--TELL ME WHAT YOU LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF AND THEN I’LL ADD TO THAT

…There are over 650,000 people that live in Seattle, more folks than live in all of Alaska.

Yesterday I went into the city. It was a perfect Seattle summer day, the ones we wait for through many months of rain.
The sky was clear. It was 78 degrees, no humidity. The air tasted clean.
People in Seattle like their coffee. I mean they REALLY like it. There is a Starbucks on all four sides of the Nordstrom store, plus Nordstrom has an espresso bar on Pine Street facing a Starbucks. Every place had a line, despite the temperature.
I feel guilty and stupid when I visit espresso bars. You stand in line so that you can pay someone five dollars to give you a cup of coffee that, by all accounts should cost maybe $2.00
It seems idiotic, asinine, but then clearly there must be a lot of idiots around.
A different espresso bar had a chalkboard sign on the street featuring their Maple-Bacon Latte. Just the thought of that makes me queasy.
Seattle has the highest boat ownership per capita of any city in the US. Probably the world. We have the ocean and lots and lots of lakes, both big and small. (On the lake where I live a float plane landed last week. That’s pretty illegal, and unsafe, since this is a small lake. But it was kind of thrilling to see this monstrous vehicle dive bomb the water—poor kayakers! They probably peed their pants—and then watch it lift off, barely clearly a copse of evergreens.)
On the highway, driving home from Seattle, I saw a driver texting. Saw another on her cellphone. Saw another brushing his teeth while driving (true story.)
On the drive home I had a rush of gratitude, feeling fortunate to live in such a beautiful place.

...These are some things I like:

"I've seen extreme bravery from the least likely of people. Life is about the moments when it's all gone wrong. That's when we define ourselves." Bear Grylls

"A man who makes no mistakes makes nothing." Winston Churchill

"Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known." Carl Sagan

"There is more in us than we know. If we can be made to see it, perhaps, for the rest of our lives, we will be unwilling to settle for less." Kurt Hahn