Hey, what do you know! After more than a year of sitting vacant and forlorn, the charming little restaurant space in the Loveless Building has gotten a new tenant. With a Spanish accent, no less. Olivar is set to open for dinner July 22nd. You know the space -- the one famously vacated by the much anticipated and extremely short-lived dessert house Coco La Ti Da, and its much-anticipated and almost-as-short-lived predecessor, Fork:

I haven't been to the Bite of Seattle -- coming up this weekend -- in years, but there's another annual food-focused event I haven't missed for the past four: the Samish Bay Bivalve Bash and Low Tide Mud Run, to be held this Saturday, July 19th, at Taylor Shellfish Farms in Bow. Admission is $5 (kids six and under and registered mud-runners are free), and you buy scrip for food, drink and games. The bash is a fundraiser for the Skagit Conservation Education Alliance, and helps the MudUp campaign clean and restore the water and shoreline of Puget Sound. That do-gooding aside, I go because watching the ridiculously filthy and strenuous mud run on the tideflats is a kick in the pants (though I've yet to duct-tape my running shoes to my ankles and have at it myself):