beautiful, funny, sad & true

This afternoon, Mike sent me a text message, asking if I wanted in on a special dinner deal tonight.  Not being stupid, I readily agreed.

I’m not sure if I can divulge all of the details, but I CAN tell you that the dinner was held at Cafe Nell (which is excellent, by the way) on NW Kearney, and it was hosted by the sales rep for the Henry Estate Winery (which is excellent, by the way).  So.  Here’s what our dinner consisted of.  Apologies for the low quality of the pictures, but I was there for the food and the company, and the picture-taking was secondary.  And truth be told, after all that wine, it’s a good thing I got any pictures at all.

Course 1 (appetizer):  tomatoes from Cafe Nell’s own garden, mixed with chevre cheese.

Course 2:  Manila Clams steamed in Widmer Drop Top Amber Ale, seasoned with Old Bay (ale).  I confess; I forgot to take the picture before I started eating this one.
Wine pairing:  2007 Pinot Gris

Course 3:  Fried Oregon Mushroom & Squash Blossom Salad
Wine pairing:  2004 & 2006 Syrah

Course 4:  Washington Black Cod, with a Chipotle Chili Rub, and a Peach and Blackberry Vinaigrette
Wine pairing:  2005 Oregon Chardonnay

Course 5:  Grilled SuDan Farms Lamb Chop, with Grilled Corn, Roasted Red Pepper and Oregon Farro Salad
Wine pairing:  2006 Oregon Pinot Noir

Dessert:  Pavlova with fresh Washington Peaches and Oregon berries
Wine pairing:  2007 Muller Thurgau

The cast of characters:

Andrew, the chef, who gets my eternal kudos and thanks:

Doyle, the wine rep:

Gretchen and Tiffini:

Jessica and Ryan:

Kerry:

Mike (Don’t tell his mom he ate lamb!):

Mr. T (otherwise known as me):

Now that that’s all been established, here are some random pics from the evening.

I can’t even begin to tell you how much fun this evening was, and how exquisite all of the food was, and how lovely it was to make a bunch of new friends, but I have to admit that the best part of all occurred at the end of the evening.

Last night I was dinking around on one of those social networking sites – randomly, no friends in common or anything – and I came across this particular woman’s page.  I liked her picture and the way she described herself, so I clicked over to look through her photo albums.   She’s done some work on movie sets, and had some interesting experiences.   Then I saw an album called ‘Portland Spirit’, which is a cruise ship that goes up and down the Willamette River and has afternoon and evening cruises.  I’ve played on it a couple or three times, and it’s a total blast.

So anyway, I clicked on that album and after a few pictures, I came to this one, and just about fell out of my chair.  Check out who’s sitting there playing cello, on the left side of the picture.

ISN’T THAT WEIRD?  Pretty fortuitous, too, I have to say.  Naturally, I wrote to her to tell her about all of this, so we’ll see if anything comes of it.

Awwww, yeah.  I love it when that kind of synchronicity happens.

It’s been another of THOSE weeks, hence the silence around these parts.

Engagement party, lots of ‘party’ parties, movie night or two, tons of recording, it’s just been a blur.  Last night was a friend’s birthday party, which was followed by a ‘party’ party, and tonight is two friends’ wedding (You may remember the bachelor party from a couple weeks ago. . .?), which is to be followed by – what else – a huge party.  The vast majority of people who will be there are also professional musicians, so I’m anticipating a ‘jam’ of acoustic instruments of all kinds.  I’ll be bringing my accordion, for sure, and my camera as well.

I don’t usually talk about this, but the weather here in Portland has been stunningly beautiful lately.  One day it was so lovely that I ditched rescheduled a rehearsal and hit the road in the afternoon so that I could go for a hike instead.  I ended up at Beacon Rock, which is along the Washington side of the Columbia river, about an hour’s drive from here.

It’s 850 feet high, and you get to the top by way of a steep trail that was engineered by one of the people who built the Historic Columbia River Highway.  The trail is about a mile and a half long, and it’s a surprisingly difficult walk.

Nothing like a bunch of tasteless graffiti (“dick juice”) to bring you back to reality.  Anyway, here’s what the view from the top was like, on that particular day.  This one is looking downriver, toward Portland. . .

. . .and this one is looking upriver, uh, away from Portland.

There’s a plaque at the bottom of the rock which tells an Anglicized version of the rock’s history.

It was a lovely day, and a lovely random trip.

And now it’s time to get ready for the wedding.  I have to leave in an hour and a half, and I still need to shower and all that.  Today is equally beautiful, and the ceremony is being held out in the forest.  It promises to be a really great night.

Ummmm, hi.

Yeah.

I’m alive and well.  And busy.  Gosh. . .where to start. . .?

I’ve been doing lots of recording, with my friends from my first band ever.

I went on a random little day trip up the Columbia gorge with RockShowGirl, and we hiked to one of the many waterfalls and enjoyed the scenery along the curvy old highway.  On the way back, we stopped in Cascade Locks, where we ate the best bacon burgers either of us had eaten in our entire lives.  I suppose that means I’ll have to stop calling myself a ‘quasi-vegetarian epicure’ pretty soon, yeah?

I went to see an unbelievably amazing show; a double-headliner bill featuring Butterfly Boucher AND Emilie Simon.  Both are supremely talented (not to mention beautiful), and I got the chance to meet both of them afterwards.  I told Butterfly that I’d love to play cello with her the next time she’s in town, and she seemed like she was into the idea.

I did something I’ve never done before, and thought that I’d never do; I went to a minor-league basketball game.   [I will now pause for your exclamations of shock and horror.]   Ordinarily, I find most sporting events mind-numbingly boring, so I volunteered to take pictures (with someone else’s digital camera, which is much slower and less responsive than mine) of the game.  I took about two hundred, and I would guess that about three actually came out.  It was pretty funny.

I went to an amazing restaurant called Trébol with Jeannie-wa.  It was stellar, and I can’t wait to go back again.

I went to an amazing restaurant called Indish with BoringFish.  It was stellar, and I can’t wait to go back again.

I had a gig with IrishBand, which ended up being IrishDuo that night, because Violinist was in MileHighState.  It was the first time we’ve ever done a duo show like that, and it was actually quite fun.  I brought the accordion, and someone asked if we knew any Beatles songs.  I couldn’t help myself, and blurted out, “Yeah, I know all of them.”  This was their cue to throw obscure songs at me, to try and stump me, which didn’t happen.  “I Don’t Want To Spoil the Party”, “Let It Be”, “Blue Jay Way”, “Real Love”, all were par for the course.  It was super fun, and we may actually incorporate that sort of Beatles sing-along set into some of our future shows.  If anybody got pictures of that, I haven’t seen them.

I’ll spare you the technical details, but I bought some equipment for my cello which makes it possible to plug it directly into a PA channel, instead of having to mic it when I’m on stage.  It may have been a small step for mankind, but it was a giant leap for my cello career.

I went to a friend’s bachelor party, which lasted until six o’clock in the morning.   At around quarter to five, a neighbor called the cops to complain about the noise in general, but ‘in specific’, I’m sure it had to do with our hilariously horrible drunken guitar playing.  The cop couldn’t have been any nicer, actually.  He was great, and totally cool about it.  It was a super-fun party.  I spent the next day in bed, and got up around three-thirty to take a shower and make the hour-long drive up to SeaBird’s family’s home in the middle of a cedar grove on the edge of a hill, to eat incredible food, marvel over the kids, watch the neighbors’ enormous fireworks display, and celebrate a birthday, an anniversary, and the founding of our country.  They are my surrogate parents, and I always come away feeling rejuvenated after spending time with them.  People like that are very rare and special.

Yesterday, I bought new heads for my drums, installed them, tuned them up, and then recorded drum tracks for three songs in our FirstBand project.  I started working on a fourth song, but it was trickier than the other three, and I didn’t get a take that I was satisfied with, so I’m going to give it its due today.

So yeah.  Been all busy all the time lately, but I haven’t forgotten about you.  It’s nice to finally have spare minutes to let you know what’s been happening.  This is just an overview, too.  There’s been plenty more, such as going to movies and sushi with LJ and SeaBird, for example.

Today I woke up at nine and edited audio tracks, even before I’d had coffee, in order to get ready for today’s recording session.  It promises to be another good, productive day.  There’s certainly been a lack of ennui around here lately.

Okay.  Deep breath, diving back in now. . .

Saturday morning, after a train wreck of a gig in Renton with my friend BT, and having stayed up until four o’clock in the morning the night before, I got up and nine o’clock and drove up to my brother’s house.  I got to see Niece #2 for the first time, and she’s almost five months old.  She was very quiet and smiley, and she instantly grabbed both my thumb and pinky finger in her tiny hands, which seemed to surprise everyone.  “She never does that with us,” they said.

It was great to see them.  The last couple of times I’ve been up in Seattle, they had been in Portland, so our paths hadn’t crossed.  We do talk on the phone regularly, but it’s not the same, especially when a new baby is involved.  We went for brunch at a delicious Mexican restaurant called Azul, then went back to the house and just kinda hung out for a while.  They were packing for a trip, so I just stayed downstairs and played with Niece 1 and Niece 2 while Nephew was upstairs sleeping.

We all went our separate ways around 1:30, and since I had no agenda for the rest of the day, I decided to take a rest from driving and go sit in a park for a while.  Naturally I had to drive for quite a while to get to the park, but the plan was set.  I headed down to GasWorks Park, in the Fremont district.  That’s the short version of the story.  The long version is that there were two or three large festivals in Seattle that day, and traffic was nightmarish.  I also took a wrong turn and ended up going across the short bridge to Eastlake (I think. . .?) and hung out in a tiny little park along Lake Union for a while, exploring and walking through the neighborhood a bit before driving back across the bridge to Wallingford, which is a neighborhood that I could quite easily see myself living in.  By the time I got to GasWorks Park, I was ready to relax.  There was some sort of folk arts festival happening, so I was glad to have gotten there early enough to check it all out.

Naturally, I had my camera with me, and I was very glad I did.  There were lots of colorful costumes, great gypsy klezmer music, naked people (some painted, others not), belly dancers. . .

(Can I just take a minute here to say that the naked dancing guy had a surprisingly gigantic scrotum?  I rarely feel the need to mention things like that (mostly cause I don’t see many scrota!), but I mean, jeez.  You’d find it worth mentioning too, if you’d seen it.  I’m just saying.  The security guy finally made him wear pants, which he grudgingly put on, but kept pulling them down as low as they would go, showing fully half of his ass and barely concealing him in the front.  Yeesh.  Anyway. . .I don’t want to devote too much time to scrota; I feel that I’ve done enough already.  Moving on.)

. . .and, of course, the gas works itself.  This is one of the weirdest parks anywhere, and it’s in one of the most beautiful settings in all of Seattle.   It’s slightly sinister, utterly fascinating, and endlessly photogenic.

I seem to remember signs posted around the park that said things like, ‘Wash Your Hands After Touching Grass’ and ‘Do Not Lie On Grass; Please Use Blankets’ and things like that, but I couldn’t find any of those this time.   The city must have cleaned the place up a bit more since the last time I was there.  It’s been a few years.

Anyway,  the day was lovely, and I was glad to have had the extra time to spend in such a leisurely way.  I love Seattle, and every time I go, I toy with the idea of moving there.   Here’s the view from the park.  If you click on it, you’ll see that it’s full-size so that you can really get a sense of it.  It’d be amazing after dark too.

I don’t know that I’ll actually move there.  I have good things going for me here (not to mention extremely cheap rent), but I do love it, and I always come back and look at apartments on ListByCraig in various neighborhoods, trying to decide which area would suit me.

Le Sigh.  Je t’aime, EmeraldCity.