It Started with a Journal

I just dropped ropo off at the airport. We went to one last HPB right before (in Tukwila), because we're nutty that way. Seattle is so sad she's leaving that it is crying copiously (aka, POURING RAIN). Goodbye, summer ... I hardly knew ye. /weepeth

During her stay, we:

* Went to Whidbey Island
* Gorged ourselves on lots of meals, many of which involved too much pasta
* Nearly got a speeding ticket
* Made 3 kinds of ice cream
* Almost had to spend the night at the Mukilteo lighthouse
* Went to West Seattle
* Finished jade_okelani's photo competition
* Got pictures of many out-of-state license plates that I didn't already have (we want to photograph all 50 states, but realize we'll probably never get Hawaii)
* Woke up a lot in the middle of the night when Talis would bark his head off hearing noises (aka Robbie getting up to use the bathroom)
* Made 2 homecooked meals
* Finished a 1,000-piece puzzle (with the help of romanticalgirl, who came over for dinner and was conscripted into puzzle slavery)
* Finished S1-3 of How I Met Your Mother (well okay, I did)
* Bought lots of books (me mostly of the cookbook variety plus Ursula le Guin's Earthsea quartet and George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series)
* Got bitten on the neck several places by bugs (well okay, I did)
* Had dinner with more lovely people - corianderstem, leiliaxf, breyer and the latter's brother and bro's friend
* Went to the Washington State Arboretum
* Saw Wicked


( Long post, text and picture intensive. )

And that is all for the pictorial of the last week or so. I was all sad about sending Robbie to the airport, but then we received a gift from on high: A HAWAII LICENSE PLATE!!! (I started writing the list above before sending her to the airport.) Robbie has been saying forever that she doesn't even know why we're bothering with the license plate game, because we'll never find anyone who's shipped their car from Hawaii to the mainland. And yet someone did, and they passed by us on the freeway. She'd just dug out my chapstick from the armrest compartment for me, and we both saw the plate at the same time. We both let out huge *GASPS* and then she was fumbling for her camera. So even though Robbie leaving was a sad thing, it was tempered by the most excellent license plate find. (In fact, right before that we got a North Dakota one, which we were pretty stoked about, but it was nothing compared to our joy over Hawaii. Yeah, yeah, we are total dorks.)

Now that I've been brewing my coffee at home (and not even that expertly), I must say ... the coffee at work is really gross.

I'm sad to be at work this early in the morning. I'm usually not even awake at this time, much less in my office. I'm also hungry and the notice that our Friday bagels have arrived hasn't come in yet. :/ I also have to remember not to eat a lot, because tonight ropo and I are going to Icon Grill! I've been wanting to check this place out, because they supposedly have really good mac & cheese. In fact, they have two kinds. The appetizer version, which are like, fried macaroni & cheese nuggets that you dip into sauces, and the side dish: "This Mac n' Cheese is unlike any you've ever had before. Four cheeses, tomato snow, crunchy topping and a final flourish of even more molten cheese." Mmm.

Afterwards we're going to go see HP6 on IMAX. And take pictures along the way (not, obviously, of the movie).

So far Robbie's visit has been filled with a lot of eating. We haven't even done that much, but still haven't found any time to cook at home or make ice cream, but that's partly because I'm not off work until next week.

Yesterday we went to Third Place Books, which is more of an upscale Half-Price Books. It's better because they tend to have rarer material and they're anal about the condition of the books, but it's not as good because they mix new and used books (so you might get excited by seeing something you've been looking for, only to discover that it's a new copy at new prices), and they sell used books for more than half (how much more depends on the book). Considering you can get 30-40% off books at Amazon and when Borders sends coupons, getting a used book for that price isn't a good deal at all. Anyway, I brought a box of like-new, mostly trade paperbacks to see what I could get, and they only took 3 of them! And one of the ones they took was A Nerd in Shining Armor, which was terrible. So yeah, I don't think their book buyers know what they're doing. <g> HPB isn't so choosy, they always take everything, as far as I know.

The cool thing is that I found Tom Douglas's Seattle Kitchen for pretty much half price -- and it was autographed! Tom Douglas is the most famous chef in Seattle; like, if you were entertaining visitors and wanted them to go back with the full Seattle experience, you would include taking them to one of his restaurants. I also found Alice Medrich's Cocolat, an out-of-print book that I bought for $30 not too long ago, for $10. Grrr. I'm going to try and resell my other copy.

Finally, I just have to mention the fun game jade_okelani devised for us. Robbie and I both like photography and have the exact same camera, so she's got us on a sort of photo scavenger hunt. We get different clues (which add up to a larger puzzle that we have to solve, every 3 photos), and she awards points based on composition, style, and her own whimsy. :)) I'll have to share my photos after it's all over (or possibly after each round, if we're allowed), because obviously I cannot let Robbie know my clues.

BTW subject line is in reference to "How I Met Your Mother," which I am really enjoying so far. (Got 3 seasons of DVDs for $15 each on Amazon! Looks like that deal's over, though.)

Also, happy birthday, corianderstem!

Things to do before I die: Crawl into a trash can.

Check.

( You know you want to ask. )

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Saw my friend J. today. Funny story (okay, not really), she moved away 3 years ago then moved back 2 years ago except she emailed an old account of mine and so I never knew, and she never pursued it because she thought I didn't want to be in touch or moved or some such. I never bothered to try and contact her again after she moved away. Flimsy excuses on both our parts, but at least we're on the same wavelength: we care just enough to try and be friends while we're both living in the same city, as long as we don't have to put too much effort into it.

Every time we see each other we inevitably go shopping. We don't know why; neither of us are actually avid shoppers. Just turns out that way. I ended up buying some cute and inexpensive things from J. Crew and Old Navy (a friend of a friend has this rule for buying clothing: You can buy it if you think you will wear it as many times as it costs, in dollars. So, you can buy a $15 top if you think you will wear it at least 15 times. It's a pretty good rule of thumb to go by). At J. Crew I got a pair of salmon-colored pants that I will only be able to wear for another few weeks, during the last waning moments of summer. The length actually FIT me. You know why? Because they're capris. So they're supposed to be short on "normal" women. On me they fall past my ankles. At Old Navy I got a number of tops and a couple of skirts. I need to lose weight (that old mantra) so the waist won't fit so snugly. I tried on the next size up, but the skirt length increases also, making it look frumpy instead of cute, so obviously I couldn't get it.

We also saw Julie & Julia, which was a cute book and a cute movie as well. Y'all know I just adore Meryl Streep, but really, she's awesome in it. She perfected the Voice. I mean, yes, everyone can do an exaggerated Julia Child impression, by just using a falsetto, but JC's real voice is more subtle than that, and Meryl totally got it. Color me impressed (as usual).

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Before seeing J. I tried to get my driver's license renewed at the DMV. They were on #93 when I arrived; my number was #112 and I had an hour to go before an appointment at my car dealership where I was going to take my car in for service. I hoped, futilely, that they would get to me quickly, that maybe a bunch of people before me had gotten fed up and left already. When they got to #96, the number sign went away entirely. Possibly they went to lunch? I waited around for 10 minutes after that, then gave up and left; no way were they going to get to me in the time I had left. I went to get lunch instead.

As for the car ... well, I know I brought it on myself for getting a high-end vehicle in the first place, but -- come on. When I had my Corolla it cost $30 for an oil change. Now? $171. WTF. Seriously, what are they doing, coating my brake pedals with gold? Actually, if they were doing that it might be worth the cost. BUT THEY'RE NOT. Anyway, that's why I brought it in on a Saturday; I requested a loaner vehicle (it's one of their 2010 model SUVs and it is nice -- the GPS has a built-in MOUSE, for pete's sake. In my car it's a touch screen, which is always covered in fingerprints), and because they're not really open on Sundays, I get to keep it for 2 days. Sure, I'm still paying way too much for a simple service (plus a latte and bottle of water), but at least I get something back.

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Public Service Announcement re: PayPal personal accounts. If you have a business account at PayPal, they take a cut of whatever money you're sent. It's been that way for awhile, so it should come as no surprise to anyone. However, it used to be that if you had a personal account, you could receive money up to a certain amount (like $500?) without them taking a percentage. Apparently that is no longer the case, the greedy bastards. Now they take a cut even from personal accounts, unless the transaction is marked as a "personal transaction." So if you're ever collecting money for a good cause, or paying a friend back for something, make sure those transactions are marked as personal, otherwise PayPal will take some of that money. There. Now you know. You're now one step ahead of where I was 30 minutes ago.

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Tomorrow I am going to Kohl's and buying myself a Magic Bullet. I went to a dinner party Friday night where the hostess made a yummy Caesar salad dressing with it, and now I must have one. I've wanted one since I saw jade_okelani make whipped cream in a MB in like, 1 minute, but now that there are TWO things I have a lot of use for, I've decided it's a reasonable purchase. Why Kohl's? Because I have coupons that will take $15 off. I just hope the price for the MB in the store is the same as what they list online...

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OMG, ropo is going to be here in just over a week! I can't believe it's that soon! Eeee! I am so excited. We are going to go around and take pictures. I really, really, REALLY hope the sun comes back while she's here; pictures with cloud cover just don't look as good. If the trend at weather.com is to be believed, we're looking at sunny, mid-high 70s. Yay! We are going to go see Wicked, as the touring cast will be here during that time, and also HP:HBP on IMAX. We MAY do a day trip or something to a neighboring island, but preferably not Vashon, which is cute but kind of boring, or Bainbridge, which we've already been to. If any Seattlites have suggestions for islands or really, anything else, give a shout. ropo loves photography so we're open to anything fun or that would at least yield good pictures. <g>