quick!  It took us longer to ride the hotel elevator to the twelfth floor where our room was than it did to ride all the way to the top of the Space Needle.  When we got off of the elevator, I felt like I was in a giant spaceship.

We then went outside to walk around the outside of the spaceship Space Needle.  It was rainy and cold and SO WINDY!  I was a frigid little monster.  Not only did I need that raincoat, I also needed my orange sweater that Ms. Joni made for me. 

I didn't even think about bringing my sweater because when I was packing in Dallas, it was almost too hot for a t-shirt, forget a sweater!  If I had my own cellphone with all of those fancy app things, I could have checked the weather in Seattle while I was packing.  I mentioned this to Mr. Guy.  He said no phone for me.

Back inside, there was a great big map that showed all of the places where people have traveled from that have visited the Space Needle.

Mr. Guy added our names to the map.

One of those yellow dots is me!

After Mr. Guy signed our names, we walked back to our hotel.  It was still raining, but it was not nearly as cold and windy on the ground as it was 605 feet up in the air!  We needed to get back and pack.  The Lady got lots of new picture taking stuff and Mr. Guy was not sure where it was all going to go.  I got a new t-shirt and the Space Needle, but it did not take up much room in our suitcase.

When we got up on Sunday morning, it wasn't raining anymore.  We took a short walk around our hotel.  There were lots of pretty orange flowers, and the leaves on the trees were also turning orange.  The trees in Texas do not have orange leaves.

We took a few pictures and then it was time to leave for the airport and our trip home.

When we got to the airport, I was hungry.  Mr. Guy bought me a sandwich on funny a bread.  It had a hole in the middle of it.  That seemed strange.  I was worried that Mr. Guy got defective bread.  He told me that it was supposed to be that way.  The bread was called a beagle, or a bugle, or something like that.  

It tasted good, but I still don't know why all of the sandwich insides didn't fall out of the hole in the middle of my bread.  I like un-holy bread better.  Is that right?  Well, you know what I mean.

When we finally got on the airplane, I fell asleep in Mr. Guy's lap.  I didn't wake up until we were almost back in Dallas and the flight attendant starting talking to me.  

She wanted to know my name and where I had been.  I got excited because I thought that maybe I could have my picture taken with her and I would be up to person #26, but nope.  She said that she was not allowed to have her picture taken while in her working clothes, something about 7-eleven, or costing nine dollars and eleven cents, or something.  I didn't want to get her in trouble, so I will have to find another person #26.

Finally we were back in Dallas.  We waited for our suitcase to come around the racetrack.

Once we had our bag, we headed home and I started writing.  And that is my story about Seattle.

THE END!

Me in Ely and Cambridge

Here it is Saturday. I think I am starting to catch up with the days. Even though it is already Saturday, I’m writing about Friday.

Today we had breakfast in the hotel. The Lady said that breakfast was served every morning in the hotel!  I thought it was nice of them to give us breakfast everyday. Blue and Orange monsters need to start their day with a good breakfast. 

After breakfast, it was back on the bus. The people in Britain call it a “coach”.  I thought a coach was someone who taught game players how to beat up other game players.  That is not what it means here.  Mr. Martin was there waiting for us. He is the coach driver, not the coach.  Mr. Martin drove us to a place called Ely. There is a big church there called a Cathedral. The Lady and the singing people were going to sing a concert there. 

We had to park a hundred miles away and walk to the cathedral. Well, it was not 100 miles really, but it seemed like it. Mr Guy carried me all the way from the coach (see I’m learning to speak British!) to the cathedral.  When we got there, I was surprised. The only churches I had seen were small ones like the one in Delaware next to store where The Lady and Mr. Guy adopted me. Ely Cathedral is GREAT BIG. It is all stone and colored glass windows. As we walked it seemed to get bigger. It was almost a scary place. 

Some nice folks there gave us a tour. That made it seem less scary. Ely is very old. Because it is so big and made of stone, things echo everywhere. All the voices sounded louder.  We learned a lot about the history of the cathedral. I did not get it all. I think there are things I needed to know before I got there about Norman (whoever he is) and some other guy named Henry D8. Maybe he is related to R2D2.  Even though I was confused, Mr. Guy really seemed interested. So I guess it was all good. 

In the afternoon the singing people did their concert. It was really good. I had never heard them sing before. I was a little worried that they would not let blue and orange monsters in to the concert. The cathedral people were very nice.  A couple of them asked Mr Guy all about me. He told them how I go places and have this blog. They thought that was great! So I got to go.  When we got to the chapel where the singing people were going to do their concert, there was some blue there.  The Chapel was called The Lady Chapel and the blue lady was The Virgin Mary.

If you want to hear what the singing people sounded like, here is a link to one of the songs that they sang in The Lady Chapel at Ely Cathedral.

When the singing was over, we got back on the coach and Mr Martin took us back to Cambridge. We had the whole afternoon to look around there. Cambridge has a big and old college. It is bigger and older than the college where The Lady teaches or either of the colleges where Mr. Guy and The Lady went to school.  The Lady got me a new shirt just so I don’t forget about Cambridge!! YAY!!! 

I’m not really going to go to Cambridge for college. I would have to leave The Lady and Mr. Guy. I don’t want to do that.  And, I am not really good at school things.  I like it when The Lady and Mr. Guy teach me what I need to know. 

One thing that Mr. Guy taught me about while we were in Cambridge was telephone booths.  I thought booths were someplace that you sat with your friends at a restaurant, a place where you were supposed to eat and talk to your friends who are right there with you.  Telephone booths are places where you do talk to your friends, but you have to pay money to talk to them on a piece of plastic that is attached to the wall of the telephone booth with a big thick piece of wire.  This all seemed very strange.  Mr. Guy's telephone booth is much smaller.  He can carry it in his pocket wherever he goes.  He does not have to stay attached to a big red box on the street corner to talk to his friends.

While we were in Cambridge, we also did something called punting.  I thought punting was something that those coach people did to help their team beat up the other team.  Apparently in Britain, punting means something else too.  We rode on a funny boat where a guy stood on the end and pushed us along the river.  

It was fun and we got to see more of Cambridge.  It was a little like bumper cars though because not all of the boat drivers were good and boats kept running in to eat other.  It was not scary, though.

Neither was this dinosaur.

We had a snack with Mr. Mickey and Ms. Robin.  They liked me and were not embarrassed to walk around with me.

After our fun afternoon and evening, we went back to the hotel. We were going to leave Cambridge in the morning and we needed a good night’s sleep. 

So that is what Friday was like. I will tell you about Saturday (which is really today) tomorrow!

I know…the time and days are all confused because I wrote this on time but did not post it on time and now it is several weeks later.  After I wrote this post, I realized that it was going to be hard to get this done while we were in England.  I will tell you all about the rest of my trip, but I will write about it from where I am now, back in Texas!

England Bound!

This post was written on Friday July 22. We had trouble with getting the pictures to my blog. So Mr Guy and the Lady are helping me catch up.   I have so many pictures and so many things to share!  It is going to take this little blue and orange furry monster lots of minutes to write all of these words!  Please be patient with me!

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Wow I'm a little confused. I think it has been three days since we left home. It was Wednesday, but now it is Friday! The Lady says we lost six hours on the plane. Disappearing time is too much for a little blue and orange monster to understand. 

You may wonder why we are going to London. Actually we are only going to the London airport and then traveling by bus to another part of Great Britain. Mr Guy told me London is a city in Great Britain. The Lady sings with her church choir and they are singing at churches in Great Britain.

The last few days have been a go go go time. We got on the plane in Dallas on Thursday, Wednesday, I looked at the sign and it said we were going to London. 

The Lady and Mr Guy had told me that we would be going on a long trip some time ago. We had even looked it up in the Atlas at Mr Guys school before he retried retired. Until I helped Mr. Guy and The Lady pack a whole bunch of stuff at home, it did not seem real.   

They let me put a few shirts in their bags.  I did not take too many because I knew I would find some new shirts in England.  I was afraid that if I took any more shirts, there would not be enough room to bring any new ones home.

The Lady had to take lots of special singing clothes that took up a lot of room in her bag.  She packed something that she called vest mints or investments or something.  They looked like a long black dress and a short white bib or something.

We got to the airport very early and then waited a while before we got on the biggest plane I have ever seen. The Lady and Mr Guy said they had never seen one that big either.   I wish we had taken a picture!

We were in a section called "business class". I wasn't sure this was good because I thought Mr Guy had retired and The Lady was off for the summer; I did not think they would be busy in classes while we were on the airplane. Mr Guy explained that class is a word with a lot of meanings. In this case it means a type of space you get on the plane. The Lady said that this was like first class we had flown before, but maybe even better. 

It think business class really was better! There were lots of buttons for me and Mr. Guy to push and we got lots of space and the seat folded out into a bed! 

They gave us great food for dinner. 

Mr Guy and I watched a movie.  Our TV also showed us where in the world our airplane was flying.

This map didn't look quite like the atlas that Mr. Guy had shown me.

These screens had lots of numbers on them!  All of this made my eyes tired so I took a nap.  Or maybe I went to bed.

The Lady worked on her pictures and on her own blog. When Mr Guy and I woke up it was time for breakfast! And it was already Thursday morning. I thought it should be Wednesday night still because we didn’t sleep that long. Mr Guy tried to explain time zones and the lost six hours to me, but I just did not understand. 

When we finally got to London and got off of the plane, we went through this place called imagination, or something like that. There we told the Great Britain person (Mr Guy says people from Great Britain are called "British") why we were in Great Britain. The Lady and Mr Guy had to show their passports. These are little books with terrible pictures of The Lady and Mr. Guy that say that they came from the United States and that they are allowed to travel to other countries. Mr Guy said I did not need a passport because everyone wants visits from blue and orange monsters. 

Once we got our bags, everyone from the singing people group got on a bus. Most of these people had not met me so there were a lot of introductions. I will tell you more about the bus another time. The most important thing about getting on the bus was that everyone was excited because Mr Simon is our guide and Mr Martin is driving our bus. These two did the same things for the singing people three years ago when they came to Great Britain. The Lady and Mr Guy had not adopted me yet so I wasn't on that trip.  It was BBB - Before Blueper B.

Mr Martin is a good bus driver. He took us all to a city called Cambridge. 

First we had lunch...or breakfast...or a midnight snack and then had a tour of Cambridge. 

The singing people had special blue shirts so that they could find each other.  I like that their shirts were blue!  I did not have one of their special shirts, but by accident, I wore a blue shirt that was the same color as theirs.  That's good.  I didn't want to get lost in this city that was way far away from home.

It was fun to see this very old city even though we were very tired because we lost our nighttime, which meant we lost our sleep time!  

After our tour, we finally went to our hotel, ate dinner and went to sleep.  We woke up and the it was Friday.

That is what we have done so far. Today (Friday, really) we are going to a place called Ely Cathedral where The Lady and the rest of the singing people will make music together for the first time in England. I hope I get to go. Then we will go back to Cambridge and have the afternoon to look around.