Cups of Awesome

The middle one actually is named Cup of Awesome.

So during the Texan's visit to Seattle we made a real effort to visit as many bars as we could.  This both did and did not work as we sometimes would become 'stuck' at a bar.  Whatever.

Here's a quick rundown of our various barhops:

Night number one:

Bathtub Gin & Co.  I love this place, the drinks are awesome, the bartenders are awesome, and it's really cool inside.  Plus, you have to find the doorway in a parking lot so it adds a bit of a 'where in the bloody hell am I' vibe.  However, the crowd was a bit off this time...weird guys that were busy cougar hunting and rich talking douchebags (fyi, nobody cares about your family's  restaurants)...  Oh well.  The drinks were excellent.  

Murphy's.  Meh, just a pub.  The beer selection was ok and we had fun playing darts.  And there was an awesome back porch with friendly patrons.

The back porch at Murphy's

This is what happens when left alone w/ an entire patio to ourselves...

Night number two:

Happy hour hopping downtown - We stopped at Club Monaco's Sazerac first. http://www.sazeracrestaurant.com/seattle-bar.php We were both hurting a bit from the night before so we just had a beer there (and some AWESOME leek and artichoke dip), then we went over to the bar at the W.  Meh.  Don't ever ever order coffee there.  It was yuck.  However, after that we went to Quinn's for dinner.  That place never disappoints.  The beer selection is awesome and the food is even better. http://www.quinnspubseattle.com/  I'll probably write something on this place when I get around to the restaurant post.  Needless to say we called it a night early that day.

Night number three:

There was much mountain climbing that day so a reward was in order!  Hoorah for the Rogue Brewery! http://www.rogue.com/events/pub-events-issaquahpub.php

Amazing how beer makes you feel better after a long hike.

So, later that night after we'd gotten cleaned up and rested, etc.  Jenni, Laura, and I headed over to Via Tribunali for dinner.  YUM.  We also managed to put away a good bit of wine.  http://www.viatribunali.net/index.php?page=capitol-hill We journeyed on from the fanfreakingtastic pizza to Knee High Stocking Co.  This is probably my favorite bar in Seattle so far.  http://www.kneehighstocking.com/  The drinks here are so freaking awesome (thus the one named Cup of Awesome) and varied.

So fun and delicious!

We stayed there for a while, made friends with the waitress and bartender, and then cabbed it home.  Also, hooray for viable public transportation!  

Night number four:

So this was the day that I discovered kayaking.  Most awesome thing ever.  Also, the place where we rented the kayaks was also a Mexican restaurant.  So after an hour+ paddling around on the water we returned to Agua Verde and had margaritas!  I seriously see this becoming a habit...  http://www.aguaverde.com/ 

Cheers!

We left the magical land of kayaks and tequila and headed home to get ready for dinner.  Not going to write a lot about this place since I'll cover it later but Cafe Bizarro was so freaking good.  We just drank the house wine and it was great.  http://www.bizzarroitaliancafe.com/  After that we just went back to my house and sat outside enjoying the fantastic weather w/ some wine that i had in the house.  

Night number five:

Well, not really night.  We started off the morning with drinks at my new favorite breakfast place, Roxy's Diner.  http://www.pastramisandwich.com/  The food was amazing and the drinks were cheap.  You really can't go wrong w/ that combination.  I think my new favorite Sunday Funday drink will be a mix of ginger ale and champagne.  It was both delicious and refreshing, a tasty treat! 

That day was the 4th so we just went to the fireworks.  Drinking in public is certainly handled differently here than it is at home.  As in they only allow you to have beer in a tiny area and then they take them away around 9:30.  Whatever.  The fireworks were amazing!  

My newest addiction

Kayaking!  OMG so much fun.
So there's this place here in Seattle where you rent kayaks that is also a restaurant.  http://www.aguaverde.com/ Which means that you can take your kayak out for an hour or so, return it, and then drink a bunch of margaritas and eat a bunch of chips and guac!  This is also known as heaven on earth.  Or as Jenni put it, 'This is the best place EVER.  On a happiness scale of one to ten I'm at a ten right now!" (This phrase was repeated at least ten times over the weekend)
So Jenni and I had one of the tandem kayaks and Laura and her friend had the other one and we managed to not flip either of them!  Which kind of shocked me because I totally expected to end up in the water.  However, at least you can see in this water not to mention there aren't any alligators or water moccasins running around in the waterways here.  So that's a nice change.  We went out for just over an hour and paddled through Lake Washington by the Arboretum and some other random stuff.  I wanted to take a bunch of pics but seeing as how iPhones and water are enemies decided it wasn't the best idea.  Because we went on the Arboretum route we had to wear these really funny things that attached over the entry to the kayak to keep the water out.  That route sent us through this channel that we had to share with NICE boats and the wake got a little high a few times.  Some of the boats were definitely ignoring the speed limit and that's when we got splashed really badly.  However, it was awesome.  And I'm thinking this is something that I'll be trying to do a lot this summer.  Next time I'll try the opposite direction that goes into Lake Union and has cityscape views.
I also was having issues with wanting to bop all of the seagulls on the head w/ the oars...those things are HUGE.  It would have been like a real version of playing whack-a-mole...

The view from the deck at Agua Verde post kayaking

Another view...

Yes, please.

Seal of approval from the Texan on the 'ritas and guac.

Tasty! 

Super fantastic day.

Awesome octopus guy

I could have sat here all day...

Wordless Wednesdays

Thanks for the idea Debi! (please see blog at right to read about Debi and her fam)

Street art

Tequila!

I guess this could have also gone under the title "Things that are Awesome!" but I just used that one so I decided to wait a while before recycling.  Anyway, I discovered something magical yesterday and it goes a little bit like this:  jalapeno infused tequila + smashed to hell pineapple & citrus juices = OMFG YUM.   Ate at a Mexican place last night called Poquitos and while the food was good the drinks were outstanding.  http://www.vivapoquitos.com/Poquitos/VivaPoquitos.html  I had the mole enchiladas and they were pretty good but nothing held a candle to that jalapeno tequila.  I think the awesomeness of the tequila increases in a directly proportional rate to how craptastic work was that day.  It's a scientific fact.
Something else that could have gone under the 'awesome' tag was the dude that was spotted outside.  He was seriously rocking a mullet made of dreadlocks.  Or a dreadlocked mullet, not entirely sure what the proper descriptors should be.  I tried to get a pic of him through the window but alas, I failed.  So instead I'm putting in a pic of the beast b/c he makes me laugh.  Just like tequila and dreadlocks do.

Happy Solstice!

This weekend mostly consisted of awesome food, naked bikers, and more randomness than you could shake a stick at.  Seriously.
Friday night ended up at How to Cook a Wolf. http://www.ethanstowellrestaurants.com/howtocookawolf/  Good God in Heaven yumyumyum.  We had the Escolar crudo on a bed of avocado puree w/ sliced peppers on top, fresh mozzarella, clams with chorizo, soft cooked eggs (essentially really awesome deviled eggs), pappardelle with pork and mint ragu, and the panna cotta.  This was the second time I've eaten there and so far they have not disappointed at all.  It is definitely on my list of 'places to take visitors'.
The next day was spent at the Freemont Fair.  http://www.fremontfair.org/ The fairs here are certainly different from the ones at home, this is most likely due to the lack of public intoxication, but whatever.  It was still pretty entertaining.  It started off with the annual Solstice Parade which is lead by about 50 naked painted people riding bikes, unicycles, skateboards, and roller blades.  Some of the paint/costumes were really pretty good, some were flat out weird, and some people weren't even trying.  And then there was the guy that just decided to join in later and streaked down the road after the bikes.  My favorite 'costumes' were probably the groups, there were a bunch from the Wizard of Oz, some of the 101 Dalmatians, several Batmen and assorted villians, and then just a bunch of really oddly painted random people.  After the bikers passed the rest of the 'parade' followed.  It wasn't anything like a parade at home, there were really no real floats, and they didn't throw things but it was so fantastically random that it didn't really matter.  There were some terribly unattractive belly dancers. For the most part they looked like they'd just eaten an entire cake or, conversely, had done a whole lot of meth.  There was a guy dressed as a clam, a huge dung beetle, a school of fish, and some things that I couldn't figure out what on earth they were supposed to be.  Most importantly though was the Flying Spaghetti Monster.  He was AWESOME.  He was also escorted by pirates, as should always be the case.  I'm not really sure what followed him because we left to find some food.  Hooray for piroshkys and funnel cakes.  There was also a pretty good art car show.  Some of the cars were just stupid but for the most part they were fantastically weird.  It isn't every day that you see a car covered in random dental products or plastic squirrels.
Ok, more randomness to come later.  I have to take the Beast out for a run or he's going to launch into orbit.

The Bikers arrive

The Tick!  On rollerblades!!

The Wizard of Oz

Basketball players on unicycles

Whatever this guy is...

A clam!  Because every parade needs a giant clam...

The Dung beetle

I have no idea what in the hell this is supposed to be

Randomness

Because every parade needs an octopus.

Behold, the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Scary.

The  Beast's arch-nemisis car.

Things that are Awesome...

So last weekend we went to a wine release party and it was fantastic!  It was out at DeLille Cellars http://www.delillecellars.com/ in Woodinville and was for the release of the 2010 Rose.  I discovered several things at this wine tasting, first and foremost was the fact that I should definitely be living in a Chateau in wine country...might have to work on this.  Second was that Seattle flowers are huge monster mutants.  I was suspicious of this based on the ones growing around my place but my theory was confirmed while we were out there.  I'm assuming it has something to do with the fact that the sun is up at 5am (many a morning I've woken up in a panic thinking I'd overslept) and doesn't set until after 10pm.

Anyway, there were several wines that they were tasting in addition to the rose.  We had the Aix, the D2, the Harrison Hill, and some white that they gave us when we drove up.  They were all awesome!  Luckily this is the winery whose club I'm now a member of so I get some of these guys shipped to me on a quarterly basis.  There was also food provided for us by The Barking Frog (best restaurant name EVAR) http://www.willowslodge.com/wine_dine/barking_frog.html and it was pretty decent.  We had veggie skewers, sweet potato fries (yum), sliders (double yum), and some kind of a weird tuna slider/burger thing.  But nothing sweet, boooo.

The view from the Chateau

Some of the grounds.  In addition to having a chateau I would also like to have 'grounds'...

More of the chateau's grounds....

White wisteria!  It was gorgeous and smelled amazing...

Monster Peonies...

Monster roses...I'm a little afraid living here is going to turn me into a flower bandit.  I keep wanting to plan midnight flower picking raids w/ the dog...too bad he isn't what you would call 'sneaky'.

Posting posting

I promise there will be more posts soon.  I have been in the middle of packing up my old house, going to a three day music festival,  moving across the country, and unpacking at my new place.  In the middle of all of this is the whole having to work thing which is a real pain in the ass.  Also, that dog seems to demand things like love, affection, and endless walks.  Like I said, more posts to come soon!  

Ahhh....the ocean...

Hangout Music Fest

Hooray for road trips!  

Things we saw along the way...1 - Dust.

Aliens...

Whatever this cool thing is...

Bugs Bunny/Wylee Coyote country...no falling anvils

Ancient pueblos built by the Anasanzi in the 11th century

Snow capped mountains!

The Animas River in Durango, CO

Wacky flower art...

OMG SNOW!

The Rocky Mountains

Neato rocks.

Moonscapes

Awesome standing stones.

Oregon..aka...thank god it's green again

The Cascades

Seattle!  We made it!