More Seattle Fun

Ah, Seattle, with its clean air, crisp snowy horizon, two dueling newspapers, and pleasant debates over the future of the monorail. This is a smart and lively city, and as Scott and I sat in the restaurant on top of the Space Needle, watching the skyline drift slowly past, I told him I could imagine us living here in one of those snappy waterfront condos. It would be an urban existence, totally different than our own. “The traffic is awful here,” he said. “We’d never drive,” I said. “We’d take the monorail.” “I prefer Portland,” he said. “Portland’s nice too,” I said.

That’s how it is on a book tour like this—you visit one city after another, someone else is paying for your meals and your room, you have your days free, and you start to imagine that this could be your life.

Had a great reading at the university last night. 25 or 30 people, and they were a very happy crowd, very ready to laugh, even at things I did not intend to be funny. I felt like a standup comedian at times, they laughed so much.

That’s what I’ll do. I’ll move to Seattle and become a standup comedian.

One of the guys at the reading last night told me he used to pick nightcrawlers for bait. That was his job, outside at night in the wet grass. “Sign the book to Dr. Mold,” he said. “That’s what my PhD is in. Molds.”

He told me he’d like to write a book about molds. I told him to figure out what the story is first. The narrative, the characters, the essential plot, concerning molds. I’m sure there is one.With the exception of these events in the evening, the worms have been in the hotel room all week, enjoying the peace and quiet.