to market, to market

So, this isn't going to turn into a photo blog, but I have some more photos today. I have been trying to take a lot of pictures lately, especially of Seattle things I'll miss, and one of the things that I will definitely miss the most is the Pike Place Market. Well, actually all of Seattle's farmers markets, especially the Sunday market in Ballard. The markets are about the only thing in the world that make me wish that I cooked, although the feeling never lasts long enough to do anything about it. I think I just like to see produce and flowers artfully arranged.

Here is a man shopping for some fruit:

The best bargain at the market is the $5 bouquets of flowers. When my friend Brian from high school visited, he remarked, "Girls in Seattle must be hard to buy flowers for, because they probably get jaded from having flowers like this available for $5." Except I don't think the sentence was so long when he said it. My mom loved the flowers as well, and said that if she were me, she'd buy fresh flowers every week for the apartment. Sadly, she is not me, and I am usually too lazy to go get flowers ever, and I am starting to think that I might be allergic as well. But when my aunt and uncle came to visit, I told them to tell my mom that I had flowers everywhere.

Look, I'm no photographer, and I know it. But I can't help but be exceedingly proud of the picture below. Maybe if I had a more high-tech camera, it would show everything in more detail, but I think this picture captures the moment better. This is the part of the market where they throw the fish:

Better hope one of those fish guys doesn't sit next to you on the bus on the way home! They are all nice guys, but very smelly.

Perhaps one of my favorite stories involving the market was when I had first started my job, and they were having an anniversary party. It was only my 4th day, so I didn't have much to do, so they sent me on errands related to the anniversary party. One of those errands was picking up shrimp from the market for shrimp cocktails. They had already ordered it, so I just picked up the box and went back to the office. We opened the box and the shrimp were still frozen (they had ordered thawed). So then began this comedy of errors where I walked back and forth between the office and the market about 4 times, lugging boxes of shrimp back and forth and haggling for some shrimp that would be ready to eat in an hour and finally we just had to manually thaw shrimp and I smelled kind of fishy at the party.