It's great to be back at breakfast
Good MORRRNing, Seattle! After nine years as a Seattle Times columnist, writing for folks who read the paper after hours, I now can write for morning news junkies.
How sweet it is.
To back up for a minute: In 1991 I left the morning Seattle Post-Intelligencer to go to work for the afternoon Seattle Times. I had written a city column for eight of my 17 years at the P-I.
Coming to The Times felt like pinch-me-I'm-dreaming time, as if I had been hired by the major leagues to write for a locally owned paper, biggest in the Northwest, a paper with a Sunday edition.
Not that I didn't have, well, a few misgivings.
I missed the column arriving on doorsteps on misty mornings. I missed greeting ferry and Metro riders commuting to work. And I missed P-I co-workers I'd grown up with and learned to love like family.
As KOMO's Pat Cashman said last week, it's a really good thing The Times is coming out in the morning. Cashman's rationale: If you're going to wrap fish, you better start early in the day.
Oscar day: Oscar, the treasured gold icon, arrives in Seattle today. Bruce Davis, executive director of the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, will hand the statuette (one of six he's bringing to U.S. cities) over to FilmAid President Parker Trewin at 11 this morning.
Oscar is coming here to attend FilmAid's Oscar Night Gala on March 26 at Pacific Place. After the gala, which benefits the Northwest AIDS Foundation, the statuette will belong to one of the Oscar-night winners.
Books are us: Kim Osborne describes her book club (Women Who Read Books and Talk About Politics) as made up of "women who are lobbyists, women who work for local politicians, campaign managers and political hacks."
At the last meeting, a new member was introduced: former Seattle City Councilwoman Tina Podlodowski. She had been told she couldn't join until after leaving office.
This explains why the name of one former member, Seattle City Councilwoman Heidi Wills, is now missing from the book-club roster.
Taking stock: The newly minted millionaires of Avenue A, a Seattle online ad agency, partied at Belltown Billiards last week. The agency runs online ad campaigns for such clients as Microsoft and Gateway.
Overjoyed when their stock more than tripled, employees took over Belltown Billiards for the night. Some 250 employees, family and friends drank champagne, cheered and danced on the tables.
Fortunes of war: The Starbucks Cafe at California Avenue Southwest and Fauntleroy Way Southwest (across the street from the regular Morgan Junction Starbucks) bit the dust a couple of months ago.
The cafe building, in the parking lot of West Seattle Thriftway, sat empty for several weeks. Now there's a sign in the window: "Coming soon: Tully's!"
The Big O: Spotted on Interstate 405 near the Redmond exit was a rusted pickup, perhaps once identifiable as a Chevy Luv. Sign in the window: "Oxidation happens."
Jean Godden's column appears Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Phone: 206-464-8300.
E-mail: jgodden@seattletimes.com