Confessions of a Graphic Designer

A Hummel figurine that belonged to my mother A friend, Annegret, and I were talking on Twitter about memories and our belongings, and it reminded me of a story. Thirty years ago I had a friend named Kathy. She was such a happy person. She had two rambunctious nephews. One day they came over to visit while she was unpacking some very old and precious Christmas ornaments that belonged to her grandmother. Kathy and her grandmother had a special bond. I had the pleasure of meeting her one summer when I visited her family in Atwater, Minnesota. Kathy's nephews, who were maybe 8 and 10 years old at the time, were admiring the ornaments, and she said, “Here, why don’t you choose some to keep?!” I remember feeling shocked. Giving some very old and irreplaceable heirlooms to two little boys? How insane! I'm sentimental and like to keep things that are dear, nearby. The idea of giving such special things to children who, God forbid, could destroy them, seemed crazy. Annegret...

Through The Seattle Public Library The Sally Goldmark Library in Madrona is our local branch. Sometimes I think my husband, David, and I are the only people in Seattle who don’t subscribe to Netflix or Hulu. I guess one reason why is, we aren’t huge consumers of video content and we'd regard it as wasteful to pay for something we won’t use. We like watching films and television series, but since we opened Alki Surf Shop , we have even less discretionary time, including TV time. We spend an average of about an hour each evening watching films or programs. Truth be told, we’d dearly love to "cut the Comcast cord," but there are certain channels that would be a bummer to lose, like Bloomberg News, and any channel that airs "Law and Order" episodes :) The concept of getting rid of cable became more of a possibility when David discovered a treasure trove of content available through The Seattle Public Library (SPL). He regularly visits the SPL web ...

After traveling in New York for several days to attend a Verizon Summit (#vzsummit), and enjoying meals at fabulous restaurants there, I returned, craving home made comfort food. Just before the trip, I roasted a pretty sizable pumpkin (uncarved), yielding a two large sheet pans of delicious pieces of roasted pumpkin. So before heading into Alki Surf Shop on Saturday, I searched for a pumpkin soup recipe, and found one that looked good, but I didn’t have some of the ingredients. Never one to let a missing ingredient stop me, I forged on! The original recipe, Thai Pumpkin Soup with Coconut Milk, called for lemongrass, fresh coriander, vegetable stock and coconut milk. But I didn’t have any of those things. So here’s what I did: Terri’s Pantry Pumpkin Soup Ingredients: 2 TB Olive Oil 1.5 medium onions, diced 5 cloves of garlic left whole 3.5 lbs. of roasted pumpkin, diced* 1 tsp ground coriander 2 tsp curry powder 2 TB fresh minced ginger** (which BTW, was f...