Seattle living

After almost 7 years at my first job out of college, I finally left to try something new. My last day of work was June 20, and I don't start my new job until July 7, so I'm in the middle of two weeks of downtime. Most people seem to think I should be taking a vacation, relaxing, whatever, but I just keep thinking about how many projects I want to get done that I usually don't have time to do, and how little time I have left to do them!

Of course, that didn't stop me from taking off on a moment's notice to visit my sister in her new digs in Seattle (Redmond, actually). She just started work on *her* first job out of college on Monday. My mom was there with her the first week before she started work to help find an apartment, buy furniture, etc. I went up when I found a $159 fare on Virgin America for Wed through Sat ... on Tuesday. Virgin America is kind of nice - brand new planes (with odd blue and purple lighting), in-seat entertainment units with 20 channels (and ability to order food from your seat, though I didn't use that), cheap fares... I may be using them a bunch to visit my sister, though the really cheap fares seem to be (of course) midweek.

Unfortunately, my sister doesn't have internet hooked up in her new apartment yet - Comcast won't hook it up until she has a TV for them to test the cable (she got a combination package). I was planning on spending my days while she was at work at the library using their free wi-fi to work on my webpage, but somehow spent most of my time researching TVs for her, driving down to Costco and Fry's, researching the TVs online, buying the TV, turning around and exchanging it for the larger one... Ah well. I did finally fulfill a longtime goal - every time I visit Seattle I want to visit Sushi Land, a sushi place my bf told me about years ago when he was contracting with a company in Bellevue, but I've never been able to make it happen. I finally did, and discovered why my bf was so happy with the place. It was one of those places with a long conveyor belt with the sushi traveling by you, and the prices set by the color of the plate. The prices? $1, $1.50, $2, and $3. The fish was good, too - maybe not the very best fish ever, but fresh and tasty and fine with me. I had sake, maguro, and tamago nigiri, two rolls (tuna & cream cheese, shrimp tempura), and sesame balls for $10. If I wasn't waiting for the sesame balls to travel around the room (I was near the kitchen, but the belt flowed in the other direction), I could have finished my lunch in about 20 minutes. Great turnover for them! We also went to Jeem Asian Restaurant in the Safeway plaza in Redmond one night (we needed dinner around 9:30pm) which didn't look very hopeful from the outside but turned out to be quite an interesting Chinese restaurant inside - extensive menu with interesting and different looking dishes on it. We got strawberry spareribs (yum) and beef tenderloin udon with satay sauce (pretty good - my sister liked it more than me). Got lunch at Noodle Land, a Thai restaurant in the Redmond town center that was quite yummy as well - good pad thai that came with every lunch combo.

Oddly, on Friday afternoon, we were driving back to my sister's apartment so she could help me carry her new TV into her apartment, and we saw a firetruck with sirens and lights blazing coming out of her apartment complex's driveway. I thought it odd to have the lights on coming *out* of a place and asked if they had a fire station in her complex - no - and then joked maybe they meant to go to the Avalon complex next door and went in the wrong driveway. Imagine my surprise and chagrin when we got out of the car, looked back, and discovered a big plume of black smoke coming out of the Avalon complex... I guess I was more right than I knew! I don't know what happened but it seemed to be a pretty big fire, judging from the amount of smoke. I think they got it under control pretty fast after they responded, but yeesh.

I got back from Seattle Saturday night just in time to go to a friend's 30th birthday party - a rather elaborate deal with hired blackjack/craps/roulette dealers and catered food since he loves gambling, that was quite fun. Beforehand, we went to dinner at Acquapazza Ristorante, an Italian restaurant in San Mateo. I liked my dish - Strozzapreti - pasta with prosciutto, mushrooms, and peas in cream sauce - but my bf was less than impressed with his veal parmigian - he said it was overly breaded.

For lunch yesterday, I returned to Frjtz's to try the two crepes I was curious about - the one with roasted pears, nutella, toasted almonds and whipped cream, and the one with the roasted pineapple, toasted coconut, etc. Neither were particularly interesting so my curiousity about Frjtz's is pretty well satisfied, and I'm likely to never go back. For dinner, I went to Kitchen Kura, a little restaurant on Irving between 16th and 17th that servers homestyle Japanese food. I loved it - they have a list of entrees, where you pick two and get a whole meal of 2 entrees, an appetizer, a salad, miso soup, and green tea for $10.50, or a la carte options. I picked the sukiyaki (which I was craving all day) and nanban chicken (deep fried chicken that was lightly breaded and lightly fried but unfortunately a bit tasteless for my taste and too much fried food after a while). My bf picked the white butter shoyu fish - mahimahi with onion and zucchini in a butter soy sauce and the nanban chicken. Given the choice again I would have totally gotten the sukiyaki and fish - both came with a delicious sweet salty sauce that I loved. Totally hit the spot and was what I was craving yesterday. Unfortunately, my bf only likes sushi when it comes to Japanese food, we've realized - not fond of noodles or the other dishes - so he didn't particularly enjoy it. Guess I can only go back when he's not around!