We met up with friends on top of Queen Anne Hill today for Macrina’s brunch. My friend’s shirt:
SCIENCE
It works, bitches!

For reals. So many problems avoided by adhering to such wisdom.

A surefire crowd-pleaser on a Sunday morning. While in line ordering our French toast, she was approached by a stranger confirming the formula on the back — a graph of the big bang theory. Seattle, so nerdy.

One of my trivia night buddies Kate and her husband Steve threw their annual Canada Day party tonight. Tons of good food, Sweet Cicely Lemonade, tea-smoked goat (can neither confirm nor deny the authenticity of Canadian goat cuisine), barbecued chicken, Canadian beer, Canadian flag chocolate cake and another friend’s (Zach’s) American-flag brownies. I envied their daughter’s pool & treehouse (Fort Rubinskaya!), and Mr. Thibs then offered to build me one — I’ve waited my whole life for one! A great party.

On our walk home, Mr. T wondered if he could get citizenship from the Canadian government these days, as a form of Cajun reparation. Before we could finish that thought, we ran into another neighbor who happened to be giving a tour of the hood P-Patch to Canadian visitors. Canadians – they’re everywhere!

Apparently today was a national holiday – Dog Day – a la Take Your Daughter to Work Day. (Someone I know from Phoenix mentioned it, too.)

I signed us up. The Baron did okay. When we hung out in meetings or at my desk, he was chill. But, he can get wacky when meeting other dogs because he MUST meet them NOW — I get anxious which I think makes him anxious (vicious cycle!) but we all survive every time. I joke my dog’s a typical Seattle-ite — SO excited to meet other dogs but after that first intro, has no interest in furthering the relationship. Nothing aggro, but nothing friendly either.

Our most intense moment came when 3-pound puppy sprinted our way near the exec wing (I’ve recently moved floors). Just so happened my CEO was right there…and he laughed, “That’s only one bite for your guy!” True, too true. All I squeaked out was, “uhhh, yeah” as I coaxed The Baron towards the stairwell and hoped he wouldn’t lunge for a snack.

He stayed on leash all day but we took walks to break it up. I met so many people inside and out of the office, just having him along! This is a crazy dog-lovin town.

Turns out, photographing a little black dog is hard! I took a dozen shots, turned on the auto-focus assist, but this was the only one that came out.

Meet my friend Natala’s new puppy Abbey Road. She’s another morkie, like dear Cuba Libre was.
Natala had a few of us over to BBQ and to meet the little one. YAY FOR PUPPIES.

Given today’s events, Michael Jackson was in heavy rotation all evening.

Last week, I talked of heading over to Marination Mobile — this week I returned at 11 and faced a more reasonable line. Under 10 minutes, no wait! The folks who run Marination Mobile were as friendly as ever.

During the 10 minute break, though, I watched this lady from the Little Flower Station set up shop right next to the line. Next time, I’ll have to pick up a bouquet for my team’s bullpen. (I’d link to the business, but it looks like the domain is just parked for now.)

We went out for dinner at our local favorite neighborhood Indian restaurant. We walk past Roosevelt’s Seattle history mural often — tonight, I decided to capture a small section of it.
Edited to add: Funny! Seattle Daily Photo must be walking a similar beat lately. She blogs the larger version of this here.

Today was a great, lazy Sunday. Mid-day I went to pick up some library holds: Real Cajun, amongst others.

I spotted this on the way home. And this real-dog, which I know Mr. T would not exactly enjoy hanging out by the fireplace.

Last year, we took Mr. T’s father to the Washington Brewer’s Festival. It was a big hit. This year, we returned with both of his parents to “The Mother of all Father’s Day Festivals.” I have one complaint – as a Designated Driver, can we get something besides water on tap? Say, Diet Coke? Anything? Since it was so well-loved, it was a success. We ran into a few people we knew.

Next, we went to Izumi in Kirkland. It’s in a non-descript strip mall in Totem Lake, but the sushi chefs were AMAZING. I got the omakase.

Finally we stopped at Mr. T’s parents house to check in on Mickey. She’s Mr. T’s old buddy from junior and high school — this Persian cat is 20 years old. She hasn’t been doing so hot lately, so we want to make sure we spent some time with her before heading home to our side of the water.

Today’s the last official day of my Technical Communications class. I’m wrapping up a Certificate in Project Management that I’ve been working on for a few quarters.

This was one of my favorite classes. My teacher (Braden) was great and this textbook was superb. I’m hanging onto it for a number of useful checklists for future writing projects. I still have to schedule my final exam but my final paper’s within minutes of being finished — then school’s out for Summer.

I’ve got one more final revision on the paper due in a few hours…

Today, the twitterverse was hopped up over the advent of Marination Mobile‘s first official day of business. Lucky me, it was in Fremont at Skillet’s usual haunt. I walked over shortly after noon, as it was advertised they were opening an hour later than usual.

The line ended up being 90 minutes long. Mr. T took one look and turned around — I discovered my friend Natala and her work team waiting in line, so I stuck it out to catch up with her and meet them.

My favorites: the pork Aloha sliders and the Kalbi Beef Tacos. I also tried the spicy pork tacos. I have to say, this was the first meal I’ve had in months that was spiced good and hot from the get-go. They knocked the socks off of Skillet’s recent offerings. I’ll be back, but no later than 11 next time.

It’s been 28 days without rain in Seattle proper. Amazing for May/June.

One of Mr. T’s 782 cousins dropped by before dinner. She updated this penny while we chatted.

Studiously avoided flowers today.

Today was not that bad. But it might’as well’ve been. I’ve had my knickers in a twist about a number of things. When we got home today, Mr. T made me a pseudo-muffuletta. We hung out in the yard and the Baron acted all zany.

I noticed these uninvited weeds (pictured above) are really taking off.

I swear I’ll find a non-vegetative subject tomorrow.

For over 2 years, my book group’s met to discuss a monthly selection. This month: Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. It reaffirmed my decision to never consider medicine a viable career option.

As a child, I couldn’t take my pulse in health class, so I pretended. Too squeamish. During my honors orientation at my university — where a trip to the undergrad cadaver lab was a feature — the tour guides told me I turned light green and was on high alert for passing out. Squeamish! I turned to vegetarianism around age 18 because dealing with raw chicken freaked me out. Too squeamish. As I’ve since lopped off fish heads in the name of gourmet, I’m over this one.

Well this book was a rough one. I had it in paperback and on audio. I listened to over half in fits and starts for 2 months. Finally last week, I gave in to skimming the last third to glean discussion possibilities, then I set it aside and moved onto another memoir. All that said, I believe Mary Roach is a good writer.
—-
My friend Cynthia brings lovely gifts to the month’s host or hostess. She brought this token of sunshine, amongst other goodies. (Chocolate cookies!)

Seattleites have been BLESSED with the best summery weather in nearly two years. Around lunchtime, Mr. T & I went down to a local farmer’s market and picked up fresh chevre, flowers, and produce. For dinner he made salads with butter lettuce with toasted chevre. We dined al fresco, as most of our neighbors did.

You learn so much by eavesdropping on the loud talkers.

I swear, I try to take pictures of things besides flowers.

Spotted this as I was taking The Baron for a walk.

Here’s the flower I wanted to post at the top. From the neighbor’s yard, across the street:

Despite the sunshine, not so much a fan of the world today. After I got home from work, Mr. T & I walked over to our favorite neighborhood Indian restaurant for some comfort food. I spotted this on the way and decided it was a better candidate than my lunch which made me really really grumpy after I was already irritable. Why spread that negativity around when there’s stuff like this to share? (That’s probably a sign dinner & Mr. T more than made up for the crappy & long day.)

I touched on this recently, but when I look around our herb garden, I’m amazed at what comes back year after year without effort. Two years in a row, this oregano pot goes barren by Spring and just when I think it won’t come back, the whole container explodes with new life.

After work, I walked over to Adobe to attend a Color Management meeting. (I wrecked one of my MacBook color profiles last month, so the subject’s on my radar.) I spied this Lotus under the Fremont bridge. At the meeting I ran into Traca again, for the second day in a row. We enjoyed both speakers, one from Adobe & one from Foundry Interactive.

Related: I’m habitual about carrying extra camera batteries…you know, the one day I got lazy in the morning is the one day the point ‘n shoot gave out on the first shot. That’ll learn me. The G1 (Android) saved the day.

Traca organized an Americana-themed potluck tonight to honor visiting International grad students. I love any & all things Americana, foodwise, so I was all over this. When it came time to plan what to bring, I was at a loss. I knew there’d be apple pie and ribs and potato salads and so on.

Domestic goddess gfrancie advised: Cherries in the Snow. Brilliant reminder — I’ve wanted to make this since she first told me about it 18 months ago. It’s no-bake and simple:

Graham Cracker Crust made from graham crackers, sugar, butter
Middle layer of cream cheese, heavy whipping cream, sugar
Topped with Cherry Pie filling

Loved it and consider it the whole-food version (ha!) of another guilty pleasure: motomotoyama’s Dream Pie. (Essentially Dream Pie boxed mix in pie crust.) Traca called it no-bake cheesecake. That’s about right.

My good friend Amy organized a team to participate in Seattle Works Day, an all-day volunteer event that takes place every June. Our assignment was the Mt. Baker Ridge Viewpoint. We worked with some of the original organizers in the neighborhood, cleaning up and landscaping the whole hillside. As you might imagine, this was a filthy endeavor, so no cameras.

Seattle Works thanked its volunteers with an after-party at Seattle Center for several hundred. There was a great turnout and we made small talk with El Jefe: the mayor, who was pretty gracious for all of the hard work.

All tables came with crayons and butcher paper. This is Amy’s graffiti.