Yvette's Inner Geek Blog

The fledgling barn swallows have learned to fly. Only two were in the nest this morning after my class, and one more came fluttering in while I was standing there.

They are still smaller than their mother and their feathers are muted suggestions of more brilliant colors to come. Their beaks were tiny little pinpoints; so different than the baby bills they had just last week. Well, that was my impression until mama bird swooped in with some extra nutrition—they can still open their mouths to a proportionally frightening size. If they’re still that flexible in the chompers next week, I’m guessing they’ll just eat the mama bird to satisfy their hunger… for… BRAINZ!

Hrm. Sorry about that. I just read the first issue of North 40 (comic book published by Wildstorm) so there are some zombie and Cthulhu-like ideas floating around in my head right now. I can be very impressionable when I’m paying attention.

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The weather was perfect this evening. After a short date at the crowded library (not quite the geek-romantic scene you might be picturing), Ben and I drove into the foothills near our house and discovered a little lookout at the end of a road. I’d cleverly placed that camera in my purse for moments like these, so you can share our view:

Not too shabby for a Tuesday night. The sunset, the twinking lights, the lake, the mountains… the opportunity to procrastinate instead of doing homework.

I forgot to mention the whole POINT of our trip to Boise, which was going to Colleen’s housewarming party on Saturday evening! Their house is adorable, with a backyard full of foliage and a very nice deck. We met their cool and laid-back Boise friends, snacked on snacks, drank some beer, and disappointed Colleen’s ten-year-old by not bringing Mario Party 8 with us so he could play it on his new Wii. Sorry, kiddo! We’ll bring it next time if you don’t have it by then.

Okay, so. Sunday morning, after being a little disturbed by how well I could hear the male and female voices in the hotel bathroom next door, Ben and I walked a few blocks to Boise’s Basque Block on Grove Street. Say what now? That’s right, Boise is home to the largest community of Basques (approx. 15,000) in the United States. We met up with Colleen, her hubby, her son, and her mom for brunch at Bardenay, a very cool restaurant and distillery.

It was a beautiful morning, but we opted to eat inside. After living in Utah for a few years, Ben and I were perhaps overly impressed by the beautiful bar taking up the length of the restaurant without any barriers or weird liquor laws. But we were rightfully impressed by their selection of breakfast cocktails on the menu. I opted instead to drink coffee and eat “Bardenay French Toast,” which was a miracle breakfast food dipped in orange/cinnamon batter and dusted with powdered sugar… served with a side of Basque-style chorizo and rosemary red potatoes. Except I substituted eggs for the potatoes because, truth be told, I’m not a huge fan of potatoes. So, no, I didn’t eat any Idago potatoes.

The meal was still delicious, and the company was lovely. We parted ways, promised to come back to Boise, and took a nice stroll back to the hotel parking garage. The Basque Museum and Cultural Center was right across the street from Bardenay, but it was closed, so, with a sigh of relief from Ben, we kept walking. He hates going to museums with me because I find EVERYTHING interesting. Sor-ry!

According to Colleen, the sheep-friendly Idaho hills attracted the Basque people. I can see that. I visited my grandfather while he was still alive and living in Hossegor, which is a resort town in Southwestern France very close to Basque country. I’ve tasted Basque cuisine and driven through the hilly countryside, where at times the car was stopped on the narrow road by a herd of sheep passing by with a lone (and very tan) sheepherder. Like to the point where we couldn’t open the car doors because the sheep were thumping against the car on all sides. So I can see how the Idaho countryside would attract people from that area.

(When I was 13 and stayed in Hossegor for a few weeks, my step-grandmother took me to a Basque museum/store where I learned about the culture and famous tradition of high-quality weaving and subsequently fell in love with the style of traditional Basque linens (linge Basque in French). It was something like the Basque Eco-museum in St Jean de Luz, but that was established in 1999 which was a few years too late for me to have visited. Maybe I saw an early version of Jean-Vier‘s headquarters before it was an official museum. My mom gave me a set of linge Basque table linens a few years ago after her last trip to France, but I’ve never used them because there hasn’t been an occasion special enough, you know?)

Right. Boise’s Basque Block evoked some older memories beyond the cool factor. Another cool thing in Boise was this faux-crack on the side of this building (maybe Colleen can enlighten us in the comments section with what building this is?). It had little misting jets to cool down passersby—not to worry, we did not let them dampen our spirits, hardee har har!

We finally made it back to the car and returned to Interstate 84 less than 24 hours after arriving in Boise. Based on the information we received at the Twin Falls Visitor Information center on Saturday, however, we elected to take a detour along Route 30, the “Thousand Springs Scenic Byway,” which followed the Snake River. So we ditched I-84 at Bliss, population 275.

Bliss was podunk and sadly desolate; truly the antithesis of its name. Its few businesses were in disrepair or perhaps closed forever. If it ever had a prime as an amusing stop for motor tourists like us, that time has long past. We saw one resident while we stopped to stretch our legs and take a photo of the welcome sign, and he was driving a bright red truck with two happy dogs in the truckbed, kicking up clouds of dust from the dirt road next to the silent railroad tracks. There was also a shrieking killdeer bird hanging around the sign that clearly wanted us out of his insect territory, dammit. So we drove on and left Bliss in the dust, so to speak.

We stopped at a “Fossil Beds” National Monument outside the tiny town of Hagerman—which boasted “Library of the Year” on a sign outside its library that was seriously smaller than a bookmobile. The “monument” consisted of a roadside sign and a gorgeous view (my photos do not do it justice). I’ve never seen black rocks before, and these looked particularly brilliant against the bright green hues from a rainy spring. Back in the car, this is what the road ahead of us looked like. Not too bad, eh?

There was another fossil bed scenic view not too far away, with a wooden plankway to a spot overlooking a crook in the Snake River. It was serene and quiet and I kind of wanted to build a house on top of all those fossils (that were supposedly somewhere in the striations of the cliffs; they were too far away for me to make anything out) just for the view. Oh, and the birds. There was a pelican in the water and what we determined (with the help of a sign nearby) was an osprey flying overhead. But it might have been an American White Pelican based on what Teh Internet is telling me today. Either way, that thing was huge.

There was a smaller bird that kept shrieking at us from the top of a telephone pole to leave his habitat, just like the killdeer in Bliss, so we moved on. We wanted to stop at Shoshone Falls and get back on the freeway before dark.

Shoshone Falls, according to the Twin Falls Visitor Center Man, has been dry for the last six years because of drought. This year there the falls were running again, and we happened to be driving through during the peak three weeks of rushing water flow. So we veered down a windy road lined with rocky cliffs and ponied up three bucks to enter a park… and suddenly found ourselves facing the 212-feet-high “Niagara of the West.” Once again, my photos do not do this place justice. There are lots more on my Flickr photostream.

The roaring water, the fine mist swirling around faces and through parched desert-lungs. People of all kinds lingering, drawn to this place for their own reasons. We hung around for a while, enjoying the day, enjoying the view, and enjoying each other’s company. We haven’t celebrated the anniversary of our first date since we were married, but May 11, 2009 marked ten years of us being a couple. As the sun started to set, we returned to the road—one decade of adventures, misadventures, accomplishments, and changes of direction behind us, and hopefully many more in our future.

It’s almost August, and it devastates me to realize that I haven’t blogged because I NEEDED to blog about my trip to Idaho in… (squeak!) May. Ben and I took more than 300 photos between our two cameras, so sorting them and uploading them to Flickr was frankly daunting. BUT IT HAS BEEN DONE. And I’m finally going to tell you, with what I’m sure will be anticlimactic fanfare, about my exciting weekend in May.

I’ve lived in Utah for almost four years now and had never driven into Idaho (which, for the record, I keep typing as “Idago” because really, who puts an H after the letter A?!?! srsly, WTF). I didn’t really have a reason to visit the land of Famous Potatoes until my Idahoan friend C. invited me to her housewarming party in Boise. I befriended C. through this very blog when she was SpudLostInUtah… we finally met in person last year and then a miracle occurred and she was able to escape crazyass Utah, and her blog name changed to FoundInIdaho.

Anyway. We left on Saturday a little before noon, and were pleasantly surprised by the drive through Northern Utah, where the rocky, industrialized mountain area gave way to green and sparsely populated landscape, perhaps similar to what Utah Valley looked like before it was inundated with tightly-spaced condos, churches, and McDonald’s.

The drive through Southwestern Idaho was much greener and hillier than we expected. Heavily-irrigated fields were filled with cows galore. (Ben and I played fiercely competitive rounds of Cows I Win, which is a game I learned in college. The first person to see a herd of cows and call out “Cows I Win” wins. Negative points if the herd turns out to be horses or sheep.) Silvery-green scrub brush dotted non-irrigated areas in interesting patterns. Hawks, eagles, and ravens, and possibly a falcon flew in and out of our view. I’ve turned into a little bit of a bird nerd, and really wished that I’d brought binoculars and field guide with me. At least Ben was driving so we didn’t have to worry about me swerving into oncoming traffic while pointing at them.

However, Major Fail: Ben failed to alert me, and I did not notice, that the Idago (what the hell, I’m just renaming the state) border was looming, so I did not take a photo of the “Welcome to Idaho” sign. I’m pretty sure we did actually leave Utah, though, since the drivers started behaving like actual drivers instead of rude, idiot asshole f*cktards. (I’ve experienced Masshole drivers, and they’ve got nothin’ on half-brained Utah drivers in F-350s with trailers of ATVs. Ahem. /rant. Sorry.)

We took a little longer than expected to arrive in Boise because we stopped at some of the scenic overlooks. This photo was taken just before we drove across the Perrine Bridge into Twin Falls, where there was reportedly a Visitor Information Center. That’s the Snake River and a taste of America the Beautiful. Oh, and a golf course on the right side.

We passed the Visitor Info building twice before getting there. Which might be hard for you to believe, given how large the letters are on this tiny building, but trust me. It’s hiding behind an Outback Steakhouse and faces the canyon and a small park instead of the road. Must have been some visiting Utah civil engineers who thought that up. But the short detour off the freeway to find it was absolutely worth it; the Snake River canyon was amazing and the guy inside the Visitor Center was incredibly friendly and helpful. Like, to the point where I wondered if there was going to be an ultimate reason for explaining all of that information as there was at the end of the movie Wayne’s World, which validated Chris Farley’s cameo-filled-with-seemingly-unnecessary-information. (See, Mom? There’s another example of how watching that movie a million times had a purpose after all!)

And here we have a non-sponsored appearance of Burt’s Bees Lemon Butter Cuticle Cream. Seriously, If I don’t use this stuff regularly, I pick/bite my nails/cuticles until they bleed. I had it out and got all artsy with the Perrine Bridge in the background. I like that the curve of the little tin is echoed in the curve of the bridge.

Not included in any photos that I took: base jumpers. But they were there. Also, a little chameleon of some sort.  At first we thought it was just a cute lizard doing push-ups on a rock to impress/scare us, but then it moved behind a bush and turned green. You BET I started singing karma-karma-karma-karma-karma chamel-e-on! According to Teh Internet, this little guy is not a chameleon after all. But you know what he was for sure? A diva. He kept moving closer until we got a good photo and said how cute he was. Then he grew bored of us and scurried away.

In other exciting news, I did not realize that the Oregon Trail was real. I thought it was just an educational computer game that I never played well enough to beat.

And this is for my mom. Horses have teeth, too! But I wondered briefly if that’s where horses went to learn about dentistry for their species? Because maybe they’ve advanced beyond the “paw once for yes, twice for no” intelligence? And now they’re capable of performing root canals—at least in this obscure Idaho town that had a two-pump gas station in front of a “COUNTRY STORE” that was the hoppingest place in town and probably the only liquor store for miles and even had a Shasta machine out front that ate my 50¢ and then, after a generous honor-refund from the cashier inside, was out of Diet Shasta and shot out cream soda instead of root beer which was too sweet for me and Ben had to drink though he didn’t really mind after all.

Boise eventually appeared over the horizon in the early evening, seemingly out of nowhere. We counted down the mile markers and were like, “um, does Boise actually exist? Because there’s no sign of life and it’s almost our exit…” and then BAM! A city in a tree-filled valley in the middle of what is otherwise nowhere. Sorry I didn’t take a photo of the BAM! moment.

We checked into our hotel—the Hampton Inn in downtown Boise. We had a great view over the newly gentrified neighborhood and movie theater below, and the room was nice and clean, but the walls were paper thin. It was easy to hear, um, bathroom sounds… from next door. Yay. Otherwise a nice place. We walked to meet C., her husband and son at the TableRock microbrewery for dinner, where I had a reuben that had never heard of New York but was otherwise good, and we tried some of the local beer on tap but unfortunately I can’t remember exactly what we had. I probably had the amber ale, and I do remember liking it.

Wow, so now I remember what blogging is like again. It takes time and energy! I’m going to do Idaho Day 2 tomorrow. If I don’t, you have my permission to slug me in my I.P. address. But I will blog, so you don’t have to plan how you would actually do that. You can get a sneak preview by looking at my photos from Idaho on my flickr photostream.

[Idaho trip summary is still in the works, once I get off my busy/lazy butt and upload the photos.]

My writer friend Ted is spending the month of June traveling across the country, staying with kind friends along the way. Ben and I managed to convince him to make a weekend stop in Utah along his journey. It has been rainy and stormy and chilly the entire weekend, effectively presenting Ted with the image that Utah has a wet, temperate climate. Though we can certainly use the rain here, this is a false image. It’s also ruined our plans to take him on scenic tours, short hikes, and have a barbecue.

We attempted to win a hot air balloon ride on Saturday morning, getting up at 6am to do so. We watched the balloons inflate, but then were given the sad news of some “safety first” crap because of incoming storm cells and that meant the balloons would not be launched at all. This made Ted very sad. I still feel guilty, even though the weather was not my fault.

Some friends came over Saturday evening and helped us inaugurate the new cornhole boards. We were able to clear out space upstairs to play this otherwise outdoor lawn game, and it went very well. Our Utah friends seemed to enjoy this Cincinnati-based game that started to become popular while I was living there in the early part of this decade. (Can we say “early aughts” or is there some other way to say it? Early 00s or Early 2000s just don’t seem right.) Once the cornhole craze died down and winners of a mini-tournament were declared, we headed downstairs to play Rock Band. Ben succumbed to (a lot of) peer pressure and sang. He’s the Guy Who Doesn’t Sing In Front of People so this was a very big deal. I’m very proud of him. Though I know it may never happen again.

Today was another crappy weather day, and we postponed a scenic drive up to the Sundance resort until after 4pm. When there was a break in the weather, Ben, Ted, and I jumped in the car and actually saw a little sunshine heading up Provo Canyon. Now, I volunteered the past two years at the Sundance Film Festival, and have worked a few heavy-lifting shifts this summer for the Summer Labs, so I could look all cool and stuff by saying hi to one of the Sundance Institute managers.

The timing was good, and we were invited to sit down in the screening room with a crowd (under 100 people) of visiting directors, writers, producers, and Sundance staff for a private screening. It’s great to know people! The Summer Labs are for creative types (who have to go through a competitive application process) to workshop some scenes from their manuscripts.

The screening consisted of 1-6 scenes from each of about 10 screenplays, and we were warned beforehand that they were very rough cuts. Some looked more promising than others, but it was really cool to glimpse into the lives of Professional Film People. We were cautiously aware that we didn’t really belong, so we tried to be inconspicuous.

And we kept our cool when Alfre Woodard was introduced and then sat right behind us. And also when the lights came up at the end and we noticed that Alia Shawkat was sitting three empty seats over from Ben. She put on a baseball cap and slinked off pretty quickly, not giving any of us the opportunity to walk up to her and awkwardly/fannishly say hello and then maybe lick her face. It’s probably for the better.

This whole volunteering for Sundance thing is turning out to be one of the best decisions I ever made. It makes living in Utah a little brighter, even on a somewhat dreary day like today.

Our lovely Thursday in Seattle was followed by an equally beautiful Friday in terms of weather, but more grumpiness on an emotional level. This likely had to do with the fact that we walked about 5 more miles than expected throughout the course of the day.

The plan was good; walk down Pike Street from the hotel to First Avenue, where we would catch a bus in the free ride zone to Jackson Street and walk two blocks to Safeco Field for a 12:30 game day tour of the ballpark. Except… for some reason, the only bus that passed us on First Avenue was not going that direction. This directly contradicted the hotel front desk ladies, who assured us that LOTS of buses go straight down First Avenue. So. We walked 2 miles (according to Google Maps) and arrived at Safeco Field a breezy 15 minutes before tour time. But I was damp with sweat and not nearly as caffeinated as I would have liked, and I was hungry and thirsty, so even the nice weather did not seem as nice as it could have if we’d been able to take a damn bus for a portion of our journey.

Still, the ballpark tour was cool. Even though Ken Griffey, Jr. did not lead it as I was expecting. (I thought he worked for the team now?) A shrewish woman in her 70s named Helen led the tour instead, and she was full of information and excitement as long as nobody asked any questions. Most of our fellow tour-takers were Japanese and abided by her unspoken rule—too busy affirming stereotypes by fawning over every mention and piece of memorabilia related to Ichiro. We got to sit in the press box for a few minutes, and I thought that was cool. Ben about wet his pants from the excitement of standing in the dugouts and then on the field behind home plate. On the dirt, mind you. DO NOT EVEN THINK ABOUT TOUCHING THE GRASS, Helen said, with the implied sentiment that she would put on her Gremlin face and bite off your Tender Parts with one snarl if you did.

After the tour, we browsed the team store and confirmed that we are well past the Obtain Chinsy Souvenir From Everywhere stage. Well, that was more my hurdle than Ben’s to begin with. We went across the street to Pyramid Brewery for lunch. I enjoyed water and some of Ben’s Audacious Apricot Ale. My burger was okay, but the sweet potato fries were Audaciously Awesome and satisfied both my carb and vegetable cravings.

We walked back up First Avenue afterward to Yesler Way and Pioneer Square, where a great miracle occurred and we caught a bus. Instead of taking it all the way back to Pike Street, we got off a little early and went down to the waterfront where we caught the last Argosy Harbor Cruise of the day. We wanted to take full advantage of the nice Seattle weather and got some great views of the skyline. There was also a sea lion hanging out on a buoy by the West Seattle peninsula who posed for photos as we cruised on by.

Still full from lunch, we finally made it back to the hotel in the early evening for a nap. Later on we relied on The Internet for our bus itinerary to the Space Needle. Guess what? The Internet (specifically King County’s Metro Trip Planner) provided much more accurate information than the front desk. There was no line at the Space Needle, and not many people hanging out at the top while we were there (about 10pm-11pm). We ended up back at Tap House Grill for a late-night snack and, of course, some beer. Well, Ben had a beer and I drank water and we complained to each other about our sore legs and feet.

Saturday we met up with our friends Liz and Josh (and their 3.5-year-old daughter, whom I haven’t seen since she was a month old) and ate good Chinese food at Pike Place Market. Except the diet Pepsi was nasty. We stopped by Golden Age Collectables to pick up our allotted one-per-person comic for Free Comic Book Day, and then headed back to Safeco Field (in their car, thankfully) for an actual baseball game. We sat in “Area 51,” which is in right field close to where Ichiro hangs out. He’s number 51.

The most exciting part of the game for me was batting practice, where Liz and I whimpered and cowered together as baseballs came screaming toward us multiple times. Ben and Josh were ready to knock us down “for safety” to catch any balls headed in our direction. A few came close, but attempts were foiled by people with bug mitts and long reaches who didn’t even end up having seats in our section.

Josh said that I HAD to try the stadium’s garlic fries, so I did. And I basically breathed garlic fire for three days. I officially recommend them, but with caution. And plan to share because you actually get a lot for the overpriced fee.

It was “Turn Back the Clock” night at Safeco Field, and the Mariners and the Oakland A’s were dressed in retro jerseys from 1939. So they were actually the Seattle Rainers and the Oakland Oaks. There was no modern music played, only Swing and traditional baseball tunes on the organ. It was pretty cool… the Jumbotron even displayed video with a sepia and crackle filter so it looked like film footage from 1939. I liked the gimmick. The game went pretty quickly, and though we thought it might go into extra innings, Oakland ended up winning it in the ninth. Josh was sad, but Ben was just happy to be able to watch a live pro baseball game again. Going to a minor league Salt Lake Bees game just isn’t the same.

Sunday we met up with Liz and Josh again to go to the zoo. Seattle has a nice zoo, and if you like birds, you NEED to visit the Willawong Station. It’s a “bird feeding experience” that brings out the best of bird ownership without the need for you to clean up any poop or change the cage. In a different exhibit, I was rushed by a kookaburra. Luckily there was a plate of glass or plexiglass between us, because that m’f'n beak would have hurt bigtime.

After the zoo, we went back to Liz and Josh’s sweet new digs for dinner (some of the best take-out Pad Thai I’ve ever had) and general hanging out. It’s hard to not live closer to them.

On Monday, there was some time to kill after we checked out of our hotel and before our flight, so we meandered down the street to the Seattle Aquarium. Ben enjoyed it more than expected, and revealed to me that he wasn’t sure he’d ever been in an aquarium. I couldn’t believe it, but then again I worked a summer at Sea World of Ohio (when it still existed) and can’t imagine life without occasional aquarium visits. In any case, it turns out that I really, really love puffins. Is it possible that I’ve never seen them before? Perhaps. I spent a proportionally large amount of time staring and smiling at them and taking a bajillion crappy photos that didn’t turn out. Well, a couple kind of did. I’ll get those up on Flickr in the next couple days.

And that was our Seattle trip. We won’t be moving there anytime soon, but I definitely want to go back to visit. Now that we’ve done our downtown tourist trip, we can try it from a different angle. If it’s baseball season, though, the angle will still have to include a game! No garlic fries next time, though.

It must be love if a wife is delighted by her husband working the phrase “wretched hive of [scum and] villainy” into an anniversary card.

Ben and I celebrated our fifth wedding anniversary today with dinner at the Chef’s Table in Orem, Utah. It’s a pretty fancy place, though weirdly located on dreary, high-traffic State Street and nestled on a hill between a car dealership and some not-fancy housing. Still, the service was great and the food was amazing. We’d never been there before… but we’d like to go there again.

Ben called ahead for a reservation yesterday and had apparently mentioned that it was our anniversary… so when we arrived we were greeted with “Happy Anniversary” and some pleasant small talk by a chipper, dark-haired woman wearing a bright pink shirt. We were taken to the “reservation room” where we had a nice view of the mountains despite the cloudy, rain-threatening weather. The trees were not yet full enough to block our view of telephone poles and houses below, but it was fun to watch a pair of starlings flitting about the springtime trees all evening.

Ben and I don’t eat out a ton, but when we do it’s usually nothing fancy. You know, the type of place where menus are either already at the table, slapped in a pile in the middle of the table, or handed to you but with sticky stuff all over them. So the Chef’s Table was a lovely change of pace. The menus were opened and handed to us one at a time, and the pink-shirted hostess somehow also managed to lay my napkin over my lap simultaneously.

As soon as she walked away, a waiter’s assistant walked over and placed a stemmed glass dish with a dollop of something in front of each of us. “Lemon sorbet,” he said, and walked away.

“GOURMET!” I believe I whispered to Ben. And then, because I was feeling like I knew what it was for, I said, “To cleanse the palate.” I still think that’s a pretty good guess, and didn’t have a reason to think otherwise.

After some major deliberation, I ordered the “sautéed duck in port reduction sauce” with roasted red pepper potato soup. Ben ordered the “bacon wrapped beef tenderloin with sauce madeira” with French onion soup.

Normally when we try new places or new foods we’ll reach across each other’s plates for samples or trade partial portions. We didn’t feel comfortable doing that there, so I can’t vouch for the taste of Ben’s food, but he reported that is was very, very delicious.

Regarding my soup, I said to “imagine the most amazing potato soup you’ve ever had, then add freshly roasted red pepper to it.” It wasn’t too creamy and the spice levels were perfect. The texture was not entirely smooth, but that didn’t prevent me from finishing the whole mini-tureen that was placed before me. In response to my soup review, Ben said this regarding his: “Imagine the most amazing French onion soup you’ve ever had. (…) Yep.”

(I’m writing this review of food without being a practiced food critic. Suffice it to say that while our meal was more expensive than the norm for us, it was delicious enough to warrant an attempt at food critique.)

I ordered a glass of 2005 Raymond Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon to go with dinner (for my Utah friends: that’s a type of wine). It was advertised as having, among other flavors, overtones of caramel, vanilla, and coffee. I tasted the caramel and vanilla but couldn’t detect the coffee. Guess I still have some work to do before I can become a sommelier! Whether or not it was supposed to go with duck, I can tell you that it was really good wine.

It was also nice to see that I was not the only one enjoying a glass of wine with dinner—a table behind us ordered a couple bottles. It’s still funny to see a table full of grown-ups at a fancy restaurant drinking only water, coke, and lemonade.

Our main courses were beautifully presented on large white plates with sprigs of fresh rosemary and the sauces artfully poured over the meat. My duck was cooked medium rare, as suggested by the waiter, and it was tender, juicy, and not like chicken. I’ve only had duck once before, but this one was better. The large slices of zucchini (which I normally don’t like) and carrots were made gourmet by dipping them lightly in the port reduction sauce. The “crispy house potato gratin” that also came with the duck was one of the best potato dishes I’ve ever tasted, and I’m not a big fan of potatoes so don’t take that statement lightly. The melted cheese on top is what made them “crispy.” I am considering calling the restaurant tomorrow to ask if I can just get a tray of that crispy cheese to go. It was really good cheese.

The dessert menu looked fantastic, but we’d cleared our plates and absolutely could not eat more. I vow to go back for just dessert one day soon.

We took our time eating dinner and really enjoyed ourselves this evening. Perhaps my review would be different had it not been our anniversary—I guess I’ll just have to go again soon to test out that theory.

Lastly, I leave you with a personal accomplishment. At the start of the meal, Ben looked at the wine, then my shirt, and said, “This is going to end badly.” But I wore a new white shirt and didn’t dribble ANY food or wine onto it! New world record!

Ben and I spent the afternoon with Kathleen and Ron on Christmas Day last year. Kathleen was diagnosed with colon cancer in early 2008 and had undergone chemotherapy, but even though she’d lost a lot of weight and looked more frail, she was as talkative as ever. She told me that she intended to live for another 20 years to see her grandchildren married, and that she’d told her doctors that their grim predictions just wouldn’t work for her.

I believed her. And I am now trying to deal with sadness from her death and guilt from not going to see her since Christmas—not even after I got the message last week that she was in hospice. The time just passed by too quickly, and I guess I’ve been floating around in denial and avoidance. She was only 57 years old.

Kathleen and I were coworkers at my last job, and though her kids are my age, we bonded over being the only non-Mormons at the corporate office. And over trains. Her husband, recently retired, was the manager at the local Union Pacific railyard and Ben is a model railroader who goes ga-ga for real trains.

They invited us to visit the railyard the last few Decembers (along with the employees’ families, who mostly come to see Santa and eat Kathleen’s cookies) so that Ben could take photos and touch the insides of a locomotive. At the railyard in 2007, I took a photo of Kathleen and Ron that she really loved. The photo was a little blurry, but she had a great big smile on her face.

We went to her memorial service this morning.Kathleen was Christian, but had not found a congregation that fit her spiritual needs since moving to Utah from Texas in the 90s. Her Mormon neighbors offered to hold the service at the local church, and it was very nice. A lot of my former coworkers were there from the company that laid me (and Kathleen) off last year. I was happier to see some more than others, but I know that Kathleen would have wanted every one of them there.

I’m not typically a crier, but I don’t have a great history of holding myself together at funerals or memorial services. I was doing okay walking into the church building, greeting Ron and his kids, until I got to the table with the guestbook and programs. Read more…

I am delighted to announce that yesterday evening, completely unprovoked, Ben took our relationship to a new level. He invited me to organize our CD collection.

What’s the big deal, right? It’s just a ginormous pile of plastic and digital music files.

Heh.

Okay, there are a couple things you need to understand before you can understand why this was such a big deal to me. When I was in elementary school—elementary school—I had a small bookshelf in my room where I kept my small collection of books in alphabetical order by title. My parents gave me a typesetting/rubber stamp set that I used to stamp my name in every book, as well as to make official-looking library cards for my family and visiting friends. And I kept index cards with the book titles and stamped due dates on them. I, uh, kind of really wanted to be a librarian when I grew up. (And also a veterinarian, a babysitter, and a writer, but that’s not really relevant to the story.)

By middle school, I switched to organizing my books alphabetically by author and then title. They stayed that way for many years through many moves. When Ben and I finally got bookshelves in our house a few years ago, I spent a very happy weekend pulling books out of boxes and shelving them in a loose Dewey Decimal order. Fiction is separated from non-fiction, which is grouped by subject and then alphabetically by author. It’s a little tricky because of the arrangement of the shelves. Ben understands my need to have my books organized, and doesn’t really care how I mix his in.

Now, about multimedia. Read more…

Happy Square Root Day! Even Scientific American is talking about it! This holiday comes only 9 times a century (and 9 is my favorite number), so please do something to celebrate.

For example, choose to eat square foods—preferably made from some sort of root. You could cut a potato into a cube, then cut it into 15 slices and fry them up. Eat the slices in groups of 3, 3, and 9. If you don’t have any square and/or root foods available, just try to eat or drink in groups of 3 and 9.

Or watch the trailer for the upcoming Tim Burton Movie, 9, and send it to 3 friends with the instructions that they should each send it to 3 friends. (But that’s it, okay? It’s a mathematical celebration, not a chain meme.)

It’s also a great day to learn shortcuts for typing the square root symbol (√)!

Mac OSX: option + v

Windows: alt + 0251

Number code: √

Character code: 221A

If you choose to celebrate Square Root Day, please leave a comment to share what you did!

In related news, I would like to publicly apologize for disappointing my friend John on Febrary 13. I neglected to blog about 1234567890 Day. Perhaps this little factoid will help with my redemption: I cherish the memory of my mixed 4th/5th grade class pausing to celebrate sequential numbers at 1:23:45pm on 6/7/89.

March of ’09 is pretty special because it’s the only month in each century wherein one may celebrate both Square Root Day and Pi Day (3/14). It’s also my dad’s birthday!

Dad is a scientist and fairly geeky in his own right, so I happily explained to him over the phone what a special day it was to have a birthday. He told me to have fun with whatever fumes I was huffing. Happy Birthday, you crotchety ol’ smartass! Love you!

I was so excited about being NaBloPoMo’s Blog of the Week that I managed to skip a day of blog posting yesterday. Whoops.

But the house finally has some lights up in electric holiday fashion, and the tree is also up in the living room. Ben wants to add some more lights before we put on the ornaments… but it’s very pretty even without ornaments, as it turns out. Usually we start decorating the tree as soon as it’s up so we rarely leave it partially naked like it is now.

Yesterday we took in our friends’ three girls so that their parents could get some Christmas shopping and wrapping done without them around. We probably fed them too much sugar, but we had a lot of fun playing the Wii and watching one of my favorite Christmas specials that they’d never seen: A Muppet Family Christmas.

The only copy I have is a VHS tape that I bought in college because my taped-from-TV version had worn out… but unfortunately the “flashback” scene of the Muppet Babies singing “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” is edited out because of licensing issues. Bummer. And now that Disney owns the Muppets, the chances of seeing them on DVD together with the Fraggles (still owned by Jim Henson Company) and the Sesame Street Muppets (now owned by the Sesame Workshop) are pretty slim.

The girls have grown up watching the Fraggles on tape and, more recently, DVD, so they were really pumped about seeing some new Fraggle material. (Um, unless the fact that it was actually made 21 years ago disqualifies it as new.)

They were extremely disappointed that there wasn’t more Fraggle interaction and that they weren’t discovered by any Muppets except Kermit and Robin. They also thought that the Christmas Carol medley at the end went on a little too long. But they loved the rest of it, and the oldest (who is 13) recognized Jim Henson’s cameo at the end. That made me happy.