Pinochle and Pedicures

So much has happened since Friday night.  Well, maybe not that much.  Saturday was spent cleaning and shopping in preparation for a sleepover that night.  We got four different kinds of cheese, two kinds of crackers and a seeded baguette.  Also, inspired by my recent love affair with the Moscow Mule, I decided to try and make them.  Of course, rather than just use ginger ale and lime juice, I had to make my own ginger-lime syrup and used lime sparkling water and lime juice (and, of course, vodka).

Our friend Heather came over and brought a delicious sour cream lemon pie.  We then proceeded to drink some (maybe one too many) delicious Monica's Moscow Mules and teach Heather how to play pinochle (#54).  Sadly, we were reduced to playing 3-handed, but Heather picked up the game pretty quickly, and I think there's potential there.  Then we helped Heather on her own list of goals.  Because she is a bit more "rigid" about some things, she is doing 100 goals in 3 years.  Because she just couldn't handle all those odd numbers and arbitrary time limits.  But that's one of the reasons we love her.  We finally went to bed around 12:30 and slept in a bit. We then had brunch at Wild Wheat Bakery and Cafe in Kent  with an additional friend (who sadly couldn't make it to the sleepover portion of the party) the next morning.  If you're up for heading to Kent, I would strongly recommend having brunch there (or pastries, or cookies, or just bread).  They don't have a website, otherwise I would be linking to it.  Yelp had nothing but rave reviews, though.

Monday being a holiday, I had lunch and got a pedicure (#67) with my friend Christina.  It was nice to catch up and hold her beautiful baby.  And the pedicure is lovely, as evidenced below.  The picture does not do the brightness and cheeriness of the hot pink justice, but you get the idea.

It's been a rough week or so at work, but I'm getting through it.  It's actually been a great distraction to have this list of goals and the blog to keep me occupied.  There are changes coming for me at work, which I'll have to share another day.

Thanks for all of your positive feedback and support.  This has been such a fun and rewarding journey thus far.  I'm looking forward to sharing more of it with all of you.

A Problematic Pattern and Answers to Some Questions

You may remember that the plan for our date tonight was to dine at Urbane and then go see the Picasso exhibit at the SAM.  Well, as is our wont, we achieved half of the plan.  Those of you who were privy to our Christmas Eve plans (dinner out, then a burlesque show followed by midnight mass: we made it out for dinner and then went home) may begin to see a pattern as I reveal what happened tonight.  We did, in fact, make it to our 5:45 dinner at Urbane.  The food was pretty good, though the prices were a little steep given the quality.  I'll give you the rundown.  But first, let me apologize for the incredibly poor quality of the photos.  I need to read up on how to make one's iPhone take halfway decent pictures.  If you know something about how to do this, please, do us all a favor and tell me.

First we had water

then we had drinks (Margo had a Dragonstooth Stout and I had a Moscow Mule, which is my new favorite drink).  This was, in fact, the best Moscow Mule I've had so far (out of 3 total).  Margo liked her Stout.  We then had a cheese plate with three fine cheeses (a Camembert, Beecher's Blank Slate with Honey and a raw goat cheese), crackers, and the MOST AMAZING spiced huckleberry jam.  I was so enthusiastic about the jam that the bus boy asked me if I wanted him to bring me more.  On to the entrees; Margo had the Hanger Steak Frites and I had the Hazelnut-Crusted Rainbow Trout with D'Anjou pears, chorizo and sage in a delicioius little hash on top.  Margo liked her entree fine.  I loved the little pear/chorizo/sage hash on top of my trout.  The trout was fine, just not that exciting or flavorful.  Also, it was white.  All the rainbow trout I've eaten prior to this has had some color.

On to the dessert.  Oh, dessert.  I love dessert, and this dessert did not disappoint.  I had the lemon pudding cake with housemade ricotta.  And it was delicious.  An excellent balance of sour and sweet.  And the ricotta was the perfect counterpart.  Margo had the pear crisp with ginger ice cream, and it was mighty tasty as well. (I am also apparently incapable of making the pictures display properly.  Just tilt your head to the right and squint.  I think that will make it all look much better.  I promise not to take any more pictures with my iPhone and post them on the blog.  At least not until I learn how to do it better.)

  The service was less than ideal.  The waitstaff kept trying to take our dishes to other tables, we saw more of the people with plates and the busboy than our waiter, etc...  The final blow came when the waiter brought our debit card back with a receipt that showed he had charged us $145 MORE than the total of our bill.  Needless to say, he didn't get a great tip.  All in all it was fine, but I don't feel the need to go back.

Now on to the shameful part of date night.  Margo stood in line to get tickets for the Picasso exhibit.  The earliest she could get was for the 9:40PM entry.  By the time dinner was done, we had decided to skip the Picasso exhibit and go home.  I am sorry to say that we do this ALL THE TIME.  At least this time we didn't pay for the tickets because they are free for members.  But it's pathetic, truly.  We always have these grand plans, which I have to tell EVERYONE about ahead of time, and then we have terrible follow through.  Apparently following through on plans should have made it on to both of lists of 101 goals.  Maybe next time...

Now to answer some of your questions, since some of you have apparently forgotten how to use Google.  The Mycological Society is just a fancy name for the Mushroom Society (the people who like mushrooms and learning about mushrooms and picking mushrooms in the forest).  The Gottman book is The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work by John Gottman.

Finally, the other question I've gotten is about why I want to get rid of my iPhone.  Especially when everyone else is poised to get one, now that Verizon is going to have them.  Here's the thing.  I feel like my iPhone has kind of taken over my life.  I can't seem to do anything or go anywhere without my iPhone.  I check Facebook at least ten times a day, I check my email compulsively, I'm constantly available in every possible way to everyone I know, I check my blog to see how many followers I have at least fifteen times a day, and the list goes on.  Every moment I'm not doing something real I am doing something on my iPhone.  I want to experience life again without the distraction.  I'm trying to watch less television, spend less time on the computer, and have more life experiences.  So I want to ditch my iPhone.  Just have a regular phone with an unlimited text plan and experience what's going on around me rather than Googling it or distracting myself.  So there you have it.

Exercise and Eating Out

I am fortunate to have a partner who is good at helping me keep on track (well, at least most of the time).  My plan to go to the gym after work today devolved into doing the Wii Fit Plus workout at home, to making an offer of dinner and a movie to my LL.  Lucky for me (in the long run at least), in response to my offer of dinner and a movie after she had already agreed to do the Wii Fit Plus with me, I received the following text message "Workout.  No dinner and move."  So after a brief stop at Safeway to pick up some hamburger and veggies for spaghetti (the sauce of which included yellow squash, orange bell peppers and kale, served over whole wheat pasta), home we went to get our Wii on.

One thing I love about the Wii (#18) is that it really just seems like you're playing a game until you notice that you're sweating and you've burned a couple of hundred calories (#4).  The problem I have with the Wii Fit exercises is that they really hurt my feet (plantar fascitis which is exacerbated by my gym shoes being in the car and me being too lazy to go out to the car and get them.  a bit ironic, I guess).  The other thing that I sometimes love and sometimes am really annoyed by is the humor programmed into the Wii Fit.  It played the same joke on each of us in turn tonight, which wound up being a little annoying.  And then I find myself talking back to it, or accusing the trainer of hitting on my LL.  Good times, overall.

Date night this week (we try to do this weekly, but usually succeed in accomplishing 2-3 nights per month) has evolved from eating at the mall food court and going to see Harry Potter (finally), to eating at a new restaurant and trying to see the Picasso exhibit at the SAM.  I'm excited about the restaurant, and had the realization tonight that it is often the dessert menu that sells me on a restaurant.  We are planning to go to Urbane Restaurant and the clincher was, quite honestly, the pumpkin brulee served with pecan shortbread on the dessert menu.  The rest of the menu also looked interesting and delicious, however.  You'll get a full report in the days following and I will try to take some crappy pictures of the food on my iPhone.

I just realized that this bit about date night is apparently about one of my imaginary goals, which I swear I had written down, of trying a new restaurant each month.  Let's just pretend that it's a goal, although I think that the truth of the matter is that it might be my LL's goal.  Oh well.  I'll tell you all about it anyway.  It might get boring if all I ever talk about is my goals.  And eating delicious food is always the goal, even if it didn't make it onto the list of 101.