beverages, zombies and paper cranes

the harbingers of summer have finally arrived! the scent of sunblock mingles with the briny smell of the sound, all of the stops are announced on the buses for the benefit of tourists and i've switched to iced coffee and zombie books.



this means that the summer drinking season has begun! i'm back on the dewdrivers, sweets! (although, chotda's skinny bitch sounds pretty great too. i might have to switch midseason.)



i'm also betting that this summer will be full of paper cranes. i made my very first one last night!



i went on to make 40 more of them. yeah, i can get a little obsessive when it comes to making stuff.



when i reach one thousand, i think i'll wish for a pony.

today? why do you even ask?! i've got 1000 paper cranes to fold! sheesh! only 959 more to go!

late spring cleaning

will i be able to stop listening to this avett brothers song today? no, i don't think that i will. it's catchy and about death! hooray!

since it's t-minus 29 days and counting until padre's visit, i've been reorganizing the closets and cabinets. (yes, we all know that i need meds, thanks so much for pointing that out.) as such, i didn't get outside until later in the afternoon. i heard that it was deliciously sunny though.



it was still amazing when leff and i walked downtown. lookit this shadow.



doesn't it seem like it belongs on a stage set?

anyway, the purpose of walking downtown was to get a new shower curtain. and, oh baby!, what a shower curtain we got!



the brown pattern is flocked, bitches! so that means that i can pet my shower curtain. aaaaaw yeah!

one last thing before i go. remember this photo from yesterday? well, chotda fixed it and made it wonderful!!



thanks, chotda!!!

but for now, it's back to the cleaning for me.

new swapatorium post!

this month's entry on swapatorium? sunday morning sausage ring with eggs continental!



i am trying to break your heart! with two pounds of pork!

walking and talking

long weekends are awesome. having an extra day to knock out some errands like walking down fifth to take photos for the seattle tourist google map (it's still a work in progress.) that leff is compiling for our visitors this summer was wonderful.

leff took most of the photos yesterday. i just managed this one.



and my lunch at top pot.





i didn't take pictures because i was trying to help my dad find a hotel. don't ever try this when you're not near a computer. i found myself screaming "don't stay in kirkland!! NOT. KIRKLAND!!" and "parking is expensive! everything is expensive! yes, there is a lot of traffic!!" from an empty parking lot. (padre has some hearing loss, hence the yelling.)

i guess i'll be walking with my camera today to make our google map more inclusive.

lazy sunday

i did nothing yesterday. i read a lot. i also slept a lot. and then there was the defining moment of sunday--birthday cake ice cream with kit kats.



hmmm, now that i think about it, maybe the "law and order: ci" with stephen colbert sums up the day a bit better. eh, who cares. this whole post is really just a way of proving how lazy i was yesterday.

bday cds and gorditos

saturday was notable for not only the annoyances of folklife (no, i haven't gone. i hate folklife. but i live in queen anne so the festival makes itself known to me if i set foot outside my apt.) but also for a glut of cds!



yes, amy winehouse. shut up.

also fun was the trip to greenwood with j and leff. j bought me bday lunch at gorditos! thanks, j!!



here's my bday horchata! yum!



seeing as it's a rainy, sleepy day, i think i'll end here and take a nap. it's really all sundays are good for anyway.

okok booty!

in no particular order, here is all of the goodness i purchased at okok yesterday! (sorry not to give you toy names, descriptions, etc. but i'm running late.)

the most fabulous birthday ever! (excluding the "clash of the titans"/"making of thriller"/pizza party and sleepover at age nine)

i'm not kidding about that title. yesterday was my second favorite birthday ever! and i should know a thing or two about having bdays considering that i'm getting moderately long in the tooth!

leff and i started the day at zeitgeist.



it's my favorite coffee shop in town. yeah, i said it. i like vivace as much as the next person but my love goes to zeitgeist. so there.

our first store of the day was kobo at higo.



i've been past kobo a billion times but had never gone inside. unfortunately, the higo side of things (higo used to be a japanese dry good store) was blocked off so i only got to view the exhibit over some boxes. still, leff bought me a tiny little lucky cat



and one of the design chair volume 1 blind boxes of which i'll post a photo later.

after kobo, it was time for lunch at takohachi!



i'd never been until yesterday and now i'm sad that i wasn't there every. single. day because it's closing next week. the food was delicious, fresh and inexpensive. i'm crying inside because i won't be able to get this bento with curried rice (and miso soup that's not pictured) for much longer.



seattle readers! for reals! go to takohachi one last time before it closes! and if you've never been before, then go!!

bento desire sated, it was off to the wing luke.



it was a little smaller than i had thought it would be but still, enjoyable in its own way once the freakin' school children got out of our way.

i suppose it goes without mentioning that we stopped at kinokuniya and uwajimaya, right?



i picked up a copy of gr, some "super happy girl" notebook paper, black sesame pocky and, most wonderfully, DURIAN WAFER COOKIES!!!



oh yes! they smelled like durian fruit!! it was quite hysterical! honestly, the smell didn't bother me but leff. um, well, why not just read his account. i'm still laughing about it!

after a durian cookie, a short nap and a trip to the bank (where two tellers wished me happy bday. i have a nice branch bank, it's true.), a came over.

since padre had sent me a little bday cash, a kindly drove us to okok, where, OMG!!, the best thing ever happened!

okok is not going to be selling blind box toys anymore. i don't know why i asked their most wonderful employee if they were going to stock toys any longer but i'm certainly glad that i did BECAUSE! are you ready for this?!? he told me that i could check in the back room where the toys were being stored! and that, HOLY HELL! i could buy any of them for half off!!! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!!!

i'll have a separate post of the toys later today because i haven't taken photos yet but i must say, again, THANK YOU SOOOOOO MUCH, OKOK GUY!!!! you are mega, mega awesome!!!

ok, *whew!!* as if the day couldn't get any better, a drove us to golden gardens.



it's low/negative tide season so a lot more of the beach was exposed. no, i didn't see any geoducks but i still get all sugar high happy when i'm at the beach. (those of you who didn't grow up landlocked might not understand the pure joy of reaching a beach in about 15 minutes that i experience every time i visit.)

we were encouraged to please feed geese to ducks.



but i didn't.

since the original pancake house had closed for the day, we had dinner at denny's. yes, i know. denny's. but when the urge for cherry covered pancakes hits



you kinda' have to go with it.

this post has gone on long enough. i need to run to easy street to pick up a few cds and then i need to take pics of the okok booty. plus, it's gordito's day with j!

i turn 34, tup tim thai, dinosaurs from china

happy bday to me. i'm now 34. should i be happy about that? (hahaha! only those that know me in rl know how traumatized i am by being so close to 35. oops. now i guess that you do too.)

anyway, with no time to either plan for or bake a cake this week, i replicated the hostess wedding cake (first photo on the page) with little debbie cupcakes.



pretty tasty. and it's going to take a long time to finish.

poor leff! yesterday he was had some sort of weird illness. maybe it was something he ate? anyway, he started feeling a little better around 2ish so a dropped by and we went to tup tim thai, my favorite thai place in queen anne. i had a thai iced tea and



the garlic prawns (not pictured since i gobbled them up!). leff and i split an order of sticky rice with fresh mango which i also gobbled up. thankfully, there was a photo of it on our table.



i LUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURVE sticky rice with mango!! i'm drooling just thinking about it!!

since it was my bday eve, that meant that we got to watch an episode of "a haunting". i lovelovelove this show! and by that i mean, i love the general crappiness and the quickness of homeowners to blame self opening cabinets with bad hinges on ghosts and demons.

we also watched "enter the dragon" ('cause i ♥ ♥ hearts ♥ ♥ bruce lee!) before a had to leave for a bball game. which was too bad really because he missed the fossils at pacsci. (i still have a visitor's pass, a, so any time you'd like to see the fossils, just let me know!)

anyway, colassal fossils is awesome! a bad pano, if you will.



a lot of the dinos are actual fossils and not just casts. i'm not sure if this guy was real or not



but this crichtonsaurus is! (i've been laughing about the name "crichtonsaurus" since i read it.)



these little guys are not much bigger than housecats! and they're related to triceratops! if i were being charged by a herd of them, i would only be able to stand there and "aaaaawwwww!".



in summation, if you're into dinos and in seattle, do the colossal fossils thing. very, very cool.

did i mention that it was sunny yesterday?



right, time to get this bday thing started. i think we're headed to the international district. and, if the log flume is running at the center, i'm *so* riding that today!

nordic heritage musuem and a few other things

if you read yesterday's post, you already know that i visited the nordic heritage museum.



that is not the official entrance. i just like that the building still resembles the daniel webster elementary school that it used to be in a former life.

i was soaking up nordic heritage yesterday 1) because i'd never done it before 2) because padre and my step mom are going to be in town next month and i'm scouting museums. i guess given that padre is a minister and that i'm kinda stressed about the impending visit, it was appropriate that this religious mannequin in the american settlement section scared the hell out of me.



he just sort of materialized in my blind spot. gah!

the museum consists of three floors. the first shows the difficulties of immigration and settlement. normally, lars brekke, a blacksmith who lived in ballard, would've been able to quote things at me but he was feeling under the weather. poor guy.



the second floor is dedicated to fishing, logging, folk art, a library and a special exhibit area. the third consists of separate rooms devoted to finland, iceland, sweden, denmark and norway respectively.

the finland room smells like church due to the donated pews and alter. i felt an overwhelming desire to drink welch's grape juice.

i'll be going back to the museum. (esp for tivoli/viking days) i wasn't able to see as much as i would have liked since i was actively avoiding five bus loads of children. but i did take away a quote about swedes that's been making me giggle for no reason. that quote being "give me a bunch of swedes and i'll build you a railroad to hell!".

i'm giggling again already.

wednesday's bday food was chocolate covered strawberries.



sorry it's so blurry. i was more into eating them than making them pose for long.

after dinner, leff and i headed downtown.



we took the monorail and sat in the very front since neither one of us had done it before.



don't give me flack about using the monorail. it's a hell of a lot faster than the bus esp if you live in lower queen anne and are headed to the westlake center area.

tonight leff and i are doing the member's preview at pacsci. dinosaurs!! dinosaurs from china!!