I'm so sick

There's no picture for this one, I don't think anyone wants to see me right now. I've got some sort of flu and I've literally been in bed for 3 plus days now. It's a really bad week for this, considering my family has come into town and we are moving this weekend, but thanks to the help of Lee I'm not freaking out too much about it and I know all will be okay. Today I actually had the energy to turn the TV on and watch some fabulous daytime madness. I can't believe how the Hogan's, the Kardashian's, the Margera's, the the housewives of NYC live! I really like my life even more after watching them, even though they crack me up a bit. Hopefully I'll have a new entry next week from the comfort of our new home! I'm so excited to move in!!

We're Not Handy

So Lee and I keep saying how we don't know much about home improvement projects and we are going to have to learn as we go. Well, here's a prime example of that. This is the horribly ugly and bloody wall that we painted to match another lovely burgundy wall in our new house, and obviously that didn't turn out so well. And this is after 3 coats of paint, a painting party, several trips to Home Depot, lot's of take-out, and several of our friends getting up on a very scary ladder.

This morning we called professional painters and begged for their help as soon as possible. Before we move the furniture in, before my family comes into town and before we go crazy. They took pity on us and are at the house right now, saving us. We've learned our lesson--we really suck at painting and it's not as easy as it looks. I must say though, we've been having a really good time playing house. Every mistake is a new experience that Lee and I go through together and we laugh about them all, this is the life.

Master's CC Final Class

So the final class of my master's cooking series at Culinary Communion was Desserts. I've never felt so ill after a class in my life. Eating 6 desserts for dinner does not make one's tummy feel well. Between all the beer we've had lately and this class, I feel the need for a detox.

The dessert above was my favorite. A lemon souffle with raspberry coulis. Yummmm.

Greenwood Breakfast Hot Spot

Lee and I took Monday off to paint the house and went for breakfast at Mae's Phinney Ridge Cafe. We had blueberry coffee cake, a spinach and mushroom omelette, a big plate of potatoes with cheese and veggies and some sausage--yah, it was huge and tasty. We didn't finish, but it was a sight to behold. It gets crowded on weekends, but we got right in the other day. A very diner-ish feel to it, and pretty terrible service, but I think that's because the waitresses are so laid back they don't think people actually have stuff to do. She did like my blue hair though, so she's pretty cool in my book.

A Greenwood Night Out!

I'm keeping these posts short for a while since I seem to only have about 15 minutes maximum of free time these days. We are BUSY. All of a sudden moving has been kicked into high gear and now that we officially have our home, we are getting as much done as possible over there before we move in.

We did get a night out with some of our best friends, Dannie and Rob, who are pictured above. We did the whole thing in Greenwood and had so much fun, aside from the fact that I drank too much Guinness and was kind of silly, but still, it was great.

We started the night off at 74th Street Alehouse and the wait was long, but worth it. Normally, if I have to wait more than a few minutes I'm not interested, mostly because the place is obviously packed and I'm not into crowds plus the service isn't so hot. I ended up having a warm goat cheese salad with pecans and balsamic vinagrette--I make this sort of thing at home and so it wasn't anything new to me, but it was still quite good. Then after dinner we went for dessert at Yanni's, a Greek place next door. I had baklava and ice cream and Lee and Dannie had this yummy cream filled honey thing, forgot the name, but both were super good. We need to go back there for dinner. After that we headed to Cooper's Alehouse, which is somewhat of a sports bar, but they have board games to play (yay!) and a nice laid back feeling. I really liked this place, it reminds me of the bars we used to frequent in our mid-20's--not too crowded, good pub food, good beer on tap and something to play while we drank.

Can't wait for another night like this where we have some time to blow off steam and hang out with Dannie and Rob. So far we have a date to go to the University Street Fair, by far our
favorite street fair of the year, and do some of the same. It's the first day of spring today, and I can tell that laid back feeling of summer will come soon--until then, we are not stopping.

Another Picture of Lee and a Piece of Paper

We needed to pick up some mail from our new place yesterday, so on our way up we also picked up our neighbor, Susan, and walked to Mr. Gyros for dinner. Turns out we really like that place. I knew there was a neighborhood meeting next door at the Neptune Coffee Shop and I wanted to see what my peeps were up to, so we headed over there after inhaling a plate of falafel and hummus. For some odd reason the city never put sidewalks in Greenwood, at least those streets above 85th, so there is a huge movement to do so as soon as possible, especially since this area is growing by leaps and bounds. We met Seattle's famous angry letter writer (Susan was *very* excited about this, like she was Joan of Arc or something), were impressed with the free Vietnamese bhan mei sammies and signed up with locals to help with the petition for sidewalks. We also each wrote a letter to the City of Seattle saying how desperately we need these sidewalks.

See above: The letter Lee wrote and then proceeded to sign my name at the bottom-isn't he adorable? Ya right! Apparently he wants me to go to jail--little does he know that I have many detailed plans to escape that situation due to my vivid imagination as a child. Or hopefully he'd bail me out if those fell through.

Yoga and Beer

Lee, Susan and I just started taking a series of beginners yoga classes at Whole Life Yoga and despite my grand intentions of making it seem really cool, I think the coolest part of the night for them was the drinks we had at the Baranof afterwards. Still, we did get some things accomplished. The Baranof is Greenwood's biggest dive bar, so that's checked off the list of places to visit--you know it's a dive when they have free soup in a grimy old crock pot after 9pm. We went over the yoga homework sheet, as Lee is showing, while we had beer and whiskey sours. That always makes homework better. Then after our cocktails, we went to have coffee at Wayward Coffee shop, another neighborhood haunt. At 10pm on a Wednesday it was fairly crowded, with bunches of guys playing board games at tables, good coffee and ploughman sandwiches.

We've got our next yoga class this Wednesday, but the beginner classes are sooo slow and I prefer the more energizing, flow yoga, so we'll see how it goes. At least we are always getting out there and trying new things, which is something I love about Lee and many of my friends. Never a dull moment in this corner of the world.

Big Game of Tetris

As our official move date of March 31st gets closer I am realizing that I'm going to have to do quite a bit of work just to have a place to put our boxes. I'm not very fond of our condo association--we didn't properly break down a box before we put it into the recycle bin and we found it on our doorstep that evening, like an ominous message saying *we'd* be chopped up into little pieces and put in a box of our own if we didn't do things correctly the next time. And once Lee parked in the guest parking spot and got a note on his windshield, the ink bleeding from the rain and plenty of profanity and threats of what would happen if he did it again. Well, now the association has decided that chimney cleaning day is March 29th, perfect timing guys. So not only do we have to move all the furniture around the living room in some sort of pattern where they can get to the fireplace, but we have to stay at home all day because it's like when they install your cable and they give you the anywhere from 8-5 time slot. Now look at the picture of our living room. This is the biggest space of emptiness we have in the whole place, how are we going to find room to move the couch and put all the boxes in there?! I'm baffled, plus I'm too cheap to buy storage for one month and I'm too stubborn to move everything twice by storing them at my sisters. So I will stack, and use my tetris game playing skills, and strategize and it WILL work! I can't wait to have actual storage closets and room for our kitchen gadgets in our new place. It will seem like a mini-mansion compared to this one!

You're in my heart, You're in my soul

Ahh, it's that special time of year when the Girl Scouts of America have blessed us with their highly addictive cookies. As I type, I am currently munching on a sleeve of Do-Si-Do's. Such a lovely name they have. So innocent. Except that I'm unable to stop at one, and that is why it's a good thing that the Girl Scout's come once a year and I get only one visit to their enticing little table. When Lee and I went to Thriftway the other day I nearly jumped out of my own pants in excitement to see them sitting outside, then I just perused the table before going into the store to make sure they still had my old favs and of course they sure did! I feel grateful to have Lee in my life for many reasons, but right now I'm feeling particularly grateful that he is helping me eat these cookies and fully understands their mind-numbing draw. You see, Lee's sister, Meghan, was a Girl Scout growing up and had the things laying around the house for a month, constantly within arms reach-- plus wasn't he doing the world and his sis a favor by donating to a great cause? That's what I like to think every time I put a cookie in my mouth. I haven't felt much like writing lately, but the instant I put a Samoa in my mouth, I felt like typing away. They are quite the little miracle. I think they use really sweet girl scouts in those things.