semi-drunken, cheerful babble
Oct. 1st, 2006 12:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
verbicideOMG that was fun.
What a weekend, and it's only Saturday night!
Um, and apparently I'm feeling quite chatty tonight --just finished typing and this is fucking huge, so under a cut it goes.
So on Friday night, I went to see Howard Jones in freaking Bremerton. Pete is an enormous fan and had bought tickets for a table at the Admiral Theater. He invited me, Jeff, and another friend of his, Doug. Jeff researched ferries/transportation and I was on food detail. I know way more about dining options within walking distance of the Kitsap Ferry than I ever thought I would need to know. The main trick was finding decent vegetarian food since Jeff, Pete, and as it turns out, Doug, are all vegetarians. Luckily for us, an Indian place just opened up last month.
It was funny, because Bill was out on Friday, and we realized that by leaving at 4:30PM, half the department would be gone. Doug met us at the office, and I drove us to the ferry where we found some fantastic and cheap parking. We hustled to the ferry, downtown traffic sucking even harder than we'd predicted had landed us in a time crunch. And as we ran to the ticket agent we encountered the dismal reality of the ticket line, which was forever long. Our ferry was scheduled to leave in minutes. It wouldn't have been disastrous if we'd missed it, because there was plenty of time to get to the concert, and we could just eat on the Seattle side, but happily someone bought a clue and let the Bremerton-bound cut in line. We stampeded onto the boat, and they roped the line off after Doug, leaving a handful of miserable bastards to wait for 70 minutes. I don't understand how people deal with the ferry on a regular basis. It would make me homicidal.
Anyhow, onto the boat. It was a gorgeous day and I LOVE standing on the deck and getting blasted by the wind. I took that adorable picture of Jeff, and eventually the guys went in to get some soda and popcorn, but I really had no desire to budge. Jeff came back out later to join me and reported that Pete was inside musing, "Why isn't she cold?" Somehow, I don't mind being cold on the deck of a boat! The ferry ride is really quite beautiful, especially on a day like last Friday, which was freaking gorgeous. My foul mood from the Cell Phone Photo Thingie incident melted away.
So, on that topic. A tangential:
I got that wild idea that I wanted to be able to use the phone-picture-blogging thing, and it just wouldn't work. I stayed up half the night (stupidly) and got it a bit further along. Finally, as I figured out the Flickr system, I had to enter a new e-mail address to send pictures through Flickr. My cell phone suddenly started rebooting. It was fucking maddening. I called T-mobile support and talked to two very nice people, and the advanced tech support lady eventually concluded that my phone was broken. I couldn't believe it, but nothing was making sense. No reason for it to keep fucking rebooting. I was in a foul mood. It was just one of those things where you know something shouldn't be a big deal, because for christ's sake what the fuck does it matter if I can get my cell phone to take a picture and send it to my blog. But sometimes misbehaving technology makes me INSANE. I talked it over with Pete (who is a geek extraordinaire) and he voiced the very obvious solution that I kept ignoring, even though I'd thought of it, which was that maybe something was wrong with the address. Turns out the fucking blog-posting e-mail address from Flickr is something my phone hates. It's too long is my guess, and it was making the phone freak out instead of just saying, your fucking e-mail address is too long. So I've got a redirect set up and it's working fine now. But I was so irritated by the whole thing, and largely my own uncontrolled obsessiveness about it, that I had a headache and was keeping in check my bad mood, because no one else needed to suffer from it. And eventually Jeff's anti-depressant super-hero powers cheered me up. That and Pete's completely infectious enthusiasm and good cheer about the Howard Jones concert to which he was treating us, including ferry tickets, no matter how much we protested. I'm glad I didn't listen to that support woman, and you know, buy a new phone!
End rant.
Back to weekend fun. We landed in Bremerton and easily found our way to The New Delhi. Food was good, and turns out Doug knows the owner from like ages ago. Doug, Pete's friend, was also very cool and we were a bouncy, happy group. Pete made a move for the bill, but there was no way he was going to pay for anything else, so we were finally able to contribute to the evening. The timing for everything worked out great. We walked over to the theater and the table we had tickets for was awesome. Doug and Jeff bought us all rounds of drinks. The gin and tonic was great, but nearly wiped me out because it was strong and sometimes I have no tolerance for liquor (unless Matt is buying Irish Car Bombs, apparently).
I'm not a big Howard Jones fan, nor am I an anti-fan. I just don't know more than a couple of songs and electronica isn't really my genre of choice. But both Pete and Jeff (especially Pete) were so giddy about it, that it was really awesome to just be there with them. Howard Jones can definitely sing and play, and is funny to boot. It was just him on keyboard and a guitarist. It was a fun show, and afterward Pete got in line to finally, finally meet him. Pete's been a fan for 25 years and this was the first time. I'm so mad at myself for not bringing a decent camera and snagging a shot of the event.
We had some time to kill before the ferry, but not as much as we thought we would, so we strolled along the completely dead streets of Bremerton. Waiting in line the last fifteen minutes was excruciating because there was a band of juvenile delinquents having a disgusting belching contest. It echoed and was honestly more disgusting than I think I can convey. I wanted to take a baseball bat to their heads. Or grab them by the ears and hurl them into the water.
Happily the boat was largely empty, so we found seats far far away. I was going to go outside again (I really like being outside on boats), but Jeff was very cute and coaxed me into staying inside and keeping him company. I got some knitting done (on his scarf) and we all made extraordinarily bad jokes. I think we all took turns falling asleep for a few minutes, too, as the ferry left at 11:45 and we were tired.
Back home to Seattle, we walked to my car and I drove Pete and Doug back to our office, ran in to get my laptop because I had to make some changes live that night, and then I drove Jeff home.
I can't say enough how happy I was to get home myself, and not just because I was dying to pee. It was about 2AM at this point, and I wasn't going to be able to sleep because I'd hit that point of being over-tired. I showered, uploaded that cute cute cute picture and watched some glorious tv. I think it was around 3:30AM before I conked out.
I woke up late, and was very groggy. I eventually hunted down my phone because Jeff was going to call to coordinate our Saturday-morning market ritual.
I think we finally touched base around a quarter to 11. I scrambled into some clothes and did dishes, waiting for him to come pick me up. We drove to the market, and you know, I fucking love the market, but it was particularly glorious this morning. All the vendors that have been failing me the last few trips (I'm looking at you Holmquist Farms), had everything I wanted. I love Willie's Greens and bought a metric ton of spinach and arugula. Never spent so much money so fast. I bought raspberries and blackberries, basil, greens, Italian parsley, tomatoes, hazelnuts (chopped raw and lightly salted whole), strawberries, a baguette, pluots, green onions, fresh chevre, eggplant, onions, and a lot of romano beans.
We went to Costas for lunch --I love that place. After lunch, we ran back to my place, hauled the produce upstairs, and then ran out again to go to the liquor store and grocery store, where I still forgot the damn pomegranate juice! Jeff dropped me off and I got to work pretty damn fast, because party!
I also called leetle Sarah who is a quarter-of-a-fucking-century as of today! Or, whoops--yesterday because it's after midnight now.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SAAAAAARAH!!!
Anyhow, so I busted my ass and was even granted a boon, when the guys called and said they were running half an hour late.
The bruschetta was ready and I had everything set for the pomegranate martinis. I was able to grill one side of all the pizzas and laid out all the fun toppings. We had sausage, pepperoni, and grilled chicken (chopped). I grilled some eggplant, red onions, portabella mushrooms, and red and yellow bell peppers. I also had sliced cremini mushrooms and fresh arugula out. Cheeses included some feta and fresh mozzarella. Was that it? I think that was it. Oh, it wasn't. I also made Jeff's mom's marinara sauce and Jeff's recipe for pesto sauce. If there was a theme to the meal it was: I WISH I WAS ITALIAN!
Everyone seemed to have a lot of fun designing their pizza. I'd been apprehensive about the technical details, but it worked surprisingly well. People took long enough designing their pizzas that things didn't get backed up at the grill. And god bless the warmer setting on the oven. I tried a whole wheat variation for Jeff along with the regular white crust. We sat down for the arugula, strawberry, and hazelnut salad (with balsamic vinaigrette) while the last pizza toasted. When time came for pizza, I was able to use the peel as a cutting board, and just cut everyone's individual pizza into quarters and just plate it for them. We also finally had the red Spanish wine Jeff and Chris brought me the last time they came to dinner, and it was excellent.
I'm also really glad I bought the pizza peel. I thought it would be fun and useful, but what I didn't realize was --it was absolutely critical. I could not have maneuvered those toppings-ladened pizzas on/off the grill with just a spatula. So that was very much a relief. Also--food processor for mass quantities of garlic=fucking yay. So glad I didn't try to mince it all by hand today, because it went into every-fucking-thing.
God, that was fun. Craig and Greg are such adorable creatures, and it's always wonderful to see Chris (who brought me new music to check out--Yola Tengo--and he has fantastic taste, so I'm looking forward to it). It was also a day for getting flowers from cute guys for me. Jeff bought me beautiful sunflowers at the market and C&G brought me a really pretty miniature rose bush.
We played some Apples to Apples afterward and I actually won (I never win!). We had two desserts. The amazing key lime pie that Greg made. It was spectacular. Then after some games, I served my fresh fruit tart.
The mess in the kitchen is somewhat hilarious. I'm going to start a load of dishes tonight, and then deal with the rest tomorrow.
Tomorrow: must go to West Seattle to drop off some stew for my brother, and then Wicked at the Paramount! In between there I have to study French and clean my goddamn desk because it's bill time!
What a weekend, and it's only Saturday night!
Um, and apparently I'm feeling quite chatty tonight --just finished typing and this is fucking huge, so under a cut it goes.
So on Friday night, I went to see Howard Jones in freaking Bremerton. Pete is an enormous fan and had bought tickets for a table at the Admiral Theater. He invited me, Jeff, and another friend of his, Doug. Jeff researched ferries/transportation and I was on food detail. I know way more about dining options within walking distance of the Kitsap Ferry than I ever thought I would need to know. The main trick was finding decent vegetarian food since Jeff, Pete, and as it turns out, Doug, are all vegetarians. Luckily for us, an Indian place just opened up last month.
It was funny, because Bill was out on Friday, and we realized that by leaving at 4:30PM, half the department would be gone. Doug met us at the office, and I drove us to the ferry where we found some fantastic and cheap parking. We hustled to the ferry, downtown traffic sucking even harder than we'd predicted had landed us in a time crunch. And as we ran to the ticket agent we encountered the dismal reality of the ticket line, which was forever long. Our ferry was scheduled to leave in minutes. It wouldn't have been disastrous if we'd missed it, because there was plenty of time to get to the concert, and we could just eat on the Seattle side, but happily someone bought a clue and let the Bremerton-bound cut in line. We stampeded onto the boat, and they roped the line off after Doug, leaving a handful of miserable bastards to wait for 70 minutes. I don't understand how people deal with the ferry on a regular basis. It would make me homicidal.
Anyhow, onto the boat. It was a gorgeous day and I LOVE standing on the deck and getting blasted by the wind. I took that adorable picture of Jeff, and eventually the guys went in to get some soda and popcorn, but I really had no desire to budge. Jeff came back out later to join me and reported that Pete was inside musing, "Why isn't she cold?" Somehow, I don't mind being cold on the deck of a boat! The ferry ride is really quite beautiful, especially on a day like last Friday, which was freaking gorgeous. My foul mood from the Cell Phone Photo Thingie incident melted away.
So, on that topic. A tangential:
I got that wild idea that I wanted to be able to use the phone-picture-blogging thing, and it just wouldn't work. I stayed up half the night (stupidly) and got it a bit further along. Finally, as I figured out the Flickr system, I had to enter a new e-mail address to send pictures through Flickr. My cell phone suddenly started rebooting. It was fucking maddening. I called T-mobile support and talked to two very nice people, and the advanced tech support lady eventually concluded that my phone was broken. I couldn't believe it, but nothing was making sense. No reason for it to keep fucking rebooting. I was in a foul mood. It was just one of those things where you know something shouldn't be a big deal, because for christ's sake what the fuck does it matter if I can get my cell phone to take a picture and send it to my blog. But sometimes misbehaving technology makes me INSANE. I talked it over with Pete (who is a geek extraordinaire) and he voiced the very obvious solution that I kept ignoring, even though I'd thought of it, which was that maybe something was wrong with the address. Turns out the fucking blog-posting e-mail address from Flickr is something my phone hates. It's too long is my guess, and it was making the phone freak out instead of just saying, your fucking e-mail address is too long. So I've got a redirect set up and it's working fine now. But I was so irritated by the whole thing, and largely my own uncontrolled obsessiveness about it, that I had a headache and was keeping in check my bad mood, because no one else needed to suffer from it. And eventually Jeff's anti-depressant super-hero powers cheered me up. That and Pete's completely infectious enthusiasm and good cheer about the Howard Jones concert to which he was treating us, including ferry tickets, no matter how much we protested. I'm glad I didn't listen to that support woman, and you know, buy a new phone!
End rant.
Back to weekend fun. We landed in Bremerton and easily found our way to The New Delhi. Food was good, and turns out Doug knows the owner from like ages ago. Doug, Pete's friend, was also very cool and we were a bouncy, happy group. Pete made a move for the bill, but there was no way he was going to pay for anything else, so we were finally able to contribute to the evening. The timing for everything worked out great. We walked over to the theater and the table we had tickets for was awesome. Doug and Jeff bought us all rounds of drinks. The gin and tonic was great, but nearly wiped me out because it was strong and sometimes I have no tolerance for liquor (unless Matt is buying Irish Car Bombs, apparently).
I'm not a big Howard Jones fan, nor am I an anti-fan. I just don't know more than a couple of songs and electronica isn't really my genre of choice. But both Pete and Jeff (especially Pete) were so giddy about it, that it was really awesome to just be there with them. Howard Jones can definitely sing and play, and is funny to boot. It was just him on keyboard and a guitarist. It was a fun show, and afterward Pete got in line to finally, finally meet him. Pete's been a fan for 25 years and this was the first time. I'm so mad at myself for not bringing a decent camera and snagging a shot of the event.
We had some time to kill before the ferry, but not as much as we thought we would, so we strolled along the completely dead streets of Bremerton. Waiting in line the last fifteen minutes was excruciating because there was a band of juvenile delinquents having a disgusting belching contest. It echoed and was honestly more disgusting than I think I can convey. I wanted to take a baseball bat to their heads. Or grab them by the ears and hurl them into the water.
Happily the boat was largely empty, so we found seats far far away. I was going to go outside again (I really like being outside on boats), but Jeff was very cute and coaxed me into staying inside and keeping him company. I got some knitting done (on his scarf) and we all made extraordinarily bad jokes. I think we all took turns falling asleep for a few minutes, too, as the ferry left at 11:45 and we were tired.
Back home to Seattle, we walked to my car and I drove Pete and Doug back to our office, ran in to get my laptop because I had to make some changes live that night, and then I drove Jeff home.
I can't say enough how happy I was to get home myself, and not just because I was dying to pee. It was about 2AM at this point, and I wasn't going to be able to sleep because I'd hit that point of being over-tired. I showered, uploaded that cute cute cute picture and watched some glorious tv. I think it was around 3:30AM before I conked out.
I woke up late, and was very groggy. I eventually hunted down my phone because Jeff was going to call to coordinate our Saturday-morning market ritual.
I think we finally touched base around a quarter to 11. I scrambled into some clothes and did dishes, waiting for him to come pick me up. We drove to the market, and you know, I fucking love the market, but it was particularly glorious this morning. All the vendors that have been failing me the last few trips (I'm looking at you Holmquist Farms), had everything I wanted. I love Willie's Greens and bought a metric ton of spinach and arugula. Never spent so much money so fast. I bought raspberries and blackberries, basil, greens, Italian parsley, tomatoes, hazelnuts (chopped raw and lightly salted whole), strawberries, a baguette, pluots, green onions, fresh chevre, eggplant, onions, and a lot of romano beans.
We went to Costas for lunch --I love that place. After lunch, we ran back to my place, hauled the produce upstairs, and then ran out again to go to the liquor store and grocery store, where I still forgot the damn pomegranate juice! Jeff dropped me off and I got to work pretty damn fast, because party!
I also called leetle Sarah who is a quarter-of-a-fucking-century as of today! Or, whoops--yesterday because it's after midnight now.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SAAAAAARAH!!!
Anyhow, so I busted my ass and was even granted a boon, when the guys called and said they were running half an hour late.
The bruschetta was ready and I had everything set for the pomegranate martinis. I was able to grill one side of all the pizzas and laid out all the fun toppings. We had sausage, pepperoni, and grilled chicken (chopped). I grilled some eggplant, red onions, portabella mushrooms, and red and yellow bell peppers. I also had sliced cremini mushrooms and fresh arugula out. Cheeses included some feta and fresh mozzarella. Was that it? I think that was it. Oh, it wasn't. I also made Jeff's mom's marinara sauce and Jeff's recipe for pesto sauce. If there was a theme to the meal it was: I WISH I WAS ITALIAN!
Everyone seemed to have a lot of fun designing their pizza. I'd been apprehensive about the technical details, but it worked surprisingly well. People took long enough designing their pizzas that things didn't get backed up at the grill. And god bless the warmer setting on the oven. I tried a whole wheat variation for Jeff along with the regular white crust. We sat down for the arugula, strawberry, and hazelnut salad (with balsamic vinaigrette) while the last pizza toasted. When time came for pizza, I was able to use the peel as a cutting board, and just cut everyone's individual pizza into quarters and just plate it for them. We also finally had the red Spanish wine Jeff and Chris brought me the last time they came to dinner, and it was excellent.
I'm also really glad I bought the pizza peel. I thought it would be fun and useful, but what I didn't realize was --it was absolutely critical. I could not have maneuvered those toppings-ladened pizzas on/off the grill with just a spatula. So that was very much a relief. Also--food processor for mass quantities of garlic=fucking yay. So glad I didn't try to mince it all by hand today, because it went into every-fucking-thing.
God, that was fun. Craig and Greg are such adorable creatures, and it's always wonderful to see Chris (who brought me new music to check out--Yola Tengo--and he has fantastic taste, so I'm looking forward to it). It was also a day for getting flowers from cute guys for me. Jeff bought me beautiful sunflowers at the market and C&G brought me a really pretty miniature rose bush.
We played some Apples to Apples afterward and I actually won (I never win!). We had two desserts. The amazing key lime pie that Greg made. It was spectacular. Then after some games, I served my fresh fruit tart.
The mess in the kitchen is somewhat hilarious. I'm going to start a load of dishes tonight, and then deal with the rest tomorrow.
Tomorrow: must go to West Seattle to drop off some stew for my brother, and then Wicked at the Paramount! In between there I have to study French and clean my goddamn desk because it's bill time!
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