August 2005 Archives

Rounding out Major Appliance Month here on bradandkathy.com, we bring you news of the latest additions to our family: a Miele washer and matching dryer.

We last bought a washer in 2000, right around the time Henry was born. At the time, we wanted something water- and energy-efficient and compact. The Maytag Neptune front-loader was pretty new at the time and well liked by reviewers, so we ponied up for the stacked version (a full-sized washer and drier stacked together in one unit). At first, we loved it. But by the time we moved out of our house for the remodel, the honeymoon was over. The dryer was fine, but the washer would sometimes fail to pump out all the water or even spin the laundry. We had it looked at once under warrantee and learned to deal with some new quirks.

Then we started noticing something else: a musty mildewy smell on our "freshly washed" clothes. We managed to beat back the mildew with judicious use of bleach, but it would always return eventually. By this summer, the mildew was down in the rubber of the door seal, not just on the surface. Ick. We were fed up. Of course, the thing was out of warrantee, so we started shopping around for a new washer and drier.

Charlie attended his first baseball game yesterday! He slept through most of it. It was good to have a family outing. It's hard to believe but we forgot to bring a camera.
The Mariners beat the Royals 11-5.

So, it's done. As of noon today, our house has air conditioning. I've created a flickr set to document all its spine-chilling glory.

It started in the Spring with The Attack of the Alder Trees. Kathy's allergy to Alder pollen hit an all-time high this year. We decided once and for all that the little HEPA filter we had in our bedroom just wasn't cutting it. I started looking into whole-house air filters. I thought I had things pretty well figured out when we had an early streak of hot weather. With our windows open to stay cool, we'd be filtering all of Seattle. It's pretty unusual to have hot weather that early, though, so maybe it would be okay.

Then summer arrived. It's been a pretty comfortable summer, even by Seattle standards, but still warm enough to need the windows open and the fans running. Kathy's allergies waned, but mine started earlier than ever and for the first time, so did Henry's. It didn't take us long to make the decision to get air conditioning along with a whole-house air filter.

I got bids and picked a contractor, but decided to wait until after Charlie's arrival to schedule the work. So here we are comfortably cool and happy to be doing our part to expose The Seattle Air Conditioning Lie.

I posted a while ago about our somewhat disappointing visit to Cupcake Royale. Last week, Henry and I were over in Ballard picking up our car after having it serviced at the dealer, so we had no choice but to stop in for a cupcake. The cake didn't have quite so coarse a crumb this time, but the frosting was just as disappointing. It's like they set out to use the finest ingredients and cooking techniques to recreate canned grocery store frosting. Bleh.

On the other hand, we have found a place with cupcakes that deserve to be called Royale: Grand Central Baking Co. We stopped by their new place on Eastlake for lunch the other day. The sandwiches were great (I had a grilled Cubano... yum!), but the real hit was the dessert. Unlike Cupcake Royale, they only have a couple kinds of 'cakes at a time, but what they lack in variety, they make up for in quality. We tried the chocolate with raspberry frosting and the pineapple-rum with coconut frosting. Both were just about perfect. Their frosting is a very light (in texture, not calories) buttercream. Neither too sweet nor too dense, it's smooth and very tasty. Yum.

In other food-related news, Wedgwood has had a sudden explosion of coffee places. Until recently, there were just two places in the neighborhood serving decent coffee (Cafe Van Gogh and Grateful Bread, for those keeping notes). As I mentioned before, Top Pot is due to open their Wedgwood donutarium sometime soon and Starbucks opened a store a block from our house at the end of June. Then on Tuesday, we found of that one of our favorite cafes has opened a new place just a few blocks away. Café Javasti makes some mean espresso drinks and also serves very tasty crêpes (sweet and savory). We've been going to their original café over in Maple Leaf since Henry was a baby. We took him there this morning without saying where we were going and he was practically overcome with excitement when he saw the sign.