teamEggers

Cheese, Wine, and Sunshine

Hi all!

Jon and I are finally getting a little bit more settled in to our new house. It’s fantastic to see our stuff starting to take shape into a home.

We took a break from the chaos to check out the Cheese Fest this weekend and had a really good time! Less cheese than last year, though that translated into less crowds. It was so sunny. Just a really great day to be out at the market with friends.

This pic is from last year, and the crowds weren’t as intense, but at least it gives you a little bit of an idea of what the event looked like:

Around noonish, we (heather, steven, yelena, ben, jon and I) had eaten enough cheese to give us bellyaches, and did what all reasonable people would have: decided it was time for wine.

If you’re in belltown and in need of a bottle of wine, I definitely recommend stopping into Seattle Cellars. The guy that was working (owner?) recommended three fantastic and vastly different bottles all in the 10-15$ range. They were perfect for the afternoon. The wine shop has a cooler with about 20 chilled bottles of white, rosé and sparkling, which is important to know if you’re looking for something to drink right away.

Onward and upward. Literally. Today’s adventure takes us to Steven & Yelena’s rooftop deck, with a fantastic view of the city, the sound, and the mountains.

…and our new house!

…which is incredibly close to quite a few friends. How cool is that?

We live on the west side of lower queen anne.  For any non-seattleites out there, that’s midway between the sound picture above (we’re really close to the “coast”) and the space needle.

What’s that in the backround? The seaplane! Are you listening, mom?

As we settled in to our afternoon of sunburn fruit and wine…

…we noticed that the sky was doing a weird apocalyptic sort of thing. How odd is this? Anyone ever seen the ring around the sun like that before?

Is it the end of the world? Perhaps. Or maybe it’s just time for another glass of wine. Pass the rosé please!

Citizen

What a crazy few days. Flying in, lost bags, enjoying the hospitality of the very gracious Garrens, checking out the new apartment and… finding out that this many things were left in the kitchen from the last guy…

… so I’ve spent the past few days cleaning here and there. But overall, it’s a fantastic place. Hardwood floors in parts, a great view, super spacious. Not a lot of storage, but that’s seemingly the only downside.

I signed up for a gym across the street from my new office (which is downtown now! how fantastic!), and have kind of just been… loafing.

I don’t have internet in the house yet, so I’m tied at the wrist to my iPhone. But… maybe that has nothing to do with not having internet connection on the laptop. Maybe i just forgot what it was like to be an iphone users. haha.

Let’s see. I have a “real life” adventure today! I found a workshop on Project Management for Web Design (which is exactly what my team does), so chief and I are going to take a “professional education” day and check it out. I’m excited! I hope they teach us all kinds of valuable stuff that we can come back and share with the team. So I should scurry on over to that. More (substantial) stuff later. I have more pictures left from japan to share!

On US Soil

Hi All! After a flight that made me question my mortality, god, and the universe in general, I’ve landed safely in Portland.

See, when your flight is delayed by two hours for “maintenance issues” and then the first few hours of the flight are swirvy and bumpy and make you wish the stewardess would be a little brave and bring me a damn glass of wine to take the edge off…. wait, what was I talking about? Right. Maintenance. Should I have been nervous or excited that it took them two hours to fix this unnamed broken piece of my aircraft, before we decided to fly across the ocean? Are they being very thorough or were they not sure what the problem is?

I’m happy to be home. I’m not sure that you ever really appreciate how great something is until you don’t have it for a while. There’s nothing particularly special about the Portland airport, but boy… I sure am glad to be here.

More later.

Fertility Fest, aka the most inappropriate pics I’d ever put on the internet.

Admittedly, the fertility fest was a while ago.  Almost a month. What had me waiting?  Perhaps the sheer amount of pictures we took intimidated me.  Or maybe I was trying to decide whether or not to show you all of them.  Or… again, maybe I’m just lazy.

Maybe my twice-a-day posting will clear my good name? Because my fingers are starting to bleed from typing so much.

On Friday, my mother calls me.  “What are you doing for easter?” she asks.  I’m sure she wasn’t exactly expecting that I’d found a church and decided to devote myself to feeding the japanese poor for a day, but then again it wouldn’t be entirely unlikely to have coerced my friends into letting me cook Easter Dinner for them.  She was downright shocked when I told her I was going to a fertility festival.

…at a shrine where women to go to pray for fertility.

So clearly that’s not why we were going, unless you consider the possibility of my praying to become a Barren Shell of a Woman^TM.  While there are actual legends and more serious stories that were historically associated with the fest, these days it’s mostly a tourist attraction.

And why wouldn’t it attract a lot of people? Jon has a theory that this society is generally repressed, and so when they have the opportunity to get a little crazy, they get a lot of crazy. On that note, a lot of customs in this country vaguely remind me of Catholicism.

So. What’s the hullabaloo? Well, first there’s a competition to see who can sculpt the best-lookin wang from a vegetable. I’ve definitely never thought of playing with your food in such a way, but it does lead to some interesting dinner-party options.

…and of course, there’s the educational merchandise…

And the completely inappropriate pictures to be had. This girl is, what… 8? what the hell is she doing flashing the peace sign all up near that? Seriously. Future hussy.

If it was 11am, and you were walking around with a beer in your hand, and a guy comes up to you with this thing on his face… wouldn’t you have had the same reaction I did?

This is jon’s boss, Jeremy. Look at his hat. Look… closely… at his hat.

And then the crowds parted and packed in closer together. It’s time for ceremony! It’s time for a parade! It’s time for… a 6 foot tall penis carried by drag queens? < record screech >

Oh, jesus. Was it busy. We saw more Americans here than anywhere else we’d been in Japan. I look at pictures like this and think about how very much some of you would hate to be here. But I suppose that’s what you get when the world keeps growing and everyone wants to live in the city, eh? Normally, I have no problem with this but it does make for finding a restroom a bit challenging.

I guess I’ll leave you with this. Because… well, just because I think it’s funny, i guess. All the japanese women waiting in line for their picture were patting it on the head and demurely standing behind it. You gotta get up in there, ladies!

Who Goo? FUGU!

For two years, we’ve been talking about it. When we came home last year, people asked us… so, did you do it? And we had to quietly say “no” to each of them. It’s not the fear of eating something that will kill you in a few minutes, but rather… the reviews of those who had made it out alive.

Okay. Okay. I’m being dramatic. Hardly anyone dies from eating fugu these days. The fatalities you hear about are generally in back-ally sorts of establishments or from fishermen who think they’ll probably be fine just hacking the little fishy to pieces right there on the boat.

It’s really hard to become a certified fugu chef. And when someone dies in your establishment, you lose your license forever. (Historically, a sushi chef was supposed to commit honorable suicide by his fish-knife, should his sushi kill anyone else.)

So what did it taste like? You’re dying to know. It sounds funny, perhaps a little lame, but… it tasted a little bit like chicken. Sometimes. See, we had it a few ways.

First out came our mandatory appetizer, which was thickly cut fish skin (very gelatinous. not very much flavour) and green onions. Meh.

Next up we ordered it breaded and fried, which tasted almost exactly like chicken wings. I was searching for the bleu cheese dressing. Fugu even has a really strong bone that was left in, which made the chicken wing comparison that much more appropriate.

Time for the main event: fugu sashimi. It was incredibly light, almost too delicate to taste. A squeeze of lime was really all the sauce you wanted, because it was so easily overpowered by the ponzu or scallions that they served it with.

And it’s not like it was cheap. I want to taste it, you know?

After this, we did yaki-fugu, and they brought out a set of hot coals to grill our fish on. The fish was so fresh it was twitching. Twitching. Please watch this:

The grilled fugu was our favourite by far. It started to take on the soft, melty attributes of halibut. Really nice!

Sake was copiously poured throughout the night, and I swear… one of these times I’ll learn my lesson not to drink so much on a school night. There was sake with fish-tale on the menu, which a couple people opted for. I’m so glad I stayed away from that. It was the foulest smelling thing evar. EVAR. yuck.

The last thing we got was fugu nabe, which is a stew of the fish in fugu-broth. There’s something really spectacular about julie schooling us all on the magic-that-is-induction and how we could stick this bamboo and paper basket onto the heating element but it didn’t catch fire. Which is kind of fantastic.

The nabe was kind of fantastic too. While fugu isn’t in your future, I think we should have a “japanese stew” night at our house sometime soon. They’re really easy and really tasty.

And that’s it! This is the core of our group, people you’ve seen around teamEggers for the past few months: Jon, Emi, Brian, Me, Julie, Will.

Have a great night. Thanks for tuning in.