Yesterday was Mike’s birthday.  We celebrated by having  dinner at Crush, where we ate one of the best meals I’ve had yet in Seattle.  I really wanted to take pictures, but ever since Scott scolded me about taking food pictures in nice restaurants I’ve held off.  To summarize, we had pork belly with pinata apples and parsnip puree and seared scallops in a carrot soup for appetizers for appetizers, which we shared, followed by Mike’s entree of grilled flank steak with cipolinni onions (aka the best onions ever) and yukon potato puree and my Ling Cod in chorizo broth and meyer lemon foam (I felt so Top Chef).  For dessert, we split the beignets (mmmm!) and spiced chocolate cake (i love spicy chocolate).  It wasn’t the best meal we’ve ever had- that award goes to our Valentine’s dinner last year at Stonehill Tavern (we’re still chasing that Michael Minna high)- but it was definitely the best in Seattle, and my wine pairings made me swoon with delight.  Plus, it was part of Dine Around Seattle‘s March promotion, so the whole shebang was under $100.  For Crush, that was a total steal.  Even though Mike was feeling a bit morose about his age, it was a really fantastic night.

To make things even better, tomorrow we’re going to SoCal for a long weekend.  It will be hectic- it always is- but I can’t wait to see friends and family back home.  The warm weather won’t hurt either.

Powell’s is a gigantic bookstore in Portland specializing in used, rare and out of print books- basically, a West Coast version of The Strand.  I have heard more about Powell’s than anything else in Portland- whether it was excessively dramatic sighs of glee from my friend Elizabeth, who made weekly treks there while she was a student in Oregon, or my dad, who I’ve NEVER heard get excited about a bookstore.  I was pretty excited to go, even if I just had an hour to explore.

Obviously, I wanted to wander around and buy everything.  However, since Mike and I put ourselves on a bit of a book diet recently, I was good and only bought two things- Travels in Hyperreality, an out of print book of essays by Umberto Eco (love), and a calendar featuring old pictures of people in lines.

However, while I wandered I took pictures of books that reminded me of friends and family.  So, I present you with crappy iPhone pictures of books I didn’t buy but would if I had an unlimited budget (and my own library).  (Disclaimer: this list is not in order of importance, so don’t feel left out if I didn’t include you, these were just books that jumped out at me during my 75 minutes of bliss.)

For Nugget, who also took way too many classes centered around this book (and others like it) in college:

For Rita, who wishes she was somewhere that looked like this:

For Derek, who loves a Famous Star almost too much:

For Anne, because, well, she is:

For my mom, who made me do way too many book reports on this book because somebody we’re related to was friends with Ishi:

For me, because it’s still my favorite:

For Jimmy, because honestly, wtf?

For Mary, because this is such an apt description of us:

And this last one isn’t for anybody in particular, but I squeed a little when I saw that it was in the “Historical/Rare” Collection:

On Wednesday, I hung out with my knitters, including Robert, aka Snarky Snark Snark:

I love all the knitters, but for some reason I only got a picture with Robert that night. Maybe it was because he gave me a present. I love presents.

On Friday, Mike and I had lunch with Mike’s Mom and I visited my favorite ex-coworkers.

Nancy (who smiles a lot):

warren (who hates pictures):

and Kris (these are the worst pictures I’ve ever seen of Kris. But I’d have better pictures of him if he’d put down his stupid Sidekick):

I also got to hang out with Mary, Derrick and Josie on Saturday. We had a loser-tastic Saturday night that consisted of watching the John Edwards interview Mary had Tivo-ed, ordering in Chinese rood and watching the Olympics (get it?):

And of course, I spent plenty of time with two of my favorite people ever, my parents:

You can see how happy my dad was to see me again:

I saw a bunch of other people I totally dig too this weekend, but these are the people I got pictures of. The rest of you will just have to come visit me if you want to make the blog