Holy Fried Chicken, Batman!

As I sit here typing this blog post I feel a bit like I'm about to burst.  Good god I have found the temple to awesomeness and in this place they fry a lot of chicken. But more on that later.
First, I met a friend at this great bar (next to another great bar) where they allow dogs inside and they even get to sit at the tables!  Norm's is a fantastic and happy place, however, my big ball of crazy will not be going to Norm's b/c I'm pretty sure he'd start some kind of a doggy riot.  He's sneaky like that.  Apparently Norm's doesn't have a website (too busy paying fines for allowing dogs in a restaurant I'm guessing) but here's a link to Yelp's review. http://www.yelp.com/biz/norms-eatery-and-ale-house-seattle  Also, they make homemade potato chips w/ sour cream/onion dip.  Awesome.

I don't want to go to your happy dog bar anyway.

On Saturday I discovered eggnog lattes.  And they are fabulous.  Super fabulous.  

Tastes like a holiday

Saturday night L and I braved the violent fog (sideways fog, who knew such a thing existed?) and headed out for dinner at Lecosho http://lecosho.com/  where we ate a ton of great stuff.  The restaurant is adorable and almost on the water.  There were great windows overlooking a kind of patio area (great for watching sideways blowing fog) with twinkle light trees and an open kitchen where we got to watch the chefs at work.    We chowed on housemade sausage, grilled octopus, duck, and rabbit cavatelli and it was deliciousness.  After that we cabbed it (no uphill hikes in violent fog) to a new bar that's been getting some good press, Canon Whiskey and Bitters Emporium.  http://www.canonseattle.com/  Loved this place, the inside was great, the drinks were really good and the food menu looked like it was good but we were too full to try anything out.

Freakishly clean tin ceiling...too used to the tar grimed ones in New Orleans 

The beautiful bar.

Today after some shopping we decided to finally try out this place that we've been eyeballing for a while.  For two southern transplants the promise of a fried chicken dinner sounds like a bit of heaven.  Every Sunday night Hi-Life (no, not the beer) has a fried chicken dinner and good god it is awesome.  They bring out these plates that have half of a fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, vegetables, and a biscuit. http://www.chowfoods.com/hilife/ I ate till I was about to explode and I still have plenty left over for lunch tomorrow.  Good times.  On the plus side I am currently too full of fried chicken to continue gorging on the peanut butter and nutella cookies I made this weekend.    

The bar at Hi-Life 

The largest mixer I've ever seen.

And here are a couple of fall foliage pics just for fun.

 

Portishead

That is all.

The show was at the Wamu theater at Quest field (or whatever it is now) 

Sound check

I had a lot of videos that I wanted to post but blogger is being a pain so no videos for you!

EMP

I went to the Experience Music Project museum this weekend and it was pretty awesome.  They're currently doing a retrospective on Nirvana since it's the 20th anniversary of Nevermind.  There were several other pretty cool exhibits there too, one on horror films and why they're important, one on Avatar (haven't seen it so that didn't mean much to me) and one on Battlestar Galactica (haven't seen it yet but want to).  Quite honestly the building alone is cool enough to merit a visit but the exhibits were excellent.

The EMP

There were so many different angles to photograph...

I finally gave up and went inside.

A musical tornado

The bassist from Nirvana loaned a lot of his personal stuff to the museum.  So there were clothes, instruments, photos, set lists, etc etc.  Just a ton of stuff from the band's history.

A huge wall sized photo that they took from inside their van 

A shot from one of the early shows

Concert posters

One of the In Utero angels that went on tour w/ them

The setlist from their final show.

What is this 'Seasonal Change' you speak of?

Having recently moved to the Pacific Northwest from the gulf south the whole change in seasons thing is really throwing me off.  I'm used to going from hot as bloody hell to less hot to OMG TWO COLD WEEKS to back to hot.  So this gradual cooling off in the month of October is an interesting phenomenon.  Also, leaves do something other than turn brown and die!  Who knew?  And yes, I am the dork that keeps taking pics of OMG RED LEAVES.  See evidence below.

Starting to go yellow... 

Even prettier now than when I took this.

this guy has lost most of his leaves by now.

I have to stop and look at her every time I see her

Trees on fire.

The weather has definitely turned and I'm sure I'll have posts soon on things like the best spiced cider, or hot chocolate, or all of the above.  One of my next goals is to go apple picking...

But in the meantime here is a pic of a FANTASTIC summer beer.

As my sadistic yoga teachers say, Namaste.

Homecoming

Well, not in the football sense but I did recently go back home for a bit.  A wonderful friend was getting married and I got to spend some time w/ family and friends so it was a win/win situation.  Also.  I got to gorge on Louisiana seafood so that's always a plus.  AND I finally got to see my cats after missing them for four months.  Consider yourself warned...cat pics ahead...

WTF is that?

I know what you're thinking...

Baby Kurry getting some noms

I didn't get pics of all of the food I had when I was there but here are a few shots:

Funniest wine cork ever 

Fried Shrimp!

Crawfish/corn/potato soup!

The grilled cheese sandwich at Chelsea's in Baton Rouge, aka, my personal crack...

I spent a weekend in Baton Rouge while I was there so I could go to the wedding and see friends and it was great!   I was able to see Mutemath at Chelsea's http://chelseascafe.com/, check out the new Radio Bar http://theradiobar.com/ on Government, and hang out w/ friends over brunch.

I set the prisoners free right after this...unfortunately did not realize they were supposed to stay in jail... 

I'll be your best friend 4eva if you let me out....

Mutemath!

All in all it was a good trip and it was great to see everyone!  I didn't take as many pics as I usually do b/c I was so busy catching up w/ people.  Oh well, maybe next time...

Terminal D at DFW...the only way to fly.

Mucho Visits

I've had a number of visitors at the end of the summer and been INSANELY busy w/ my stupid job so I haven't posted much lately.  Now to remedy that situation!
My brother and his lady friend came up for a visit a few weeks ago.  I think they were big fans of Seattle after leaving the soulless city of Houston, or as he calls it, the giant parking lot.  The weather was great, cool and breezy and just a nice time to be outside.
A quick rundown of some of the stuff we did:
When they first got here Jennifer had to sleep seeing as how she'd been up for about 24 hours (note to self, do not work the night shift) so we went out and grabbed some dinner without her.  I took him over to Quinn's and he loved it.  Of course.  I don't think there any way that you couldn't love that place.  We went to town on some frites, pork, bone marrow, wild boar sloppy Joes, and a pretzel.  And many tasty beers.  The next day I took them downtown so they could see the standard required tourist areas, Pike's Place, the first Starbucks, etc.  We walked through the Seattle Art Museum so they could see the cars ASPLODE WITH HAPPINESS as I like to call them.  I thought I took some pics of them but I seem to have not done so.  Oh well.
After that we went over to the Sculpture Park and walked around some.

Awesome silver tree

The Eagle

Thing of some sort.

That night L came back from Hippy Camp where she had miraculously managed to not eat any of the hippies since they made her eat vegetarian for a few days.  We headed over to Elemental Next Door (END) Wine Bar.  This place was fantastic.  It was attached to Elemental but a little more laid back I think.  http://www.elementalatgasworks.com/end.html  This place was awesome, they gave us bubbly when we sat down and the way you choose your wine from the wine list is by walking along the wall and grabbing whichever bottle looks good.  The food was fantastic too, we had a ton of stuff and it was all great.  Will definitely be going back to this place.  Soon.  Oh, and they had really fun light fixtures too:

The menu that night was on a huge piece of paper at the door.  The easiest way to study it was on my phone... 

The lights have wooden veneer over them.  Really cool...

The next day we went on a tour of the Theo Chocolate Factory! http://www.theochocolate.com/contact-us/group-tours-events.php

Magic tanks full of chocolate...

Soon to be turned into happiness...

Our tour guide.

After the tour we drove out into the mountains.  We wanted to go to taste some wines but the tasting rooms were closed by the time we were through w/ the tour so we just went to see some scenery...

Misty Mountains 

Huge trees but it's kind of hard to tell here.

Spooky fog

Mountain brook

That tree was HUGE.  

 That was about it w/ them.  My next visitor was here the following weekend and we did some girlier stuff like going to the ballet!  But first we went to Oktoberfest in Freemont and then to my new favorite bar, The Backdoor at Roxy's.

The Backdoor

Waiting for the ballet to begin

The beautiful theatre 

Love love love the chandelier in the lobby

We saw the Pacific Northwest Ballet's production of All Wheeldon and had a great time:

http://www.pnb.org/Season/11-12/AllWheeldon/#Media

We went for dinner after the ballet at Wild Ginger.  Best. Potstickers.  EVAR.  http://www.wildginger.net/  They were open late which was nice.  This town seems to go to bed kind of early...

Ok, that pretty much wraps up the highlights of the last few weeks or so.  My next post will probably be from back home since I'm headed south for a friend's wedding.  And I already have tickets to see MuteMath at Chelsea's and CAN'T WAIT.  http://chelseascafe.com/