While I was in Boise, the super-fantastic-thank-god-i-found-them Queen Anne knitting group had a significant-other friendly get together at Brooke’s house.  I am deeply grateful for having found this awesome group of girls- I think you’ll see why in a minute.  I was deeply bummed that I had to be out of town and was going to miss the event.  Mike has actually met a few of the girls’ boyfriends/husbands/fiances, usually on a one-on-one basis, and actually has enjoyed their company, so in my head, this get-together was going to be the moment when we actually made a bunch of couple friends and all of my dreams came true.

However, once I found out that I wasn’t going to be able to come, my dreams were pretty much dashed.  If I wasn’t going, I wouldn’t be able to physically drag him anywhere, so I knew he wasn’t going to go and meet his new best friends.

But this is where I am reminded how awesome the girls of the Queen Anne knitting group are.  Barrie, ever the obsessive planner, started emailling Mike early in the day harassing him to come sans me.  Kate and her fiance Max joined in on the inviting action and even brought some cookies so that he could say he was contributing to the potluck.  (In case Kate or Max are reading this, what were those cookies?  He keeps talking about them because they were so good but doesn’t remember what they were.)  When I found out that he had been successfully forced into socializing, Rita even secretly took pictures of him enjoying himself for me!

Score!

Mike actually said he enjoyed himself- evidently the boys had some heated, fascinating discussion about knitting (hate), poop (love) and the movie Big Trouble in Little China, which I’ve never seen but Mike immediately put back on our Netflix queue and is now officially declaring “the greatest movie ever.”

All in all, this made me smile.  Yay Mike.  Yay knitting group!

I’m in Boise for a business trip right now.  Actually, as I write this, I’m sitting behind a single-sided mirror watching people use a web application my team developed and trying to figure out what we need to change.  It’s not really that exciting.  There was one guy who kept mumbling to himself and thought that a button that read “Social Path” actually read “Sociopath,” and then got a little too excited, but other than that, it’s been kind of flat.

Boise is not the most thrilling city I’ve ever visited.  Growing up, my mom ALWAYS talked about wanting to move to Idaho for some reason.  i can’t really remember why- it may have something to do with the fact that she thought there were a lot of fossils in Idaho.  Maybe she’ll clarify.  But after spending a couple of days here, let me write a giant THANK YOU to my dad for putting the kabosh on that idea.  I have this horrible feeling that if we had moved to Boise at a young age, I’d be a chain-smoking mother of 4 married to somebody who drove a large piece of machinery for a living about now.  And that would not be cool.

It has been nice to spend a little time with some of my co-workers and get to know them a bit.  I’m lucky that even though I work for such a square company, I’m part of the creative team so I get to be surrounded with interesting, talented and kind of quirky people who keep me entertained.  I’m a big fan of quirk, obviously.

Tomorrow I fly to Portland in the morning for a meeting, and then finally get to go home to my cozy house, with my cozy fireplace and my lifetime supply of Greek yogurt and cottage cheese.  Even though I try to eat healthy when I travel, I still miss MY food.  Boise cuisine, while not as bad as I expected, is still not quite the culinary adventure that Seattle is.

I’m feeling kind of ancient and rickety right now.  A couple of reasons:

• We had a date at a food court last Friday.  And I was amused.
• On Saturday, we went to see Video Games Live.  Our biggest complaint?  a) The douchebag announcer who kept hogging the stage with his multiple costume changes for no reason (seriously- he came out at one point wearing Bedazzled jeans.  Vomit) and b) Mike didn’t even recognize a bunch of the songs they played- Mike, who has slept outside for multiple video games and consoles.  God of War?  What are they talking about?  Just play the Tetris theme song and make me happy.  (The Video Game Pianist playing live was pretty badass though.)

• Mike rode the bus for the first time!  Yay Mike!

• Tonight’s Good Eats episode was about Brussel Sprouts, and I was so excited that I emailed Scott (who has started a really badass blog himself) about it.
• I was bragging to Mike tonight that I get to sleep in tomorrow- til 7:30 AM.
• It’s about 10:30 PM and I’m totally ready for bed.  Nighty nite!

I am dedicating this post to somebody who has specifically told me that he doesn’t even read our blog (because he doesn’t like to “read stuff”)- one of mike’s best friends, and the person who is the self-proclaimed master of insulting me so it’s funny- Derek Unger.

Everybody has a passion of some kind, whether it’s knitting, cars, motorcycles, running, music- honestly, it doesn’t matter what it is, but everybody has a “thing.”  Our friend Derek has a lot of interests- he likes computers, video games, television, snowboarding, biking and Mott’s Apple Sauce- but his real passion, the reason he wakes up in the morning, is fast food.

Mike and Derek used to work together, and they went out ot lunch every single day.  If you ask either of them, it was the highlight of the day.  They would spend all morning debating over WHERE they were going to go for lunch, and then spend all afternoon talking about what they ate.  It was simultaneously mundane and fascinating.

So last night, when we were running errands on the East Side and suddenly realized that we were starving to death, Mike decided that we were going to eat at “the biggest food court in the world.”  Huh?  Food court?  I was immediately dismayed.  But I was also starving to death and have no idea about what goes on in Redmond/Bellevue, so I went along with the plan.

Dude, he did not lie.  The Crossroads at Bellevue really is the home of the biggest food court I’ve ever seen.  They have every kind of food you could possibly imagine- there are just aisles and aisles of fast food.  All I could think was “Wow, we really need to take Derek here.”  Here is a tiny sampling of what we had to choose from:

Pizza, plus Japanese food and Polish pierogis (you can’t see the sign).

Barbeque, Chinese, Boba

Mexican, Sushi

Indian, Pho, Soup and Paninis

Seriously, this was just a smattering of what the place had to offer.  It was insane.  We ended up taking advantage of the selection.  I had a Greek Chicken Salad (which was surprisingly good for food court fare) and Mike had gyozas and rice and tacos al pastor.  He was pretty happy.

In addition to the food selection, there was also live entertainment in the form of a gospel choir performing:

And even a library.  Yup, a library in a giant strip mall.  They obviously realized how odd this was, hence this sign:

Random.

But by far the strangest thing I saw all night was this “Family Square.”

Yeah, that looks to me like a giant corral for children.  Which doesn’t seem like too bad of an idea, as long as somebody is hopefully watching said children.

Derek, we hope you come and visit us soon so we can make your dream of watching tv, playing video games and eating fast food all weekend in Seattle a reality!

In case you haven’t heard, Microsoft announced the layoffs today.  Not good news.

Thankfully, Mike is safe.  His group didn’t lose a single person.  He’ll never tell you this, but he is actually doing really well at his job.  Sometimes I wonder how he can be so awesome at work, but still not be able to do seemingly simple things, like wear matching socks.  Maybe his secret to success is his natural tendency to stay up all night working.  Or maybe it’s his penchant for brightly colored tennis shoes and skinny jeans that prompted his boss to tell me that they call Mike their resident office hipster.  (Yeah, standards for hipster-ness are much lower over there).

But I think the real secret to his ability to kick ass is the fact that he watches this commercial before work every morning to get psyched up:

I’m not making this up.  He loves this commercial.  I hope all of my readers take a moment to picture Mike watching this on his iPhone on his way to work every morning.  And then I hope you laugh.  I crack up every time I think of it, and that’s why I love him.  Weirdo.

Here’s something you haven’t seen in a while:

It’s me.  In the sun.  The glorious, glorious sun.

I spent last weekend with my dear friend and partner in crime Anne in San Diego at the biggest knitting trade show of the year, TNNA.  It was exhausting but glorious- I had to carry around a LOT of stuff, but most of it was free books, and I spent a lot of time in a classroom, but it was because I was taking some classes with some really amazing knitters.  Plus, it was sunny- god, I love sunny- and warm, and beautiful.  And I got to get some quality time in with some fabulous people.

I ate 3 meals in 3 days at Chocolat, which, I discovered, has the perfect combination of foods- they serve crepes, gelato, coffee, paninis and cheese.  Heaven.

The best thing on the menu was this turkey sandwhich.  I don’t like turkey sandwhiches, but I wanted to move to San Diego and marry this turkey sandwhich:

It came with a side of olives.  Every time I see olives, I picture my bestie Scott (his blog is coming soon) as a 7 year old eating a can of them by sticking them on each of his fingers and gulping them off.

Denise, me, Kristy and Anne (the Handicraft Cafe Entorogue) had delicious tapas at Sevilla:

(There was a picture of me where you could see my face, but it involved a full on nostril shot as well.)

We discovered just how Anne, who doesn’t ever sleep, manages to keep herself going all day and all night:

And every day looked like this:

Which is why I looked like this when I had to leave:

Obviously, there was a lot of knitting as well.  I got 7 inches done on a sweater, learned how to knit continental-styles, found out that I cast on upside-down, discovered the joy of wrapping yarn around my neck and hung out with Cat Bordhi and Chrissy Gardiner, and watched Anne’s celebrity status as a knitting designer grow and grow.  I’ll be updating the Handicraft Cafe blog with knitting nerdiness for those who are interested (as soon as Anne finishes making the photos of me a little less shiny and a little more tan!)

Really, I’m alive.  But I’m in San Diego at TNNA (a knitting industry trade show, in case you’re not cool and don’t know anything about yarn.  Loser).  I’ve been taking classes with knitting superstars, petting the most fabulous yarn ever, and doing some serious stocking up for HandicraftCafe.com.

I’ll update with pictures and stories, but now I’m going to take a nap and then eat dinner.  Those are two of my favorite things in the world by the way.

This weekend I got to meet up with my friend Shaina! Shaina was one of my besties back in high school- junior year we even had a giant combined birthday party because we’re “star twins,” aka, we share a birthday. Sr. year she dressed up as me for Halloween, which involved a horrible blonde wig, stealing my clothes, wearing a tiara all day and walking in late to class with a bad excuse in a valley girl accent. Aw, memories. She is now a marathon-running, world-traveling super teacher extraordinaire with a really awesome boyfriend who will be joining her for a year-long trek around the globe in a few weeks. I’m constantly in awe of and slightly jealous of people who can give up control and just travel like that. I know I’m always the first one to complain about things like class reunions, but I love that we went to a high school that produced such an eclectic, accomplished group of people. Meeting up with old friends isn’t always bad, especially if they are bad-ass and doing amazing, fearless things like Shaina. But I still will complain about the concept of an awkward high school reunion where I have to look at pictures of peoples’ kids.

I got through my 28^th birthday without feeling like too much of an old bag, but this weekend I had several moments where I was in awe of how old I’m getting.My back hurts.I plan meals in advance to save money at the grocery store.I got really really excited when I read that Le Creuset came out with some new colors.

We saw the movie Gran Turino this weekend. Freaking a, go see this movie. I don’t want to get anybody so hyped up about it that they go in with too high of expectations, but it was the first movie I’ve seen in a theater in FOREVER where both Mike and I left saying what a good movie it was. I laughed and cried. Clint Eastwood’s character totally reminded me of my grandpa in Georgia, Papa Hot.

My office is cold. I really DO need a Slanket.

Today was one of those days, where everything just seemed to line up and life gives you a break. After raining cats and dogs for over a week with record flooding throughout the area; the clouds decided to take break, let the sun come out and dry up some tarmac.

It just so happens Ducati Seattle was having an open house event at 1:00PM to unveil the new 2009 Ducati Monster 1100S.  Free food, free test rides, and the opportunity to get out of the house and meet some new like-minded people? Count me in.

So I rushed down to the garage and start digging out all my old riding gear. Helmet? Check. Gloves? Check. Jacket? Check. Valid M1 license? Check. Aubrey out shopping? Check. I chucked everything into the Mini and off I went.

Today, I have to say was one of the most exciting days I’ve had in Seattle in a long time. Enough that I’m actually writing a blog post. I got to ride both the Ducati Hypermotard and the new Monster 1100S. It was like a life recharging event. My mind was trapped in the day to day mundane routines and was finally, for a short 30 minutes, I was set free. I know, I know it sounds cheesy, but it something I really can’t describe with words.

Here are some pictures from the Open House and with the demo bikes in front of our house.

To those in the know. Live. Love. Ride.

Ugh, this week has me so busy, I haven’t even had a chance to blog about my extremely busy but very mundane life.  I will get back to regular posting this weekend.

In the meantime, my last post seems to have caused some confusion.  Several people seem to be getting my beloved Slanket confused with this sad imposter, the Snuggie.

I’ve done my research.  The Slanket came first.  The Slanket is bigger.  The Slanket has a kid’s version.  The Slanket has a far more extensive range of colors.

Come on people, get your As-Seen-On-TV products straight.