Statistics in Seattle

As I mentioned, I spent the last half of June attending a total of 60 hours of lectures on statistical genetics.  I know, you're jealous.  Actually, it was a great workshop and I learned a ton about the underlying statistical models for the new types of data I'm dealing with in my postdoc.  Most of my modules were quite literally taught by the people who wrote the books on the subjects and I came away feeling inspired to work through a lot of the more challenging statistical papers I come across.  But enough about math, here's what I did on my weekends.

The weather was cool and gray the first weekend in Seattle (shocking, I know), but we headed to the Pike's Place Market on Sunday morning and made a brunch out of local fruit, coffee, pastries, fresh tuna poke, and piroshkies from Piroshky Piroshky.  Yum.

Less yummy?  The gum wall.  Yes, folks, each of those colorful dots on the wall and window ledge behind us is a chewed up piece of gum.  Gross, but oddly fascinating.

We took a ferry ride out to the island of Bainbridge where I had a serendipitous encounter at Churchmouse Yarns & Teas.  I fell in love with some wool yarn from Uruguay and decided to buy it as a memory of the trip.  As the woman was winding my hanks into balls, she mentioned that she still wasn't used to the cool summers since she had grown up in Lawrence, KS.  I told her that I went to KU and it turns out that her father is a retired biochemistry professor and close friends with one of the professors I worked for as an undergrad.  I had lost touch with him because he had moved away from Kansas after he retired, but she had spoken to him just the day before!  I gave her my contact info to pass on to him and now we are catching up via e-mail.  A small world, indeed - and full of Jayhawks!

The next weekend we had dinner downtown and headed up the Space Needle a bit before sunset.  It was a beautiful, clear day and we could see Mt. Rainier in the distance.

We stayed up at the top through sunset and it became quite cold and very, very windy.  

We drank coffee and chatted while night fell and were rewarded with a beautiful view of the city.

The next day, we went to the zoo!  I love zoos and I took a million pictures of all the different animals.  I'll spare you menagerie and give you just a picture of Denise and Laurel petting goats.

Also, us riding a dinosaur.  I'm not really sure why their was a dinosaur exhibit at the zoo, but I can tell you that having seen real animals all day, there were quite a few toddlers scared of the animatronic giants.

After the zoo, we had dinner with some friends and their very sweet cat in their gorgeous backyard that you can actually eat in, because it isn't 105 degrees and full of bugs (I'm not bitter about Texas summer, I swear).

Being nerdy anthropologists, we had to visit the Burke Museum of Natural History and Anthropology before we left town.  We were extremely impressed with their collections including

freaky giant bird fossils, 

amazing carved fish totems,

and fantastic dragon masks.

My last night in town, my friend MJ and I had dinner and then I got up the next morning for the long flight home.  It was a great trip, but I'm glad to be back.