It seems that whenever I think that I’m becoming a hermit events and fun things to do suddenly fill my every waking hour. These last weekends have been busy!

First of all, a friend discovered and invited a bunch of us to the most interesting place up here… a sushi buffet! Actually, a friend discovered it and invited a bunch of us to go. For twenty bucks you go in and have the run of the place. It is expensive… but oh my god the sushi. There’s a million different types, as well as tempura and calamari and rice and chicken and miso soup and egg drop soup and korean bbq… we sat there for three hours eating, talking, digesting, and eating again. They nearly had to roll us out of there.

For the amount of sushi that we consumed we would have had to pay much more than twenty bucks anywhere else, although we also probably wouldn’t have eaten as much had it not been a buffet. Tis the nature of the beast though.

That same weekend I went out to a punk show at the Seattle Center… mostly just because I had a desire to go to a punk show and the one at the Funhouse was the first one that popped up. Now, for those of you that don’t know, the Funhouse is a delightful little dive bar near the Space Needle with a basketball court, a bar, pinball machines, a stage, and a huge creepy clown face adorning the front of its facade. It’s like most dive bars, dark with cheap and plentiful beer, but it also is known for having great punk shows.

I apparently misjudged just how well-known its shows were, because I neglected to get tickets before I went. I approached with cash in hand only to get turned away by the ticket taker at the front before I had even gotten fully within earshot. Luckily there was a woman at the front trying to get rid of her ticket and, as she was unaware that the concert was sold out, even offered it at the original online price. So I got in anyway!

Once inside I migrated straight towards the front and just made it in time for the opening band. It was surprising how quickly a mosh pit formed, but it was not a bad thing in the slightest.

I don’t remember the bands that followed being particularly great, and I even left when the headliner started arguing with belligerent drunks in the audience, but the mosh pit was precisely what I come to punk shows for. Here were tons of people pressed tightly together dancing as crazily as possible and not caring who got in the way. Occasionally others and myself would link arms and spin in a circle, or put our hands over each others shoulders and jump around like anthropomorphic bunnies trying desperately to see a carrot in the distance.

Sure, I ended up with more than one hit that took my breath away for a moment, but part of the fun of a mosh pit is that bouncing around as the people on the outer edge push you away, riding this wave of euphoria and excitement as you punch and bounce and do your impression of the crazy muppet dance with other like-minded individuals. In the end I got my workout in, my agression out, and in the end, still had all my teeth.