Chicken Teriyaki Bowl #7

Brett Nordquist blogs about what he misses about downtown Seattle now that he is working in Redmond.  Now I’m terribly homesick.

We lived in the Seattle area for 13 years, but worked downtown Seattle.  The last 3-4 years we lived in Belltown, a neighborhood directly north of the downtown shopping area.  Now I live in a smallish city in Eastern Washington.

I miss all the people in Seattle; being able to go out and meet someone for lunch or coffee every day.  I miss seeing all of the strange and wonderful characters on the street.  I miss being able to talk to people about pretty much anything without them completely blowing you off.  I miss the Indian food, the Ethiopian food, the sushi.

I really miss the hundreds of places to just hang out.

I miss the elderly gentleman who sat at my table one day at Starbucks Pacific Place and told me that I should talk to one stranger every day.  We had a lovely conversation about being spontaneous and I never saw him again after that.

I even miss the Frye Apartments heckler guy in front of Pacific Place.

I miss walking down to Pioneer Square to the New Orleans on Friday nights for blues and gumbo.  I miss the Highway 99 club.  I miss the library, even though I could never find anything in it.

I miss being able to walk almost everywhere and having transit to go to those places too far to walk.

I miss the ferries, the cruise ships docking just a block from our condo, the city dogs, Green Lake and Half Priced Books.

I miss the people most of all.  Online social networking only satisfies a small part; face to face time is vital.  And I miss that.

This morning I was moving pretty slow. Did the usual bathroom stuff and then sat on the edge of the bed while I got dressed. As I pulled on my sweatshirt, my cat Roy jumped on the bed and connected with my flailing left arm. The result resembled a Barry Bonds homer - Roy went flying.

Understandably he was upset with me and immediately ran into the living room to lick himself and contemplate my punishment. Petting and cuddles were out of the question - he wasn’t risking another home run hit. I filled up his food dish, which usually would result in purring, but he just sulked at me.

Now he’s sitting in my chair, just staring at me, obviously just waiting for the ideal moment. Thank god the guns are all locked in the safe. The dial is too high for Roy to reach and shooting a gun is impossible difficult without opposible thumbs.

Roy is subtle, though. Hairball in the shoe, pee on the bed, shredding furniture is more his style. I’ve closed all the closet doors for safety. Meanwhile, I’m at Defcon 4 until my punishment is meted out.

Silver Lake Winery had a good-sized crowd, mainly because of The Blue Tropics.  They play a party combination of Jimmy Buffet, Van Morrison, etc combined with some of their own stuff.  I heard a really cool song the bass player wrote called ‘City of Refuge’ - referring to the Polynesian custom.  [BTW - I love linking and not having to explain references].

I’ve never been impressed by Silver Lake’s wines, but we bought a couple of bottles and it wasn’t long before the shoes came off.

Silver Lake has a small tasting room and one stall in each bathroom.  A rebellion took place wherein the women took over the men’s bathroom as well.  I found it an example of how a small group can get things done (politicking over).  One thing Silver Lake does have is a million-dollar view of the middle part of the valley.

If you stuck with my narrative this far, I’ll give you the money shot.  Silver Lake has a wine called “Blind Date”.  Not a great wine (and not laced with GHB), but something a bimbo used to drinking coolers would appreciate.  The labels were classic:

Since we were supposed to be wine-ing with my DH’s relatives, we arranged to meet them at Hyatt, which would give us time to drop in at Wineglass Cellars on the way.

Wineglass was nice because there were no tour buses full of snobby people from Bellevue and Seattle.  At Bonair one westsider was whining because no winery in the valley produced “organic wines” and she only would drink organic.  Gag me.

I can’t quite remember, but I believe the barrel was either a cabernet or zinfandel.  They did have a good bottled Zinfandel with grapes out of California, but I consider that cheating by the winemaker.

In past years we would end up at Hyatt, with blankets on the lawn and listen to a great band called The Blue Tropics.  However, Hyatt hadn’t booked them this year, instead featuring “Blind Lemon Pie” who played the WORST version of Mustang Sally I’ve ever heard.  White guys can do blues, but this one needed to stick to Springsteen covers where singing off key is an asset.

I got a great photo of the fermentation tanks at Hyatt:

I also noticed something else - the case prices were a lot lower than previous years.  I actually noticed this at several wineries.  Another thing - crowds were about half of what they were in previous years.  With gas at $3.79/gal and avalanche control on the passes, attendance was definitely down.

Next, chilling at Silver Lake

I really wanted to Twitter wine tasting yesterday, but my phone wouldn’t get any bars.  It was a blast anyway.

We started out at Bonair because Miz Dee’s BBQ was doing lunch and we were starving after a long gym session.  After beef brisquet sandwiches and baked beans we felt strong enough to tackle the barrel sample - a cabernet with very strong vanilla tones - and then the bottled wines, including their Port, which is really good.

BTW - one thing about Miz Dee; you can have good or you can have fast, but you can’t have both.  The whole crew moves like they are trapped in tree sap.

Bonair has one of the coolest barrel houses in the valley:

More to come…

I got a good talking-to by my personal trainer (PT) yesterday. I hadn’t worked out for two weeks and had pretty much gorged myself. The result - I gained three pounds. I’m definitely going the wrong way on the scale. Plus the workout itself, which I could have done fairly easily six months ago, whipped my butt like nobody’s business.

So, back to it. Truthfully, I feel gross anyway - too much fast food and not enough exercise, I feel sluggish and nasty; like congealed bacon grease left over the weekend in the fry pan.

There are a lot of things we said we’d do on our mini-vacation that we didn’t do:

• We didn’t walk on the beach.  It was cold, snowy, rainy, hail-y in rotating succession, with wind the only constant.
• We didn’t work out.  The fitness room was adequate and I stepped foot in it exactly once, just to see what it had.  The pool and whirlpool spa, however, we used quite a bit.
• We didn’t eat healthy.  Lots of yummy, delicious, butter-soaked food washed down with copious amounts of various types of alcohol.
• We didn’t go to bed early and get lots of quality sleep.  There was a great band in the lounge that we listened to until last call each night.

Then there are the things I didn’t do, that I said I wouldn’t do.  More success with those:

• I didn’t connect to the internet in any way for four days.  In fact, I didn’t even turn on my computer until this morning even though I got back yesterday afternoon.  The closest I got to a computer was calling for the pass reports before heading home.  The DH checked in once and checked his voice mail regularly.
• We didn’t try to make a schedule.  Very disorienting not knowing what we were going to do at any point.

The only problem I ran into?  Four days was about ten days too short.

I’m officially on vacation, but I still can’t stop myself from scheduling my day.  I need to clean house, take the dog for a walk, and finish the laundry.

Some where in all of that, I’ll try and write an interesting post…

If you tell people where to go, but not how to get there, you’ll be amazed at the results. - Patton

I saw this quote today and it reminded me of a History Channel show I saw.  It was about D-Day and a group who were parachuted in to destroy a particular big gun installation over one of the beaches.

When they fought their way to the installation, they found out that the gun wasn’t there; it had been moved miles inland.  But here’s the cool thing.  The soldiers’ orders weren’t “go to this bluff and destroy the gun there”.  Their orders were “go destroy this gun”.  So they packed up their stuff and moved inland to destroy the gun.

This made an impression on me because I live in a world where just enough is considered OK.  A world where “nobody told me that” is considered a good excuse.  I like the simplicity of it.  They were supposed to destroy the gun.  The gun wasn’t where they thought it was, so they went to find and destroy it.

Our basic, personal principles work the same way, don’t they?

March was busy and intense and a little frightening.  April is looking much better.  Mid month we are going to the beach for a long weekend.

photo: Magalie L’Abba

I love the beach and always feel refreshed there.

Another thing I’m looking forward to is slowing down work-wise just a bit.  I need a little breathing room…I’ve been working way too many evenings and weekends.

drawing by Random Factor

I need a little me time…