Semaglutide Medical Weight Loss in Bellingham, WA

A new restaurant is opening in Fairhaven on Wednesday, Oct. 30, bringing entertainment and bright flavors to the historic Bellingham village.

Sugar & Co., an “American Bistro that blends familiar comfort foods with unexpected flavors and high-quality ingredients,” was launched by Brie and Evan Mueller, a husband-and-wife duo who have lived in Bellingham for 16 years.

Brie, a local real estate agent and now restaurant owner, also owns her own Bellingham cabaret, Sugar. Evan is a theater professor at Western Washington University. The couple decided to start Sugar and Co. as the idea of opening a restaurant fell into their laps after the previous restaurant in the location, Milano’s Italian Restaurant, closed in September.

“I think we’re a little crazy,” Brie told The Bellingham Herald. “I had been in the restaurant industry for about 27 years before I decided to go into real estate. And the past owner of Milanos had reached out to me as a real estate agent to see if I could sell her business. ... and so we sort of started talking, and we’re like, we could actually make this happen. And so we started the process rolling,”

The couple began working on the restaurant when Milano’s closed in September, taking less than 2 months to flip the old space into a completely new restaurant and entertainment hub.

“I couldn’t believe what my husband actually was like talking about it, and I will say ‘til the day I die, he definitely was the first one who brought it up. He doesn’t believe that, but I was, like, I definitely was not the first person. So it just kind of and then it just started rolling, and now we’re opening.”

Once entering through the restaurant’s hot pink door, guests are welcomed into a sophisticated space, as a historic rolling library ladder adorns a full bar and a floral printed wall. The restaurant’s gold, black and pink accents are playfully garnished with white, fluffy feathers on each table and plush chairs along the wooden bar.

Sugar & Co.’s decor ties into the spunky, sophisticated and warm experience Brie hopes to provide visitors, and that they will share with others.

“I just think that Bellingham just needs a little spunk. I think this is going to liven it up a little bit more. My hope is that people come in and enjoy amazing service, because that’s what I’m all about, and amazing food. And get to leave with an experience, and go to somebody in Portland and be like, ‘Oh, my God, you have to go to this restaurant in Bellingham!’” Brie said.

“I want it to be a staple, where people have good food and good experiences, it’s what I’m about. And I think what we’re about here,” Brie said.

The Muellers also built a stage into the back of the restaurant for live music and entertainment, and eventually plan to add specials and brunch to their offerings.

As for the menu, the restaurant will serve a variety of dishes such as oysters, filet mignon, chicken milanese, lamb burgers, pistachio-crusted herb fish, chocolate pot de crème, cotton candy and ice cream. A kids menu is also available.

The restaurant’s bar will have wine, beer and ciders, as well as craft cocktails such as “DollFace Daiquiri,” “Sugar’s Juice,” “That’s That Me Espresso Martini,” and “Tabi’s Old Fashioned,” according to the restaurant’s website.

As Brie longs for visitors to leave feeling full and satisfied, her highest priority is creating a “fun, delicious and sassy environment” where everyone feels welcome.

“I want them to feel seen like and taken care of. I want them to feel tantalized, and I want them to leave feeling deliciously full,” Brie said.

“Just come and check us out and show us some love, and we promise to take care of you no matter what,” Brie said.

Sugar & Co. is open for all ages and will have its grand opening at 4 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 30. The restaurant will regularly be open from 4 to 9 p.m. Wednesday through Friday and 4 to 10 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at 1210 11th St. in Bellingham’s Fairhaven Village.

This story was originally published October 29, 2024, 3:06 PM.

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October 29, 2024 11:50 AM

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A raft of mud slid onto Interstate 5 early Sunday as rains hammered Bellingham, leading to a roughly 10-hour closure of the arterial route.

Crews cleared the roughly 2,000 cubic yards of mud, and a tow truck removed the cab and trailer of a semi truck that had been stuck in the muck. Washington State Patrol Trooper Rommie Smith said there were no injuries.

Smith said he was informed of the slide just north of Iowa Street around 4:40 a.m. About 6 inches of mud and tree debris were fully blocking the northbound lanes, Smith said. One southbound lane was closed after the surge of mud forced concrete barriers into the southbound lanes.

Southbound and northbound lanes fully reopened by 3 p.m.

In the meantime, traffic was diverted into the city, bogging down local streets.

“It was pretty gnarly,” said Jake Neves, 21, who was commuting into Coconut Kenny’s around noon. “I was hitting traffic that I’ve never hit before.”

More than 2 inches of rain fell Sunday morning at Bellingham International Airport, already the second-wettest October day on record.

The airport recorded about 1.75 inches in just two hours early Sunday morning, said Matthew Cullen, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Seattle.

Around 2 a.m. it started coming down “gangbusters” there, state Climatologist Emeritus Nick Bond said in a phone call Sunday.

“Just a deluge of biblical proportions there for about an hour,” he said.

The 2.22 inches that fell in 24 hours, ending at 5 a.m. Sunday, is tied for No. 17 in the record at the Bellingham airport, Bond found in an analysis. More than half of that came in just a single hour, ending at 3 a.m. Since the turn of the 21st century, there has not been an hour that has come close to the total of 1.42 inches that fell shortly before the slide, Bond said.

For comparison, Bellingham received about 20 times as much precipitation as the northeast Olympic Peninsula, in the rain shadow of the Olympic mountains.

A downpour of this intensity can make some of the softer landscapes in the Puget Sound region more prone to slides, Bond said.

As the planet warms, Bond said, the top 1% of the storms will account for a greater proportion of the rain. In other words, the Pacific Northwest can expect more intense storms. This is already being seen in other parts of the country. It’s similar to hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean — there haven’t been more hurricanes as a result of climate change, Bond said, but more of the hurricanes that do form are more likely to be stronger storms.

Isabella Breda: 206-652-6536 or ibreda@seattletimes.com; Seattle Times staff reporter Isabella Breda covers the environment.

We are proud to present "Blue Ribbon", a public trail located on Galbraith Mountain in Bellingham, WA. This project is the culmination of years of permitting work, hours of machine time, and finished off by selfless volunteer work. Watch the video above to learn about how it came to be, and come visit us in Bellingham to catch a lap down this mind bending trail!

Step 1: All trails require one thing, a corridor.

To establish ours for this project we worked with local trail advocacy group, the WMBC, to obtain permits and find a window of time for construction. All said and done, this took nearly four years from when we kicked off the project proposal to when we broke ground. During that time we walked the proposed zone, looking for the right grade to create the flow we were after. With the planning and layout completed, the trail building mastermind, Nico Vink, arrived to start breaking ground.

Step 2: Realize it's too much work for one person and call your friends.

We quickly realized it would be too much work for Nico so we called in TR GiddyUp ambassadors Teddy Jaramillo and Henry Lanman. They run a trail building operation in New Mexico, and were the perfect people to get on the job. Nico had always wanted to work with a crew of three and this project lined up perfect for that. Henry ran the big excavator clearing corridor and mining dirt while Teddy followed creating general shapes for Nico to finish and fine tune in his machine.

Step 3: Dig 'till you can't dig anymore, then dig a little more.

Nico, Henry and Ted were able to work for a solid month of spring, 2023, before the dirt became too dry to continue shaping. Nico then returned to Belgium to ride his bike and process the work he had already completed on Blue Ribbon. Giving him a summer to visualize the flow he had in mind for the trail. With some refreshed energy, he returned to Bellingham that Fall to complete the machine work on the trail. Countless days ensued with the help of WMBC's Ryan Joslyn to create the final shapes that you can ride on Blue Ribbon today.

Step 4: Find every available shovel and pair of hands to butter up the trail after the winter.

With all the machine work in the past, it was time for us and the community to get our hands dirty and butter up the remaining bits of the trail. Nico had done almost 95% of the work with the machine, but a few transitions still needed some shaping. With the help of the community and a company dig day the trail took its final transformations and was ready to ride.

Step 5: Open the trail to the world, and get some laps!

After battling with some wacky Spring weather, we finally opened Blue Ribbon in June of 2024. Thanks to everyone who helped along the way and came out for the opening celebration. And a huge shout to Nico Vink for his relentless work and contributing to making this community better and better.

This trail was a huge effort, and we are stoked to give it to the community. Hope to see you out there soon! You can find the trail HERE. Grab your friends and check it out this Fall!

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Update about Health Insurance Changes

Posted Nov 4, 2024

Hello St. Joe's Nurses!

This is a quick overview of where we are with the issue of insurance changes.

What Is Happening With Our Insurance

WSNA was not given adequate notice or information over the changes to our insurance. We do not find the plan substantially equivalent to our former plan. We are disappointed with the employer’s obfuscation of the plan changes prior to implementation. We issued a demand to bargain on October 25th and have not received a response from the employer at this time.

What Is Changing

Overall, the fixed costs go up for both nurse and employer about 10% for the PPO and ABHP plans, however the out of pocket, dependent and deductibles go up substantially. The EPO plan has far higher increases in the cost to employees when it comes to adding dependents. All plans limit who we can see primarily to Peace Health Providers. Increase in cost for us, increase in business for them.

What Can Be Done And What Can I do?

Firstly, sign up for benefits as you would normally do. As much as we don’t agree with the change and will be bargaining, comply with the process as the employer has laid out for now.

Secondly, take this quick survey to help us identify how this affects you: While we cannot guarantee any outcomes, we can push the employer to do the right thing and bargain with us in good faith. We need to know how this affects as many people as possible to make these changes.

Take the survey now

Lastly, we have identified a small group of members to meet with the employer and voice our concerns, please contact your local Unit Officers to be part of that group: https://www.wsna.org/union

For good measure, here is the timeline and why we are irate with Peace Health’s bad faith in discussing these changes with us:

9/24 - Peace Health Notified WSNA and nurses of the planned changes at the same time.9/24, 10/14, 10/18, 10/21 – WSNA requested more information to assess that the plan was substantially equivalent.10/14 – Peace Health released generic information to nurses at the same time it gave to WSNA.10/23 – Peace Health finally provided substantive information to WSNA to review plan.10/25 – WSNA reviewed plan and finds it wanting. We demand to bargain.

We hear your concerns. Please reach out to your local unit officers as well as your nurse rep with any questions.

For some, voting by mail can be an easy and convenient way to cast a ballot in an election. But what if you’re concerned that your ballot got misplaced, or lost in the mail? Turns out, there’s a way to address that.

Washington allows you to track your ballot online through its voter portal, which you can access at voter.votewa.gov. You can log in with your first name, last name and date of birth, and it will provide information about your registration and ballot status.

“So through that voter portal where you can log in, you can see not only registration status, but during an active election, you’ll also be provided the status of your ballot. So you’ll be able to see when it was sent, when it was received by the auditor’s office, when it was counted by the auditor’s office or accepted for counting,” Stuart Holmes, Washington’s Director of Elections, told McClatchy in a September interview.

There’s another way to get updates on the status of your ballot – you can sign up by text.

“The other way is voters can actually text ‘vote’ to VoteWA, which is just 868392 on your number pad, and actually subscribe to get ballot status update texts to them,” Holmes said.

There are those rare cases that ballots get damaged. In the early morning of Monday, Oct. 28, a fire damaged hundreds of ballots in Vancouver, Washington. According to the Clark County Auditor, anyone who deposited their ballot in the damaged drop box after 11:00 a.m. on Oct. 26 should check their online voter portal to make sure their ballot is processed. If it isn’t, voters can get a new ballot at the county’s elections office, located at 1408 Franklin St. in downtown Vancouver, or contact the office by email or phone.

If you live in a different county and suspect your ballot has been damaged or just want to check on its status, you can contact your local election’s office to get a replacement ballot.

When your ballot arrives, its status will be changed from “sent” to “received.” Once it’s been counted, its status will say “accepted.” If there’s an issue processing it, it will tell you that the ballot has been challenged, along with the reason it wasn’t accepted.

If your ballot is challenged, there’s a good chance you can still have it counted, but it might require you to take a few extra steps.

“Now there are scenarios in which maybe the voter fails to sign their return envelope, or the signature doesn’t match… where there’s an action that’s required by the voter in order for the ballot to be counted,” Holmes said. “So they would be texted that information as well. If they’re not subscribed to text messages, they’ll get that notification by mail, email and the phone number on file – the county auditor will call them up and let them know to expect that notice in the mail.”

Common fixable issues include a ballot that’s unsigned, signed by someone other than the voter, or has a signature that doesn’t match the voter’s signature on file. Your ballot could also require further review if your registration has failed the state’s identification review.

In these cases, county election officials will provide instructions for how to verify your identity so that your vote can be counted.

If you mailed in your ballot, but the voter portal doesn’t indicate that it’s arrived, be patient. The Washington Secretary of State’s Office estimates that it can take three to five business days for your ballot to be posted. If you still don’t see your ballot’s status after that period, you can find the contact information for your county’s election office on the Secretary of State’s website.

While Washington largely conducts its elections by mail, there are several voting centers across the state where you can pick up a ballot in person.

This story was originally published October 21, 2024, 1:45 PM.