seattle

There comes a point in one person’s life when they can’t possible eat any more cheese.

This happened to me Saturday at the Cheese Festival. But what was I to do? There was a plethora of cheese for the sampling….bleus, feta, cheddar, goat, brie, camembert, chevre, gouda, fontina, mozzarella, stilton, swiss….ah, the list could go on and on, and those are just the more common names I remember ingesting. I can’t even remember what my favorite one was called, because I was herded on to the next cheese station before I could take note.

The downside of the Cheese Festival
1. Hordes of people packed together scrounging for free cheese in the 85 degree heat. Sweaty claustrophia.
2. My stomach couldn’t even make it through two tents. I missed out on at least 4 others.
3. Sunburn. Red. Pain.

The upside of the Cheese Festival
1. Mmmm….cheese.
2. Enjoying the vibrant Seattle culinary scene with Todd, Aubrey & Ryan.
3. Pike Place Market on a sunny day is one of my favorite places to be.

Despite our gluttony on cheese, we still made a dessert stop at our favorite cheesecake shop, The Confectional. I restrained myself from a yummy individual cheesecake and had a delicious caramel cheesecake truffle instead. I convinced myself (fairly easily) that the entire day’s cheese overload was deserved after my morning 5-mile run.

My best friend Catherine is coming today for a six day visit! I’m so excited and I don’t want to be stuck at work right now, but at least I have a four day weekend to spend with her. I’m not sure what all we’ll do in addition to the touristy stuff, but there’s sure to be sushi and wine and a wedding dress fitting and a jog or two along the lake together.

Behold, my shiny new Adrenalines.

I took them for their first run last night and I have no complaints. They felt great, looked great, and had the right amount of support and cushioning. While my heel didn’t give me any problems, my knee did start hurting after two miles, I think that’s just because I took some time off and probably should’ve done a shorter, slower run. But it was so gorgeous out so I wanted to get in at least a three mile run. And I was kinda crunched for time so I had to run faster. This is somewhat logical thinking, right?

I ran to Gas Works park via Eastlake/Burke Gilman trail. Lots of people were out running, playing frisbee, taking engagement photos, flying kites, doing some weird trapeze artistry…….

It’s my favorite park in Seattle, set on a hill at the north end of Lake Union where there used to be a gas manufacturing plant. With a picturesque view of downtown, its a great place to watch the sailboats and seaplanes come and go.



I stopped there briefly to enjoy the view, then looped back to Trader Joe’s to conclude my ‘grocery run’, where I discovered a new favorite treat— the Pinachio cookie, made with pistachios and white chocolate chunks. MMMMmm!

Tomorrow is the Seattle Cheese Festival, we’re hoping to meet up with some friends and partake in some yummy cheese and wine.

Since moving to Seattle, I’ve become more eco- friendly, sometimes without even making a conscious effort to do so. Compared to the Midwest, it seems people here are much more concerned about the environment and aware of taking measures to protect it.
It’s easy to see why Seattle is in the top 10 Greenest Cities in the U.S.

I love it. Living here encourages me to take advantage of the beautiful outdoors, eat locally grown and/or organic foods, take public transporation, recycle, etc. I don’t even drive my car (Goldie) but once a week to bible study. Maybe twice a week if necessary, but sometimes Goldie sits undriven so long, I forget where I parked her.

I love being able to walk or ride the bus practically everywhere. Maybe I enjoy it because I was deprived of that option before. I love the bus. Or, as we prefer to call it….BOOSE!! (pronounced like goose)

My preferred method of grocery shopping involves me running to Trader Joe’s— with my cloth shopping bags rolled up and tucked under my arm like a football player—and catching a ride on the bus back home.

I realize in many places it’s difficult, maybe even impossible to walk to the store or work, but there are so many alternatives that you can do to be kind to Mother Earth.
-Reduce your shower time in order to save water
-Use non-disposable cups, plates, utensils and avoid using paper napkins/towels
-Get some reusable grocery bags, and if possible, tell store clerks you can do without a bag. Plastic bags are evil!
-Recycle, recycle, recycle
-Shop at your local farmer’s market and buy locally grown produce that wasn’t trucked in from clear across the country

It’s simple. Start small. We all have a long way to go, but even by changing just one small thing, you can help.

1. NASC: I’ve gone 1 week of being artificial sweetener-free and I gotta say, it hasn’t been difficult at all. With my main grocery stores being Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s, that practically eliminates any chance of me purchasing products made with artificial sweeteners. The majority of items they carry are made with no artificial flavors, colors or preservatives, no MSG and no added Trans Fats. What did I ever do without a Trader Joe’s??? I ate fake food, that’s what.

2. Running: Last week was a great week for running, I put in 20 miles. 3 miles on the treadmill, 5.5 miles (around Lake Union, then to Trader Joe’s for groceries), 3 miles on Thursday morning, and 8.7 miles on Friday evening since the weather was so nice. I figured I would do my long run on Friday instead of Saturday since we had a busy day planned.

Check out that early hill climb. The elevation chart doesn’t even do it justice. It was a killer on my quads, but I knew it would be all downhill after mile 2 so that helped ease the pain.

3. Say Cheese: Saturday we met with our friends Chris and Laurie for a six-hour engagement photo excursion (with a break for Thai food in there somewhere). They have a professional-grade camera and were willing to put up with our nonsense so we took advantage of the lovely spring day and went to a few of Seattle’s best locations for photo ops.
(I’ll post some more pictures later when I get a chance)

Chris also had two tickets for a harbor cruise that they couldn’t use, so Todd and I sailed off at 9 pm and spent three hours cruising around the Puget Sound with a bunch of 40-50 year olds. It was a great evening but we were both so wiped out from the day that we were ready to jump ship after an hour and go to sleep. Still, it was fun to go on a nighttime cruise and we spent some time just talking and entertaining ourselves with a game of who-knows-who best. I don’t remember who won. Let’s just say it was a tie.

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted about our Thursday Night Dinner Club outings, but with guests in town and conflicting schedules, we took a short hiatus. Well, we’re back and we’ve gradually morphed into Friday Night Dinner Club– due to 50% of the club wanting to watch ‘Lost’ now that new episodes are airing (we are the other 50%). As a result, a fairly unanimous decision was made to change TNDC to FNDC (and by ‘fairly unanimous’, i mean that Aubrey and I made an executive decision without consulting Ryan and Todd).

This week’s FNDC took us to Lola, a Greek-inspired restaurant that uses locally grown ingredients. Normally, it would be a bit out of our price range but being married to/dating Microsoft employees does have its occasional advantages– this time in the form of the Prime Card, which gives you a ‘Buy one entree, get the second free’ deal at numerous area restaurants, Lola being one of them. It’s practically our only chance to eating fancy.

The Oregon Pinot Gris was yummy, and since Greek food is practically my favorite cuisine, I figured anything I ordered would be excellent. Lamb, hummus, feta, olives, scallops…those are like the best foods ever! I LOVE lamb and don’t ever order steak (or even eat it more than maybe once a month), but the Washington Hanger Steak reeled me in and boy was it succulent! I would totally go back again, but I’m not sure that Todd would if it weren’t for the Prime Card savings, since most of the menu is lamb, goat and seafood dishes. It’s my ongoing struggle to get him to branch out and try foods other than chicken, cheese and coffee.

The one downside to eating at Lola? For the entire evening and most of the following day, I had Barry Manilow’s Copacabana lyrics dancing through my head….

Her name was Lola, she was a showgirl
With yellow feathers in her hair and a dress cut down to there….

And now hopefully you have it in your head too. You’re welcome.

Ah yes, the most exciting news of my year so far and I haven’t even blogged about it yet. (but thanks to Mouse for prompting me too)

I’M GETTING MARRIED!

I’m still getting used to the whole ‘engaged’ thing and I’m not one of those people who announce it from the rooftops, so perhaps that’s the reason why it has taken me nearly 2 weeks to blog about.

February 2nd started out as any normal Saturday….the sun was out and the city was bustling. I went for a late morning run while Todd went to the coffee shop. We walked downtown for a late lunch and then went to Pike Place Market, walked around for a bit and headed down to the Waterfront Park on Elliot Bay. He led me to a nice quiet spot and asked me to marry him.

I was so caught by surprise that the first thing I managed to say was “Are you serious?” A little voice inside my head was telling me “for goodness sakes make sure you tell him ‘yes‘!”

And so I said yes. I immediately called my parents (who didn’t answer), so I called my brother who told us to go buy a disposable camera since neither of us had our cameras with us. The nearest store just happened to be Pirates Plunder, and even though I begged to get an eye patch, we just bought the camera and went back to the park for some snapshots.

With planning for a wedding sure to keep me preoccupied for the next seven months, I’m not sure if I’ll have time to train for/run the Eugene Marathon. I know I’ll definitely need something to ease my stress, but I don’t think I’ll be able to focus as much as desired on months-long training. Besides, I only get to be engaged once so I want to savor that as much as possible. I can always run Eugene another year.

Todd joined me on my Saturday run for about 1/2 mile. It was nice having him run along and he even mentioned running again so at least he doesn’t hate it. I ended up going 4 miles along Lake Union and then spent most of the weekend just bumming around.

I didn’t come to any decision on a spring marathon. I actually didn’t do any thinking about that. I had a proposition to move to a different department at work so i spent quite a bit of time stressing about that, which did nothing to ease the pain of a lump on my neck, so i spent quite a bit of time stressing about that also, which just made last weekend uber stressy.

(I ended up deciding to stay at my current position and have a doctor appointment next week to check on my neck. It’s been feeling much better today and the swelling has gone down, but I think its best to be safe.)

After a dismal start to my week, Todd showed up at my work with a bouquet of pretty pink tulips and then took me out to eat at I Love Sushi. It was a fantastic surprise and made my day five bazillion times better.

I hadn’t been out for sushi since being back in KC in September. (weird, right? considering Seattle is more of a sushi hotspot than KC) I used to go out for sushi with my roommate Catherine several times a month, but Todd doesn’t like sushi so my consumption here has been practically nonexistent. I’ve been having sushi withdrawal, so this was just what I needed to cheer me up.

I ate and ate and ate until my belly almost burst….mmmmmMMM!