for a quick update on non-Panamanian stuff we’ve been up to.

Last weekend, I was sick and literally spent the entirety of Saturday in bed.  This was not very exciting.  But the weekend before that, we hopped down to SoCal for a quick trip home.  We spent 3 short but action-packed days doing fun stuff like this…

Watch a friend get married…

Congratulations Vi!  Not only was her wedding GORGEOUS and romantic and wonderful, but she was wearing an awesome dress.  This may make me sound shallow and frivolous, but I’m always a little disappointed when I go to a wedding and don’t love the bride’s dress.  This was not an issue with Vi- the girl has style.  And her dress had pockets.  POCKETS: making good dresses even better since the beginning of time.

We got to see old friends (like Helaine, who I am stealing all these pictures from.  Thanks/Sorry!)…

And the highlight of the night- I got to be part of an “Asian Party Face” (aka “look at me, i’m intimdating and i don’t smile at bitches”) group photo.  (Some explanation in case you didn’t go to high school with a bunch of nerdy Asian kids who refused to smile in pictures until they were past their self-conscious teenage taking themselves too seriously phase.)  Seriously, after all those years of AP/IB classes, this definitely makes my life feel more complete.

Earlier that day, we made the trek to Little Saigon to eat some Banh Mi deliciousness.  Mary came with us and found more evidence of my family’s not-so-secret obsession with personalized license plate.  ::sigh::

6 sandwiches for $10?  Joy.  Eating out of a stolen shopping cart in the middle of a parking lot?  Even better.

Watching my mom share the fruit she bought at the magic fruit store and try and tell this random women who only spoke Vietnamese where to buy the best cherries?  Priceless.

But the best thing of all was finally noticing that Mike was wearing THESE sunglasses all weekend and remember just what a giant dork he really is.  (Note: I like dorks.)

Sorry I’ve been absent for a bit.

I have a ton to blog about- the trip to Panama was 8 straight days of awesomeness- but upon getting back, I lost all my images on flickr.

I’ve spent the past week trying to recover them, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen.  Needless to say, I’m extremely bummed about this.  It does look like it was a user error (aka I clicked the wrong button), but as I now know very well, flickr won’t restore deleted photos.

Thankfully, I have most of the pictures backed up.  Eventually, I’d like to get the pictures back up on the blog, but that will take a while and I’m not making any promises re: a timeline.

Give me some time to mourn the loss of the pictures, and I’ll be back and better than ever in a few days.  And then the recap of Panamania will truly begin .

So what are you doing tonight?  I’m staring at a pile of clothes, gifts and wrapping paper.  And I’m a bit stressed.

The good news is we’re leaving to spend the holidays back home in California at the crack of dawn Saturday morning.  The bad news is that means I have 31 hours to work a full day, pack everything I’ll need for 2 1/2 weeks, catch up on laundry so that I don’t come back to a disgusting explosion of smelly clothes and make enough peanut butter sandwiches to get through the weekend.  Since Mike somehow managed to convince me that DRIVING was a good idea (I still don’t know how that happened), at the very least I do have the option to throw everything I own into the trunk of his car, so that’s a relief.  But it also means that I have to pack myself enough knitting to get through 2 solid days of driving and enough snacks to keep me from having to eat at some crappy fast food restaurant (thankfully, grilled cheeses at In n Out do NOT fall into this category).

On top of all that, I also have to finish some prep work for my work’s Christmas party tomorrow.  Thankfully, I have an awesome boss and a party-planning partner in crime, so instead of some stuffy gala the festivities are taking place at a local dive bar and the required attire is “bad holiday sweater.”   I think I may have located a real winner too- I’ll update with photographic evidence tomorrow.

So wish me luck over the next couple of days.  Hopefully we’ll arrive in Anaheim safely and armed with lots of entertaining photographic evidence of our drive down.

Remember back in December when I was bitching about the record snowfall that paralyzed the entire city of Seattle?  Well, that is just a dim memory.  Today, western Washington is the hottest place in the country.

And, just like they did when faced with a solid week of snow, people here are freaking out.  There is a citywide run on AC units and fans.  People who spend 10 months out of the year bitching about the grey are now begging for rain.  One of my coworkers spent Saturday digging a ditch in her backyard so she could have a makeshift pool.  This weekend at the Ballard Seafood Festival I saw no fewer than 4 booths selling special equipment to keep cats and dogs from overheating.  Seriously people- there are dogs that live in Arizona and Nevada, and they’re fine.  Your dog will be fine during our one week of hot weather if you just use common sense.

But the very best example of Seattlites’ complete inability to deal with heat came today in the form of a formal warning from the King County Metro Transit System, in which the public was reminded of ways to deal with the heat, including “taking off your jacket.”

Personally, I’m fine with the heat.  I’m as happy as a pig in mud.  I would much rather have swampass on the bus ride home than be freezing my ass off for months on end. Go heatwave!

It’s 9:30 pm on Wednesday night and I’m frantically cleaning the house.  Why on earth am I cleaning when I should be glued to the tv watching So You Think You Can Dance?  Because we have visitors coming.  And these visitors are like big time, major VIP visitors- my mom, dad and brother are flying up tomorrow!

I am super stoked to see them- it’s their first time coming up to visit us so I have a lot to show them.  So far, I know that we’re going to hit the standards- Pike Place Market, the Locks, and maybe an arboretum or something as well.  We’re also planning on driving out to Whidbey Island on Saturday to hit the farmer’s market and do some picnicking at Deception Pass.  We’re blessed with great weather this weekend, so the 5 of us will have lots of pretty things to look at while we are stuffed inside the Mini.  (Yeah, we haven’t completely ruled out the idea of renting a car that day.)

Time spent with my family is always an adventure- we’re definitely a collection of characters.  Between my super-bubbly obsessively clean mother, my dad and his slight penchant for exaggeration (yeah I wonder where I got that from) and my ridiculously laid back brother (who probably just wants to play video games with Mike all weekend), I’m sure I’ll end the weekend with plenty of stories to share.

To give you a small taste of what spurs people in my family to action, remember the sparkly gangsta’ Hello Kitty bag I was obsessed with when Ben was in town?

Guess what showed up on my doorstep on Monday?  Dopeness!  As Barrie said when I told her about it, “Dude, I need to be part of your family.”

Obviously, my attraction to all things sparkly is genetic.

I finally got Mike back from the clutches of a crazy work schedule and we’ve spent most of the weekend so far attached at the hip.  Unfortunately, instead of romantic dinners and long walks in the park, we’ve filled the time searching for a new place to live.

When we got back from anniversary-palooza that the owners of our building weren’t going to renew our lease so that they could put it back on the market.  On one hand, this totally sucks, because I really really really really really hate the thought of moving, and this time we won’t have the high-class movers who do all the work for you courtesy of Microsoft.  Lame.  On the bright side though, while we like our place, there are some things about our current place that are really annoying, like the fact that we have only have one closet in the entire freaking place.  You have no idea how inconvenient this is when you have guests coming over and you don’t want your vacuum cleaner hanging out in the middle of the living room.

So far, we’ve seen 4 places, and we actually liked 1 of them!  It’s a duplex where the owner lives in the top unit and we would have the bottom.  She travels a lot- like 8-9 months a year- so most of the time it would just be us.  The rent is really cheap- like almost $400 less a month then what we pay now, which would be awesome, and it has two full bedrooms, lots of storage, a walk-in closet, an amazing yard with a barbeque and deck, and plenty of room for a dining table.  The only downsides are that there is no garage- but our other favorite doesn’t have one either and Mike says he can deal with it- and it has an electric range.  I’m really bummed about the electric range, but the rest of the kitchen is roomy and has tons of counterspace.  And did I mention that it’s an amazing deal?

There was one other place that we liked, but it had a fairly dingy bathroom that didn’t jive with Mike’s mildew-phobia.  It did, however, have one feature that made me audibly sigh when I saw it:

Yeah, that’s a freaking Viking stove.  Dear god, all I want in life is a really amazing stove.  Ok, maybe that’s not ALL i want in life, but it would be freaking swell.  Oh well, one day…

Thankfully, we don’t have to make the decision all by ourselves, since our friend Ben is still in town this weekend.  Ben’s been giving his input, which is especially valuable because Mike and I are the least decisive people on the planet, and also found time for a yumtastic lunch at Paseo and a quick trip to the Science Fiction Museum to check out the Jim Henson exhibit (Which was awesome by the way.  I was expecting something lame like the Robot exhibit that preceded it, but this one had really great sketches and video and made me feel super nostalgic for my childhood, which was chock full of Muppet-related entertainment.  I highly recommend it.)

In the gift shop, I found this amazing Hello Kitty bag.  Too bad I’m too cheap to spend $60 on it- how badass is this?

The speakers even play music when you plug an mp3 player into it.  I would so rock this around town.

Unlike me, Ben is NOT a pussy, and bought this sweatshirt.  This is only one reason why I love Ben:

(Yeah, he’s wearing the infamous Amazon wolf shirt too.  If you haven’t heard about it, follow the link and read the reviews.)

Upon our return to the real world, there have been some definite ups and downs.

It started with ups because we got back Saturday and the weekend had really just started.  After a nice lazy morning, Mike and I put our cheesy Seattle tourist hats on and went on the Gourmet Savor Seattle Tour.  I know that it’s a given that all tours are cheesy, but I figure we have a year before we are officially “locals,” so we might as well milk our “newbie” status for all its worth.  This was actually really cool- we spent three hours wandering around downtown Seattle eating and drinking our way through some really delicious restaurants.  My pictures all sucked, so I’ll just summarize the yum:

• Duck cakes (like crab cakes, but with duck) and sangria at Andaluca.  It was my first time eating duck (yummy, at least in cake form) and the sangria was amazing.  It didn’t even have sugar added to it- therefore I’m counting it as health food.
• Pizza at Serious Pie.  I didn’t think we would find any pizza better than Veraci’s in Seattle, but then I had a piece of the Chantarelle Mushroom and Truffle Cheese Pizza and fell in love a little.  Not only did it combine the magic of truffles and cheese, but the crust was wonderful- thin but not too thin, crispy but still a tad chewy, and obviously made the the genius bakers associated with Dahlia Bakery.  This was my favorite food of the day- it was so yummy that we ordered the same pizza for dinner the next day.
• Risotto and wine at Il Bistro.  Il Bistro is and ADORABLE little restaurant hidden away in the bottom of the Pike Place Market- it’s all soft pink lighting and curiously bowing ceilings, but the risotto we had was delicious (and inspired Mike to ask me why mine always ends up so much more sticky than theirs) and the whole decor made me want to go eat a heavy meal in a corner late at night with a lot more wine.
• Salami and sausage at Bavarian Meat Delicatessen in Pike Place Market.  This was good, but I honestly think I’ve been spoiled by Salumi.  The guy behind the counter who spoke about the company cracked me up though- both Mike and I thought he went to the Sham-Wow! school of public speaking.  If the meat thing doesn’t work out, he definitely has a future in informercials.
• Chocolate at Fran’s Chocolates.  I love chocolate.  Mike doesn’t.  That means I got double samples!  At least until they brought out the Gray and Smoked Salt Caramels.  The savory-sweet combination was so universally appealing that Mike wouldn’t give his up.  ::sigh::
• Gelato at Gelatiamo.  Yum.  I forget what flavors we had- one was a fruity sorbey style, one was a nutty flavor (I think).  I was super full, but I still made room for some gelato, cuz I’m a trooper like that.

The next day, we ended our weekend of gluttony with brunch at The Corson Building.  I was extra excited about this because I had been DYING to eat here and this was the first week they started to offer brunch.  It definitely wasn’t a traditional brunch- you sit at community style tables and are encouraged to strike up conversation with your neighbors, and the food consists of a constantly changing buffet of Mediterranean style sides (chickpea salad, home-pickled farmers market veggies, house-made sausages and other such fare), French macaroons and homemade yogurt, compotes and toppings.  In addition, they also have 2 different kitchen-made dishes each week.  We got one of each and split it- I had some Porcini mushrooms in a cream sauce with a poached egg- delicious if you’re a mushroom lover- and Mike had roasted quail with eggs.  This was my other new poultry experience of the week- it was so teensy!

Even better than the food was the fact that we were seated across from another couple, and after we started to make some smalltalk, I suddenly realized that the woman sitting across from me was the author of one of my favorite local cooking blogs- it was Kari from Anticiplate!  In a weird, only-in-the-internet-age semi-celebrity moment, I went from talking about what restaurants were still on my “must eat” list to blurting “OMG I totally know you!” to a total stranger.  Thankfully, Kari was really sweet and didn’t seem to think that I was a crazy stalker at all, and we had great conversation about food and cooking while Mike and her husband talked about computer stuff.  I really hope to see them again in real life.  (If you are at all into cooking, definitely check out both of her blogs- her cooking blog, Anticiplate and her new blog where she chronicles her summer cooking internships, Summer Spoon.  They should both be on your Google Reader stat.)

Post brunch and some midday napping, we started gearing up for the week over that Truffle Cheese pizza from Serious Pie.  I was terribly sad to see the long weekend end.  Unfortunately, after this week, I’m even sadder, because Mike’s work schedule has been ridonculous all week.  The upside was that it gave me some time in the evenings to spend time swapping yarn with my favorite knitters and indulge in a long walk and some happy-hour vino during the week, but the downside is the fact that it’s 10:22 on Saturday and Mike is still working.  On the campus in Redmond.  And did I mention that it’s Saturday?  FAIL.

Sorry for the wordy post- I promise to impose my terrible photography skills on you in the next post.  Scout’s honor.

Ok, so the main reason I’m being timely with this post is because I thought of the title yesterday and have been absolutely giddy with excitement at the mere thought of using it.  Yes, I’m that easily amused by word play.

Anyway, day 2 of our adventure started with the best meal we found within the city limits of Port Angeles at First Street Haven, a tiny little neighborhood breakfast joint that is so small they don’t even have their own bathroom- you have to walk into the boutique next door that sells formalwear to pee.  I am still sad that we didn’t take pictures of the food, because it was freaking delicious- my Roasted Vegetable Scramble with Marscapone Cheese was probably the only evidence of non-grocery store generic cheese within the city limits and my berry bran muffin was a magic mouthful of delicious goodness. (For the record, i go apeshit over a good bran muffin- boring old blueberry muffins just sit there wishing they were awesome bran muffins.  Maybe it’s because they trigger something in my brain because bran muffins were the only kind of muffin we were ever allowed to have in our house growing up- gotta love my mom’s genuis semi-hippie parent logic of “if it has something healthy in the name, it’s gotta be good for you” logic.  We blissfully ignored the fact that the muffins had so much honey in them that they barely stayed together when they were warm while we smeared them with glorious amounts of butter…  ::sigh::)

So um, yeah, now that my bran muffin diatribe is over, I will summarize by saying that breakfast was good.

After eating, we jumped in the car and headed out for the next leg of the adventure- the drive to the Hoh Rainforest.  In case you were wondering why Mike agreed to put up with a trip full of kayaking (he gets seasick), Italian food (he thinks he hates Italian food, but he’s wrong- I’ll write more about that subject some other day) and hiking (he calls walking “inefficient” and thinks it is disrespectful to the inventors of the wheel), it’s because he got to drive.  A lot.  On some very windy roads.  And because I am totally immune to motion sickness (obviously a sign of a higher level of evolution), he can go as fast as he wants while I fall asleep or happily knit.

The road along Lake Crescent is blissfully windy.  Mike called it the best road he may have ever driven on.  I’ll upload some video of his death-defying rally later this week.

We drove 88 miles to the Hoh Rainforest in about an hour and a half- pretty good time considering the windy roads and occasional slow driver in front of us.  We stopped to get some picnic goods at this little “last stop before nature” camping store.  For such a little place, they had a lot of signs.

This was my favorite:

Unfortunately, Mike found a favorite sign too.  Well, he found two:

And he bought them.  Which made me sad:

Seriously not cool.

With peanut butter sandwiches, plenty of water and some Theo’s chocolate bars in hand, we made it to the Hoh and set out for a hike.

I showed off my mad log crossing skills and only almost fell 4 times.

Club moss growing on old trees makes for surroundings that are both eerie and beautiful.

As if I could resist taking one of these pictures again.

We saw these rocks and had to take a picture for my mom.  She loves rocks.

A rare find- a picture of Mike and I where neither of us are holding the camera ourselves.

Mike is very passionate about finding awesome walking sticks and then pretending he’s a ninja.

Awww. Sweaty love.

We covered a total of about 8 miles on the Hoh River trail.  The trail itself actually goes on to the foot of Mt. Olympus, but that is almost 18 miles and we do not have the gear or the stamina for that.  Mike did admit that he kind of liked the hike though, and we even talked about buying backpacking gear.  Because that’s what you do when you do something once and like it- go buy accessories!

The drive and the hike took up most of our day, so dinner consisted of grabbing a quick bite at a local hamburger stand called Frugals.  Mike actually raved about the burger- if you’re ever driving through Port Angeles, try it!  Even though my chicken sandwich was only okay, the meal was redeemed when I popped into Wendy’s down the street to get an iced tea (Frugals only had sweetened Raspberry crap- vomit) and the cashier gave me the drink for free because I had a pretty smile.  Random, and slightly creepy, but I really really love getting stuff for free, even if it is just iced tea.

So in summary- First Street Haven = good, driving fast = good, signs that are blatantly anti-dog=  bad, hiking in the only temperate rainforest in the world = super good, burgers at Frugals = good, free iced tea = bonus.

We’re back from our much-needed 2nd-anniversary-palooza.  We’re well-rested, well-fed and ready to face the real world again.  Well, kind of.  If we have to.  Ok fine, I have no desire to go to work on Monday.

Mike did an amazing job planning the weekend, which is particularly notable because he HATES to plan things.  Like, seriously, it’s his least favorite thing in the world.  He would much rather wander through the day and just take things as they come.  I, on the other hand, feel loved and comforted by knowing what the day will bring.  So the fact that he thought of activities, made reservations and generally stuck to the plan is proof that he still likes me.

We left Thursday for a couple of days in the Olympic National Forest, which necessitated a ferry ride.  Who doesn’t love a ferry?  For some reason, and maybe it’s just the novelty of moving a car across water, like fording a river Oregon-Trail style but modernized, I get really excited when I go somewhere on a ferry.  I can’t wait to get out of the car and walk around the boat, even though it’s nothing new.  Of course, then on the way back, I get super annoyed and impatient with the whole process, but that’s just because I’m usually tired and cranky.  Shocking.

Anyway, the ferry ride was cool.

I made it through the entire ride resisting the urge to pull a Titanic and instead only looked off the side of the boat demurely.  I feel like that was a big excercise in self-restraint.

After the ferry ride, we hit the road again and drove to our adventure of the day- kayaking in the Straight of Juan de Fuca.

We booked with Adventures Through Kayaking.  They were super professional, easy-going and reasonably priced.  Plus, when Mike got a little seasick (which we both totally forgot that he was prone to, but yeah, he totally is) our guide happily towed him while he gathered his bearings and gave me pointers on where we else we should explore on the peninsula.

I don’t have any pictures of the actual kayaking to share because we were too nervous to let the camera loose out on the water.  They did sell waterproof cameras, but they were traditional film style, and lord knows I’d never get around to developing those.

During the trip, we did get to see bald eagles, harbor seals, Dungeness crabs and all kinds of other fantastic critters.  The only negative was Mike’s queasiness- now we know that I need to add Dramamine to the pharmacy I carry in my purse whenever we travel.

However, the entire adventure ended on a definite high point- once we headed back, we found out that every trip with Adventures through Kayaks includes a free wine tasting at their sister business, Harbinger Wineries.  Free wine tasting = just about the greatest thing in the history of the universe.  There was even one variety- a white blend called White Dynamo- that Mike liked enough to buy.  As for all the other varieties that he didn’t dig so much, I gladly helped him finish some of those tastings.  By the time we left, Mike was feeling better and I was feeling faaaaabulous.

We headed to our hotel, checked in, and promptly took a really fantastic 3 hour nap.  I like to think of myself as somewhat of a nap aficionado, and this was a particularly wonderful one.  Unfortunately, by the time we woke up and got out the door, it was after 8.  Since we were staying in Port Angeles, there weren’t a lot of dinner options left that were still open.

So we succumbed to tourist cheese.

Yeah, that’s right, we ate at Bella Italia, the mediocre Italian restaurant that was made famous in Twilight for being the site of Bella and Edward’s first date.  What it lacks in actual good food (it’s not terrible, but it’s decidedly “eh”) it makes up for by sheer inundation of Twilight-related memorabilia.  Movie posters?  Check.  Twilight-themed wine?  Check.  A list of daily specials that always features the mushroom ravioli that Bella ordered when Edward told her he was a vampire?  Check.

After dinner we headed back to the hotel, where we laid in bed and watched CNN.  For old married folks, it was a perfect night.

I was so excited about posting about the race that I went out of order and forgot to share our Saturday adventure with Mary.  So here it goes.

What do YOU do the day before a race?  Rest your legs a bit and take it easy?  We did half of that.  We started the day off with a yummy breakfast at Portage Bay Cafe with Mary’s college friend Kerrie (whom I love because we made plans to go to Tilth with her and her husband sometime soon) and then headed to Husky Stadium to pick up our bibs for the race and knock another thing off of my master Seattle to-do list: go kayaking.

Since there were 3 of us, we ended up canoeing rather than kayaking, which was actually (I think) better, because the canoe seems a wee bit more stable.  Once we got in, we set out to explore Montlake, which is pretty freaking gorgeous.  Going under the bridges makes you feel like you’re back at the boat ride at Disneyland (if you grew up in SoCal and went to Disneyland every other weekend like I did), except you actually have to row and you aren’t stuck to some mechanical track.

See?  It does look like the boat ride.

Mike navigated…

And only got us stuck a couple of times.

Mary looked all kinds of sexy.

We saw geese and goslings.

And turtles!  I named them Michael, Tony, Amy and Jimmy.  There was another one looking in the wrong direction on another log nearby, but I didn’t get a picture of him.  I named him Derek.

The only problem with kayaking/canoeing in Montlake is that after you’ve lazily drifted past a certain point and are ready to head back, the only way to get to the dock is to navigate through choppy open water and get attacked by speedboats and huge yachts.  This results in a rather strenuous workout.  After 2 hours of canoeing, I was ready for a nap.

So we napped.  Then Mary and I walked to the seafood market down the street and got some amazing Copper River Salmon and made a kickass dinner to help fuel our bodies for the race.  Obviously, paying almost $30 a pound for salmon paid off.