Nikky Discovers the Seahawks Win

“WOAH. Who replaced the Seahawks with a good team?”

“I see we’re trying really hard not to win the Andrew Luck bowl this year.”

“Too bad we still suck.”

“Seahawks? More like Seahonks.”

Nikky Discovers the Seahawks Lose

“Seahawks are dead to me.”

“I wish I got paid to play football as poorly as we did.”

Conclusion

I only have room for one team in my heart, and that’s the University of Washington Huskies football team. The Seahawks are but a poor substitute. With colors that aren’t as awesome.

I’ll admit it: I can sometimes get too involved with work and my own life that I can forget that I’m not just one person in this world, but a being living in a collective establishment known as a city. And not just any city, but a population center in world-class city.

When this happens, I get something I call “Nikky Vision,” which is almost self-descriptive in nature. Everything else–societal ills, class warfare, and confused politics–all blend in the background as only what I want to view comes into the forefront.

Two things today forced me back into reality.

Lament of the Subway Employee

Making my weekly visit to Subway in the U-District today, a converstation between the customer and the employee behind me struck a cord. It was as resonating as it is simple. After they went through a few pleasantries:

Sandwich Orderer: “So do you go to school?”

Employee, with a hint of sadness: “I wish I could.”

And that, my friends, is basically all that’s wrong with our society. Where we are incapable of sending willing and able young adults to college. And instead we waste their talents and enthusiasm making sandwiches for those lucky enough to be able to go to school. Disgusting.

Encounter on the 49

On the way home from work I usually get on one of the first stops of route 49, so I’m almost guaranteed a window seat where I’m perfectly content with staring out the passing cityscape as I try to empty my mind of terminals and web publishing.

Instead of looking out the window, today I was dinking around on my tablet with a new magazine application. After settling on reading a blog about video games, I noticed that someone got on next to me. I don’t know how or why it struck me, but I sensed that they were someone who was down on their luck and was around my parent’s age. As they glanced at me, reading about gaming, I suddenly felt a overwhelming sense of guilt and shame.

I give as much as I can to a multitude of local charities that all do exceptional work, but I felt like no matter how much I did and supported, things could never be perfect. There would always be suffering and many very well-meaning and nice people are worse off than me. And there’s nothing I can do about it. That’s a sobering concept, and a tough one to swallow.

And it was good. MGS4ing it up while starting to consider my proto-living room home was a good first step in adjusting to the idea of actually decorating and filling an apartment rather than just a room. EXPANSION OF THINGS AND STUFF COMMENCING.

Exactly a week later, I got back from the Apple Cup to discover something odd: my apartment door was unlocked it was certainly cool and drafty inside. And what is this? Oh, there’s a hole where one of my windows used to be. Interesting.

I suppose someone else wanted my TV more than I did. And take it they did after busting out one of the windows (which is rather hard to get at from the outside, so they must have certainly wanted it) with a brick and climbing through the non-safety glass and wounding themselves quite a bit.

They certainly took a particular path. My TV and HDMI cable were gone, but the PS3, Blu-Rays, and PS3 games were all there. My laptop from 2006 was missing too, but my desktop, monitors, and DSLR WHICH WAS JUST SITTING ON THE FLOOR were all untouched.

My large hiking backpack, partially filled with really awesome things, was taken to presumably stuff the laptop into. Brown Argyle sweater from high school? Gone. Merlino Wool Purple sweater? Gone. MY FAVORITE TEA INFUSER? Gone. One of my gloves? Gone.

In a calm and collected manner, I called our friendly 911 and a nice SPD officer showed up about an hour later to look things over and take some fingerprints. It was a fun converstation when I mentioned that my hammer was also stolen.

Me: “Oh, and they took my hammer.”

Officer: “Your hammer?”

Me: “Yeah, I keep a hammer in my bedstand in case this happens when I’m home during the time.”

Officer: “And they took it?”

Me: “Well, it isn’t there now!”

Officer: “Hunh.”

So anyway, I have Renter’s Insurance that doesn’t include depreciation, so things should be pretty good. The residents around me were cool and were pretty shocked about what happened. They haven’t had another incident like that in recent memory and we figured that there was literally nobody around Thanksgiving weekend that probably let them scope out the places a bit. I didn’t have curtains in my living room yet (which actually was on my to-do list), but I certainly do now.

After half a decade in Seattle, I suppose this was bound to happen sooner or later. And Capitol Hill is still super cool despite this little incident.

Real talk here: I really just wanted an excuse to post this picture, because I’m in love with it. Last weekend I went on an awesome adventure with @erinpillar to Magnunson Park! I even did the traditional “Nikky falls into Lake Washington” ritual that occurs at least once every year. Squish squish squish go the Chucks.

Just take a look at this awesome graph, which is just so snuggly and perfect!

Oh.

OH.

Clearly we had some time warps and nobody bothered to tell me.

Clearly.

Then my brain stopped freaking out.

Turns it I was at my family’s house in my old room. And it was Saturday, which I clearly knew because it wasn’t Seattle.

Funny that.