The great thing about leaving...

is all the food. I was taken for lunch today by a couple of my co-workers to the ritziest spot on campus. Which doesn't say much, just that the price is steep. But I enjoyed my food, and the company. I went for the farfalle, because one of the guys ordered the halibut, and thes erver said that it was a smaller portion, and I was starving. I don't normally order pasta when I'm out, and even DH expressed surprised that I did, but it was the sort of day that I really wanted to eat something heavy. For dessert, the guys had a chocolate thyme pate, my girlfriend had the Snickers pie with butterscotch sauce, and I had the strawberry rhubarb crumble. I know, mine was the most boring, but I wanting some fruit.

Staff Gorge

They had a "staff appreciation" tea yesterday. It was nice in that there were tons of food, but not so good in that it was 2:30 in the afternoon and how much can you eat then?

The catering was good though, they had various types of sandwiches, with the crusts cut off of course. The one that was unusual and nice was the cucumber sandwiches, but it also had cream cheese and pesto. The curried chicken salad was also a nice one. Of course, since it was a tea, they had to have scones wtih marmalade and jam and cream there, along with a big bowl of strawberries. I tried not to think of how much pesticides I was ingesting. There were also several types of quiche and sausage rolls. Oh, and they had two cakes to celebrate whoever's birthday was this month; one was a chocolate mousse cake, no idea what the ther one was.

There was so much food in fact, that we had leftovers for lunch today. So is that a staff re-appreciation?

Too much eating!

DH and I took a long weekend down to Seattle for our anniversary. It was nice to get away for just a few days, and certainly cheaper than going somewhere exotic. It was a nice drive down too, sunny enough to be warm in the car, but not so hot that we were scorching in our long pants and shoes though.

We stopped off in Fairhaven, WA for lunch at the Colophon Cafe. DH had their bacon potato chowder while I had the African peanut soup. I'm glad I ordered a small as it was very filling and I was full all the way down to Seattle.

For our anniversary dinner, we went to some restaurant close to our hotel. Can't remember the name of it for the life of me, but it's some chain seafood restaurant for all the chi chi poo poo people. How else can you explain the fact that people were coming in for dinner at 8/9:00 at night? No one who has a family to go home to, or works normal hours would want to eat that late. Dinner was nice enough, DH's french onion soup was cheesier than a Disney movie, and my half a dozen oysters were divine. For dinner, he had the tilapia in a Jamaican rum butter sauce, while I had the marlin crusted with macadamian nuts and served with a mango salsa. The entrees themselves weren't badly priced at all, ($20ish per plate) but wouldn't you think that a more upscale restaurant like that could serve rice timbales that didn't have the stuff scraped from the bottom of the pan? I mean, I grew up with that stuff, so me is was more reminiscent of my childhood, but for a more typical client, don't you think they would've wanted their grains of rice all separated rather than a part of it clumped together?

Dessert was very nice, a chocolate tower filled with mousse, topped with blueberries and rapsberries, surrounded by a raspberry mango coulis.

I don't normally have a 3 course meal, but I couldn't resist that night, pig that I am. Plus, it was our anniversary dinner afterall.

The next day, we were headed down to the Sci-Fi and Music Museum, but DH needed to stop for breakfast. We didn't know where to go, but stumbled on The Five Point Cafe, which was unique to say the least. I didn't realize a bar could be open 24 hours, let along people would want to be drinking at that time of morning. The server looked like Bettie Page with an attitude, no she didn't have an attitude, but she looked like she could. It's not the sort of place I'd want to visit more than once in a lifetime, especially not after reading some other reviews on it, but it was certainly an experience.

The Science Fiction museum was amazing. Okay, totally cool for geeks like me who enjoy that sort of thing and can recognize some of the authors they talked about. What was really cool though, was the travelling exhibit of costumes used in some of the movies and tv shows. Like all good museums, they had some interactive exhibits (not with the costumes) that kept kids interested. The museum is linked to the Music Museum, which was not nearly as interesting. Great for kids because there was lots of interactive stuff, but really, what's more interesting, George Clooney's Batman outfit (or Robert Patrick's T2 police costume for that matter) or a piece of Jimi Hedrix's smashed guitar?

Dinner that night was next to impossible to find. We didn't want to do another big dinner night, even though our hotel was supposedly in restaurant row. So we drove around, and we'll be darned if we can find a good little local Mexican restaurant around there. Ended up going to Azteca, yet another chain restaurant. Is there no such thing as an independent place anymore. The food was so middle America blah, we might as well have saved the running around and gone to Red Robin. No offense to anyone who likes that sort of thing, but our idea of a good meal is to go where the locals go, where the food is homey and the restaurant is family run.

Today, we ended up going to the Museum of Flight. Managed to get there early enough that we could go check out the Concorde and Air Force One without anyone else being on the plane, so DH could take some cool shots. The museum also has their Space museum area open now, and boy are there some neat exhibits there. Pictures to be posted at a later date. We ended up spending about 5 hours in there, because there was so much to see. Well worth the price of admission, and we only encountered one real bratty kid (blame it on the dad for not putting a rein on the kid, I should've hit the dad with my umbrella).

Something unfoody again

But this time, I won't piss anyone off, or at least not intentionally. For those who I haven't already screamed my news to, I got a new job! I'm very excited by the prospect since my brain was atrophying in my current position, and it shows that I'm still loved.

There are some drawbacks to the new job though, mainly that 1)I'm not in my own office anymore, and that means no cranking the radio 2) I work later hours than I would like 3) I wont' be able to carpool back and forth from work anymore. But I'm taking the position cuz it's going to be exciting learning new things and hopefully I can put some of the things I've learned to practice.

I will miss my friends on campus, and campus itself, which is so beautiful at this time of year. I'll also really miss being a cougar at the start of the fall term. What I won't miss are all those dangly worms hanging off the oak trees. Yuck!

Like a kid in a candy store

DH and I went to Ming Wo today, the idea he had was to buy me a martini shaker. I had seen one once, and should've bought it and just kept it for prosperity, even though at the time I didnt' drink maritinis. It was one where it didn't just list some mixed drinks, but you actually turned it to find the right drink. Okay, that doesn't make sense, but it looks like this. Too cool, huh?

Anyway, they didn't have any like that there, but who can come out of a cooking store empty handed? So, we bought two colanders, a towel holder, and a funky curvy long dish that holds olives. Well the olive dish is a start, isn't it?

You'd think I'd know better by now

Ended up taking mom & dad to Accent's on Broadway. It was safer than trying something new on them since they tend to be critical anyway. So the only real complaint they had was that the restaurant was too noisy. That's cuz it was almost all asians in there. That's when you know it's too much of a good thing, cuz Asians can't let a good deal pass them by.

I made the mistake of having a triple raspberry dacquiri with dinner. It was hard to pass up since it was only $8. The last time I recall being sick after drinking was our first visit to the Afghan Horsemen. But that was many moons ago, when I didn't know better. On the bright side, throwing up so soon after a meal means that you didn't really consume all those calories, right?

Time for a career change

As opposed to a cool change as suggested by Little River Band? I was thinking, after that last rant, that maybe my true calling in life should be one of those annoying talk show hosts, you know, a combination of Dr. Laura and Jerry Springer. Lord knows I seem to intimidate my classmates and I've managed to piss off a good friend. If that doesnt' lead to a career in trash talk shows, I don't know what will.

Actually, I'm feeling kinda like that fellow in that joke. Y'know, the one about John the Greek saying, "you build a great city, but do they call you John the architect? No! You build the biggest, best yacht in the world, and do they call you John the Boat Builder? No! You screw one goat..." My notoriety precedes me I'm afraid.

But I think I'm going to go back to writing about food. It's a safer topic, and I shouldn't get into any trouble writing about that. So, to start, since it was a dark and cool night, we decided to have spaghetti for dinner. I had sauce in the freezer already, so it was just a matter of boiling up some pasta. But the thing that makes the pasta worth eating is the freshly grated Parmesan. I will never go back to the stuff that spills out of a container by Kraft anymore.

Gotta find a restaurant to take mom & dad to this weekend as well. Dad's birthday today, so we said we'd take them out on Sunday. Mom wants us to choose the restaurant. Should be interesting. Last time we took them to a place, mom felt she was too dressed up for it. I think mom's idea of dressing up is having the colours compliment each other rather than clash. So once I find the restaurant and we try it out, I'll write more.