Forging Ahead

Even the bathroom graffiti at a local (and very nice) pub in Belltown exemplifies the spirit of the Northwest.

My purple shirt grunts in solidarity.

On an unrelated (and differently dated) note, we went to D.Cyclone's winery today for a tour and tasting. It was awesome. We tried about 12 wines, and even picked out a few we like enough to buy (us buying non-$6 critter-label wine? No!) so D may pick some up for us. D has a very cool job.

Well, these past few posts lack substantial detail, but moving forward we should be back to normal here. Normal, of course, is that I have a 5:45 AM call tomorrow, so I need to get to bed.

I will see you tomorrow. Night.

Oh, Come On!

Recently, M and I went down to Pike Place Market to wander about and get some lunch. We passed a fruit stand with these meyer lemons.

A few years ago, I had meyer lemons at a restaurant in NY and thought they were cool. I figured I would pick some up, but couldn't find them anywhere. Fairway Market was mentioned as a good place to get them, but when I went there, they said they were out since the restaurant chefs all came by when they opened and bought everything good. I made two trips up there at like 6 or 7 in the morning (45 minute trip) to try to get some and finally managed to get a few kinda lame-looking lemons. When I tried one, it kinda sucked.

This experience put me off meyer lemons for a while.

Here, in broad daylight, they taunt me.

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Escape From Seattle

We returned to NY (and subsequently to a very nice little resort in PA) for my grandmother's 85th birthday. In addition to seeing my family, we met up with our friends in Brooklyn at one of our old haunts.

We had a lot of fun, both with my family and our friends.

On a related note, I got to shoot a shotgun at some clay disks. Very cool, and I got an awesome hat I will have to show you later.

M went to visit her family while I went to Orlando for a work trip. If you read my first post from today you'll understand why I will say nothing more, and I mean absolutely nothing about this trip. At some point though, if you're all very good, I'll show you the book I received at the end of that trip.

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Even Seven Couldn't Save It

I've watched some really bad tv.

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Some Puns Are Not Cool

We drove by here on the way to get cat food.

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More Chew

The baking continues. I've made a lot of breads, some have been tasty, some definitely not.

M and I tried making bagels, but we did not have high-gluten flour, which apparently makes the best bagels. Runor is that you can't get it in stores, but in Whole Foods you can get "Gluten Flour" which I assumed was the same thing.

It was not. HG Flour is about 14% protein, nice and chewy. Gluten flour is about 70% protein, which seized up into a mass that nearly choked my Kitchen-Aid. Sigh.

So we made the bagels with bread flour. They were fine, but not quite chewy or bageley enough. I miss my bacon and egg bagel sandwich from Bagel Hole in Brooklyn and I will have it again. I swear it! I'll just have suck it up and order some HG flour online.

Also, we found a place that makes decent Chinese so I made my leftovers into a calzone. MMMmmm.

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Stock and Barrel

We finally got around to visiting The Locks. They were pretty awesome. Ships come in at one level, they get to another, very cool. We got to see them working in both directions. I love that stuff.

There's also a "fish ladder" that the salmon use to move upstream. Earlier in the year they apparently run so thick that they're basically constantly shooting out of this thing. That wasn't going on at the time but we saw a few in an underwater viewing area.

It was raining a bit, and we grabbed fish and chips at the Lockspot (for the Deadliest Catch fans) while Nirvana played on the radio.

Serious...not making that up. We could not have had a more Seattle day. Although I wasn't wearing flannel.

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Out Of Office

Well, I'm back.

Thank you for the applause.

I'm sorry I was gone for so long. It's been over a month since I wrote anything and I hope that won't happen again. I was on a real streak there, but I needed a break. Things have been a bit rough and if you noticed my posting trend, I was mostly writing about how not great things were and just showing you pictures of things I was eating. I know that may not have been the most entertaining reading (or writing) experience.

It's not that things are much better (mos def not) but I'm going to try to not focus on them so much here.

Anyway, not much has happened in the past month, but remember that turkey sandwich that M made and then couldn't find? It showed up a week later in the trunk. Yeah, we have no idea how that happened.

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