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I spent some time cleaning up in our yard on a recent weekend, and in the process, I ran across a good-sized spider that I didn't recognize. It had a leg span of around an inch and a half — good-sized by Pacific Northwest standards — and my ill-informed initial guess was that it was probably a harmless and beneficial wolf spider. I've been trying to get the kid interested and informed about spiders, snails, bees, yellow jackets, ants, beetles, turtles, frogs, and other animals we come across, both in terms of identification and in terms of information (don't touch this one, touch that one if you want, tell Dada if you see one of these, etc.). I showed the kid the spider, snapped a couple of pictures, explained that it was a look not touch type thing, and it eventually crept off under the fence. So far, so good, too — ever since she got over her irrational fear of bumblebees, she's been both respectful and interested in whatever creepy-crawlies we come across.

Based on my knowledge of the spiders around my home town of Portland, OR, around 200 miles south of here, I made the assumption that the most dangerous insect or arachnid in the area was the mean and aggressive yellow jacket. However, after I did some Googling and reading to figure out what kind of spider we'd found, I may need to be more careful. The hobo spider (Tegenaria agrestis) is becoming common in the Northwest and has a very nasty bite, at least anecdotally. At least one source claims that there is no strong medial evidence to support the assertions that the spider has necrotic venom, but I won't be conducting any experiments.

The unfortunate thing is that the hobo spider is indistinguishable from its otherwise harmless cousins the Common House Spider (Tegenaria domestica) and the aptly named Giant House Spider (Tegenaria duellica) other than by size or by examination under a microscope. I exchanged a couple of emails with a friendly arachnologist about the spiders, and he claimed that I'd never heard of or come across these spiders in my youth in Oregon because they were introduced in British Columbia some time ago and have only recently extended their range into Oregon.

It turns out that I've got a few of the duellica living in the yard, and they are big. They're not tarantula big, but they're at least double the size of any other species of spider that I've seen in the region. Out of curiosity, I baited some of the funnel webs around the yard with dead yellow jackets and then wiggled the web with a twig to see who came out to claim the free meal. In one case, a spider with a legspan the size of my palm and a body as thick as my pinky lumbered out, grabbed the snack, and carted it back under the window sill where his web was. I'm on the fence between making sure that the kid knows not to stick her finger in the web and relocating the spider, but I'm probably going to take the relocation option. (I'd prefer not to kill the spider; the duellica is good to have around, as it displaces and/or kills the agrestis.)

Andy Sack (of Judy's List) is hosting a weekly open forum for entrepreneurs, and I stopped by the first meeting this morning. I came late and talked with a few folks, but it seems like a good mix of people at different stages of their careers and businesses. It was a welcome dose of nostalgia — back in 1999-2000 when FiveSight was just raising an angel round and rolling-up its first customers, I was a regular attendee at monthly founder-only networking dinners (usually at Reza's downtown) hosted by Paul Doyle (of ProofSpace, then and now). The Chicago dinners scaled up to about 70 people at the peak but ended when the bubble burst and implosion of Divine Interventures dragged-down most of the companies.

I don't know that I'll go weekly, but I'll attend regularly.

As our monthly attempt to get a good meal, the wife and I went to Nishino for a "deluxe" eight-course omakase on Saturday, and other than the dessert, it did not disappoint. The dessert could be described as a tempura banana split, and while that sounds like it could be good, it wasn't. The rest of the meal was so good that we didn't care about dessert. Most of the courses had a Japanese-French mash-up feel to it with amazing sashimi paired with good sauces (red wine reduction with tuna, foie gras, and shitake mushroom) or simple garnishes (amberjack with jalapeno, ginger salsa, and a garlic chip). The straight-ahead nigiri course was excellent, with literally the best o-toro that I've ever had and some sawara that was even smoother and butterier. (I'm a little unclear on the sawara (spanish mackerel) versus aji (horse mackerel), since our server said both "aji" and "spanish mackerel" — either way, those were really amazing pieces of fish, mercury risk aside.) Speaking as someone who used to regularly travel to Japan, this was great sushi; we're definitely going back.

I took a walk around our neighborhood here tonight, and it didn't look like there was much damage other than some limbs down and a couple of smaller trees snapped off. It was much worse elsewhere in the area and in the city, with flooding, originally ~10⁷ people and now down to 10⁶ people without power in freezing temperatures, and plenty of tree vs. house or tree vs. car mismatches, e.g.:

©2006 by &y; posted under CC license

We're under-prepared, disaster-wise, so this is a wake-up call that I'll answer: generator, fuel, food, and water are all on my shopping list. This also intensifies my desire to get off the grid, ideally with a set of photovoltaic panels on the roof (since we have a large amount of South-facing roof at a good angle) and maybe with an appropriate type of fuel cell for additional backup.

You know it's a serious storm when the National Weather Service says things like:

THE HIGH WINDS WILL CAUSE FALLING TREES AND POWER LINES. POWER OUTAGES ARE LIKELY TO BE EXTENSIVE. DAMAGE TO STRUCTURES IS POSSIBLE AND FLYING DEBRIS WILL BE A HAZARD. DEATHS AND INJURIES FROM THIS TYPE OF WIND STORM TYPICALLY OCCUR AS A RESULT OF TREES FALLING ON CARS AND SOMETIMES ON HOUSES. PEOPLE SHOULD AVOID BEING ON THE ROAD OVERNIGHT AND SHOULD SEEK SHELTER IN A STURDY BUILDING AWAY FROM WEAK TREES.

It's been windy enough here in Seattle that our house has been shaken by some gusts, and it feels more or less like a light (3 or 4 on the Richter scale) earthquake when a big gust hits. The lights have been dimming periodically, so we'll see how long we have power.

Earlier in the day, we picked up almost two inches of rain over the course of six hours in the form of three intense showers:

This caused all sorts of fun, including wheel-deep water for the wife to drive through and an opportunity for me to get wet changing a flat tire, although thankfully under cover.

After reading various glowing reviews, the wife and I decided to splurge and make reservations at the Herbfarm for my birthday. The meal had some moments, but it was a rare disappointment compared to our other fine dining experiences.

The first blemish appeared right at the start of the meal where the proprietors introduced the kitchen staff — at length and ad nauseum — followed by an explanation of how to find their gift shop, that the stemware on the table was available for purchase, all about the bed and breakfast suites, and on and on and on, oh and did they mention how to find the gift shop... The only thing not explicitly for sale were the waitstaff, although I have to admit that we didn't ask. We've eaten at plenty of good restaurants run by reputedly great chefs, but the informercial cum dinner theatre was out of place and uncalled for to the point that we wondered if we'd accidentally signed up for some kind of timeshare sales pitch. A port flight served on a piece of paper explaining the different vintages included the price in large type on one corner, continuing the evening's Minnie Pearl theme...

The other two things that stuck out like a sore thumb were a couple of the courses. Partridge served with one course was dry, and a crème brûlée served as part of dessert was a drink instead of a custard. That was the first partridge that I've had, so maybe they're all dry (then why eat them...?); but the unset crème brûlé is unforgivable. Whoever prepared it would have been able to tell that the custard wasn't set when they took it out of the oven or when they caramelized the sugar for the crust.

At least I always have good company.

The wife and I try to put on the dog and get out for a good meal once a month, leaving the kid home with a babysitter. In my case, "dog" means a shirt with buttons and a pair of shoes that aren't Birkenstocks, but the scene in Seattle is decidedly casual, anyway. We've got a preference for tasting menus and local ingredients, and Seattle restaurants have been good to us so far.

The places that we'd go back to, with links and comments:

• Rover's. Northwest cuisine with a French accent and inspired wine pairings (e.g., a white burgundy with lobster and beets). We went for one of the pre-set dégustations, but Rover's is the only restaurant I've seen that lets people mix-and-match off of tasting menus. Like lots of restaurants in Seattle, no valet parking.
• Canlis. Impeccable service (they do a no-claim-check valet service where your car is waiting for you when you walk out) and solid if a bit traditional menu. We inadvertently ordered too much food because the portions were larger than we expected.
• Le Gourmand. More seasonal Northwest cuisine with a French edge. We happened to go during morel season, and a big, saucy plateful with some venison as a garnish was part of the meal. If his reputation holds, the morels were probably gathered by the chef himself.
• Sitka & Spruce. Creative small plates, local seasonal ingredients, and a chalkboard menu on the wall in a tiny space. Here's a nice review with pictures in a local "metroblog".
• Elemental. Small plates with a fun "skip the menu and just bring me some food and wine" guessing game dégustation. The only negative with the meal was that the pairings included full glasses of wine, so we left both stuffed and stupefied. Like Sitka & Spruce, Elemental is tiny (~20 seats), and fills the tables for a first seating promptly at 5:30PM. (We got turned away once by arriving at 5:35...)

The Herb Farm for a game-centric menu is up next.