Category: about Seattle

File under: sign that appeared at the right place & time.

Do you ever buy furniture from Ikea at a decent sum, forget you buy it, move 4 times, then realize right before you go to donate the mystery box years later that it would fit your needs far better than this one out-of-stock cabinet you had your eye on?

Yeah, me either.

Today, Gnomey moved. This is her neighbor’s high tech doorbell contraption.

Tonight, we watched motomotoyama & her DLF teammates at the Key Arena.
They broke a world record in attendance:

Earlier in the day, it was also the sunniest day in weeks. The phone cam could barely handle it.

At the last minute, I joined some friends at Kozue. My friend S recently had a baby, and we’re in full support of helping her make up for lost sushi time.

We ordered udon, the Red Dragon Roll, the Crunchy Tiger Hidden Shrimp roll, a spicy Yellowtail roll, and a few other assorted items. I will probably return for both the udon & the sushi, but that Crunchy Tiger was my favorite. It was perfectly spicy and the right size for a roll.

But, maybe not under time pressure. If I hadn’t enjoyed my meal so much, I’d have not forgiven the sluggish & delayed service. The price was right and the atmosphere was comfortable & casual. I’ll have to give it another chance — the food was good, the $1 menu I saw was extensive & notable, & I hear the happy hour is great.

We found ourselves in southern Snohomish County today, hunting down a gift for Mr. T’s mom. When all was said and done, we stopped for pho at the H Mart – Alderwood food court. This place was delicious.

Some VIP had a birthday today.

For the record, 🙂 I played no role in this. Well, except to snap the image as I was checking out for the day. It took a few seconds to realize what The Others had done.

Anyone up for a quick lesson?

So on our way home from work, we made a stop at Tutta Bella Wallingford. As delicious as Naples, and the same price after euro –> USD conversion.

My dear friend Maya‘s in town. She’s been living in Geneva since last year, after heading there for a 6-week contract, but she’s really one of us in Seattle.

Her birthday was last week, so we celebrated tonight at The Garage — a bowling alley/pool hall. She’s headed back for one more year, so we sent her off with a sign with our signatures. This was my favorite:

As seen in the workplace kitchen.

But it wasn’t Mike the Tiger.

We celebrated at the Latona Pub, Mr. T’s favorite place. We followed that up by visiting die Bierstube with motomotoyama & Natalie.

This month, ten of us met to discuss our month’s selection: The Happiness Project. I’d seen the author speak in January & several others had already read her book. After several months in a row of dealing with apocalyptic or Holocaust fiction, we went with a cheerier tome.

We talked for 3 hours on the book alone. I’d say it struck a chord.

Captain Amy was our host. I always love this picture of hers:
Effort
Hard Work Never Killed Anybody-
But It Is Illegal In Some Places

It was recently announced this local institution will shutter forever. I’ll miss the clever marquee.

My friend Stacey came to Fremont for lunch and brought her 6 week old baby boy! He was an angel, waking up only after we left.

New discovery: Lucky Pho in Fremont now sells Kogi Tacos. They were delicious. I might have to go back for dinner. And very soon, they’ll have vermicelli bowls.

Today marks two years since I started this little daily project. At the time, I was recovering from a surgery so I used the downtime to set up a site. It fed a desire I had for years to gather my ongoing & frequently-photographed adventures in diary format, published more timely. I’ve mostly done what I set out to do.

As things have transitioned lately in several areas of my life, I’m unsure how much longer this will continue and if in a public format. But on anniversaries, I like to indulge the nostalgia and also take stock. I haven’t yet made any decisions but I certainly don’t regret having this record. I am glad I have it.

For my daily diligence of the last few months, I didn’t take a picture til the sun set tonight. I’ll spare you the poorly lit record of my dark dining room.

Instead, I’ll share a photo I saw a few years ago by flickr user EdgarDiazRocks. The title & the image still strike me now, and I suspect will forever. It’s titled “i’m afraid to forget.”

Yeah, that’s about right. I’m afraid to forget.

I took a fantastic class this evening at Lara Ferroni’s Spare Room: Low Light Photography. We worked with speedlights and continuous light. I saw friends there, made some new ones, and left class completely inspired.

After I finish post-processing on the rest of the workshop photos, I’ll come back and update this entry.

This month’s Cookbook Club covered Falling Cloudberries. I brought the Kourapiedes pictured above. No big surprise in my selection as these are very similar to Mexican Wedding Cookies or Russian Cakes that I am known to love. These are a Greek variation. But I got so frustrated during the 2nd batch I finished off the brandy I’d bought as an ingredient. The recipes were in narrative style — for an unpracticed cook like me, this led to many rereads and I still missed steps. These turned out fine.

I’d tried the book’s Prawn in Peri Peri & Feta sauce and it needed so many adjustments I bagged plans to bring it to the gathering. This was completely okay since there was so much food there: ribs, couscous, gravlax, sweet pickles, carrot salad, garbanzo salad with feta & cilantro, youvetzi, carrot cake, semolina cake with rosewater syrup, creme caramel and two kinds of ice cream — caramel and vanilla. Everything was SO good.

I think that the general consensus was that most recipes needed slight changes here and there. Could it be that the conversion from British to US measurement caused this issue? That’s the pet theory I’m pushing.

We were honored to attend the wedding of two good friends today.

Between my boss’ 2 small teams at my day-thing, everyone comes from somewhere different. We have members from Japan, China, Vietnam, India, Washington State, Pennsylvania, Texas, and of course, Louisiana. I love the variety. Spice of life, and all that. Now if the linguists/translators joined us in a supergroup we could have 5 continents covered…

Today, we had a party and invited the rest of the floor. We sorted plans out on the whiteboard.