Missing Members

"I'm in coffee heaven!" -- Ziad Geagea

Seattle's businesslike tenor is the perfect setting for a culture built around concrete skyscrapers, taxi cabs with ticking meters, and cafes serving up fresh doughnuts and plenty of hot, dark coffee. Even the hundreds of leafy trees that line the streets seem to be part of a culture of quiet production. Perhaps this is the influence of Microsoft, which is headquartered in Washington.

Liz and Ziad were nice enough to pick me up for lunch at Cafe Flora, a beautiful vegetarian restaurant with low-slung glass windows, stone columns, and old farm gates as partitions between tables. But for once, the food took a back seat for me. I was more fascinated, as I always am, by the charming Ella, with her deep black eyes, rosebud monkey mouth, and curly black Leborean hair.

We walked around Pike Place Market after lunch for long enough to get pretty tired and then sat at Starbucks for a couple hours.

And as the sun finally started to come out, Adam showed up, tired from work, and we helped him melt his cares away with stories from our afternoon. We all spent the rest of the day together, and had a laid-back dinner at Whole Foods with a short walk down 6th Avenue to our hotel before bed.

A long fun day with people who are seriously some of the greatest humans on the planet.