- There's nothing like traveling with your mom to throw your differences into relief and highlight your similarities. Stuff we both love: driving around neighborhoods, looking at houses and cats and local stores and pointing every. last. thing. out to each other; if we were with anyone else, by now there would have been bloodshed in response to the inanity of our conversations. Stuff about which we're on completely opposite sides of the fence: the importance first thing in the morning of coffee that doesn't originate in a hotel lobby.

- My new favorite pick-up line ever (even better than "Do you know the cross streets near Richmond BART station?"): "So what's a nice girl like you doing reading a web comic like Penny-Arcade?" I made the mistake of listening into a conversation and interrupting with a comment about Automata. I thought it was obvious that a) I was about a decade older and b) with my mother (i.e., Austenesquely chaperoned), but I guess gamer girlz don't just waltz into one's life every day. It's just as well that I didn't tell him we were in the area to scout wedding locations in Forks; I can't stand seeing men cry before I've finished my coffee in the morning.

- The Space Needle is a surprisingly useful way to learn about Seattle via a 605-feet-up 360° view; there are wall murals and video presentations and plenty of guides to answer questions about the whole city.

- The day we arrived was the first rain since July 13th, and what with that and the searing heat wave of last week, entire swaths of Seattle's lawns and parks are brushy, golden-beige, and very, very dead. It makes for a seedy atmosphere in a place that I remember being prosperously lush and verdant.

- We may have found the house in Puyallup (Pyoo-ah-lup, not Pull Y'all Up) (2009 Stewart Ave.) where my grandmother was raised. We definitely found my mom's houses in Kent (9631 208th Street) and in Seattle (10925 Oakridge Avenue), and the land where my grandmother's other Seattle house used to be (1846 Hamlin Street). I saw where she went to elementary school, and high school, and where she had to pull rocks from the yard and sledge them over to the debris pile. Choice commentary:

Me: But you never dangled over a canyon on a rope swing. You were always my mama, and a grown-up!
Mom: ...