On date nights, Larissa and I love to go to the Charlotte lounge in downtown Seattle.
The Charlotte is on the 16th floor, with sweeping views of the area that rival the more famous Space Needle, and it’s just a terrific place to sit and sip a semi-expensive cocktail while nibbling at one of the better burgers in the city.
Today is Valentine’s Day, but for decidedly-uninteresting reasons we had an early Valentine’s Day dinner (on the 13th) at The Charlotte.
The evening was wet and blustery, but we found parking (For free! In downtown Seattle! That’s like someone handing us 20 or 30 bucks out of nowhere, especially since I was planning on using valet!) on the street just half a block away, and in no time we were seated up in the lounge, admiring the views, ordering a Manhattan, and listening to the jazz artists playing live background music. It was magical.
Then it got really interesting.
Suddenly people — many of them youngish and chic — were appearing, and the lounge went from being lightly busy to energetically crowded (but not too crowded), what with every table and sofa and chair taken, and the bar itself standing-room only. It was an upbeat and happy crowd, with lots of smiles and laughter and happy chatter. But why? Why were there suddenly youngish people in chic evening wear steadily trickling out of the 16th floor elevator at the Charlotte Lounge in Seattle?
“We’re here to listen to Caety,” a woman told us. “She’s performing here tonight.”
We were curious, so we ordered a glass of wine, found a table closer to the corner where the microphone was set up, and waited.
Her name was Caety Sagoian. And oh my gosh she was amazing, with a voice like a perfectly tuned instrument and an amazing guitarist by her side, and soon people were dancing and enjoying the evening to her voice and the skilled accompaniment of the guitarist. It was wonderful. And before we knew it we too were dancing and it was 11pm and where in the heck did the entire evening go??
I’ll tell you where. It slipped away into the blissful wormhole that is happiness, where time suddenly accelerates and where we’re whisked away from any worries in our life at that particular time and suddenly it’s hours or days later with no clue where that time went. Moments like those make life shorter, since time stomps on the accelerator and those hours (or days) are — poof — gone just like that, but that is totally a price worth paying (a person can live for an eternity if they want to spend their days in Corporate Presentations From Hell within windowless hotel conference rooms, by I myself would rather life a psychologically shorter life happily listening to music).
Anyway. Happiness is a fun night out with my life partner. And having cocktails high up on the 16th floor while it’s blustery outside. And having a surprise performance filled with all kinds of happy people. And overall just having a terrific evening with my favorite to kick off Valentine’s Day Weekend.
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