Chocolate, Cheese, & Poo Poo

First, a quick work update: I pretty much spent the first couple weeks wondering what in the world I was supposed to be doing?  Now, I think I have a better grasp of what I'm supposed to do, but now the question is how the heck am I supposed to get it all done on time?!?  I've been working really hard reviewing proposals and budgets, writing SOPs, planning site visits and audits, and organizing and attending tons of meetings with frighteningly important people!  I can totally understand why everyone kept saying that I should've started six months ago, but considering that I've been there less than a month I think I'm doing pretty well.

This Saturday I organized a meetup event with the "Besties" group to attend an amazing chocolate festival.  It was just a small group of girls that came, but that was probably good because otherwise it would've been too hard to keep track of a lot of people.  The festival was held at some conference center near my house and they had I think 20 different chocolate companies (mostly local) each one giving out tons of samples.  It was kind of crowded and crazy with everyone trying get at the samples, but I still managed to eat way more than I thought was humanly possible.  One company had a ridiculously delicious basil chocolate truffle and a bunch of them had different versions of salted caramel chocolates which I love!

Some might say that you can't have too much of a good thing, but let me tell you, I think I may have reached that point.  Naturally, after stuffing my face full of chocolate, what did I decide to do?  Go to a cheese festival, of course!  The Besties girls and I decided to walk down a few blocks to Pike's Market where they were holding a huge, free cheese festival.  There must have been 20 different cheese makers (many local) all set up in tents and giving out samples!  I guess goats are really popular in the PNW so there was tons of fabulous goat cheese along with all types of cheddars, goudas, blues, and more.  It was a beautiful, sunny day outside so after eating an absurd amount of cheese I just walked around and enjoyed all the energy in the atmosphere.

You could smell the butter sizzling while they made grilled cheeses



They had a mozzarella making demonstration




Lots of street performers





There also happened to be some sort of weird pirate festival going on downtown

 Unfortunately the weather wasn't quite so cooperative on Sunday for my hike up to Poo Poo point.  My new friend from work, Leslie, liked saying the name Poo Poo so we decided to do our first hike with the Seattle Hiking meetup group.  The forecast called for 90% chance of rain all day long and a high temperature of 54 degrees, but we didn't want to bail on the first hike we signed up for and we figured that we'll just have to get used to the rain if we plan on being true PNW hikers.  I'm not gonna sugar-coat it... it was pretty miserable :(  I'm really glad I went and Leslie and I were mostly laughing through the misery, but the entire trail was a total mud pit; enough to completely sink into and cover your boots.  I was so thankful to have good quality hiking boots and felt really sorry for the people in sneakers.  Although I had relatively dry feet (some water snuck in through the tops of my boots) the rest of me was soaked to the bone.  Silly me, I only had cotton pants, so by the end of the trip I think they weighed 10 lbs from being so water-logged and underneath my nice waterproof raincoat I was sweating like a pig so the top half of me was soaked too. 

The most frustrating part of the hike was that I was the slowest person in the whole group!!!  I didn't think I was that out of shape.  I knew when I hiked with my brother, he was way faster, but I thought he was the outlier, not the norm.  Leslie was faster than me but both of us were still way behind the rest of the group.  When we got near the top we had completely lost track of the group and the trail signage was super confusing.  We were really worried that we had somehow taken a wrong turn so we just hiked back to the last marker and waited, and waited, and waited.  The hike was an out-and-back so we knew the group had to walk past us.  After standing around shivering for what seemed like forever, the group finally made their way back to us.  Apparently we had been on the correct path and if we had just gone a quarter mile further we would've met up with them and reached the actual Poo Poo point.

Everyone was cold, wet, and muddy by the time we got back to the cars.  The best part of the trip was having a big, hot bowl of pho with the group once we got back to the city.  I definitely want to keep exploring and hiking out here, but I think I'll be more picky about the weather and I'll have to build up my stamina before I go out with that group again.

On a totally unrelated note, I saw this while walking around today and it creeped me out.  It looks like some took the time to pose a dead bird on a twig sticking out of a bush.