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!

life, in boxes.

Hi Team! Michelle here, livin the hobo’s life – sleeping on a mattress in the middle of the floor, living out of boxes. Eating expired food.

What?

It turns out that a lot of our food is expired. Nearly everything that jon brought to the relationship, actually.
See, when we moved in to the house in Seattle together, he had a pantry full of things. Things, I am finding out this week, that expired two (sometimes three) years ago.

oh-seven? really jon? does that box really say “best before oh seven?!”. Jon, as nonchalant as ever just shrugs it off. “It’s a guideline, you see. I’m sure it’s still fine.“.

And THAT friends, is why we have stomachs of steel and can eat whatever we want in Japan. I’ve been in training since jon started going to the supermarket in college.

Meanwhile, I’ve got 7 short days left until I join jon in j-town. For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to plan social-fun-things on 4 of those night. There are still people I want to see once more before we head out! There’s not enough time in the day! (Enter in Michelle’s addiction to Coffee and her opinion that we would certainly have saved the world by now if more people were as caffeinated as she is.)

Well kids, the Windex calls.

Fall in the city

I’ve been going through my half-written blog posts this week, and thought I’d clean house a little before we embark on Crazy Japanese Adventures Part 2. Because of that, there are a few things that may feel like they end mid-thought.  I’m… a bit scattered on a normal day, so sometimes it’s tough to pick up where I left off.

***

Today was a lovely day. Full of sunshine (not really) and cellos.

As usual, I woke up hours before Jon and helped myself to a remake of yesterday’s breakfast: oatmeal with dried fruit, brown sugar, and maple bacon ice cream. Now if only I knew how to candy bacon bits to use as sprinkles, I’d never have to leave my house. Oh, wait.

At 11, I walked down to the market and picked up some *beautiful* candy-cane beets, a quince, and some purple kale. The beats were so beautiful – I’m so excited to do *something* with them.

Our post-market plans for the day included lunch at the chowda house, and a Tchaikovsky symphony in the afternoon. For some reason, I had it in my head that all russians are terrible composers. I was totally wrong. it’s all *modern* russians that are terrible composers. While the Tchaikovsky was really fantastic (it was really sweet. The first act reminded me of kids frolicking in the hills and their parents tucking them into bed at night. no, seriously.) – the second half of the show was just shy of terrrible. seriously. after the 3rd piece (non-tchaikovsky and composed in 1971) the old guy next to me leaned to his partner and said “what the hell!”. seriously. i feel like i was cheated out of an hour of my life. I can’t unhear that!!

Ahem.

Jon and i have such a fantastic life together. Pre-symphony, we gave away donuts to people in coffee shops, and I tried really hard to give a hobo jon’s latte. (it wasn’t very good. it tasted like dirt.)

Moroccan

If there was a competition going on for “couple who has the most awesomest weekends”, jon and I may be in the running.

I haven’t really finished talking about our weekend in Willamette on the 12th of November, then after that was the weekend with Chris and Rachel in Vermont (pictures are coming, I swear!), but this particular weekend was off to a rockin start as well.

Do you remember Puppy Play Time a few weeks back? Our friends, Heather and Tom, needed someone to watch their French Bulldog while they were out of town for the week, so I eagerly volunteered us.  I think Jon secretly had as much fun playing with Fifa as I did.  We’ll get a dog soon.  Just wait and see.

Fifa Monster!!!

Anyways, to thank us for the pup-sitting, H&T took jon and I out for a Moroccan Feast!  The Feast is a multi-coursed set dinner. I love it when restaurants take care of the ordering part for you. I’m of the camp that “you know what you do best, so give me that”, and when I’m at a restaurant I’m not there to *think*.  (okay, this could be in part because I completely lack the ability to process information once a certain level of hunger sets in.)

Photo c/o cronncc

I think that’s one thing that the Japanese do that maybe won’t ever catch on with our picky-American-palates.  Lots of nicer Japanese restaurants do this thing called omakase, which allows the chef to bring you an interesting selection of dishes, in the order that they’d recommend you eat them.  It’s a lot like the coursed out concept of the Herb Farm.  (oh, herb farm. swoon.) I *love* this style of dining. You usually get a good selection off the menu, and they usually serve it to you in the order that you should eat it.

How did Marakesh (the Moroccan restaurant in Belltown) rate compared to others I’ve been to? The belly dancer was smiley and had blond highlights, which kind of threw off the sultry-ethnic thing they usually have going, but the rest of the vibe was pretty standard. Nice fabric tented from the ceiling, pillows on the floor, eatin with your hands, etc. I love their flavour profiles – usually there’s a lot of cinnamon, raisin, dates, and couscous. Intensely flavoured but not necessarily heavy. I dig it.

Photo c/o Jeffwilcox