Amanda is at her Spanish for Medical Professionals class, and I am sitting in the Montlake Public Library waiting for her and taking advantage of the power outlets and free wireless networking. The library is pretty nice. It is in a newly built building; the previous one was across the street that I had actually never been in… I had only used the outside book drop when we lived on 23rd and Madison.
It’s a bit loud, though, which seems odd for a library.
Here’s a recap of the weekend:
05 OCTOBER 2007 – FRIDAY
I spent a lot of the day cleaning and preparing for a trip to the Olympic Peninsula. We were going to spent the night at one of the attending’s cabin on the Hood Canal with various other people. I went up to Roosevelt to meet up with Amanda, Zubin, Khan, Tania, and Tania’s spouse Michael. Zubin rode with Amanda and I as we tried to make the 6:20pm ferry to Bainbridge Island. Although we got there with plenty of time to spare, there were already too many people ahead of us, so we had to wait for the next trip an hour later. We took advantage of time by walking about the ferry terminal area (ok, maybe it wasn’t that exciting). Amanda did get a snack. Zubin and the rest were a bit wiser and walked to the nearby Ivar’s and had a quick dinner.
The ferry ride was fun (I love the ferry!), and we eventually made it to “Barnacle Bill’s”.
The house was very nice. In some was it was very hostel-like, which perhaps is not surprising since it is more of a weekend getaway type place.
Megan, Zubin’s sister Jasmine, her friend Piere (sp?), and another of their friends Colin were already there. They had arrived earlier and had already kayaked on the canal and had many adventures with friendly otters. They had dinner made for us when we arrived… salad and Indian inspired food. Tania and Michael brought berry pie. We then just relaxed. At one point various people played charades. Amanda made up a game where she would name some place out of an atlas and people would have to tell her where is was.
We were pretty tired, though, so we went to bed early, but most everyone else stayed up… perhaps to play various musical instruments. I read an old National Geographic from 1930 that was in the bedroom.
06 OCTOBER 2007 – SATURDAY
It was my birthday. Hoo Hah. We had bfast of coffee cake, fake bacon, and real bacon (all provided by Amanda and I). We had a lot of bacon because it was buy-one-get-one-free at our Safeway… Megan had actually gotten the same brand earlier. Tania was very happy about the bacon. She was actually rocking back and forth in her chair with excitement! I had no idea she luvved luvved luvved bacon that much. And apparently limeade, but I did not see her drink any of that.
Jasmine and her friend had an fun night. They stayed in one of the rooms in the basement, and apparently there were a lot of mice running about. Which is not all that surprising as we were in a rustic cabin. They weren’t disturbed by all that, though, but were a bit put off by the dead mouse in the bed. But they disposed of the mouse and replaced the sheets and presumably slept soundly. Unfortunately, in the morning, there was a fresh dead mouse in their bed. Oops. Perhaps they were sleeping in the neighborhood sacred mouse burial grounds.
Jasmine and friend (friend is easier since I don’t know how to spell her name… actually, perhaps Jasmine’s name is spelled differently as well) stayed behind to decompress after the mouse incident, while the rest of us went off for a hike. The weather was a bit wet and coldish, and we had to leave in the early afternoon, so we looked for some short ones.
We hiked to a waterfall, which was actually quite nice, but it was only five or ten minutes away from the “trailhead”. We then went up some mountain whose name I have forgotten, but we decided to drive up it since the weather was disagreeable and Amanda was tired. We did walk about a bit at the top, though, so we did some hiking.
Once we got back to the bottom, we bid farewell to everyone and drove back to the house; they went off to do another hike along a river. At the house we packed up, said goodbye to Jasmine and friend, and started back home.
We decided to drive down to Olympia and back up to Seattle rather than take the ferry. I did not think it would be faster even in a worse case scenario with the ferry, but I had never been in that area of the peninsula, so it would be good to learn more about Washington. We live here after all.
I had a splitting headache all morning, and there weren’t any pain killers in the house except for some suspiciously old aspirin, so we stopped at a place for Subway and some medicines. The headache stuff was only sold in single dosages, which was annoying, but I wasn’t going to let that get in the way of my pain relief.
We stopped in Tukwila at the Borders to get a medical spanish book that had been recommended to Amanda. The power kept fluctuating while we were there; I originally thought nothing of it, but perhaps it had something to do with the massive tanker explosion in Tacoma that occurred around the time we were there.
Anyways, we made it back home, and I was told to “get dressed” for my birthday surprise. I presumed Amanda was taking me out to dinner somewhere. She made me wear her fleece head wrap over my eyes while we drove to the restaurant, and after I started commenting on what roads I thought we were on, she started taking evasive maneuvers until I had no real idea where we where.
As it turned out, we went to Nishino, a Japanese place in Madison Valley that I always wanted to go to. It is not necessarily vegetarian friendly, and Amanda is not really into Japanese food like I am, so we had never been before. I had heard that they have a great omakase dinner, but it must be done for at least two people, and a more personalized one (of which a veggie one qualified) must be requested a day in advance.
So we just ordered off the menu. A lot of the seemingly veggie options had fish stock, but there were a few other things (other than various veggie sushi concoctions) that she could get. I, on the other hand, after a tasty seaweed salad, I proceeded to consume a lot of raw seafood. After the salad was a half dozen oysters. Slurp. Then I had a chef’s selection of sashimi. Slurp. I actually was not all that hungry, which is always dangerous when eating sushi, so I refrained from stuffing myself. I did get a tempura banana with ice cream for dessert. Very tasty. I will have to come back for the omakase some other time.
I guessed that we might be coming here. There aren’t really all that many restaurants that I want to go to that Amanda knows about, and two of them would require a jacket on my part. Those two would be Rover’s and the Herbfarm), and we should probably go tothose two places when Amanda can drink alcohol again. And there are a couple places in Belltown that I want to try eventually.
07 OCTOBER 2007 – SUNDAY
I am drawing a blank on Sunday. Perhaps I will remember later.
I am at home right now (although I did start this entry in the library). Amanda is upstairs catching up on email and perhaps reading TMZ. We are waiting for a lemon cake to finish baking. The piglet is out marauding.